*** FATHER

Some families go to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on TV, but for us, it’s a flight to my sister Betty and Bob’s. Tradition. They’ve two kids, Barbara and Bryan, same as Sarah and me, our Scott and Suzie. The four B’s, we call them, pretty clever as their last name is Forbes, but Betty says they didn’t name their kids to be clever. Maybe they call us the S’s, but our last name isn’t something like Forrest.

Betty says our family visit is part of the holiday. Sarah does half the cooking and Bob and I maybe have at some home repairs, male bonding, our wives call it. Guys don’t bond, but he and I get along great.

The four kids spread out in the basement, what after all these years, they still call “camp,” tents even, just ones not requiring stakes pounded into the ground.

Thanksgiving afternoon, we adults sit around the living room, Betty and I recalling how the two of us played Battleship non-stop when the family drove to Yellowstone in that Ford with the radio that started and stopped on its own. She’d made me use the Battleship pad without the cardboard on the back. Back then, I’d have gagged at giving her a foot rub, but now it’s a way of saying thanks for making that great cranberry salad.

As a kid, I’d die a thousand deaths whenever my sister realized I had a boner, but now after turkey and mashed potatoes, I let her rest her heel on my lap and she grins. Nobody gives a thought to you giving your sister a foot rub. Nobody notices when she gets up and stands behind you, her arms around your shoulders. You’re just her brother, after all, nobody catching that the back of your head feels her erectness.

Just fooling around, my sister and I. Never goes anywhere, but it’s sibling fun to be secretive. When you’ve done it just once together, it’s a bond.

When I go to brush my teeth and she’s doing the same, she says, come on in, here’s the toothpaste. I remember her breasts when I was a kid and she’s still a tease.

Bob and Sarah are running an errand, the kids are in the basement, and Betty and I are emptying the dishwasher.

“There’s something I need to say,” she tells me as we’re shelving the glassware.

“What?”

“About that time on my bed.”

I look at her. “I’ve forgotten all about it,” with as much finality as I can muster.

“I could have gotten pregnant.”

The possibility hadn’t even entered my mind. “You didn’t, though,” giving her shoulder a little shove to return her to the present.

“Might have, though.”

We’d both virgins, our folks out. Maybe she’d known what was coming more than me, but I sort of knew why we’d climbed into bed and undressed under the covers. We’d seen each other naked before -- and not just when we were little -- but it’s different when you roll around together. She’d gotten me how she wanted and where she wanted, and it wasn’t as if I’d not known what was expected of me after that. She’d locked her arms around me as if she thought I’d try to escape. Maybe we’d have done it the next time our folks were out, but as brothers can give sisters babies, we stopped while we were ahead.

All these years later when we play around, it feels a little like us as kids. Maybe she’s thinking the same, but I don’t ask. Same as I don’t ask if she still masturbates -- no secret when you grow up together -- and she doesn’t ask about me, but we both know. Is she remembering what I’m remembering? Memories can be nice, even if they’re just memories.

She’s thinking also. “I’m glad you found Sarah,” and I say I’m glad she found Bob.

Her voice steadies to get it out in one shot. “Want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Again”

I put down my plate. “You can’t ask that!”

“I just did.”

“There are others to think about.”

She pauses, obviously hesitant, but does. “They’re probably doing it right now in his car.”

“What?”

“Bob and Sarah. He snuck out of bed last night when he thought I was asleep. How about her?”

I think for a minute. Sarah didn’t know she’d awakened me, but she was back when I woke up in the morning

“Well, we can’t be sure,” even as it occurs to me that a few years back, Betty and I had taken the kids to the parade, and when we’d returned early because of the weather, the two who’d stayed home seemed so discombobulated.

“I’m pretty sure they did it that year we had the storm,” my sister says.

The rest of us had been beginning to worry when they at last made it back from going to get fuel for the camp stove in case we’d lose power. The thing was, maybe twenty minutes before, I’d gone out to fasten their gate, and I’d seen Bob’s car parked a block down the street,

Perhaps the two were getting together, but my sister’s invitation is about us, not them.

“The kids are down there in their camp playing strip poker,” she tells me, nodding toward the basement door. “My two will switch tents tonight. Barbara’s planned it all out. They’ll use rubbers.”

Our kids? I’d seen their tents, of course; thinking the girls in one, sharing secrets, the boys in the other, eating.

“Maybe they shouldn’t all sleep down there,” I wondered.

“They’d just switch bedrooms. Everybody else is doing it, or going to do it, anyway. It’s not like we don’t still have the chemistry, right? Maybe even more. You think Bob and Sarah don’t see it? It’s not like we haven’t.

Not knowing how to answer, I don’t.

I’m awake with my eyes closed when Sarah creeps out. It’s odd, your wife sneaking off with your sister’s husband.

It’s not a minute later that the door opens and in comes Betty. “Now believe me?”

The two of us tiptoe to where we can look into the living room, and sure enough, there on the sofa are our spouses, her Bob over my Sarah, pajama bottoms on the floor, the two of them rocking together as if they have all the time in the world.

I’d have charged in and made things even worse, but Betty makes me hard and I wonder if she’s going to lead me in to lie on the floor beside them, them having claimed the couch.

But that she doesn’t do -- for sure I’d have signaled no -- but instead she pulls me through the kitchen to the basement door, where we’ve only to descend part way to see the rocking of the tents. I’m not sure which kids are in which until I hear Suzie’s giggles and Scott telling her to button it, followed by their tent shaking faster, followed by a pause while a tent-pole is apparently is fixed.

“They’re using condoms,” Betty informs me as she checks my erection, as if what the boys are wearing makes what they’re doing OK. “So like I said, how about you and me?”

Again I don’t answer.

When Sarah comes returns to bed, she falls right to sleep. Betty had moved us on before Sarah orgasmed, but by how quickly she’s deal to the world, I suspect it had been big. At least she’d pulled her bottoms back on.

The kids, being kids, are probably already at it again

Next day: Black Friday, I’m not sure how to handle things with my brother-in-law, having watched him do my wife last night, but we’ve got the porch railing to work on.

Betty shoos the gang off to the mall. “Santa’s sleigh and everything. Get some lunch. We’re out of everything here.”

My two elbow each other on the way out.

“We’ve got all morning,” my sister points out, once they’re off. “Sarah and I had a little chat.”

“About what?” the “little chant” a warning flag.

“I told her that we -- you and me, I mean -- understand what they’re doing because we’ve done it too.”

“That was a million years ago. We don’t have proof, what they’re doing,” more to her main point.

“Sarah knew that. It’s her’ idea, us two staying back, a chance to get back together.”

“Back together?”

“In bed. We decided you and Bob should switch rooms.”

“Who we sleep with?”

“Precisely.”

Maybe we just...” not quite sure I was getting it.

“Get in bed? Perfect! We’re not virgins this time, right?”

“Yeah, maybe, but...”

Sarah promised they take forever.”

A sister and brother can take a break from having sex, but if they’ve stayed close, wh in the meantime, when they get back to it, it’s as if they never stopped.

*** SON