Chapter 7

There was, after Val said Rip Van Winkle's name, one of those moments authors call a "pregnant moment", where everybody knows something of great import has just happened, or is about to happen, and that lives will be changed as a result.

That pregnant moment gave birth rather more quickly than anything living that gets pregnant. But, like most births, this one was loud and full of angst, if not a little fear and pain.

The three girls found themselves somehow transported to the couch, where they were suddenly sitting side by side, staring up at the faces of six women and one man.

The telling of that conversation, if that's the right word for what happened for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, would be long and tedious, so there will be only a summary of the main points, or comments that were ... discussed.

"How on Earth could you ... forget ... that you had found something like this?" asked Martha.

"We didn't exactly forget..." whined Becca. "We decided not to tell anyone about it."

"You what?" gasped four or five adults.

Val, the oldest, and the one who already lived away from home, where she could go again once the dorm opened back up, held up her hand.

"At first we thought everyone but us knew about who Great Grandfather Bob was. That Rip Van Winkle was our ancestor. The journal tells how he had to change his last name to Winkle just to get some peace after he woke up. We thought it was a secret, and that we weren't supposed to know yet."

She held up her hand again when four or five adults tried to interrupt her. When it quieted down (and it did - isn't that interesting?) she went on.

"Then, when we read the journal, we knew that telling anyone wouldn't do anybody any good. Rip Van Winkle didn't really understand why he went to sleep ... and he didn't know why he woke up, or what it was that woke him up. All that would have happened if people found out was that Grandpa would be taken away from us and dissected or something."

"And we knew he'd wake up." chimed in Fran.

"And how, exactly, did you know your great grandfather would wake up?" asked her grandmother.

"Well..." said the girl uncomfortably, "Rip woke up. So we figured Grandpa would wake up too."

Becca got her two cents in. "And we knew that when he did wake up, then we could tell our secret."

"That would be the secret that all of us already knew about ... right?" asked Gidget acidly.

"Well," whined her daughter, "After a while we couldn't tell anybody because we were too old to play hide and seek and that's how we found it - playing hide and seek - and if we said we found it that way people would have laughed at us and ... and ... and..." She burst into tears, so frustrated was she under the intense scrutiny of all those hostile adults.

Bob was on his knees in front of her instantly.

"Hey, don't cry." he said soothingly. "We're not mad at you. It's just a surprise, that's all. Come on now. It's all right."

He held her hands, leaning against her knees, which were tightly closed as her body had taken on a defensive posture. His touch, and his youthful face so close to hers, electrified her and memories of what she had done with this man ... to this man ... as he lay sleeping added to her emotional burden. She blushed beet red as she felt tingles in various places around her body, and leaned back. She pulled her hands from his, more from self defense against the emotions racing through her, than because she didn't want to touch him. Then she balled up her fists and wiped her eyes, sniffling.

Bob stood up and faced the other adults.

"They did the best they knew how. And she's probably right. It probably wouldn't have made any difference. All it would have done was upset everyone. I'm awake now, I'm fine, I remember everything that happened while I was asleep, and we're going to be a family again. That's all that really matters."

"Where is this journal?" asked Martha, ignoring his heartfelt speech.

"It's in the desk." said Val. "We put it back in there for safe keeping."

"In the desk." said Martha woodenly. "You know, about five years ago I almost donated that desk to the local Public Television Station for their fundraising auction. The only reason I didn't was because I didn't think we could get it down out of the attic without it falling apart." She looked decidedly grumpy and that made her look older than usual.

So then ten people tried to cram themselves into the attic to retrieve Rip's diary. Nobody wanted to be left out of the adventure, and all insisted on climbing the steep steps and packing themselves into the dusty, hot room. Fran was the smallest, and she ducked under the desk and fiddled. There was a creak and a snap and her hand came out from under the desk with the book in it. It was snatched from her hand by Martha and there was the beginnings of a tussle when all three of Bob's daughters tried to take possession.

Bob had to raise his voice to restore order, and pointedly said "May I have my Great Great Grandfather's journal ... please?"

His daughters had the sense to look abashed, and the book went to him.

Again, the gentle reader's indulgence must be begged as this tale is told. The following weeks and months were a veritable whirlwind of activity, examination and discovery, and all the Winkles - the Van Winkles as they now privately called themselves - were neck deep in that physical and emotional turmoil. As such, to tell their story demands that many different kinds of activities be described and some of that turmoil will inevitably seep into the narrative. So if things bounce around a little, have patience. All will, sooner or later, be revealed.

Bob read the journal out loud to his "new" family. Because of the length, it was decided to break it up into many small segments. It became a ritual of sorts for Bob to read a few pages each night, as they began to adjust to the fact that he was really awake, and was not, apparently, going to go back into his mystical slumber. With the exception of Martha, who had somehow convinced the others that he should stay in his old house "for a few weeks ... to fully adjust..." the other women went on with their lives in a more or less usual fashion. The one difference was that only Martha still got to have sex with her father. In fact, as Bob got used to the idea, Martha got to have a lot more sex with her father than she had in the recent past.

That didn't mean the other women who had been engaged with him in the past forgot about it. Not at all. In fact, as they all gathered each night to listen to Bob read from Rip's journal, something began to happen that some of the women had not anticipated.

As he read to them, his baritone voice had an almost hypnotic quality, and the smooth planes of his face moved and twisted as he unconsciously used skills he had learned in High School speech class and musicals. His voice was that of an old time storyteller, mesmerizing the nine women. He always seemed to know just where to stop, when something was about to be revealed, and inevitably the women moaned as he closed the old journal, begging him to read more.

Rip, in his spidery, tiny writing, talked about his termagant wife who, along with all the other women of the town he lived in, made his life miserable for such common things as tippling a mug of ale now and then, and for enjoying a beautiful spring day by not wasting it on manual labor. He was overjoyed at being unemployed, as that gave him time to play with the village children and make their toys and go hunting with his faithful dog, Wolf.

He wrote at some length about the virtues of home gardening and of fowling, a pursuit which he didn't feel was real labor. Both, he felt, fed his family, which was, after all, a father's role, yes? That his wife disagreed with him, and wished to be wealthy enough to never have to raise a finger around the house, made him sad beyond his ability to describe in the journal. That was a theme he returned to to over and over again.

Sunny, Gidget and Polly, none of whom had ever been intimate with this man, and had, for the most part forgotten him most of the time, began to become infatuated. Each of them had tried to find the man of their dreams, and somehow each had found something much less. They loved their children, but the fathers of those children had been found wanting, much as Rip claimed to have been found wanting by his shrewish wife. And yet, rather than identifying with the wife, they chose to believe the description Rip made of himself, as an easygoing, happy-go-lucky loving man who wanted nothing more than to have enough to eat, to enjoy a beautiful day and to be able to play with children and make them happy. In their minds, had his wife been less of a bitch, he would have been loving and considerate of her too ... of course.

And the man who read all this to them was, as they believed, the direct descendant of old Rip. He had even met the man when he was a child ... had actually spoken with old Rip. The old roll top desk and the journal in it were gifts to Bob by the legend himself! And Bob was handsome, and polite in a way that men had forgotten how to be, it seemed. Whenever he accompanied one of them on a trip somewhere he was most solicitous, opening doors for them, taking their hand to help them in or out of the car, and generally paying them the kind of honest compliments that twenty-something men just didn't do these days.

And it wasn't just the women in his family who noticed these things. Saleswomen all over town fawned on him, giving him the kind of service that, in New York City, would have demanded a tip. He didn't tip them. Instead, they gave him their phone numbers.

And at night the women listened avidly as Rip told of how his wife's razor sharp tongue beat down all happiness in the house, even to that of Wolf, Rip's faithful old hunting dog. His description of how Wolf's tail crept between his legs and his ears laid back even before they went into the cottage each day, successful hunting or not, made them all sigh. Polly and Sunny both had dogs in the house, and Gidget was still getting over the death of her own. Again, their heartstrings were plucked by the old man's words.

All the women delighted in taking Bob places. His ever present amazement at the advances of technology were a source of constant joyous laughter. It usually took Becca, Val or Fran to give him explanations of how things worked, but Sunny, Polly and Gidget almost always had a better sense of the timeline of when things had appeared on the market. There were constant references such as "I remember when that first came out. I was ten or eleven at the time and we couldn't afford one until they'd been in stores for several years."

Computers seemed like magic to Bob. Conversely, the manual can opener in June's kitchen drawer was completely familiar to him. While its overall appearance was different than what he remembered, it was instantly recognizable to him, being practically unchanged in fifty years. Automobiles, as Bob referred to them, also left his mouth hanging open. Air conditioning was something he neither understood, nor thought necessary. At the same time, news reports about concern over this or that country's nuclear ambitions produced discussion in which were voiced many of the same concerns that people in his day had worried about.

The first time he saw Val get a call on her cell phone left him laughing helplessly as he later described how she suddenly decided to talk to a noisy piece of plastic she pulled out of her purse. It was only after her actual conversation that he recognized the same language people had used fifty years ago to answer the phone. He was fascinated by the radio, and spent literally hours sitting hunched by one, hopping from station to station as he explored what to him was the amazing variety of sounds the little box would produce. Conversely, television didn't much interest him. The programs his great granddaughters watched horrified him. The ones their mothers liked seemed empty and vulgar. It wasn't until someone tuned the television to programs in black and white that his interest perked up. Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke were his favorites, and he'd stop doing almost anything to see the Honeymooners or Jack Benny. Even though most of them had been produced after he went to sleep, they were much closer to the world he remembered than anything else on the tube.

And, as often as they could, the clan would gather, and more of Rip's journal would be revealed. And on each of those occasions the bond between the women and Bob would be deepened.

June, rather than Betty, was the next after Martha to resume her previous activities with her father. For a month she sat and wiggled excitedly as she sat with him, or went places with him, or had him over for dinner. Then one day he showed up unexpectedly, sent to her house by Martha to borrow something.

She was in her bikini again that day, lying out in the sun. The first she knew of his presence was when his shadow fell over her face. She flinched, not expecting anyone to see her, and opened her eyes.

"Daddy!" she said, relieved that it wasn't a stranger.

"I was hoping I'd get to see you in that getup again someday." he chuckled.

There had been much discussion about many things between Bob and the various women in his life now, but talk about sex had been avoided. There were too many secrets trying still to be kept. Even though Martha dragged him into bed almost every day she still tried to keep that a secret from the others.

But all of the women who had been intimate with him were fully aware that he retained memories of what they had done. It made for some emotionally charged interaction sometimes.

June sat up.

"Daddy, can I ask you a question?" she asked.

Bob stared down at the vast expanse of sweat-dotted skin on her body. Having gotten used to making love with Martha, his prick was almost always interested in a beautiful woman. It reacted to June.

"Of course." he said, wishing he could adjust his thickening penis.

"You remember how you said that you can remember ... everything?" She got flustered. "I mean about what happened while you were asleep?"

That didn't help Bob's condition at all. Her voice was tied to some really great "dreams."

"Yes, dear." he said. He couldn't help but treat his daughters as daughters, even though he appeared younger than them.

"How did you feel about that?" she asked, looking away.

"I thought they were dreams." he said.

"I mean now." she corrected herself. "What do you think about ... what we did?"

"Let's go inside." said Bob, feeling his own skin beginning to produce sweat. "I'm supposed to borrow a weed whacker, whatever in the world that is."

"I'm sorry, Daddy." said the woman getting up. "I didn't mean to bring back bad memories."

He held out his hand to pull her up. "Who said anything about bad memories? I'll be happy to answer your question. I just want to do it in the shade."