Chapter 9

We did pretty well for a month. We were helped along by our mother tracking each day on a calendar in her efforts to be ready, should one of the girls miss a period. None did, though. I think it was the first time in that house that periods were celebrated, rather than reviled.

During that month Agent Brown was a frequent visitor. It had been decided that making a bunch of juveniles come to the offices of a federal law enforcement agency to be interviewed wasn’t in our best interests, and might draw the attention of the media, who kept a loose eye on the offices of federal agencies like that. Tom and Jerry’s indictment (which was only for the counterfeiting part of things) got fifteen minutes of fame, but then things calmed down.

So Agent Brown, or Phil, as first my mother and then the rest of us began to call him, came to get detailed statements from each of us about what happened. Each of those interviews took hours to complete, so he only did one (Valerie) the first time he came. Mom fed him and then said that if it would make things easier, he could stay in the guest room the next time he came. Rudy and I shared a bedroom, and the girls shared another one. Valerie had been angling for her own room (the guest bedroom) but Mom said she only had one more year before she’d go off to college, and she could survive living with her sisters until then.

So we actually had a guest bedroom. And Mom’s a good cook.

So that’s what he did. He wanted to pay Mom and Dad what it would have cost him to stay in a hotel, but they wouldn’t take it.

The next time he came I was first on the list. I had tried to talk to Val about what she’d told him, after her interview, but it had lasted over three hours and she said there had been too much said to be able to remember it all. I thought that was a little odd, but she was obviously tired, so I let it lay. Before Phil took me into Dad’s office to do the interview, she pulled me aside and I found out why she’d been so reticent with me. It turned out she’d been reticent with me because she wasn’t reticent at all when she talked to Phil ... and had been embarrassed to admit that to me. Now, she did.

“I told him everything,” she whispered. “They’re going to prosecute Tom and Jerry for producing kiddy porn.”

“You told him everything? What does that mean?”

“It means he knows everything you and I did, and that we did it because Tom told us to do it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What I mean is, don’t try to cover anything up,” she said. “I don’t want him to think I lied.”

I stared at her.

She blinked.

“I like him ... okay?”

“You like him?”

“Yes. So? Is it so awful that I like him?”

“You like the federal agent who arrested you and put handcuffs on you,” I said.

“They took them off,” she said, sounding wounded.

“He’s probably thirty,” I said. “And married, with two kids.”

“He’s twenty-two and he’s not married,” she said, looking smug.

“That’s what he tells young, impressionable girls he’s seen naked,” I said.

“No it’s not. We talked about all sorts of things. Did you know this is his first big case? He’s only been a secret service agent for six months!”

“Val, he’s still five years older than you,” I pointed out.

“Daddy is older than Mommy,” she said, her jaw beginning to protrude.

“You just said Daddy and Mommy,” I pointed out. “And Dad’s only one year older. Besides, you’re a minor! He’d get thrown in jail if he did anything with you!”

She got hostile, then.

“The age of consent in this state is sixteen!” she snapped. “I don’t have to have anybody’s permission to do whatever I want to!”

“Unless it’s smoke, or drink, or vote,” I smirked.

I was astonished when she reached out and, with clawed hand, gripped my junk. She squeezed, slowly, until I was on tiptoes.

“I let you put that thing inside me,” she hissed. “Don’t make me sorry I did that.”

“Okay, okay. You like him,” I gasped.

She let go.

“I know it’s stupid. Please don’t make fun of me. Just don’t make me look like a liar.”

“Okay,” I said.

Then I went in and told Agent Brown everything. He was extremely detailed in his questions, and in recording my answers. He could type ninety words a minute, and kept up with my narrative of events easily.

When he said we were done, he leaned back in Dad’s desk chair and stretched.

“Fucked up situation, huh,” he said, out of the blue.

“It turned out better than I could have hoped for,” I responded. “At least for me.”

“And your siblings,” he said.

“Yeah, them, too.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“How did it feel?”

“Feel?”

“How did it make you feel to know that you were having sex with your sister?”

I reflected on that for a few seconds. I hadn’t actually tried to think about that, before this. My memories of it all were happy/fuzzy/ecstatic/uh-oh/danger, all mixed up.

“I think it was different with each one,” I said, finally.

“I’d be interested in hearing why,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

He looked away.

“It’s not a professional interest,” he said. “What we’re talking about now is between you and me.”

“Did you ask Valerie about that?” I asked.

He blinked, but didn’t look away.

“Yeah. She wouldn’t answer me.”

“She has a thing for you,” I said. It just came out.

“She does, huh.” He smiled, but it looked like a dismissive smile.

“She’s afraid if our stories don’t match you’ll think she lied to you.”

“If your stories match too closely people will think they’re rehearsed,” he said. “Witnesses see things in vastly different ways sometimes.”

“It’s hard to describe,” I said.

“Can you try? You don’t have to. I’m just curious.”

“I’m not sure I can. I can tell you why I decided to actually do it, if that helps.”

“Wasn’t it the money?” he asked.

“That was part of it, but only a little part.” In my statement all I’d said was he offered us this if we did that, so we did that.

“Go ahead.”

“Well, Tawny was curious and eager to spread her wings. I could tell she wanted to try stuff. To be honest, the thought of her doing that kind of thing with anybody else made me a little crazy. But if I did it, it didn’t seem so bad. With Val it was different. She was conflicted. She tried to talk us all out of doing anything at all. She’d have sent those guys packing from the get-go. But inside she wanted to see what things were like just as much as Tawny did. She got to the point where she decided that, if it was going to happen, the only guy she was willing to let it happen with was me. And Rudy.”

“So she didn’t actually consent,” he said.

“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “She kept saying we shouldn’t, and then confided in me that she wanted to. That’s what bothered her the most. It didn’t bother her to do things with me. It bothered her that she wanted to do them.”

“I get that,” said Phil. “I have a sister. I wanted to see her naked when we were kids, and it bothered me.”

“But you’d still have done it if you could,” I suggested.

“I guess so,” he said. Then, “Yeah. I’d definitely have peeked if I’d gotten the chance.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“She’s a housewife in Sacramento with two kids and a husband I’d shoot, if I could get away with it,” he said. He grinned. “Nobody will ever be good enough for her.”

“I understand that perfectly,” I said.

“Well, I was just curious. I guess we’re finished,” he said.

“If it helps, I kind of feel like I understand Rudy and Sam a little better,” I offered.

“How’s that?”

“Well, they do the twin thing all the time, like they know what each other is thinking. It’s a closeness I never really understood until now.”

“You mean being with your sisters ... like that ... brought you closer,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’ve never felt as close to anyone as I did ... then.”

“Do you still feel that close?”

I thought about that for a few seconds.

“I guess I do,” I said.

We did okay for another month, except that Dad thought it would be a good idea to hire a lawyer to represent us. That guy, to bolster our claim that we’d been manipulated by Tom and Jerry, rather than being willing partners in crime, believed that we should all go to therapy to “mitigate the emotional damage of being molested.” He recommended a therapist.

The fact that there wasn’t any emotional damage sailed right over the therapist’s head. She was convinced there had to be damage, since we had been made to commit incest etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I get that. I mean the traditional creepy guy in a van offering out candy to kids happens. And I’m quite sure there are tons of cases where kids minds are all messed up by what happens to them. But that just wasn’t the case with us.

If you do a little church-hopping, you’ll run into a range of types of ministers. Some of them stand rigidly in the pulpit, red-faced and scream about what inveterate sinners the members of the congregation are, and how they’re all doomed to the fires of Hell and eternal damnation if they don’t change their ways. They use fear and intimidation to get people to act “right.” Then there are some who read parables to the congregation and talk about how much God loves us. Hell is never mentioned. There is the inference that God is disappointed when we fail over and over again, but the message is clear. He loves us despite our failings and Jesus is the proof.

Our therapist was the Hellfire and Brimstone kind of person, who believed that there had to be damage and the sooner we cried and wailed and worked through our feelings of guilt and shame, the sooner we could be normal again.

Even Tawny figured out within a few days that you just had to fake the moaning and wailing and crying, to get this woman off our backs. We endured that for a week before Mom sat in on a session. She’d talked to the girls and knew nobody had been traumatized, physically or emotionally. She complimented the woman on a miraculous turnaround in our attitudes, and took us out of therapy. I’m really glad she did. In my opinion, the therapy was causing more harm than the reason we were in it.

That said, there was some residual guilt about the whole situation. That was fully unpacked in therapy, but not for the reasons the therapist thought it was. Val felt guilty that she’d given in to her desires. I felt guilty because I’d been so eager to give Tawny what she wanted, and that even though it had turned out okay, it could have been really bad.

And we all felt a little guilty that we all wanted to continue our newfound “closeness” when it was so crystal clear that it had been horrible, awful, damaging, and destructive.

Things got better after we finally got clear of the therapy. Nobody was telling us how damaged we were anymore.

Well, most things got better. One of the decisions our parents made after this was that we had to wear clothes in the house. Our days of being nudists were over.

One thing that was clear to all of us was that there was a level of familiarity between us kids that hadn’t been there before our vacation. We had done this momentous thing. It hadn’t worked out like was thought it would. Two guys were in jail, awaiting trial. But for us, it had actually turned out pretty okay. We’d had a fantastic adventure and done fantastic things. We’d done intimate things, things that had brought us as close together as two people can get.

Most of all, as the girls entered the prickly, dangerous, angst-filled world of adult sexual relationships, it hadn’t been scary or heartbreaking. The girls had liked everything that had happened to them. Not counting the being arrested part and the public humiliation part, of course.

But other than that, even though it was being filmed by strangers, they felt the love Rudy and I were offering them. Sure, they recognized the lust in our eyes and actions, but they knew there was love behind that. In all their minds that’s how they thought about it. They didn’t perceive themselves as having “fucked.” They perceived themselves as “having been made love to.”

It can be a huge difference. Most people can take or leave “a fuck.” There’s always “another fuck” around the corner. If you know where, you can go buy “a fuck.”

But making love is different. It’s precious. It’s rarer than it should be. And people who have done it have the inescapable drive to want to experience that again.

Even if it’s with a partner the rest of the world deems to be unacceptable.

Two months had gone by. Things had settled down. Phil had finally (sadly, in my opinion) told us he was finished, and would not see us again until the trial. If we needed anything, we had his number. Wearing clothes wasn’t really a big deal. We wore them everywhere else, and staying dressed in the house wasn’t a huge adjustment.