Chapter 3

"What do you think of us now? Do you still want to be our friend?" All I could do was nod my head up and down, letting her know that I still did. Grace looked down at Jane's head and began caressing it, lovingly, satisfied, for the moment at least, and giving herself over to the pleasure of their shared intimacy. I waited a few moments, watching the two of them together, before getting up and taking off for the bedroom. I called Gerta, asking her if it would be too much trouble for her if there were two extra for dinner.

I had bolted my door before calling Gerta, and I was on my bed, thinking about the way Grace had looked when she had touched Jane. To me, it seemed like she was communicating more caring, in that one touch, than I had ever experienced during all of my sex with Bea. I recognized this as something I wanted to have. I wanted someone running her hand along my cheek, so I would be able to feel her love for me. I'm sure they had only wanted me to see them having sex together. I didn't think they expected I would learn how much they each cared for the other. I had been feeling sorry for both of them, until I saw a glimpse of what they had together. I still wanted them to be my friends, and I wanted to help them too, I just wasn't sorry for them anymore.

It was another hour before they came out of my bathroom. Grace carried herself as if she expected me to say something negative to her, something that she'd need to retaliate for. Jane seemed shyer than before, more vulnerable looking than she had been. I didn't know what to say, or how to act around them. What were they expecting from me? I looked at them, but I kept quiet, hoping they would say something to let me know how they wanted me to treat this.

"Nice tub, we had a ball, thanks." Grace had on one of her smirks. I could tell she had sensed I was thrown a little off balance by what had happened. Being the way she was, she wanted to exploit it now, by putting me on the defensive if I showed any resistance or disapproval. Her way was always to attack, whenever she was faced with the possibility of disapproval.

"You're welcome. I don't like baths. At the orphanage, you had to take baths until you were seven. The big kids got to take showers. They used to give seven or eight of us baths, in the same water. I didn't like bathing in dirty, soapy water."

"Aren't you going to say anything about what we were doing?" Grace seemed off balance herself now, probably nervous that I hadn't already said something to give her a chance to defend what they did. I still didn't know what to say. I didn't mind what they did. It made me feel better knowing they loved each other like that. I saw it wasn't just the sex. People just having sex didn't touch like that.

"You love each other, so that's good. It makes the sex a lot better too I'd bet." For the first time since she came out of the bathroom, I saw Jane's shoulders relax and her body uncoil a little. She had been more nervous and tense than I thought.

"You have any problems with us being this way?" Grace still seemed like she wanted to have some fight over this. I didn't understand why.

"You mean being loud and angry, or you having sex with each other? It doesn't make any difference to me that you both love each other. It should make a difference to you though." I saw Grace's eyes start to get back to normal, and her body seemed to get more relaxed too.

"Well, thanks for letting us use your Whirlpool. We haven't had any privacy, or opportunities for a long time. We don't usually perform in public either."

"That wasn't my idea. I was ready to leave."

"We wanted you to know about us, in case it made you change your mind." Grace had draped her hand behind Jane's neck, absently playing with the neckline of her tee shirt. Jane wasn't purring, but she did snuggle back towards Grace's touch, letting Grace know she welcomed it.

"We're having some kind of chicken tonight, cooked the French way, with sauce, over noodles. It's real good the way Gerta makes it. Gerta says we'll eat at seven. My mother thinks you're quiet Grace, from when we were at the golf course. I didn't tell her how you really are. My dad will be there too. He doesn't talk much at dinner, and when he does, its usually just about business. If you want to talk about golf, that would be good. Ask Mama about the sand play green, and the green in the lake. Once she gets started talking about the golf learning center, she'll probably talk through the whole dinner."

"Are you going to tell her about what Grace and I did?" Jane looked worried when she asked me.

"I wasn't planning to. If you want to, you can. We had this girl named Elena that worked for us, and she liked girls, but Mama still hired her. Don't jump up on the dinner table and show her though, my dad would throw a fit if you did that." We all had a laugh about the idea of them doing that, and, we knew that because no one had said anything bad about the other, the three of us had reached an understanding. We went back downstairs, and into the kitchen. Gerta was in there with Elizabeth, and the two of them were working on different things. Gerta was fixing dinner, and Elizabeth was baking. One of the things Gerta had discovered was that Elizabeth made the best breads. I introduced both girls to Gerta first, and then to Elizabeth. It surprised me how shy Elizabeth was around strangers. She was quiet with all of us too, but you could really notice the difference around Jane and Grace.

In the time Elizabeth had been with us, I hadn't gotten to know her very well. I wasn't sure if she was avoiding me on purpose, or if Gerta always assigned her work to do that was away from wherever I was. I had only said about fifty words to her since she started working at our house, and she'd probably said about ten words back to me. I knew about her a little bit from what Mama and Gerta had told me. She was a widow, and her husband had been killed in a fall from a horse. They had lived in North Carolina when he had the accident, but she had moved back home to Ridgeline to live with her parents again. Her husband had died four years ago, and she was twenty eight years old. My mother told me that Elizabeth was a very unhappy woman, but she didn't say anything after that. I guessed she was still unhappy because her husband was dead. She still dressed in clothes that made it hard to tell what kind of shape she had underneath them.

I had gone out the kitchen back door once, looking for Hans, to ask him a question about something, and had run into Elizabeth in the side garden. She was smoking a cigarette that smelled awfully funny. I thought it might be marijuana, but I wasn't sure. She jumped when she realized I was standing there, then quickly threw away her cigarette, grinding it into tiny bits with the heel of her shoe. I told her I was looking for Hans, and she pointed back at the garage. She looked frightened, but I didn't say anything to anyone about my suspicions.

At dinner that night, Grace decided to take offense with something my father said about the minimum wage. All he said was that the minimum wage took away jobs that people with marginal skills needed. That didn't sound too bad to me. In fact, I hadn't paid any attention to it. He was always saying things like that, and if you asked him about it, he'd go into a whole lecture to prove his point to you. If you kept quiet, he'd either be quiet too, or else talk about something else.

The way I remember it, Grace then told my father that he personally wanted wages kept low so that he could profit more at the worker's expense. It was something like that. As soon as she said it, I knew we were in for a long lesson about how good jobs were created. Dad was very smart, and he knew a lot about how to make companies run. He wasn't very good about understanding why people weren't too happy to accept what he wanted to pay them.

He was personally generous, but his generosity didn't carry through to business. According to him, workers were paid what they were worth. He said it was all a matter of supply and demand. The more or better skills you had, that your employer needed, the higher you would be paid for them. The people with the least valuable skills should make the least. If they weren't able to live on that, they needed to develop skills that were in higher demand.

"That's the way people like you justify paying yourselves a hundred times as much as you pay your workers. Whatever you do is always worth so much more than what they do. In your mind."

"What I do, young lady, is create and protect all those other jobs, so that people will have a way to make the wages that you ridicule as being insufficient. Believe me, most of them are damn glad to be getting their paychecks."

"I didn't say they weren't. What I said was it wasn't fair, and that you take advantage of them, by paying them less than you should, because you can, and because it means more money for you."

"I have sixteen hundred people working at my company. Each of them gets a paycheck larger than mine."

"Thomas, don't dissemble, it isn't becoming for you to do so."

"Well, they do. It's a fact." Dad was smiling at Mama, we could both tell, from his expression, that he was enjoying the jousting with Grace. "Even if I was making one hundred times what we pay a delivery driver though, I would still be worth that much, and more, to the company. Most of our employees can drive, but almost none can lead the company, or safeguard the future operation that their jobs are dependent upon."

"I could see if you thought that should command five times the delivery driver's income, but no job is worth one hundred times another. What would you do if they refused to pay you that much?"

"I would go to work for someone who recognized my true value to them, or, failing that, I would build my own company, from the ground up, and put my former company out of business, using my superior business planning skills. In ten years, I'd be larger than my old company, and able to pay myself whatever I wanted to make. People with my skills are quite rare, and much in demand."

"Spoken like a true elitist, Mr. Parsons. You derive your wealth and power by taking advantage of those who make it possible for you to have it."

"Spoken like a Bolshevik true believer, Grace. Capitalism rewards innovation, achievement, and success, while Socialism stifles the first two, and renders impossible the last. If you're looking for elitist's, look no further than the very few men that guide the Soviet Union. They don't rely on profits to determine their rewards, only position. They pay lip service to the idea of communal wealth and equality, but observe how their workers live compared to their own living conditions. When you've done that, come back and compare it to the disparity you're complaining about here. Which of these systems thrives, and which is an economic patchwork, bloated with non productive workers, and failed five year plans?"

"Kenny, tell us about your golf, dear? What did you shoot?" I was wondering when Mama was going to stop him. He was only getting started too. Mama said the reason he felt so strongly was that he'd had to learn these lessons the hard way, as he made his way to the top in the business world. I thought that was funny because he'd started almost at the top, straight out of college. Mama and Uncle Bunny believed the same way that my father did, but they had learned early in life that it wasn't necessary for them to explain or justify their wealth and income. If it ever did become necessary, they hired people, like my father, to do it for them.

At least we spent the rest of dinner talking about golf. When Hans was clearing away the main course dishes for the dessert Gerta had prepared, Dad started talking with Grace again.

"Grace, how would you like to come to work for me this summer? You could be my summer intern. You'd be running around doing routine gofer work, but at the same time, you'd get an insider's idea of the way things really work in running a company. I believe, at the end of the summer, your views would be radically altered."

"I've already been offered a job, for eight dollars an hour."

"I'll match that, and we'll throw in room and board. Bertie, we'll give her Beatrice's old room, if that's all right? That would solve her living situation. Are you afraid your ideas won't stand up in the real world?"

"Thomas, I'll tolerate no attempt to repeat your earlier behavior with Bea."

"Bertie! I'm merely trying to prove my point with this. I assure you that you needn't be concerned on that score."

"Very well. It might prove beneficial at that. You must promise to let her have two afternoons free during the week, to play golf with Kenny and Jane. You can't spoil the whole summer for her just to prove your point. Jane, since you and Grace are obviously a couple, you are free to join us as well. I'm sure the bed is large enough for the two of you." I'm not sure who was more surprised when Mama said that last part. Dad looked up at Mama, but didn't say anything. Jane and Grace both looked at me, as if they thought I had betrayed their secret. I just looked at Mama, amazed that she knew, and more amazed that she'd speak of it like she had, at the dinner table. Mama was enjoying the reaction she'd had. She reached out and took Jane's hand in hers. "Don't blame Kenny, dear. He didn't tell me. He didn't have to. I've observed you both here at the table this evening. It is as obvious as if you'd announced it out loud to all of us. Of course, Thomas and Kenny are males, and they don't recognize these things, even when they can't help but see them. I was unaware that you believed it was a secret. If I've embarrassed either of you, I'm very sorry." Neither Jane nor Grace seem much comforted by her apology to them.

I might have believed her explanation, if Gerta hadn't come in with the dessert right then. I saw the look that passed between Mama and her. It was the look of conspirators. How did Gerta find out though? I wondered if it might have something to do with the telephone that had appeared in my bedroom, shortly after I came there to live. I decided I'd wait to get alone with Gerta sometime, after Grace and Jane left. If I was certain of anything, it was that Gerta and I were very close. She would never do anything to deliberately harm Mama, I was certain of that as well. I had to find a way to ask her about how she found out about Jane and Grace, without making it necessary for her to harm Mama by giving me that information.