Chapter 21

July 17, 2018

“We’re here!”

“Kitchen,” Kalina responded to Maren.

“We’re going to change into appropriate clothing. We’ll be right there.”

When the four girls reached the kitchen, all wearing narrow tubes and G-strings, except that Civ wore no tube, the three parents greeted them in the current inter-family tradition: hugs and two-pecks-and-a-half kisses that typically slid into three-peck kisses.

Once her mouth was free, Emma remarked, “I love how the two families interact, and I’m glad to see you and Katie here tonight, Liya.”

Katie replied, “We’re happy to be here. Like you, I love how our families interact. This is so fun!”

Kalina smirked, then stated, “And our guy gets so ... inspired when you girls visit. That’s particularly so for these Tuesday nights. With four pretty girls who are not his wives wearing LA skimpywear, Jeff gives us wonderful times in our bed.”

The four girls and his two wives immediately looked at Jeff, and he stated, “You thought that I’d object. Didn’t you? I’ve taken to heart your rejection of my objections, so I’ll, hopefully, surprise you by telling our daughters and their two visiting sisters that I love our Tuesday-night bedtime romps.”

Civ gurgled her happiness and stepped into her dad’s space and threw her arms around him.

“I love that you’re getting more comfortable with the ... sexy repartee when around my sisters. Neither Mare nor I would ever object to things like this. Mare and I aren’t permitted actual sexy-time, but we’re fine with fun and/or funny sexy repartee. And, Dad, make sure you’re good enough to our moms that we can hear from them how good you were to them.”

Jeff flinched, but responded, “Are you okay with me telling you that I’ll do my best to make them truly enjoy our ... What did you call it? Sexy time?”

Mare answered, “Close, Dad, but it’s a single, hyphenated term, so you need to run the components together. It’s ‘sexy-time.’”

He asked, “Who ... coined the term?”

Civ answered, “Your elder-but-second daughter, the very lovely Maren Palecek. Oh, and Dad, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’m so glad you were fine with Emma and Mare changing their last name to ... yours. Mare particularly appreciated the commitment to Emma and her by allowing that.”

Mare quickly stepped into the space currently occupied by Jeff and Civia and snuggled her way into both of them, resulting in the two of them putting single arms around their, respectively, daughter and sister.

While Emma stepped into the backs of her daughters and added to the scrum, Kalina said, “Dinner will be on the table in five minutes. I hope it’s okay with our ... semi-guests-slash-good friends, but we’d like to start dinner conversation off with our girls’ schooling.”

“That’s fine,” answered Liya. “Beth suggested that we might expect something like that.”

Kalina shook her head slowly, then asked, “Does she figure everything out?”

“Not everything, but a surprisingly large percentage. We’ve given her a mental vacation for the near-term future and have established an executive committee to fill the leadership ... semi-void.”

Emma responded, “That’s probably a good thing. I know she seemed to forget about the business discussion on Friday. Is that the sort of thing that’s concerning you?”

Liya nodded and replied, “We have experience of her losing it a couple of times, and those scared us. When it looked like she might be headed for another such instance, we had to step in. She’s so very critical for our success, so five of us are trying to fill the void with her on mental vacation. We’ve all known how critical she is to the LA, but it was still a bit surprising and ... dismaying how many little things she did or solved for us. We’ve decided that we’ll need to make sure she takes frequent mental vacations. It takes her a long time to get in critical condition, but we want to avoid that as much as possible.”

As the seven began moving food and drinks to the table, Kalina responded, “I’ve never understood how a 14- and, now, 15-year-old could manage ... this, put together this incredible group of girls, and yet keep everyone happy and fulfilled.”

As she put the large bowl of mashed potatoes on the table, Katie stated, “We seniors were surprised when she arrived as a 14-year-old freshman at soccer practice and calmly and without obvious effort took control of Central’s offense and earned the respect of a number of sophomore girls who had been on the team the year before, and that despite that various freshmen beat them out of the positions for which they were backups the previous year. Enough respect to vote for her as O captain. Even though we five seniors were not then as close with each other as we had been a few years earlier, we got together and talked about that. Meka was her greatest supporter among us in that ... meeting, I suppose. Beth absolutely amazed Meka at her capabilities on the pitch but, more importantly, in her leadership ability. That’s what we’re trying to keep available to us by giving her mental vacations.”

The table was prepared during Katie’s words, so as everyone sat to the table, Civ stated, “I think she was really ... not ‘worried’ but maybe ‘concerned’ about how the ... photography business would work out. While, obviously, we have no sales yet, I think your discussion today helped alleviate a lot of her concerns. She looked much more ... umm ... calm after it.”

Kalina put her fork and knife down, then asked, “Regarding that business, what do you know about Garvey?”

Liya replied, “Katherine recommended him to us as a framer, telling us that while she didn’t really know framing, that he seemed to be well respected. We’ve been incredibly happy with his efforts for us. Rache has said that he’s very good at that task. He’s also been critical to Rache understanding, at least better than she had, which was nearly zero understanding, of the ... career she wanted.”

“And that was as ... a photographer of ... sex and sexual situations?”

“Yes,” answered Mare. “We were there for that discussion, and he was very helpful. He also seems like a nice guy, perhaps even a very nice guy.”

“How did Katherine come to know about him? Did he do work for her in some way?”

Civ answered, “They’re former lovers. They parted amicably as ... unsuitable for each other in that way.”

All three parents leaned back and blinked at Civia’s words, and Emma responded, “Wow. I didn’t expect that! Liya, are you concerned about taking Katherine in possibly affecting your business relationship with Garvey?”

Liya replied, “No. At least, neither has given us any sort of indication that it would be trouble. Katherine knows how much we, particularly Rache, have been picking his brain and how much help he’s been to us. He lent us the drone with which Rache and Lana captured the butts-and-balls photo. Of course, we now understand that at least some of his reasons for helping us is his estimation of how much Rache ... and Lana ... could help him earn by helping us. Even if he’s off a little at what the two-butts photo could gross, Rache said that he’s confident his ballpark estimate is not far off. Actually, he told her that if ten or more of the photos sold in the first month at 2500 dollars each, that we should raise the price at least slightly.”

Emma softly remarked, “Wow. No wonder he’s willing to do fulfillment as well as framing.”

Mare asked, “What’s fulfillment? Rather, what does it mean in this context?”

Jeff answered, “Hosting the website, taking the orders, and ... fulfilling those orders, that is packing and shipping them.” He turned his head from Mare to Liya and asked, “Would he display the photo in his shop and try to sell it from there?”

“No. He suggested that there be nothing that could suggest the photographer is resident in or near Elkton, given that most of our membership is underage. He said that the likelihood of displaying the photo locally causing us problems was slim, but there was no sense in pushing it. Obviously, we agreed with that.”

“I’ll say,” remarked Kalina, “and I’ll take this opportunity to turn this conversation to the education of our two girls. We’ve discussed this with Beth, but I’d like to get additional opinions. Katie, I’m interested in your opinion, as you graduated from the high school she would go to. Liya, I want yours as one of the ... brainiac girls in the LA, not that there are anything like dunces in the family.”

Katie and Liya looked at each other, after which Liya replied, “I know that both of them have whizzed through Algebra I materials this summer, and that was after Civ whizzed through the various pre-reqs for Algebra I earlier. They’re both quite bright, with Civ possibly having a foot or, perhaps, only a few toes up on Mare. Regardless, they could get through school much more rapidly and/or with more knowledge under their hair than if they plodded through school grade-by-grade.

“They’re both also self-starters and, particularly with you three parents and the wide array of assistance they would get in the compound ... in biology, cosmology, physics, English, and math, I believe they would have little trouble going at their own pace and graduating one or even two years early.”

Silence reigned for some while until Jeff asked, “Are you saying that ... Civ could graduate before she was 16?”

“Yes. Unless something came along to chew up more of her time, absolutely.”

Before being asked, Katie stated, “I agree. We’ve got some real brainiacs in the family and Heather’s the only one that might have more brainpower than Civ. Mare, I don’t want you to think any of us denigrate your intelligence, but from what we’ve seen, you’re only [air quotes] on the level of Beth, Liya, or Celeste.”

That got Katie a hug from behind by a tall, young girl with a curly-headed mop and wearing a very skimpy tube top.

A bit burbly, Mare stated, “I have no problem with that comparison, although I’m not sure I’m as brain-powered as either Beth or Liya and certainly not as strong as Celeste.”

Liya softly added, “Getting ahead might be useful if you decide you want to be a model.” When Mare began to object, Liya added, “I looked into that because I like to know stuff. Unless you’re incredibly lucky and your body becomes fantastic such that you become one of the model superstars which can rake in huge gobs of money, pretty models with presence and the willingness to travel can make a lot of money. More than enough to allow you to pay for Emma to travel with you, something you would need to do as a minor. You could get legally emancipated, but until you’re 18, some opportunities won’t be open to you, so I don’t see a reason to get emancipated, unless you get a big head and begin disagreeing strongly with Emma.”

Mare stared at Liya for nearly a minute, then looked over at her mom. While both were trying to wear neutral expressions, only Liya was being successful at the effort. Mare ran around the table and forced her way onto Emma’s lap and wailed as she buried her face into the left side of Emma’s neck.