Chapter 4

The day that Brenda, Emily and Shirley graduated, the twins were two weeks old. Mama had hired some help for Joyce. They were two sisters that lived about a quarter mile away from our house. Karen was seventeen years old, and her sister, Lina, was either fifteen or sixteen. They were the oldest of six children, and Mama knew their grandmother. I think she had once worked for Mama, as a maid or something. The girls would come in and do whatever they could to make it easier for Joyce to care for the twins.

Bunny was a happy little baby. He slept well, didn't spit up his mother's milk, and when he cried, it wasn't very loud. Roberta was an altogether different story. She loved to be fussed over. She was loud, and she made these terrible faces, where her eyes would get all scrunched up, and her face would turn red, as she protested whatever condition she found herself in. The thing that worked best, when she was like this, was to pick her up and walk all around the house with her. This was something the two sisters excelled at doing. They would walk with Little Bertie until she calmed down and went back to sleep.

Karen was especially good about changing diapers. I had changed a few, in the very beginning, and was amazed at what little babies could put out. Joyce seemed to love everything about taking care of the kids. We had put both little bassinets in our bedroom, and each of the kids would wake up a couple of times a night, wanting to be changed and fed.

Brenda moved in the day after graduation, and she wanted to help with the babies too. It seemed like there was a competition over who would be allowed to hold the babies. Too many girls, not enough babies to go around. Joyce was breast feeding, and her milk had come in very strong. She had plenty of milk for both children. I would pass by Joyce sitting on the couch, feeding one of the twins, and there were usually at least two of the other girls there, standing around, watching her as she did it. I had tasted Joyce's breast milk, but it didn't do anything for me.

Joyce and Brenda invited Shirley and Emily over for a small graduation dinner, and a meeting of the X's afterwards. It was funny, listening to them sitting at the kitchen table, talking about me like I wasn't right there to hear what they were saying. It was embarrassing too, because they all seemed to like to go into vivid detail about things that we had done in bed together. I took it for about forty minutes, but then I just had to get up and leave. I remembered most of the things they were talking about, and I also realized the girls were doing some careful editing while telling their stories.

When Joyce came to bed later, with Brenda helping to carry one of the sleeping twins, she told me that the other girls had gone home.

"If you want to do something with Brenda tonight, Kenny, I wouldn't mind."

"No. We'll wait until she decides, and until you can participate with us. You girls went and made yourselves all horny, telling each other those lies about what we did together. Shirley was the worst one too. I couldn't believe some of those things she made up about us."

"How come you never made me scream at the top of my lungs, Kenny?" Joyce was in a playful mood, I could tell, but the doctor had told us we needed to wait six weeks for everything inside to heal, and get back in the right places.

"She's a screamer, Joyce. I never made her faint, and I've made you faint several times."

"I already decided, Kenny. I told you that when we talked before." Brenda had put Bunny in his little bassinet, and had walked over to where I was sitting on my bed. I had put down the book I was reading when everyone came into the bedroom.

"It isn't that simple, Brenda. There's still the summer, and Emily. I wouldn't feel right about us doing anything when Joyce wasn't able to join in if she wanted to."

"Emily wants to move in here, and so does Shirley, if you'll let her bring Derek. Just for the summer. We all talked about it, and we all promised not to get jealous."

"I'm a married man, Brenda, with children in the house. Besides, I gave up on that harem idea a long time ago. It's too complicated. I promised Joyce too, so forget it."

"Joyce was the one who first said it might be fun, just for the summer. We can all go to work at your dad's company, and use the bedroom as a place for Bunny and Bertie to be. I can cook, and we can all take turns with watching the babies."

"Is that right, Joyce? Are you planning for us to hold orgies at work?"

"It would just be for the summer, Kenny. We're leaving after, for Lawrence. Emily is going back east, to Columbia, and Shirley is going to school over in Bolling. This would be the last summer all the X's will be together. If you think about it, it's just like what you proposed before, except, this time, everyone has already said they'd like to do it."

"Shirley said she'd like to do things with other girls?"

Joyce and Brenda both laughed when I asked that. I looked at them, waiting for them to tell me why what I'd asked was so funny. Shirley was the only one of my girl friends who'd never shown or expressed any interest in other girls.

"I don't think Shirley would have a problem doing things with anybody right now. Every time we see her, she's always complaining about how much she misses sex. She's always asking Emily and Brenda about what they do. She was the first one who said she'd like to move in too. Emily wasn't sure if she wanted to move in or not." Joyce gave Brenda a look, and I wondered what they weren't telling me. I saw Brenda nod to Joyce. "Emily had a new boyfriend. At least, she had a boy that she did things with. I don't think she's seeing him anymore. She's afraid you won't want her living here now."

I'll admit that I had an emotional response to hearing that news. I'm not sure why that was, since I'd long considered things over between us. It wasn't jealousy I felt, it was more like disappointment. I don't know why I even felt that.

"We're all moving on. This is probably a good thing too. I don't think I want to get re-involved with Shirley and Emily just for the summer. It doesn't make any sense, and it would just make it harder when everyone splits up to go off to school later. Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I'm interested in it."

"What about the other thing you said, with Emily, and us? Are you going to change your mind about that now?"

"As I remember it, it was you suggesting it so that Brenda and Emily could continue their friendship without violating the agreement about no outside relationships. I said I'd be willing to wait until the end of the summer for Brenda to join us, so she and Emily could continue things the way they were. The truth is, I don't really want to get involved more than I already am. Brenda is a different case for me. I'm still ready to do what we talked about. As far as what you girls want to do with each other, I'd have to think about how I'd feel about that. Right now, I'm tired, and I want to get some rest."

Brenda left, then Joyce kept me up for another thirty minutes while she tried to explain why it would be a good thing for us to have Emily and Shirley living with us for the summer.

"Even if there were no sex, it would be a good thing. This is especially true for Emily, because she's having problems at home right now. Shirley is having money problems, and she needs to get her own car to get back and forth from school every day. Her mom needs to have her car at home, if she's going to be watching Derek all day, while Shirley's in school. We could use Shirley at work, and, if she lived with us, we could all go back and forth together."

"I'll buy her a car, Joyce. As far as Emily's problems at home, I'm sure she can work those out if she has to. I know how you operate too. You just want to get them here in the house, under any pretext, then you're going to start doing things to make me tempted. If you want to do things with those girls, Joyce, I'll give you my permission. I don't want to complicate my life by doing things with them too."

"If I promise you, if we all promise you that we won't try to get you to do anything with either Emily or Shirley, will you let them come here to live?"

"Joyce, tell me what makes it so important to you."

"Brenda, it's important to her. Not Shirley so much, but Emily. She thinks Emily needs her right now. Brenda is thinking about getting a place for her and Emily, for the summer."

"What's wrong with that? It might actually be better if they did it like that."

"Mama doesn't think so."

"Mama again. Is she worried that Brenda might decide to go off with Emily, when she goes east?"

"She didn't say that, but she thinks Emily is dangerous for our plans."

"Our plans, meaning hers and yours? Having Brenda go off to school with Emily isn't dangerous to any of my plans. I've said it before, if Mama has something she really wants or needs from me, about Brenda, all she has to do is come to me, and tell me why it's so important to her. Until she does, I'm not going to do anything to try to keep Brenda from doing whatever she chooses to."

"Did you mean it about buying Shirley a car?"

"Sure. We should get you a new car anyway. I'll buy yours from the leasing company, and we can give that to Shirley. It's still a good car, plus it's big enough so she could drive it comfortably. We'll have the company lease you a new one. Do you want another Lincoln?"

"Actually, I was thinking I might try a Cadillac next. I like driving yours, and now that I'm so much taller, and my belly isn't so big, I don't even need the pedal assists, or to scoot forward, because your seat comes further forward than the one on my Lincoln."

"We'll get you whatever you want, Joyce. See? That was easy."

"When I tell Brenda what you told me, Kenny, she's going to want you to give her some of her money so she can move out to be with Emily."

"That's fine. She can have as much of it as she wants. She's only taken out two thousand so far. Don't be worried about Brenda, Joyce. I don't think she's ready to move that far away from home."

"It would be so much easier if you'd let everyone move in here. Emily and Brenda could share a room together, and we could wait to start our group until after Emily leaves."

"I'm not going for it, Joyce. I've seen the looks you guys are all giving each other. How you all react every time I happen to say something. I know you and Mama both believe I'd be better off with you making decisions for me, orchestrating my life the way you think would be best. You and Mama are going to find there's a big problem with attempting that. The difficulty with your ideas is, we don't always agree on what is best."

"I promise we won't try to trick you into having sex with Emily or Shirley, Kenny. We have all this extra room. I like all the X's, and we really could use their help at work, and with the twins."

"What about Karen and Lina?"

"They were only temporary. Mama just hired them until I was back up to full strength again. I think Lina has to go to summer school next week anyway. Karen wants a full time job for the summer. I think Gerta is going to help her get something that pays better."

"If I went along, it would mean I'm not going to do anything with Brenda, not so long as Emily is living here."

"I'll explain things to all of them. What about Derek? Can Shirley bring him to work with her?"

"I don't see why not. We should set up some kind of kid's nursery, away from our offices anyway. I'll put the John's on it. I think there's an empty office off the kitchen. That way we wouldn't need to hear them when we were trying to get things done. Were you planning on putting Shirley and Brenda in charge of watching them?"

"What about Emily?"

"What about her? This is your plan, Joyce, not mine. She does things for the girl's group home, so you know what she can do. Use her however you think is best. Dad wants me staying closer to him this summer. He says he wants me to start thinking like a company president. I'm supposed to watch and learn from him."

I also had plans to get my pilot's license over the summer. I'd put it off, mostly because I was worried about my mental stability. My Dad was the only one who thought I should still get my license. I think Mama and Joyce were worried I'd go into one of my withdrawals and crash on purpose... I asked my Dad why that didn't worry him. He said I could do the same thing in my car, or fifty other ways. Flying wasn't going to be any more of a risk than allowing me to continue shaving myself. My Dad was a practical person, not given to worrying about problems he couldn't control. Mama could have learned a thing or two from him.

I was getting sleepy before Joyce decided to quit while she was still ahead. I had agreed to having all the girls move in with us, but she had to accept my decision about Brenda, and about me not having sex with Emily or Shirley. I knew my life was going to get very interesting.

Most guys would have killed to get themselves into my position. I was going to be living with four girls, girls who had all openly declared that they wanted me to fuck them. If I was being honest with myself, I would have admitted that I wanted to fuck all of them too. The problem with it, for me, was that I didn't want to just have casual sex with any of them. I believed, once I'd loved somebody, there was some kind of bond between us. The idea of us having friendly, non-committed sex, just didn't have any appeal to me.

I slept pretty well. I was developing what Joyce referred to as father's hearing. I would wake up at night when one of the babies started crying, just enough to give Joyce a little wake up shove, and then I'd fall back to sleep. Later, when Joyce started using the breast pump, she stopped letting me get away with that.

The next morning, our house was once again full of the four X's. Brenda moved her things from the bedroom she had previously selected, to Elizabeth's old bedroom, over in the back part of the house. Emily was moving her things in there as well. Gary had come along to help her. Shirley had her brother, Ron, helping her and Derek move in.

Irene was walking around the house all day, watching as the house filled up with girls. It was in the early afternoon when she came into my little office and told me she was quitting. I asked her what the problem was, thinking it was the extra food she would need to prepare. It turned out that she had a sensitivity to noises, much like Anne Coulter had. With four women and three babies, she said her nerves were already getting rattled. I wrote her out a check, paying her for the whole month, and phoned over to Hans to have him come with the limo, to drive her and all her stuff, over to her sister's house, near Bolling. Gerta laughed when I told her why I needed Hans.

Hans was laughing too as he watched all the X's scurrying around the house, carrying things from one room to another. Joyce and I walked Irene to the door of the limo and saw her off. She looked happy to be on her way. Brenda was already in the kitchen, taking inventory, and planning that night's meal. I went back to my office and closed the door. The noise didn't bother me that much, I just wanted a buffer, between myself, and all those girls.