Chapter 191

“As I drifted between waking and sleep, surrounded by so much love, my only coherent thought was, ‘I need a bigger chair.’”
—Devon Layne, The Prodigal

18 MARCH 2022

If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were all sucking up. Neither Brittany nor Cindy has been a minute late for curfew when they go home. They’ve both established their routine of being at the farm Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday nights but both have backed off pushing for additional nights like Sunday. They are perfect daughters, perfectly obedient to their parents. Even Beca is spending a couple of nights a week at her mother’s house—usually Monday and Tuesday. Em and I spent a night a week at our parents’ house. Different nights.

I overheard a conversation with my parents and Rachel’s parents when I stopped by to visit one evening and they’d gathered to play cards.

“Rachel calls three or four times a week,” Dee said. “I think she misses having her mother around to give her advice. Being out in the world is so hard on them.”

“Randall says Livy does the same thing. Our children miss us and will always be our children,” Bert said. “Missing them is part of our burden.”

“I spoke with Riko yesterday. She was very tired because she says Desiree calls her after rehearsal every night. Usually about eleven. They talk for hours,” Mom said.

I guess we’re all bonding with our parents and making sure nothing upsets the plan for the next two weeks. Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll stand before a judge in Boston with my eleven girlfriends and we’ll become one plural domestic partnership. We’re getting married.

I’m a little sad that Remas has chosen not to join us in the ceremony. She’s sad, too. It’s smart, really. She doesn’t want to join us until she’s had a chance to be with us on a more regular basis—as in sometime after we move to DC. She feels a little like a satellite to the real family.

Family. When it comes down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Twelve people who love each other and want to be with each other always, forming a single social and economic unit that we’ll call a family. A family we have decided to name Octave. I will become Jacob Hopkins Octave. Rachel Evans Octave will be my wife. So will Nanette Schwartz Octave. And Cynthia Marvel Octave.

There are twelve half-steps in an octave of music. Twelve in our family. The Octaves.

The girls were all fluttering. I don’t know what else to call it. I guess I was fluttering, too. We’d all gone out for a run this morning—just a mile to be out enjoying the spring weather. Donna and I checked the back field and decided it was too wet to run the tractor over to mow. We might have to bale the cut grass by the time the ground is dry enough to run the tractor on. We don’t want to have it sink into the beautiful driving range.

But that wasn’t the only fluttering we were doing. We cleaned every square inch of the farmhouse. That meant moving all the furniture. And as long as I was moving furniture, the girls all thought we should try a different arrangement. In every room. Beds got moved. Sofas got moved. Tables and chairs were reoriented. Donna even changed the position of her desk and decided we needed another desk in the study to accommodate our business. We all tended to drift in and out of the study as we worked on schedules, programs, contracts, and accounting. She was right. We needed at least one more desk.

I was looking at the big calendar drawn on the whiteboard with dates and locations for our upcoming concerts. April and May were going to be a zoo. Rachel, on behalf of the Office of Civilian Service, had negotiated Fridays off for Cindy and me to travel to different schools for assemblies. We weren’t going to play every school in the Fort Wayne area, but Rachel had booked assemblies in the eight largest schools in the region.

In addition, we were doing six Saturday concerts and they were as far away as South Bend, Lafayette, and Indianapolis. We’d developed our playlist so we had a one-hour program for assemblies and a two-hour program for Saturday concerts. Starting April fifteenth, we were going to be very busy.

My stomach growled and I realized I was catching the tantalizing smell of cookies baking. I drifted out to the kitchen and found Beca lifting a tray of cookies out of the oven and putting another one in.

“We’re all being so domestic today,” I laughed as I sampled a hot cookie.

“Careful! You’ll burn yourself,” she said, slapping at my hand. “We’re nesting.”

“What?”

“Nesting,” my sister said from behind me. She broke a piece off my cookie and shoved it in her mouth.

“I thought I was immune to this kind of thing,” Nanette said as everyone began wandering in. “Is someone pregnant? We’re feathering the nest.”

“Not me,” I said. Enough of my girlfriends had mentioned wanting to become mommies after I finished my two-year National Service that my cock was involuntarily rising at the very mention of pregnancy. Or perhaps it was because of Cindy backing up to me and rubbing her bare butt up and down my cock.

“And just think, when we get to DC, we’ll start the whole process over again,” Donna said. “Only we’ll all be there. I love each and every one of you but I want you all to know I miss Joan, Desi, Livy, and Rachel intensely.”

“Yes. I wish we were moving at the same time we’re getting married,” Sophie said. “I want us all to live together.”

“But this is the hard part we prepared for,” Beca said as she broke from a kiss with Brittany. “We all understand we are forced to be apart, but we support each other and love each other. At least Rachel, Desi, and Livy have each other for support.”

“And Remas,” Cindy sighed.

“And Remas,” Beca agreed. “And next week we have Friday off school because of the teacher workday. Who wants to go to Chicago with Jacob and me to visit Joan?”

“As a teacher, I have to participate in the workday,” Donna sighed. “Otherwise I’d be right with you.”

“I have to work, too,” Nanette said.

“Sophie?” Brittany asked. “Think we can talk Mom and Dad into the two of us going to Chicago with Jacob and Beca for the weekend?”

“I don’t think it will be a problem,” Sophie said. “But, Cindy?”

“No way I even want to ask my parents. They have a notion that we should go off on a little family outing that weekend. One last hurrah, you know?” Cindy said. She kept up the rubbing against my cock and I was about ready to fuck her right there in the kitchen. I think that might have been what she was hoping.

“I’m going to stay home and pamper Donna and Nanette,” Em said. “The house will be quiet and I think they deserve a hot scented bath, a massage, and some sweet loving.”

“Oh, Emily, I love you,” Donna said. Nanette caught Em in a hug and kissed her. If I fucked Cindy on the kitchen counter, I’d have to move to the end to give Nanette and Em room. The timer rang and Beca turned from her embrace with Brittany to get another tray of cookies out of the oven.

Though she was loud and emphatic as usual, Cindy’s weren’t the only orgasms that were screamed out that weekend. The eight of us in the house managed to find about every position we could get into to please each other. We didn’t get much practicing in, so I took Cindy home and we practiced there for a couple of hours, much to the delight of her parents.

As much as possible, I was working ahead in my classes. Conducting experiments in physics was difficult to do except during our twice-a-week labs. In Latin, Miss Lustig said to just make sure I’d memorized the vocabulary for the week and did the translations. Class time was spent reading aloud and translating.

In English, I was deep in the disturbing novel A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was one of four novels for this unit. My favorite dystopian novels were on the list: Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. Rounding out the list was Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was more familiar with the movie than the book. Who could forget Jack Nicholson? We had a paper due before spring break on the topic of ‘What is my responsibility to myself and to others?’ I was having difficulty keeping that one down to the requested five pages. I had a lot of thoughts on responsibility these days.

LeBlanc was driving us during rehearsals. The week after spring break was our spring concert. I was thankful Cindy and I didn’t have solos, but periodically LeBlanc would call the two of us forward to perform a piece from our upcoming concert and have it commented on by the orchestra. Our Rachmaninov arrangement that was just three minutes long generated a fifteen-minute discussion on whether or not interpreting a composition for one instrument on a different one was consistent with honoring the composer’s intent.

I had most of the practicum for Business Math completed and was just attending lectures. We were working on the integration of statistical functions to project revenue growth rates over marketing spend with diminishing return. I wondered how many people actually used that for business planning. We certainly didn’t.

Finally, Mr. Richards was leading us through the legislative process and explaining why it took so long for a bill to become law—if it ever did. He compared standard legislative process to initiative process and we had an interesting discussion on whether the electorate should be able to initiate new laws and why that was a dangerous thing.

One of the things that we had to make time for was clothing. First, Cindy and I needed to expand our performance wardrobe. It wasn’t so much that we needed different looks as that we needed to have our clothes cleaned and laundered between performances and know we always had fresh clothes when we appeared. I was pitting out my shirts something fierce. I only wore dark shirts now because the sweat beneath my arms was too visible in a white shirt. I wanted nothing after a performance so much as a shower. And while I loved Cindy’s scent and flavor, after an hour in the spotlight her body odor was a little intense, too. We bought clothes, careful to make sure our outfits were compatible.