Chapter 5

Thankfully, by the time Betty had decided that there might still be some clothes left in a box that her son had left behind, and that they might fit Bob, and June had found a blouse and a pair of jeans that fit her, and Bob had managed to drink two more cups of coffee, his penis was behaving itself again.

With a stern warning directed at June not to “do something stupid” Betty marched out the door, presumably to go get the clothes she hoped would fit her father. She left Fran there saying, oddly enough, “Watch your Auntie June.” and disappeared.

June had many of the same questions for him that Betty and Fran had, and he was content to let Fran answer some of them while he examined this new woman in his life. She was healthy and what, fifty years ago, he would have called “well preserved”. He had never found himself attracted to older women, his young wife giving him all the loving and more that he could have desired. But his memories of this woman’s alto voice, and what went along with that voice, caused him to look at her much more frankly than he might have otherwise. Her animated personality, and vivaciousness made her seem much younger than the fifty-three years of age he knew she had to be. He was startled to realize that her birthday was only two days away. He resolved to get her a present of some kind.

While they talked Fran went to the phone and made two calls. Her voice was excited, but muffled. She was grinning when she hung up the phone and returned to the kitchen, where Bob had decided to stay, just in case something happened “down there” again. He felt refreshed, though even so small a breakfast had filled him to the point that he felt slightly bloated. He figured that his stomach must have shrunk during fifty years of being empty.

A car door slammed outside. Soon after Betty opened the door, her arms loaded with clothing. As she reached to shut the door there was the screech of tires and two more car doors slammed shut. There was the sound of excited voices ... young female voices ... as Betty turned, her face agitated.

“It’s the girls.” she announced.

“I called them.” said Fran smugly.

“You shouldn’t have!” barked Betty. “It’s too soon for him to have so much excitement!”

She was almost bowled over, as she tried to block the doorway. She was pushed into the room by a tall black-haired girl and a shorter girl with dark red hair.

“Where is he?“ they chorused together. Their eyes found him, still sitting at the kitchen table, bare chested, his level gaze examining them.

Bob was pretty well in control of himself. The food had helped, and his mind was clearer now than it had been since he awoke. There were only three female voices he’d heard while he slept that hadn’t been matched up with women. One, he knew was Martha’s voice, which was older. The other two had to be the voices that had announced themselves to the sleeping man ... on many occasions ... as Becca and Val. He now remembered two voices saying they were Val. His mind had separated them simply as his wife, and the other Val. He now suspected, based on what he had already learned, that one of these two young women was that other Val.

The two young women skidded to a stop as they saw the man at the table. For all their excitement as they had entered, they were now frozen and mute. Betty shook her head and closed the door behind them.

His initial impressions of the girls were based mostly on appearance. The taller of the two had jet black hair that was long and straight, falling well past her shoulders, and held back with something. She was thin in the waist, and was wearing a pair of pants that flared outward at her ankles, like the bell bottoms sailors wore when he was a young man. But the resemblance ended there. The ones worn by this woman were so tight that if she had a bee sting on her ass, the swelling would show through. They were also low slung to the point that he wondered how she kept them up. Her shirt looked like a T shirt that the lower half had been cut off of. Her breasts pushed that shirt out so that it would have been easy to reach up under it and grab handfuls of ... what was pushing them out. He could see skin from just below those thrusting breasts all the way to where he would have expected to see the start of pubic hair. He couldn’t tell how old she was, but she was obviously older than the red head and Fran. Her high cheekbones and the lack of anything resembling fat on her face gave her a mature worldly look.

The red head had on loose shorts and what looked like a man’s shirt. The tails had been tied in a knot between and below her breasts. The shirt was too big for her and was loose, but he could tell that she was well developed for a girl in her mid to late teens. Her hair was in a loose braid, but a lot of it had fallen out, giving her a wild windblown appearance. She looked like she spent a lot of time outdoors because her skin had a nut brown color, like June’s and was darker than that of the others.

Bob felt a need to take some kind of control over his life. He started by hazarding an educated guess.

“Well, one of you must be Becca, and the other is probably Val.”

Five sets of female eyes all locked on him. No one said anything at all. Their mouths were open and it was clear to him that he had scored a hit.

Feeling a little giddy, he made his face remain calm and pushed a little further.

“I remember you two reading to me ... and other things.”

Both girls’ faces went ashen white. The red head moaned and looked down. The raven-haired one covered her mouth and her eyes went large and round.

Betty frowned, and was the first to move.

“Other things? What other things?”

She looked around, her frown deepening as she saw the embarrassed looks on their faces. She looked back at Bob, who was smiling, completely unaware that he was perilously close to opening a can of worms. None of the grandmothers who had been so familiar with him were aware that their granddaughters had also become ... familiar with him as well, if a little less so. That the girls hadn’t told each other about their private activities only made them a fragmented force, that couldn’t work together to defuse the situation.

The only thing that kept all those worms in that can was the fact that Bob was able to recognize that something was wrong. Betty’s face was taking on classical look of suspicion, which signaled to Bob that all these women didn’t necessarily know about each other’s activities. He felt the little bit of control he’d tried to grab for slipping away.

“Um ... you know...” he caged. “They told me things ... private things I suppose. They probably didn’t’ think I’d ever wake up and remember them.”

Betty looked at him, three small lines creasing her brow. It was obvious she was evaluating his statement. Bob realized she was a very intelligent woman, something that made him both proud and a little nervous at the same time.

“What kind of private things?” asked Betty suspiciously.

Bob smiled widely. “Now I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I blabbed things spoken to me in confidence ... would I?” He stared intently at Betty. “I mean isn’t it true that women should be allowed to have certain ... secrets?”

Betty flushed. This was dangerous territory. She and her sisters had adjusted to the fact that they all loved their father in ways that society wouldn’t understand. They had kept very secret who the fathers of their children were. That had been no small feat, seeing as how each had had her first child at age fifteen. There had been some fancy footwork as the girls visited the doctor alone for their prenatal checkups. More than once Martha had called the doctor’s office pretending to be her mother and explaining that she had to work, and could the doctor please give her his report over the phone? The fact that the sexual revolution was in full swing had helped a little. There had been other children too, a pair of boys for each of Bob’s daughters, all sired by the sleeping man. But by then they were older, and no one asked them any questions. Bob’s daughters knew that things couldn’t go on like that, and that their children should be raised in as normal a fashion as possible. So a pact was made that none of the children would be told who their biological father was.

It had been difficult. Any woman who has three children by an unknown father is odd in modern society. To have three sisters all do that was a powder keg. That they had been able to pull it off in a small town was a miracle. While they worried about the neighbors, they did not worry about their father. None of his daughters had thought he’d remember anything if, and when, he woke. Right now Betty was the only person in the room who knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her father knew at least what she had been doing. She was, in fact, doing it when he woke up.

June was thinking along the same lines. She didn’t know what her father remembered about his time asleep, but if he remembered anything at all, she didn’t want him talking about it in front of the girls.

“Yes!” barked June, making everyone in the room jump. She shot a conspirator’s look at Betty. “Of course a girl sometimes has secrets. It’s nice to know my father is a gentleman.” she added.

The two new arrivals didn’t relax so much as wilt while standing there, darting looks around as if to see if they were really safe. None of them seemed to catch on to the fact that all five women in the room were uncomfortable ... and that all of them thought they had something to hide.

Just as the grandmothers didn’t know about the erotic activities of their granddaughters with Bob, they were firmly convinced that their granddaughters didn’t know about how intimately their grandmothers had cared for Bob over the years, and would be horrified if they did.

The uncomfortable silence went on so long that it was Bob who felt the need to break it.

“So which one is Becca?” he asked.

The redhead came alive and smiled timidly.

“That’s me.” she said shyly. She had told this man all sorts of secret intimate details about herself, and spent enough hours with him that they now added up to several months. But to her he seemed like a completely different man as his blue eyes stared at her. She felt a tingle in her belly at that level gaze. He was much more handsome awake than he had been asleep.

Bob looked at the tall thin beauty. She looked like a fashion model.

“So that means you’re Val ... Valerie?” He glanced at Betty. “Named after my wife?”

Betty nodded, smiling.

Val had a little more self possession, being the oldest of the cousins. She smiled and said in a formal voice. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you Great Grandfather Bob.”

Fran waved her hand in the air, like she was waiting to be called on in school. Everyone looked at her.

“Um ... we were just talking about that. He says we can call him Uncle Bob ... if we want to...” She suddenly looked uncomfortable in the spotlight. “I mean so he doesn’t sound so old...”

It still felt stilted and uncomfortable in the room, and Bob didn’t want things that way. He waved a hand in the air.

“I don’t really care what you call me. I’m just glad to be awake and get to meet all of you. At least I think I’m glad to be awake. I have a feeling all of this is going to take some getting used to.” He pointed toward the counter. “Take for instance the obvious improvements they’ve made in toaster ovens. That one got my breakfast ready much faster than they would have ... back in my day.”

All the women looked at the counter where he was pointing. Becca was the first to speak.

“Toaster oven? What’s that?”

June laughed.

“He’s talking about the microwave.” She turned back to her father. “You’re right. A lot has changed since you went to sleep. You’re going to see some amazing things. I can’t wait to show them to you,” she finished excitedly.

Betty came alive too. She held out the clothing in her arms.

“I brought some of my son’s things. Your grandson. He’s off doing something somewhere, trying to make money. I think they’ll fit you.”

Bob’s first instinct was to go somewhere private and get dressed. But as he reflected on the uncomfortable reactions of the women, based on his comment that he remembered “other things” he suddenly felt wicked. After all, every woman in this room had either handled his stiff prick, or taken it into her pussy. He had a glimmer of a suspicion that not all of them knew that, and another glimmer of a way to find out. He casually spread the clothing out on the table in front of him. He picked up a pair of shorts made of some soft material. They had the regular pockets, but in addition had an extra set of big pockets on the thighs, with a flap that kept them closed. He pulled at the flap, but it didn’t seem to want to move. He thought that was odd and pulled harder. There was a ripping/tearing sound as the flap came up and he stopped.

“I didn’t mean to tear them.” he said helplessly.

June laughed again. “You didn’t tear them. That’s Velcro. It keeps things closed when you want them closed, but lets you open them when you want them open.”

She reached for the shorts and closed and then reopened the pocket flap several times.

“See?”

“Wow” said Bob, examining the hook and loop system with fascination.

He picked up a T shirt that had the words “No Fear” on it and put that back down.

“Can’t wear that one. I’m terrified.” He grinned to show he wasn’t serious. The fact was that his stomach was in knots, based on what he was about to do. He picked up another shirt that had buttons down the front and a floral pattern on it. It reminded him of those kids who rode long boards, standing on them in the surf.

Then, like it was the most normal thing in the world to do, he stood up and dropped the towel on his chair. All five women stood and stared at the naked man as he picked up the shorts with trembling fingers and stepped into them. They were too big and he had to hold them up with his hands.

“Got a belt?” he asked, looking over at Betty.

Her eyes were large and her mouth was in the shape she could use to whistle.

“I ... I didn’t think.” she croaked.

He glanced at each of the other women, trying to make it look casual, as if he thought one of them might, for some strange reason, be in possession of a man’s belt. His purpose was to gauge the look on their faces at seeing him naked. He felt satisfaction when all of them looked surprised, but none of them displayed the outrage he would have expected had they never seen him naked before. Psychologically, they were used to seeing him that way, and none of them thought fast enough to act as if they hadn’t.

And ... none of them objected to what he had done. He thought to keep them off balance.

“Unless you don’t mind me walking around nude, somebody needs to find me something to keep these pants up.”

Nobody said anything and he almost grinned. Then Betty jerked and spoke.

“Frannie, honey, go out to the garage and see if there’s a piece of rope or something out there.”

Bob saw something white peeking out from under the shirt he was going to wear and pulled it out. It was a pair of briefs, and was the first thing he’d seen that looked like the clothing he remembered. Feeling naughty somehow, he let the shorts drop and stepped out of them. He took his time stepping into the briefs and pulled them up. In contrast to the shorts, they fit him perfectly. His penis made a distinct bulge in them. He was having fun now and just stood there. All five women were still watching him.