Chapter 32

It was complicated crying that Polly and Becca shared. The emotions that raced through them in little bits and pieces, from different directions, were a little like being in a bumper car at the fair. You got hit from a lot of different directions at the same time. It was partly release of the stress of keeping something secret, part acceptance from each other, part fear of the future and there was a little bit of happiness thrown in too. Neither woman was actually unhappy about the fact that any of the potential fathers had made a baby. Neither woman would have ever thought of doing anything to become "un" pregnant, not counting delivering the child. For Polly, who had gone through this before, and knew more or less what to expect, the thought that a man she loved had created life in her was thrilling. Becca, less sure about her relationship, none the less couldn't help but be excited that her potential as a woman was being fully realized.

And so, eventually, the emotions of the moment abated to a more manageable level, and the crying stopped.

"You have to tell your mother." said Polly. "You need prenatal care. We'll go get that started together."

Becca nodded. Her eyes still glistened, but she felt better already just with Polly knowing and being in the same situation.

"And you have to tell Denny. I have to tell Brian. We can do that together too."

"But..." whined Becca.

"No buts. You should have told him as soon as you knew. He deserves that. I'm going to tell Brian as soon as I can."

"That's easy for you." said Becca. "He already said he'd marry you if you got pregnant."

"I'm already married and those were the words of a man in the throes of lust." said Polly. "I've already raised a girl alone. I know that's not fair to Roger, but I felt alone. Anyway, the point is I'm not worried about it." She patted Becca's hand again. "You, on the other hand, could make a life with Denny, but it must be a life based on honesty. I know only too well how being dishonest can screw things up. Besides, as I recall, Denny said he'd marry you too if you got pregnant."

"No, he got mad at me for not taking things seriously. He said he'd want to be in the baby's life, but he didn't say he'd marry me. I think he's going to be mad at me for not taking precautions."

"Precautions are the responsibility of both partners." said Polly, "Though the consequences weigh far more heavily on the woman. In that sense, she has more responsibility. Even so, you have to tell him."

"Okay." said Becca finally. She felt better about that too. At least it would be over with and she'd know what was going to happen. "First thing tomorrow morning I'll tell Mom. I can't go home right now and ruin her whole night."

"You want me to be there with you for that too?"

"No. I'll do it. She'd just yell at you. You were supposed to keep me out of trouble, remember?" She didn't say it in an accusatory manner. It was just a fact.

Polly snorted. "Who'd have thought that a double date would lead to a double pregnancy?" She grinned.

Gidget woke up feeling out of sorts. She had been tired the night before and, since Becca was off with Polly doing something, she had gone to bed early. She got up and wished she hadn't. She must be coming down with something. She decided to take a shower. That always made her feel better. She got out of the shower and dried off, examining herself critically in the mirror. Of the three women her age, she ran the most, played basketball at the YWCA one night a week and was more vain about her body than either of her cousins.

She looked in the mirror as she ruffled her hair. Her hair was straight and short and all she had to do was partially dry it and then comb it straight down and let it dry naturally. She turned sideways to see if her breasts were sagging. She had looked at her breasts thousands of times. Nowadays, though, they looked different to her for some reason. They had returned to being a source of sexual pleasure now that Bob played with them and sucked at their tips. She smiled, suddenly glad she had them, and that he loved them. Her eyes dropped lower. Her belly was hanging out a little. She straightened her back to correct the bad posture that caused that little problem ... but she still had a slight bulge.

The sensation in her stomach drove her to the toilet about the same time her brain woke up and said "HE-LLO!" She didn't throw up, but she could see her face reflected in the water of the commode. It was wavery. When the urge to toss her cookies passed, she stood back up and looked in the mirror again.

When was her last period? She tried to think. She didn't pay much attention to them, being lucky that they were always easy. It was just another thing she had to do four or five days out of the month ... nothing special ... nothing even interesting.

She opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out the box from the place she always kept it. She and Becca used out of the same box. The last time she'd had a period it had ended on the day she used the last tampon in one box. She had put the new box in its place, but hadn't opened it. She remembered that inane fact as she pulled the box down from the shelf.

The cellophane wrapping the box glinted in the light. It was untouched.

For the life of her she could not remember when her last period was. She didn't mark them on the calendar any more. In the past she didn't care. She didn't plan anything around her periods. When they came ... they came. She dealt with them and moved on. After a while another one would come along. It had been that way for years and years and years. She put on a pair of panties and went out into the house, trying to find some way to figure out when her last period was. There was nothing. She stood in the living room, topless, just thinking. When was her first date with Bob? That had been a Friday night. She replayed the night in her head. She had just renewed her driver's license earlier in the day.

She went to her purse and dug out her billfold. She pulled the license out and looked at the date of issue. Her jaw dropped. It was three months in the past.

She thought about that. She hadn't had a period the whole time she and Bob had been ... practicing to date. To put it another way ... she hadn't had a period in three months!

Feeling sick at her stomach again, she went back to the bathroom. She ran her hand over the swell of her abdomen. She had known it would be possible, but she hadn't believed it could happen to her. The first thing she thought of was that she was a product of the same sperm that had impregnated her. If she hadn't known that, she would have been unable to face her mother and aunts. But they would understand. They had done exactly the same thing.

Ever pragmatic, Gidget didn't spend time worrying about what could not be undone. Her mind was already at work rationalizing what she had done. In one sense, she was carrying on a time honored, though secret, family tradition. Even her cousins might be able to handle it. Sunny would freak and count the days until her next period, but when it came she'd relax. Polly hadn't seemed all that upset about being the product of incest, so maybe she'd take it okay too.

Now ... what to do about telling Becca...

Becca woke up feeling better than she had in a long time. Talking to Polly and setting things in motion had helped her mentally. She might as well get it over with. If her mom kicked her out, she'd need all day to find someplace else to go and get together some things to take wherever that was.

She got up and went to the bathroom to take a shower first. She pushed open the door and found her mother standing there, dressed only in panties, staring in the mirror, her hand on her abdomen, like she had a stomach ache. Gidget's head swiveled and she looked startled.

"Oh." she said. It didn't sound like surprise, exactly. In fact, it had a distinctly odd sound to it.

Mother and daughter looked at each other. As if they'd rehearsed it, they said together: "We have to talk."

There was that tight laughter that goes with such a situation, when something is funny, but neither person is in the mood to appreciate the humor in the situation.

"Take your shower." said Gidget. "I'll get something ready for breakfast. We can talk then."

Becca enjoyed her reprieve and her shower ran over just a little. She brushed her teeth and combed her hair, like her mother did. It was longer, but when it dried it would just hang straight.

When she got to the kitchen Gidget had put on a T shirt, but that was all. Becca had on gym shorts and a T shirt as well. Two bowls of cereal were on the table, along with bananas. Becca looked at the banana. The last time she'd confessed to being pregnant, a banana was involved too. She suddenly thought of Denny's penis, and compared it to the banana lying by her bowl. She couldn't help but smile.

"What did you want to talk about?" asked Gidget.

"No you first." said Becca.

"Sweetheart, after what I tell you, you might not want to talk to me for a while. Let's get whatever is on your mind out of the way first. Then we'll both get to talk."

Becca felt her throat get tight. There was nothing for it but to just get it over with.

"I'm pregnant." she said carefully.

Becca expected any number of things to happen. She had played and replayed them in her mind a hundred times. She mentally steeled herself for anger, shame, embarrassment, a lecture, or any of various kinds of things to happen.

What she was not prepared for, was for her mother's mouth to drop open, and then for her mother to laugh. Becca hadn't been there when Gidget went on her laughing jag at the suggestion that she go on a date with her grandfather. Becca had, not to put too fine a point on it, been out getting pregnant ... if she wasn't already pregnant by Bob.

But Becca had seen her mother do this on more than one occasion. Gidget had a finely tuned sense of humor and irony, and when her giggle box was well and truly knocked over, and all those giggles spilled out, she was helpless to stop herself. It was like that now. Gidget held her stomach and laughed great wracking sobs of belly laughs, barely able to get a breath. Part of it was that she was experiencing a sudden release of anxiety, and the emotion flowed out of her body with her laughter. Part of it was because of the irony of the whole situation. Where Polly and Becca had cried the night before, Gidget released the tension by laughing.

Becca sat and waited patiently. You had to just wait for Gidget to run out of steam when she got like this. Her mother got the hiccups as she began to get control of the laughter, and they made her more or less helpless too for a while. The only way to get rid of them was to hold her breath, and she couldn't do that because she was still gasping for air and occasionally trying to laugh again.

Finally Gidget stood up, turned sideways to her daughter, pulled her T shirt tightly across her abdomen and let her bulge show.

"So... [hee hee heehic] ... am I." [hic]

Becca stared at her mother. She wasn't prepared for this either. She looked at the bulge in her mother's abdomen and realized it looked almost exactly like her own. She stood up and pulled her shirt tight across her own abdomen and then went to stand in front of her mother. They stared down at each other's bulges, and then at their own.

It was while they were doing that that it penetrated into Becca's head that the only man her mother had spent any time alone with was ... Bob.

"Mom..." she started. "Did you know that grandpa has been having sex with grandma and Aunt Martha and Aunt Betty?"

Gidget sobered. "How did you know that?" she asked.

"He told me so." said Becca.

"What? When?"

"When I made him help me learn about what it was like to have sex." said Becca.

Gidget's eyes went wide. "You can't be serious. He's your great grandfather!"

Becca nodded. "And he's your grandfather." She looked at her mother's belly meaningfully.

Gidget's brain felt like it was being squeezed for a second, and then the pressure was gone. She looked at her daughter, who suddenly looked like an adult, instead of her little girl.

"Yours is Bob's too?" she asked.

"I don't know for sure." said Becca. "I've been with Denny too."

Gidget sighed. "That was the whole idea of having Polly along! She was supposed to keep you from giving in to your hormones."

"Actually, it was too late by then." said Becca. "I gave in to them with Grandpa."

"That bastard." said Gidget heatedly. "He seduced you and then he seduced me too!"

"I don't know about you, but he certainly didn't seduce me. I had to blackmail him into doing anything at all, and then it took me all kinds of work to actually get him to ... you know." Becca looked at her mother. "It really wasn't his fault ... except that I liked him and I felt safe with him."