Chapter 32

Paul Christian searched frantically for his missing covers when he was rudely awakened by his mother, Carol, “at the crack of dawn” — his term — but 0930 by the military-time digital clock by his bed. His awakening took the form of Carol yanking the covers off him and dropping them completely out of his reach on the floor. The reason for his rude awakening was the need for him to drive to the C-store and meet Henry Hall and Penny Watts who were due to be at the store at 10:00.

Paul stumbled off in the direction of his bathroom while Carol, completely oblivious to her eldest child’s grumbling, returned to the kitchen.

“How is he?” Ann asked with her eyes gleaming.

“You should ask!” Carol replied. She was trying to look stern but could scarcely control her giggles. “What did you do to my poor son last night?” Then she thought for a moment and said, “Perhaps I should ask how many times you drained him dry last night?” With her eyes wide she continued, “You do know, in spite of carrying his baby, you’re not even married yet. And ... and ... I seldom do that to Bill more than once or twice a week. Do I hon?”

Bill Christian just rolled his eyes, groaned, and returned to his perfect Western omelette.

“That means yes,” Carol translated brightly.

Ann just giggled.

Paul came stumbling down and just kept going down the stairs from the kitchen to the basement garage. He was still so out of it he even forgot to kiss Annie on the way by. Carol just shook her head sadly.

By the time they finished breakfast, it was time for Carol’s youngest, Amy, to have her breakfast. Or maybe it was snack time? Or... ? What the hell ... the infant wanted Mommy’s nipple and that’s exactly what she got.

Ann received an education in motherhood and “quality time.” She had read an endless series of articles aimed at professional women professing that it didn’t matter if the woman worked outside the home. After all, the articles said, she could substitute the quality of the time she spent with the infant for mere quantity. But what Ann learned was that “quality time” was being there for the infant on the infant’s timetable, not the mother’s.

Carol was nursing the infant at her breast and cooing at it when they heard the car drive up in front. With the baby still firmly attached to her nipple, she went out the front door to welcome her guests.

Paul was awake by this time. He rushed back to the following car and opened the door for Penny Watts. The woman gave him a warm smile, alighted from the car ... and gasped. There were Carol and Ann standing there at the door, both stark naked. The only member of the group “dressed” was baby Amy; she was wearing a diaper and Carol had her wrapped in a receiving blanket.

Hurrying to the car, Carol extended her hand and said, “Welcome, Penny Watts! Although I’ve certainly come to know Henry, I’ve never had the opportunity to meet you before.” Then she looked down and realized the source of Penny’s gasp. “Oops! I should apologize, I guess. But since we’re stuck out here on the western edge of nowhere, clothing has been optional for about 20 years. And if you look around, you’ll see that, with the exception of infants in diapers like Amy here, they usually opt not to wear any.”

While she was welcoming her guests, Christian and Kramer children had been rushing over from all directions to greet them. And all of the kids were naked.

Penny came close to Carol to get a better look at the baby. (I’ve said this before: What is it about women that causes them to have to goo at any available infant? I’ve concluded they must be hard-wired that way.)

Carol smiled warmly and said, “I would give Amy to you to hold, Penny, but not right now. If I tried, she would take my nipple with her, and I might need it again sometime.”

Penny folded back the receiving blanket to get a better look at the infant. “Carol, she is utterly exquisite!” Then with the gentlest touch, she stroked the infant’s tiny cheek. “No wonder...” she murmured softly.

“‘No wonder’ what?” Carol asked.

Penny was slowly shaking her head. “Carol, women spend hundreds of millions every year on every concoction imaginable to try to get baby-soft skin. What a stinking waste! Nothing could ever get a woman’s skin as soft and smooth as this infant’s.” Looking into Carol’s eyes she said, “She is utterly perfect, isn’t she?”

Carol blushed and said, “Bill and I like her. We’ve decided we won’t even put her out for adoption.”

At that point, Ann and Paul began introducing Henry Hall and Penny Watts to the siblings. Before the introductions had been completed, Kimberly Kramer and Little Bit had come over from the Kramer’s along with an additional supply of children.

With introductions complete, Amy had finished her meal and after one of the older Christian girls had changed her, had gone to sleep. At that point, Carol gave her to Penny to hold.

Carrying the infant in her arms, she followed Kim, Carol, and the Harris twins on a tour of the property. One thing that caught her eye was the row of tall trees along the southern boundary of the combined properties. In a land that was near-desert, trees — let alone tall deciduous ones — were a rarity, and yet they appeared to be thriving.

Kim explained that Carol and Bill had planted them when they built their house 20 years before. In addition to deep-root fertilization, there were pipes set deep underground to water them. “It forces the trees to put their roots down deep to get the water,” Kim explained.

“But they’re so healthy-looking, too!”

Kim giggled. “That’s a result of two things: First, I think all our kids are at least part monkey. They love to climb. As a result, the older ones spend a lot of time pruning, trimming and thinning. They’ve done a great job shaping the trees, too.”

“Insects?” Penny asked.

Again Kim giggled. “That’s funny, too. We use systemic pesticides that are really neat. They’re taken into the tree and circulated with the sap. And it’s a marvelous system the trees have. What it amounts to is: ‘You leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.’ As a result, if you look carefully, you’ll see a number of birds’ nests in them. And the birds are happy as hell. But if an insect starts to chomp on the tree or any part of it — even a leaf — it’s poisoned by the systemic pesticide. And it’s wonderful. No over-spray, no contamination of anything ... Just dead bugs from time to time.”

Penny just slowly shook her head.

Almost an hour had passed and it was getting close to the time to meet Chad and Tami. While the women had been sightseeing, Henry had been setting up. He started to give haircuts, beginning with the youngest, the Kramer and Christian 2-year-old boys. He was amazed at how perfectly behaved the two little boys were sitting in the chair. No fuss, no muss, and particularly, no tears.

Following the two little boys were two 4-year-old girls, Kristin Kramer and Karen Christian. The two came bounding up hand in hand when Carol called out for them. “Hi, Mommy!” the two chorused in unison.

“These are our identical twins,” Carol explained.

Penny Watts raised an eyebrow at that one.

“Oh, Kim and I did it a little differently,” Carol explained blithely. “We each carried one.” She paused and cocked her head, apparently in thought. “Yeah,” she continued, “and we flipped a coin to see who would deliver first. I won, so Kim had to hold Kris in while I delivered Karen. You should have heard her! It was an utter riot. ‘For God’s sake, Carol, would you please hustle? You’ve been delivering for almost a full minute now, and only the head is out. I’m dying... !’

“When it was Kim’s turn, she barely got her thighs spread when the baby came out.” She shook her head and added, “I had to really jump to keep Kris’s head from bouncing on the floor!”

“The ... floor... ?” Penny asked, aghast. “Where ... where did you deliver?”

“The usual place,” Carol replied: “the kitchen floor. It’s the easiest place to clean if any of the gunk gets off the polyethylene drop cloth.”

Penny just rolled her eyes.

The two little girls were utterly gorgeous. Moreover, they behaved like identical twins. In fact, more often than not the two would jointly utter a single sentence. At times it was in unison, at other times one would start, the other would pick up in the middle, and the first would finish it. And since their voices were identical, too, if one wasn’t looking at them, one would think a single little girl was speaking. Both were golden-haired, blue-eyed blondes with perfect overall tans fully revealed by their nudity. While Henry worked on Kris, Karen sat on the counter facing her twin and critiqued the work.

The one essential element was that they had to have the same styling.

“Sweetie, just look at this girl,” Henry said to Penny. “Have you ever seen such a perfect little girl? Or, I should say, girls.”

“Oh, my!” Penny exclaimed. “You’re right, darling. They are utterly perfect.” Then turning to Carol Christian she said, “I guess it’s easy to see why you and Kim keep producing children. They’re simply perfect.”

By this time it was Karen’s turn. While he was working on her hair, Henry asked, “What did you ask Santa to bring you this year?” He expected to hear a very long list.

Instead the little girl named a particular doll. And stopped.

“Is that all?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Mommy says that Santa travels in a sleigh down from the North Pole. And since he has to take care of so many little boys and girls, if he brought Kris and me lots of toys, some other little kids would have to go without. And that wouldn’t be fair, would it, Mr. Hall?”

Henry could feel the moisture in his eyes. “What do you do with these children, Carol? If all the children in the world were like these two, there would really be a population explosion!”

“Oh ... Well, I guess they’re the reason I resigned from Clifford & Jamison.”

“Oh... ?”

“Yeah. The commute was getting to me, and it really wasn’t fair to the kids. So anyway, I’ve been a housewife for over 17 years now. There are a couple of things I do on the side, though, to stay active.”

“Like what?” Penny asked, knowing as she spoke that she was walking right into something.

“Well, I guess I’m vice president & general counsel of Aerospace Technologies. And Female Fitness, Inc., too, I guess. And I’m corporate secretary of both. And I still do a little trial work on the side to keep my hand in. Then there’s school...”

“The kids’ schools, you mean?” Penny asked.

“Uh ... No. Kim and I home-school them through the 8^th grade. But I had to do something to keep from developing an inferiority complex around here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know that Kim has her doctorate in engineering and Brad has his in history. Well, I thought I should have one, too.”

“And... ?”

“I have a Ph.D. in English literature,” Carol confessed. “And I’ll get another this June, I guess.”

“In what?”

“The history of science,” Carol said, blushing.

Penny just rolled her eyes. “How about Bill?” she asked.

“Oh, he has a Ph.D. in economics and is getting one in military strategy. Then Jenny Clark has a couple, too.”

“Good grief!” Penny exclaimed. “There are — what? — about ten doctorates among the five of you?”

Carol just nodded once.

“Sheesh, Henry, can you imagine? Talk about the blind leading the blind! Can you believe the nerve of these people? Trying to home-school their children when they’re only marginally literate themselves? I mean ... Only ten earned doctorates among them? Give me a break!”

By that time Henry had finished with Karen. The little girl looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. Turning on Henry with her brightest smile she said, “Thank you, Mr. Hall, for making us so pretty!”

Kristin Kramer was saying the same thing at the same time.

Henry just slowly shook his head. “No, sweeties, don’t thank me, thank God who created you as two of the most beautiful little girls alive!”

With that the two little angels went running off in the direction of the swimming pools.

“They’re really pretty neat,” Carol admitted. “But it gets funny sometimes.”

“How so?” Henry asked.

“It causes some confusion with other children,” Carol said. “They’re the only little girls with two mommies and two daddies.” She grinned and added, “And believe me, Kim and I are interchangeable. It’s funny, particularly at Christmas. First of all, the girls’ handwriting is essentially identical—”

“Handwriting?” Penny gasped. “You’re teasing, aren’t you? They’re only four years old!”

“Handwriting,” Carol repeated. Then she shrugged and added, “I guess our kids are a little brighter than average.”

Penny just rolled her eyes. “But you were saying something about Christmas?”

“Oh, yeah ... Under the tree will be four packages addressed to ‘Mommy’ and four for ‘Daddy.’ It causes a little confusion sometime.”

“What do you do?”

“We each get two,” Carol replied with a shrug. “It’s no biggie. And if it happens that we got two of the same thing, we just trade off. But the kids the girls play with get terribly confused. Either Kim or I will appear to pick them up, and the two little girls both scream, ‘Mommy!” and run up for a kiss and a hug. Then with both talking at once, they can’t wait to tell us what they did that day. But the other children have to wonder. After all, while the girls are identical, Kim and I sure aren’t. Oh, well...”

At that point two cars came down the drive. The first was Tony’s SUV — it was his turn to meet the guests — and the second was a silver Mercedes AMG-55 with Chad Palmer driving. The young man jumped out of the car and ran around to open the passenger-side door for Tami Baker.

Both Carol and Kim were there to greet them. After giving Chad a warm smile, Tami saw the two women and gasped.

“Oops!” Kim exclaimed. “We keep forgetting about our private nudist colony. It disturbs some people.”

The girl just pulled herself up straight, smiled, and extended her hand. “Actually,” she said, “as Little Bit and Ann learned last night, I’m a bit of an exhibitionist myself. Am I correct in assuming that around here clothing is optional?”

The two women grinned, nodded, and said in unison, “You sure got that right!”

With that, Tami swallowed hard and began to strip.

“You shaved!” Little Bit commented, taking a good look at Chad Palmer for the first time that day. “And it looks pretty neat. Now, with a haircut...”

Chad, too, stripped. When he was bare, the two Harris girls were surprised. First, he turned out to have very well-defined muscles. But beyond that, he was tanned all over. When Little Bit asked him about it, he grinned and said, “That’s what’s left of Cancun from Labor Day.”

Hearing his words, Tami looked shocked. “Were ... were you staying at ... the Hyatt Regency Caribe?”

Then it was Chad’s turn to look surprised. He just nodded his head.

“And ... and is your father, Charley? And your mother, Bonnie?”

Again the affirmative nod.

“I do not believe this!” Tami exclaimed. “I was there, too.”

“And your parents? Ken and Connie?”

This time it was Tami’s turn to nod.

Suddenly both began to laugh uncontrollably. The others just looked on in amazement.

“Bridge?” Tami asked.

Again the two cracked up with laughter as Chad just nodded his head.

“Would you two kindly let us in on the joke?” Little Bit asked with the irritation showing in her voice.

“You or me?” Chad asked.

Tami nodded toward him and grinned.

“Well, I’ll fill you in from the Palmer point of view. Tami can add whatever she wants. At any rate, my parents are pretty good Bridge players. Very good, in fact. What they really love is Rubber Bridge, but they could never find any other couples to play with. So anyway, they played Duplicate. But since they’re both Life Masters, they were forced into ever more high-powered competition. The competition didn’t bother them, but all the garbage associated with high-powered tournaments — the bidding screens, the card bids — sure as hell did. So they quit a few years ago.

“Then about a year ago, my mother bought one of those Female Fitness exercise things. It’s the computer-controlled model and she adores it. She used it to lose about 30 pounds and really build up her muscles. She has dark hair, green eyes, and the body of a teenager. She’s drop-dead gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Anyway, she decided she wanted to show herself off on the nude beach at Cancun. Dad had been working out, too, and he’s a real hunk. About my size, but with about twice my muscles.”