Chapter 27: A Bowl of Cherries

I looked up from the Good Book and met Marybeth's eyes. "I don't know what to say," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

"An interesting read."

Marybeth laughed when I said that. "I saw tears, I saw laughter. I saw pride."

"All of that and much more," I told her. "You read in history about Julius Caesar and King Tut. Charlemagne and Charles the Great. Ivan the Terrible."

"Don't forget Jesus and Buddha. They also came preaching love and not hate."

"It seems almost a crime that so few people have read this."

"She never envisioned the world we live in today; God knows, she was amazed by the changes. Do you know she was born before the Wright Brothers flew? And she lived to watch men walk on the moon? And the one thing she wanted most: for two women to be able to walk down the street, hand in hand, and not be bothered. She got to live long enough to see that."

"The other part is going to be harder to bring about," I told her.

"Yeah. She was grossed out by NAMBLA. I've always been ambivalent about it; I'm not sure if I'm the pot calling the kettle black."

"What's that? NAMBLA?"

She smiled in glee. "The North American Man-Boy Love Association. They promote sex between adult men and boys. They actually lobby to get the laws changed. Fat chance."

"Is that so bad?"

"It is if you believe a whole lot of altar boys who were seduced by their priests. Of course, a lot of that might depend on the ease of winning those lawsuits. I don't know, Laura. It sounds the same, but it's never worked the same, at least I don't think so.

"Sure, it sounds self-serving, but we have a lot of history now on our side. Denise is a case in point. How easy would it be for Terry to just throw up his hands and walk away from her? Carolyn is confused; I know she doesn't like her mother, but who would, the way Denise has been acting the last few months? But Terry wants to make his marriage work, Carolyn can't conceive of her mother leaving, and Denise is ashamed of herself.

"We don't get many problems like this, but we've put the pieces back together before. We will again. Maybe someday we'll fail, but I don't think it will be with Denise."

I turned off the computer, got up and stretched. Marybeth eyed me. "You're not a bad-looking woman, you know."

"I've heard a few people mention it." I was smiling when I said that. "I wouldn't kick you out of bed, either."

"Have you given any thought to the main problem?" Marybeth asked.

I nodded. "Yes. Looking back, it's clear why it worked so well for so long. You couldn't afford to tell on someone else, because it meant you were in water almost as hot. I'm surprised you didn't have problems before this."

"I think we were having problems, which is why we've been drifting for the last few years. I think it's why there's been more pushing, too. If you come on strongly to someone and they say no, it doesn't cause the gossip it once might, and no one looks at your friends to see if there's a common thread. Rhett Butler syndrome."

"Pardon me?" I asked, confused.

"Rhett Butler. You know, 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!'"

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, oh. And the first time a girl gets it into her head to lash out at one of us because she didn't get what she wants... now that will be a mess!"

"Maybe the conservatives are right, society is going to hell in a hand basket. Loss of our moral compass or whatever."

"That had to be a joke, right?" Marybeth asked.

"Not a very funny one. But I think it's true. Everything's becoming relative, morally equivalent. Maybe some day people would accept what we do, but not in time for us."

"No, I don't expect so. But any ideas?"

"How do you make someone swear an oath, based on their personal honor?" I asked rhetorically, "when the whole concept of honor has pretty much been replaced by self-actualization and personal aggrandizement?"

"True enough. In the past it was loyalty to your teammates and it never mattered what kind of teammates; that was the glue that held them together. Stitched together by the social downside of what else we liked. We still have the glue, but even that's been weakened. People move so much, they come and go, you don't stay and bond as once was true. Even when everyone else was moving, our girls have tended not to. And when they did, we could send them to someone who was a fellow traveler. It's been getting harder and harder to do that.

"I know Nancy's expressed some doubts about transfers, even girls who were vouched for from elsewhere."

She paused to think. "I believe our girls have loyalty in greater measure than most others, but like everything else any more, it's just a shadow of what it once was. Personal honor? If Shirley or Reggie had any sense of it, they'd never have talked outside the group. Honor and loyalty; they are something you have to suck with your mother's milk. You can't teach that to a teenager. Not with any certainty."

"Surely some of the others must have noticed by now, too?" I asked.

"I was thinking the same thing. We don't send many emails, but for something like this, it will be best." She waved at the door to her office. "Why don't you go out there, eat someone for lunch, maybe."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Don't tempt me!"

I left her sitting at the computer and wandered into the living room. Denise was sitting on the couch, talking to Amy and a girl I recognized from the squad, even if I didn't know her name.

Amy smiled at me. "My dad's coming over soon. He says Mom is feeling better."

I gave her a warm, sisterly hug and she smiled at me.

"Denise was telling me about how worried you guys are," Amy said after we let go. "I wouldn't talk, not even if they were pulling my arms and legs off with hot pinchers!"

The other girl was a year older than Amy and, I thought, more mature. "I don't think any of us would say anything, Amy. It would be a betrayal of everyone on the squad, and all those who came before us. That would be the worst rat thing a person could do."

The girl looked at me. "Amy told me about how you're helping her and her family. That's what we do. We help each other. With grades, with personal problems, even just staying on the squad can be hard, sometimes."

"Laura's helping my family, too," Denise offered up. "For no reason I can see, except that she can and wants to help."

"I like Carolyn and Terry," I told her.

Denise flashed me a wintry, weary, woeful smile. "One day I want to be on the list of your friends."

The girl looked at Denise curiously, but didn't say anything.

I held out my hand to her. "I'm Laura Alban Hunt, wonderful helpmeet, incompetent with names."

"Vivian Sloan," she responded. She had an odd handshake, sort of like I'd seen politicians use. "One of these days, I'll be old enough to change my name, it'll be Peggy Vivian Sloan."

She smiled at me. "I understand you've been reading some of my family history."

Her eyes were mesmerizing. "I'm not related by blood to anyone in it. I was nearly seven years old when I was adopted. But my adoptive mother was Clara Denham's granddaughter, Peggy Sloan. I went to Miss Peggy's funeral."

"Viv's mother was killed in a car accident eight years ago," Denise told me. "And she was her mother in all ways but the one."

"Even if it was just for a year and a half," Vivian agreed. "Since then my grandmother Peggy and Angie raised me."

I grinned at her. "Want a hug?"

She grinned back. "Almost never can get enough!"

I hugged her to me, and as was so familiar any more, the press of her breasts against mine made me sigh. Neither of us was wearing a bra, I could tell she felt pretty much the same way.

Terry Bowden showed up then and I gave Amy another hug before she went off.

"You'd never know her mother was dying," Vivian said as I closed the door. "For me, it was quick. My dad showed up at school to tell me what had happened. I don't know how people can stand protracted goodbyes."

"I'm a widow; I don't know either."

She nodded, "I heard. Marybeth also told me that after reading the Good Book all morning, you just might be a little horny."

"Just a little or a lot?" I asked her. "I'd have to say a lot."

"Well, I've been dying to meet you. Would you like to show me your etchings?"

I laughed, "No etchings, but I do have the loan of a bedroom."

"Even better!"

Denise caught my eye and waved towards the bedrooms, a gleam in her eye.

I took Vivian's hand and led her away.

Inside the bedroom, I kicked off my shoes and turned to her.

She was standing, watching me. A crooked smile on her face. "I know what you're thinking," she said, her voice a whisper.

"What am I thinking?"

"That you have to be crazy. For wanting to make love to a sixteen year old girl. To a girl you met a few minutes ago. There are all kinds of words people use to describe girls who do that sort of thing with guys."

"Slut, tramp, whore."

"And worse.

"Laura, my mother, my grandmother, and all of their mothers and grandmothers all the way back, wrote in the Good Book. Marybeth may have a copy of it, but there's a verbal tradition as well, particularly in my family.

"Almost as soon as I was adopted, Mom began to tell me stories: about girls who played hard and did well, who won games and championships in the most amazing feats of derring-do you can imagine. All girls, all sisters, I was told at first. Not sisters of blood, but sisters of the heart, who loved each other like their real sisters.

"I was too young when my mother was killed to understand all those stories and just what she meant by loving each other. But those stories had an enormous impact on someone as messed up as I was in those days.

"When I went to Miss Peggy's funeral, I was a hard case. I smoked, I drank, I did drugs. It was kind of a last gasp of hope by a few of my mother's friends that I might see the light. Did I mention I have a living grandmother and great-grandmother as well? They don't quit; they never quit.

"I stood there and looked into the casket of the old woman, and I turned around and looked at all the women around me, who'd come to pay homage to her. I met some of the heroes from those stories I'd been told. I shook hands with them, and they all looked at me with the calm confidence that you all have.

"I scandalized everyone, because I leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. I swear, Laura, there was a spark. Something jumped between us. Something I don't really understand. She's inside me, I know she is."

I was silent, trying to digest it. There were times I felt totally evil and depraved, that all I was doing was justifying to myself slaking my lusts on fragile teenage girls.

Only what was the truth? Who was fragile? My daughter, who had buoyed me up after Roger was killed? Carolyn, who had taken savage abuse from her mother... and still talked about wanting to do things with her. Who was fragile? This sixteen year old girl standing in front of me, glowing in the dimness of the bedroom? Or me?

"I want to found a church," Vivian said. "The First Church of Peggy, Reincarnate. A church with priestesses like you and Marybeth, Nancy and Denise and all the others who've gone before. And acolytes like myself who do our learning, but not at your feet."

She giggled then. "Which makes it our holy duty to get naked and make love for the rest of the afternoon."

I looked at her, feeling a little silly and giddy. "Some day, I want to make love to one of you, wearing a cheerleader uniform."

Vivian looked me up and down. "You're a little older than usual, I'm not sure we have anything in your size. But I'm sure we could fix one up."

I realized that I'd phrased it wrong, that Vivian had known exactly what I meant and had pulled my leg anyway.

I reached out and began pulling off her blouse, and then I undid her shorts and pushed them down. When she was down to the buff, I lay on my back on the bed and positioned her over my mouth.

I was feeling really horny, and I could sense that Vivian was as well. This time I didn't bother with preliminaries, instead, seeking out her clit with my tongue. I fluttered my tongue over it and heard her sigh with pleasure.

Viv moved, sighing and moaning as I slaked my thirst. She twisted and pushed, sometimes matching me, other times moving in opposition. It was wonderfully delicious trying to anticipate her moves, with that special girl tang as a reward.

I don't know how many times she came; I took each orgasm as a pat on the back and then went on to do it again.

Viv finally lifted up and moved to lie next to me, her tongue pushing into my mouth. I kissed her, feeling the same sort of teenage urgency and fervor.

After a few minutes of that, Vivian pulled away. "Now you know me for the total perv I am. The person's taste I love best is my own. There are times I can't get enough."

I kissed her again, but this time resisted her tongue entering my mouth. After a few seconds, we were rolling over and over in bed, trying to tickle each other. Finally the two of us were laughing too hard to do anything more than just lie there together, wrapped up in each other's arms.

She moved down and started suckling on one of breasts, reminding me a great deal of Susan. I arched my back and came, surprising me that I'd come so quickly. She nipped one of my nipples and I came again. Her finger penetrated me and I wanted to curl into a little happy, complete ball.

It took a while for my heart to stop hammering, my breathing to slow to something less than a steam engine chuffing frantically away.

I reached out and took her by the shoulders, swung her up, so that the two of us were sitting up in the bed, facing each other.

"Vivian," I started, sounding too serious, even to myself.

"Laura." She was mocking me, but it was with a smile.

"Do you know Elena Bustamonte?"

"Sure, she graduated a few years ago. She's the one whose father is a priest."

"Have you ever been with her?"

Vivian looked at me and shook her head. "Why do you ask?"

"Who do you live with?"

"My adoptive grandmother, Peggy Brewster Sloan and her wife, Angie. They've considered themselves married for more than fifty years. Awesome."

"Are you happy there?" I asked.

Vivian shrugged. "I'm not unhappy. But I'm not blind; I see grandmother Peggy look at me at times and then she goes into her room. I know she cries. I don't know if it's for me, for my mom, or what. It breaks my heart; Angie doesn't say anything, but I know sometimes she worries. Grandma Peggy isn't in the best of health."

"I'm buying a great huge house for me and my friends. If you'd like, you could join us."

Her eyes lit up. "We could do this some more?"

I nodded.

"Who, besides Elena?" Vivian asked.

"My daughter, Susan. Sherrie Licht."

"I know Sherrie; she graduated last year. Her girlfriend decided it was time to go straight, I heard."

"Close enough," I told her. "Some others who visit. Denise's daughter Carolyn, Amy and her friend, Fred. Some others."

Vivian grinned. "Sounds like you're working on a harem."

I shrugged. "Sounds like. You were the one who said it, Vivian. The First Church of Peggy."

For a second she stared at me; her expression had gone blank, showing nothing. She shook herself. "Jesus! Sometimes I get so paranoid. You're serious. You believe me. You really believe me. You don't think I'm kidding."