Chapter 28

I left Emily and went over to my bedroom, to shower and get ready for school. So far, everything happening, as a result of my wanting to gather a brain trust for the business, had brought increased dissension inside our group.

I was torn between what I wanted, what I feared, and what I felt was ultimately best for our family. All of this was caused because Joyce and I both believed we needed to add the sexual component to the mix, that doing so would tie our brain trust closer to us. Using physical intimacy as a bridge to give the new group a chance for some sustainable permanence.

At breakfast, Shirley asked me if I'd drive her over to the campus so she could speak with me. When she asked me, I told her yes, and then I noticed Joyce had been trying to get my attention before I spoke to Shirley. When I nodded to her, after answering Shirley, Joyce just made a motion with her head, as if to say it hadn't been important.

Shirley and I were still in our driveway when she began talking, telling me exactly what was on her mind. She too was having some of the same problems that Emily had spoken about, feeling like Joyce and I were pressuring her to support something she really wasn't certain she wanted to have take place.

She didn't object to Dale or Eddie, she made that very plain, but she didn't see why the brain trust had to be added to our existing group. Joyce had kept telling her it was necessary, but she didn't give her any good reasons for why it was. Shirley wanted me to give her those reasons.

I didn't have any reasons that I could give her. What I had was a feeling, based, mostly, on my own experiences with our group, and with working with other people in the business. When you had key people, you wanted to tie them to you more closely than any of the regular employees.

Joyce was a good case in point, so I tried to explain to Shirley about how difficult it would be to replace Joyce, and how her leaving the company would have a long term very negative effect on our profitability and efficiency. I told her we were looking for the kind of people who were as valuable and effective as Joyce was, for our brain trust.

For people like that, you needed to offer more than just a job or a career. They had to be a part of the company too. They had to be so comfortable with you that they'd never want to leave.

"If you go ahead and do what you're planning, you and Joyce, it will destroy what we already have. I know this. To you and Joyce, the business is a lot more important than it is to any of the rest of us. You're doing all of this for the business, something we don't care that much about, and it makes us feel like we aren't as important to you as we all thought we were. You're telling us you're willing to sacrifice what we have with you, just so your business runs better, and is easier for you to operate. Nobody will tell you this in front of Joyce, but all the X's are here just for you. We love Joyce, but she isn't why we all agreed to be in the group. We didn't join just so you could use us to make your business run better either."

"You would still have me. We aren't talking about taking anything away, we're talking about adding more to our group."

"We don't want to add more. We want it to stay just like it always has been. Can't you find another way to help the company, one you could do without changing what we have?"

I wanted to tell Shirley that I shared all her doubts and fears. I wanted to tell her I would abandon my brain trust idea, or else modify it so that it didn't impact on our group. I wanted to, but I couldn't, not without first discussing everything with Joyce. Shirley had raised a valid point about the business only being important to Joyce and me. To the two of us, the company made up a large part of our lives. Both of us were willing to do quite a lot to insure that it grew and got stronger.

"Shirley, I'm happy we had this talk, and you've given me some ideas I need to think about. I promise you that we won't add anyone to our group unless everyone already in the group gives their permission and approval for it. I need to speak with Joyce more about this. Maybe she and I have been thinking solely about the benefits this would bring to the two of us. We all need to give this a lot more thought."

I spent the rest of the day in my classes, thinking about what Emily and Shirley had told me, and deciding what I needed to say to Joyce. This whole brain trust idea was evolving anyway. It was a problem, but Joyce and I were both good at finding solutions to problems. We just needed to come up with something that would achieve what we were after, without hurting what we already had.

One thing was already clear to me, and that was there wasn't any way, at the present time, to merge the group and the brain trust together. We were going to have to come up with a plan that kept them separate, but allowed us all the benefits we'd have if they were merged.

I started thinking about the modular concept we'd used for the group homes, building smaller, independent units, all loosely connected under the umbrella of a single corporation.

Dad had done something similar with how he had integrated all of our companies, to make each one more efficient. They all worked together with some things, but each unit maintained its own, separate, identity. This is what the X's were trying to tell us. They wanted to keep their own separate identity.

They were my wives, not company assets, or brain trust playthings. I was almost through with my final class of the day before I finally started understanding what I hadn't learned earlier, from what Emily and Shirley were trying to tell me.

Joyce had the piece of paper that made her my wife, plus, she had the openness to sexual experiences that the X's didn't really have. In addition, the business was even more important to her than it was to me. It was the combination of all these things that made the brain trust merger with the group attractive to her.

The X's only had my declaration of love for them, and none of them seemed very anxious to go outside our group to broaden their sexual experiences, in spite of what Joyce would have me believe. To all of them, the business was just something Joyce and I spent our time and energy with. It wasn't an important part of their attention or their focus.

All of the sacrificing to make the brain trust into part of our group, would end up being done by the X's. Joyce wouldn't be giving up anything she valued, she'd be getting things that she wanted. I would be giving up my exclusive position in our group, as the only male sex partner in their lives. To Emily and Shirley, what we were asking seemed unfair. Looking at it from their viewpoint, I had to agree. It wasn't a balanced change we were requesting from them.

I began to ask myself if I thought I'd have a big problem with sharing Joyce, and only Joyce, with other male members of the brain trust. I already knew, from Joyce herself, that she felt excited by the prospect, and that she felt very confident that it wouldn't change the way she felt about me.

I wanted to have sex with Dale and Eddie. I also wanted them to become part of our brain trust. Mostly though, as a result of my talking with Shirley and Emily, I wanted to protect the family grouping that we had already formed. I wondered if the X's would accept the type of compromise I could see taking shape in my head. A group, consisting of our family, and another group, an extension, consisting of all the members of the brain trust.

Joyce and I would have membership in both, but would commit to spending our nights, at home, with our real family. The sex part would be trickier, and it couldn't work unless there were both males and females living at the extension. Another tricky element would be explaining to Dale and Eddie that they were being excluded from our family. It was tricky, but not impossible. We didn't really know each other that well yet, and everything had happened very suddenly. They had come to us, hoping for nursery worker jobs. From the way Dale had reacted the night before, it seemed that she was as anxious as we were to get this situation settled. The real problem was going to be Joyce.

I still remembered the fight we'd had over the way my Dad and I had handled Biddy Walter's leaking our data to Coinmark. When I'd told her later that evening, she and I had ended up in a shouting match that had disturbed everyone in our household. Joyce had told me that she should have known better than to have trusted me to handle anything that needed a firm hand and a strong stomach.

She wanted Biddy in prison. She ended up calling my father, and the two of them spent a tense twenty minutes, on the phone, arguing about what needed to be done. In the end, Joyce and I had ended up sleeping apart for a whole week.

My Dad and I finally ended up telling her that she couldn't go to the company's offices until she agreed that she'd accept what we'd done concerning Biddy's punishment, or lack of punishment. Joyce had been as upset over that as I'd ever seen her. True to her nature, she persisted in aggravating the hurts we'd inflicted on each other. She didn't, seemingly, couldn't, let it go.

I don't think she would have gotten over it at all, if Ellen hadn't started screwing up some deliveries from one of the rail hubs. When faced with not being able to go up to Bolling to get things straightened out, Joyce decided that making her department run correctly was more important to her than seeing to it that Biddy got what Joyce thought she had coming. It was a very tense period, and Mama made it decidedly worse, when she sided with Joyce throughout this whole period.

I'd stood up to her then though, even though I understood what she was feeling. I took her worst verbal assaults and scornful abuse, realizing it wasn't me she was really mad at, but the frustration over not having been there herself to see that the right thing, to her way of thinking, was done.

This was another case where Joyce and I weren't going to be able to completely agree. In the past, when we disagreed, Joyce's tenacity would win out because of my unwillingness to continue fighting against her. She would simply wear me down. I didn't want to get into another contest of wills with her. I'd present my case and listen to her response.

There might be some room for compromise, but not in the area where we continued to try to involve the X's with the brain trust. They would be welcome to interact with the brain trust, but it would have to be from their own initiative. I wouldn't prevent them from doing it, but I wouldn't encourage them, or more importantly, allow Joyce to encourage them, to do so.

I came home ready to do battle with Joyce. She wasn't there. Phil told me that Joyce had borrowed his truck to use it to help move Dale and Eddie over to their new apartment. Joyce returned, alone, at six thirty. The rest of us were just finishing up with dinner when Joyce got back. She joined us in the dining room.

"I got Dale and Eddie their own place, over by the campus. I thought it would be better, until all of us decide what we're going to do." Joyce walked over and hugged Emily when she said it. After, she hugged Shirley, and then Brenda. She finally came over to me and sat down in my lap. "I was going to tell you this morning, Kenny, but you were running late, and Shirley needed that ride. Our other idea wasn't going to work. I was up half the night trying to think of a way to make it work, without it spoiling what all of us have now. It just won't work to expand the group like that."

"You're right. I have another idea that might work, but it has some complications that would need to get ironed out first. I agree that we have to keep the brain trust separate from the family, but we can still have the brain trust, and try to make it work like we make our family group work. We can use the modular extension concept. Only you and me would be part of the brain trust. I think the X's were mostly upset that we were getting them involved in something that wasn't their concern. I don't mean that we'll exclude them if they want to participate, only that it wouldn't be anything they'd necessarily have to involve themselves in."