Chapter 12

“What’s wrong Beth?” Josh said when he walked in the door. He had come home earlier to greet and talk with his brother. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Where’s Jerry?” He expected him to walk through the kitchen door. “Did you show him the room?”

“He’s gone, Josh.”

“GONE? Gone where?”

“He left for the station. He’s taking a train back to Cedar Grove?”

Realizing that he didn’t know his brother anymore, he had counted on the old Jerry Cross coming to town and accepting what was going on at his house with his daughter. “But we’ve worked so hard to make this happen, Beth.”

“He said it’s a whorehouse Josh and it’s going to ruin our neighborhood and our lives.”

“But what about Laura? She’ll be crushed.”

“I found something out about Laura Josh. Jerry IS her father.”

“After all we’ve talked about regarding Laura’s paternity how can you be so sure?”

Jerry has convinced me that he is so concerned about his daughter that he couldn’t stay with the knowledge that she will be having sex with a stranger in the basement. You on the other hand are eager for it to happen.”

“But even if I could prove that Laura was my daughter Beth, I would probably feel the same way.”

“Right,” Beth replied, “that’s my point. Jerry feels more responsibility for her as a parent.”

“But I can’t understand that he would take off just like that without even talking to Laura. She’s going to be crushed.”

“I don’t know about that,” Beth said. “I’ve gotten the feeling that she was uncomfortable that her father would be here. She never said it, but she never was as enthusiastic about it as I would have hoped. Not being parents, I suppose that we were more open-minded about it than most real parents would have been. He left a letter in an envelope for her before he left.”

As Laura rode home on the EL, she couldn’t shake the angst she’d been feeling all day. As much as she had never understood why Aunt Beth and Uncle Josh had been pushing so hard for her father to come to Chicago, particularly on the day they would cut the ribbon for the rec room. And now she was riding home to meet him. GOOD LORD, she thought I wonder if he has seen the room yet.

He had been so understanding when she was going through her grief at Billy’s death. It had been like he was giving her marriage counseling during that time while she was still home. It was her dad who pushed her so hard to move to Chicago to live with Beth and Josh. She had been in such a sad and vengeful state at the time. Her vow to have sex with soldiers was made as something honorable. The fact was that she just wanted to be fucked. When she got to Chicago it didn’t take her friends at work long to convince her to do what they were doing at the USO and give sex away to the GIs. Now that she was doing it every week.

She wondered what Mary Jane Rusnak was doing at home. Was she having sex with a schoolteacher or something—she had always talked about her preference for older men. Why do I always compare myself to Mary Jane? She knew the answer, she had always envied MJ’s blatant disregard for what other people thought. I was the good girl and look where it got me.

She had to admit that although her motivation was honorable, she enjoyed making out with different males and having different dicks inside her regularly. She knew that Mary Jane was active with other boys but thought I bet she hasn’t been fucked by as many as I have. The minute the thought went through her mind she felt guilty again for having such thoughts and being so envious of Mary Jane.

She wondered if her father’s encouragement was a way to get her out of the small community of Cedar Grove where she might get involved with a boy or a man and end up getting pregnant as her mother had, to get married and be tied to that small town for the rest of her life. He had tried so hard to get her to go to Chicago. But as the wheels of the EL train screeched ahead of stopping at her station her stomach churned at the thought of seeing her father who probably already had seen the rooms downstairs—as if they were part of a whorehouse.

Walking through the door she heard voices in the kitchen—her uncle and aunt and no doubt her father. She thought that Beth and Josh would love it. Their moral compasses were on such a different plane than most of the world. They were so incredibly proud of the rec. room and what the girls were “doing” for the troops. She wondered what her dad would think of the reality of her fucking strangers in those rooms, of her escapades in bed with Beth, and that she had sex with his brother numerous times. It was all she could do to propel herself forward and come face-to-face with her father.

“Bad news sweetie,” Josh said as her frame filled the kitchen doorway, “Your dad already came and left?”

“LEFT?” she said with disbelief, “He can’t have been here long.” She did everything in her power to keep her face from showing the relief that she didn’t have to confront her father. And the butterflies were gone.

Beth said, “He and I had a lengthy conversation about it, Hun. When I took him downstairs, he just couldn’t handle it and said he had to leave. He left a note for you. I put it on your dresser.”

“Sorry,” Josh said. He didn’t tell why he felt that way. He had hoped that Laura could be involved in a threesome with him and her father.

After having rushed to the room she sat on her bed and opened the note that was a letter.