Chapter 52

From the report I received from Joyce, after Shirley and I returned home, Brenda and Cindy had spent the night together. Joyce hadn't learned yet whether their interaction had been a success. That was always a worry with Brenda, because she would sometimes just be the passive recipient of whatever attention her partner wanted to lavish on her. Luckily, there were other occasions when Brenda really got into it. For Cindy's sake, I hoped it had been a case of the latter rather than the former the night before.

Joyce also confirmed that Emily, Eddie and Dale had all spent the night together. She laughingly admitted to having spent part of the night in Dale and Eddie's room too. She claimed that the night was definitely a success for Dale, in terms of how her body reacted to Emily's bold assaults.

"I don't think that will be the last time that Dale and Emily get together. She enjoyed the way Emily was able to physically control her. I think Emily enjoyed being the biggest person in the room. She has this mean streak too, you know? She likes to make you do things to her. You know how she gets wild if you hold her down and force her? She gets just as wild if she does it to someone else. Last night, she tried that on all of us."

"She only tried it?" Joyce smiled and blushed when I asked her that.

"When it was one of us against her, she was able to do whatever she wanted to. After, we all ganged up on her, and then she got the same treatment she'd been dishing out to us. She liked it both ways. When I left, she was sleeping with Dale wrapped up in her arms. They both looked so innocent. If you had walked into the bedroom after they were asleep, you wouldn't be able to believe the things they'd been doing to each other earlier. I don't have to ask you how it went with Shirley. Before we left last night, all of us could hear her screaming. We had to try to get the little ones and the nursery girls out of there in a hurry. I think Shirley's screaming got everyone even more excited. It's hard not to think about sex when she starts saying those things like she does."

"We had a great time. I didn't get much rest until around four thirty. I think I overdid it a little. After we got finished for the night, one of my hands started shaking, for no reason. I think it was a muscle spasm, like a cramp or something. It looked funny. It did it again, while we were eating breakfast this morning. I don't think it's anything to worry about, but I'm going to have someone check it out next week, in Birmingham."

Joyce looked a little concerned. I'd tried to present it to her as casually as I could, trying to minimize her worry. There really wasn't any reason to be concerned until I found out more about what the problem might be. At that point, I thought there was a pretty good chance that I could get a few more hours of normal rest and there wouldn't be any reoccurrence of the hand shaking.

I took a little nap before lunch. Joyce laid down with me, but she left sometime after I fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt better, more like my normal self.

At lunch, Joyce reminded me that I had a two thirty appointment with Frank Clooney, over at his office. I wanted to make some changes in the trusts that Joyce and I had set up for all the children. There were individual trusts for all of them, but we had also created a master trust, where each of the children had an undivided one twelfth interest. Frank had told us that it made sense for us to attempt to reduce the size of our estate even while we were young and healthy. This trust was one where we parked long term assets that generated income which we didn't need.

Frank had mentioned a provision in Uncle Bunny's bequest to me that allowed me to designate a different beneficiary should I elect to forego some or all of my inheritance. When he had first brought it up with me he told me that it was a provision included to give me the greatest possible flexibility when it came to structuring my assets. He mentioned many possible tax advantages of transferring portions of my inheritance to others.

Uncle Bunny's estate had already paid the estate taxes. This amount wouldn't change regardless of who the ultimate beneficiary's ended up being. Uncle Bunny had given me the ability to change his designated bequests. Frank hadn't mentioned this provision to me until after I had reached the age of twenty one. He didn't say it, but I believed that Uncle Bunny had left him a separate set of instructions that he used as a guide in how and when he presented certain information to me.

The meeting with Frank lasted for over two hours. I told Frank to transfer all of my stock in the company over to the children's trust, changing the provisions for the trusteeship so that my father was the trustee should anything happen to me, and that Joyce would take over as the second successor trustee, should anything happen to make it impossible for my Dad to continue serving.

My father already had voting control over my stock holdings, including the ability to pledge all company assets to secure financing. What I was doing was effectively removing the stock from my own estate by putting it into my children's estate. Frank had recommended that we set up beneficiary distribution so that a child's interest in the trust ended at his or her death, until and unless I had already predeceased that child. In this way, we wouldn't have to deal with one of the children having an estate problem in the event of an early death. The trust was for my living children, after my death. It was much simpler for taxes that way.

I had to make this election before my twenty fifth birthday, according to the provisions in Uncle Bunny's bequest. After that time, all interest in his remaining estate devolved itself directly to me. With the acquisition of Alliance Vending, using most of the money I'd lent my father for expansion, the stock I had just approved divesting, represented about ninety percent of my total net worth. I knew I'd get the money back, someday, for the loan I'd made to the company, but I wasn't exactly strapped for cash regardless. Still, I felt a lot lighter in the wallet after leaving Frank's office.

Back home, I had a nice late afternoon with all the wives. Joyce and I did get into a minor argument about Ellen, about my decision to curtail any sexual relationship with her. Joyce maintained that it served no purpose to keep her outside what she referred to as our inner circle.

"Joyce, I've made up my mind about this. It doesn't have anything to do with Ellen, not really. It has to do with casual relationships. I'm not going to be sleeping with everyone that works with us. We aren't kids any longer either. Our children are growing up pretty fast, and I'd like to be able to explain our lifestyle to them someday in a way that makes some kind of sense. I want to love every woman I make love too. I don't love Ellen, and I'm not going to love her. You can sleep with her, if that's what you want to do, but I'm not going to."

"It isn't the same, Kenny. I could agree with you about this if we hadn't already slept with her, but we have. How do we explain that we're changing the rules now?"

"We don't need to. Just don't invite her to come spend nights with us. If she brings it up herself, tell her that the family has gotten too big to allow us to indulge in recreational encounters. She'll understand. She might not even ask. She hasn't been here in months. Has she complained?"

"I've been talking to her about going down to Birmingham. She was in that other relationship, so we didn't see as much of her then as we usually would have. The only reason she'd agree to go to Birmingham is you. If she doesn't go down there to work for you, she'll quit."

"She can come down and try that thing you were recommending. I don't see why that means we have to resume something we've already pretty much quit doing. The bottom line is that I'm through with sleeping with her. If that has to mean we lose her, then we'll just have to accept that."

"Tell me why you're the one who always gets to decide these things, Kenny. Sometimes I have to do things I wish I didn't, but I do them because it helps with what we're trying to get accomplished. I need Ellen. If we lose her for good, we're losing someone who is very valuable to me. I don't see any harm in us inviting her to spend time with us like we did before. Not all the time, just once in a while, so she feels like a closer part of us."

"If she really was a closer part of us, that might make sense. She isn't though, and she won't ever be. I'm trying to explain to you that I'm already spreading myself too thin. It makes no sense to do what you're asking, not when I'm unable to spend as much time as I'd like to with all of the women who are a close part of our life."

"I'm saying that Ellen should be a closer part of our lives."

"I hear you, Joyce. I just disagree. I already said you could sleep with her if you want to. Any of the wives who want to can. I'm not going to though, and you need to just accept that fact and move on."

Joyce didn't reply. I knew I hadn't convinced her. I knew she wasn't done trying to get her way either. At least the lines had been drawn, and we each knew where we stood on the issue. I felt like I had accomplished the main chores I'd scheduled for myself for over the weekend.

I spent all the rest of the late afternoon and evening playing with my children. We roughhoused together in the play room, and I was a little surprised with how well they all worked together to subdue me when we were wrestling. They were becoming an organized team.

Little Bertie and Bunny were the team planners, and Derek, as the biggest, was the enforcer of their edicts. He was the first one they threw into the fray, using his size as a diversion so they had the time to position all the others. No matter how I tried to counter their attacks, they always found a way to immobilize and defeat me. Even the smallest were assigned roles. I was impressed.

I noticed that both sets of twins were more like their mother than me. They were more organized and purposeful, goal oriented and persistent. The older set were also a little ruthless, willing to absorb some punishment to achieve their objective. None of my children acted much like I remembered acting, and I was so thankful that this was true. All of them were far more social than either Joyce or I had been or were.

You learn a lot about children's personalities by playing with them. Even the youngest were old enough to seem like little people to me. I was sitting in the nursery reading to the three oldest kids when my hand started shaking again. Derek thought it was funny, and started laughing. The twins didn't laugh. They watched my face, hoping that my reaction would tell them whether it was something to be worried about or not. I tried to smile at them and make a joke of it.

"See, you beat all the rest of me, but my right arm still wants to wrestle you some more." I reached out with it tickling them with the uncontrolled movement. When I did that, Bertie and Bunny broke out laughing like Derek had. After the hand quit shaking, all of them were after me to make it do it again. I tried shaking it like the tremors before, but it just wasn't the same. I kissed them all and told them to sleep good and I'd see them in the morning.

When I got to my bedroom, Cindy and Joyce were waiting for me. For the first time I could remember, I begged off from fooling around, explaining that I was worn down from some bug or something, and I needed a good night's sleep.

"Did it happen again, Kenny?" Joyce had real concern in her voice when she asked me that. Cindy looked puzzled, not understanding what Joyce was asking. I nodded to her that it had. "Like the other times? Did anyone else see it?"

"Not as long this time, maybe thirty or forty seconds. Derek and the big twins were there. I was putting them to bed, reading them a story. I made it into a tickling game with them. I don't think they were too worried about it. They wanted me to make it do it again."

"What are you talking about, Kenny? Do what? What happened?"

I turned to Cindy to answer her questions, but my body decided to answer her all by itself. That damn hand started shaking and flopping around all on its own. The three of us sat up in the bed watching the eerie display. I was just as fascinated and transfixed by the disjointed movement as they were. Joyce started crying, and that made Cindy start up as well. I wanted to cry myself. By now I was reasonably certain it wasn't something with a simple explanation, and it didn't look like it was going to go away on its own.

I could also see I didn't have any hope of keeping this quiet now. In less than twenty four hours, eight people had seen me having one or more of these episodes. They were too frequent and too unpredictable as to when they'd occur, for me to be able to conceal them.

"You're not leaving here until you get that checked out, Kenny. I mean it too."

"Joyce, don't be silly. I need to be in Birmingham. There are good doctors and good hospitals down there too. I've already decided not to try to fly the plane myself, so we'll have one of the other pilots fly us down. All it is so far is a hand shaking. Don't make it into any big thing before we need to."

"Is it always the same hand?" Cindy asked me this.

"So far it has been." We looked at my shaking hand. This was the longest it had continued shaking. It had been a couple of minutes already. I reached out and put the hand between Joyce's legs, trapping it there.

"Kenny! What are you doing?"

"We may as well get some benefit from all that movement." Joyce didn't think that was funny, and she opened her legs up again, moving away from my hand. She never took her eyes off the shaking hand though.

"Make it stop, Kenny. Sit on it or something." I realized that Joyce was a lot more upset by this than Cindy seemed to be. I took my hand and reached for Cindy's thighs. She opened them willingly, then squeezed them shut herself, trapping my hand up past the middle of her thigh. It felt very warm between her legs. Just as she did so, the tremors stopped. I left my arm trapped there anyway. It felt good where it was.

"It wasn't that big a deal Joyce. I was just trying to have a little fun. Make a scary thing a little less scary. You don't have to be so afraid of it. All it really amounts to is some unplanned shaking. It doesn't hurt or anything.

"It must have scared Bertie and Bunny. It scared me to death."

"I told you they were laughing. We made a game of it, and that's how they ended up treating it. They kept after me to do it again."

After all the excitement, there was no way I was going to be able to just go to sleep. I was too keyed up from what had happened. I already had my hand between Cindy's legs, so I started kissing her and fooling around.

At first, Joyce stayed aloof from what was going on. That didn't last very long though, and in a few minutes, she and I were engaged in our usual double teaming tactics. It ended up being a very satisfying sexual encounter, and not just for Joyce and me. Cindy really got lit up from all of the coordinated stimulation. Joyce got increasingly rougher and more demanding as she observed Cindy's reactions to my increased physical demands. Cindy liked being bitten, something that I didn't know about before. Eddie liked giving her Hickey's, but Joyce bit her all over the place. Hard nips too, not just pretend bites. Some left marks, and I was surprised by the depth of Cindy's response to this treatment. She seemed to be having really intense orgasms, one right after another. It was Cindy who finally pushed us both away from her, begging us to let her rest.

I hadn't managed to cum yet. I pounced over on top of Joyce and pushed myself as fully as I could into her. It had always amazed me how easily Joyce was able to switch roles. She managed to mold herself into whatever I needed at the moment. She went from being the hunter to the prey in an instant.

At some point our lovemaking stopped being something we were doing out of pure physical need. This was when I realized what her true fears about my shaking hand earlier meant to her. She wrapped her hands around my neck, holding onto me for dear life. I felt her fear, her desperation, as she clung tightly to me. Even when I had achieved my release, she refused to allow me to roll off of her, holding me tightly to her body.

This wasn't role playing or an act. The one certainty I'd always had with Joyce was her love for me. It didn't mean that she would defer to my wishes in all things, or that she wasn't going to be ruthless in attempting to get her own way in areas we disagreed about. What it did mean was that she valued me, even above herself. She always had been like that. She saw her life as mostly being about taking care of and assisting me. I saw it differently, so did everyone else we knew, but Joyce was consistent in her response to anything that seemed like it might be harmful to me. She fought against those things with every ounce of energy she could command.

I had no doubt that the Birmingham medical community would soon be bombarded with demands to first find out what was wrong with me, and then to fix it. I had presented Joyce with her new primary project. All else would go on hold for her, until such time as my situation was understood, then resolved, to her complete satisfaction.

In a way, as I finally was released so that Joyce and I could spoon together, I knew I'd done the right thing by bringing Joyce in on the shaking hand problem. Even if it hadn't been deliberate on my part, I'd activated the one force that would absolutely not rest until the cause and the remedy of my condition was found. I could forget it now and concentrate on what I needed to accomplish. I'd delegated the shaking hand problem to Joyce. She'd make sure no stone was left unturned to get to the bottom of it.

My mother and father came over to have an early lunch with us Sunday morning. Joyce had already called and told Mama about my shaking spells. That was how she started referring to them, as spells. Of course, my parents were concerned. By now, all my wives had been informed about my hand, and all of them had been caught staring at it, as if they expected it to perform for them at any second. It made me pretty self conscious. I found myself hoping it would do it again, just so everyone would have their own chance to see it for themselves. I didn't enjoy being the circus freak for them.

I'd already called the airport and lined up a pilot for us for the return trip to Birmingham. The flight back was uneventful for us. I sat back with Joyce and Cindy, and we planned our week. Joyce was in charge of setting up an appointment for me with a doctor. Cindy had suggested that Joyce speak to her mother about which doctors to choose.

I told Cindy to try to finish up with her part of the remodeling of the administrative floor during the coming week. I had finally come up with her next project. All I would tell her was that it would involve some travel and that she'd be gone, by herself, out of state for at least a week or two.

Since Joyce had already made the decision to convert the Consolidated plant in Texas over to a vending product production plant, I thought it would be a good idea if someone went there and looked over the current facility. We already had the layout plans for the plant, but didn't know too much about the roads, rail access, distance from other resources, things like that. I wanted Cindy to do a survey for me to get me all the answers to the questions I'd already come up with, and any others she could think of that might need to be answered.

I made a mental note to talk with Joyce when she and I were alone again. I thought it would be a good idea to involve Shirley more in what we were doing. I wanted to propose that Shirley and Cindy travel together to Texas to handle the assignment. I thought it would be better if the girls went as a team, and I really wanted Shirley to start thinking of herself as a valued part of this aspect of our family.

Emily and Brenda were heavily involved in the group homes. Joyce, Eddie and Dale were involved in the day to day operations of the company. Shirley helped with taking care of the children, did a little to help with the group home kids, but wasn't truly engaged in anything that had her complete attention.

I thought she needed something that would bring her some satisfaction, and, maybe, challenge her. She was very bright, but not overly enthusiastic about anything so far. We needed to find her something to get all excited and passionate about.

Sunday afternoon and evening was mostly me relaxing at home. I hadn't had any reoccurrence of the shakes since the previous night. I had some reading I needed to get through, so I sat in the living room reading, while Joyce and Cindy stayed busy with making something to eat, and whatever else they were doing.

Dinner was pretty plain fare, some kind of pork and cabbage dish over pasta. Cindy said it was a joint effort when I inquired about who had supplied the recipe. Joyce laughed and made a comment to Cindy, too low for me to hear what it was she said.

At ten, we retired for the evening. Cindy and Joyce spent some time fooling around, but I didn't involve myself in their mischief. They didn't make any effort to involve me either. I slept well. I got up at six and went into the bathroom to get ready for work. I had another short shaking episode in the shower. Nothing really, about thirty seconds of the shaking hand, and then nothing else. I didn't mention it to Joyce or Cindy at breakfast later.

Cindy and I drove to the plant at seven thirty. Joyce stayed at the house to take care of some work she needed to do, and to have a phone available for her to call out on. I gathered, from breakfast conversation, that finding me a doctor, and an immediate appointment for a check up, was her primary interest and intent for the day. Everything else was what she planned on doing to fill out the remainder of her day.

Joyce called me at eleven thirty to tell me that I needed to meet her at three P. M., over at University Hospital, between 6th and 7th Avenues. Cindy was there with me, and she told me she knew where we needed to go. She gave me the name of the doctor we'd be seeing, telling me that Laura had called him herself to get me in for an immediate consultation. I wasn't happy with how that sounded, and not with Joyce lighting a fire under Laura either. The last thing I needed were all of our employees running around thinking the boss was really sick.

I told Joyce that Cindy and I would meet her there at three. When I got off the phone, I went right back to working on the proposal I was preparing to set out the terms I wanted to have in place for the reopening of the Nashville Consolidated plant. I was sending back three of the people that my father had sent me from there, to interview and hire the very best of the previous plant employees.

All the workers we'd gotten from there were doing very good work for us, filling in until we got things resolved with the Macklinson family. I'd had several informative talks with the two senior production people from Nashville, and I had been struck by their fear that we were going to end up losing the best plant people in Nashville. Several times they'd mentioned that the good ones could get new jobs anywhere, and it was only the laggards that would still be around if the plant stayed closed for too long.

I didn't know how much of this was simply an attempt by them to get me to hurry things along at the Nashville plant, and how much of it was their genuine fear that the best people wouldn't be available when the time came to reopen the plant.

I had decided that it made more sense to tie up these best workers if we could do it without it costing us too much. We had done quite a bit to improve and upgrade things at the Lucas Company plant while keeping the whole thing operating on two shifts, while we made those improvements.

My father and Joyce both agreed with my plan for protecting and preserving the best of the old Consolidated labor force. They agreed, but both of them had warned me that I couldn't afford to lose a lot of money doing it. I needed more bread and roll production in the Southern area anyway.

My father was helping us out with some of his plants, but he wouldn't mind not having to do so. He was always in favor of more production growth anyway, believing that he could find new markets if he had the product to put in them.

The proposal I was writing up would get the Nashville plant back up and operating, using the best of the equipment already in place there, plus whatever we could bring in from the Texas facility as well. I knew that a lot of brand new baking and packaging equipment was being sent down to Texas as soon as my Dad gave Joyce the final approval for her converting it over to vending product production. The timing for that would be delayed with the acquisition of the Alliance Company, but I knew most of the equipment had already been ordered and paid for. The same company that had built our new Omaha plant was going to do the renovation on the Texas facility.

Joyce had mentioned, on the flight down to Birmingham, how critical it was that we get Kyle's program operating both here and elsewhere, in order to create enough new demand to justify all of my father's expenditures, money he'd already committed before we purchased Alliance so unexpectedly. Joyce was becoming more like me when it came to taking action first, and then trying to make that action be justified by producing whatever was needed to make it work best.

My Dad referred to that as flying by the seat of your pants. It irked him that either Joyce or I believed it had any place in a business climate. Joyce and I had scored some points with him using our methods, and he'd taught us a few lessons too, when our methods had ended up causing us a host of problems. Our greatest results came from tempering our optimism with his conservative approach. With the three of us involved in making decisions, things had usually gone pretty well.

As the time got closer to when we needed to leave for my medical appointment, I found myself becoming more unsettled. I knew I really wasn't prepared for anything major to be involved in causing my spells. I had too much to do, and too many people and programs depended, at least in part, on my continuing good health and productive activity. I wasn't emotionally prepared to receive any bad news or prognosis.

Dr. Gardinier was a specialist in both Internal Medicine and Neurology. He was somewhere in his sixties, about five ten and a little overweight. He had a large head with a deep fringe of snow white hair, shaped in a horseshoe pattern around the sides of his head. He wore little glasses, like Ben Franklin's in some drawings I'd seen. He was serious and efficient, while remaining friendly and good humored.

We got off on a real good foot when he insisted on seeing me by myself. Joyce didn't like it at all, and Cindy seemed somewhat unhappy as well, but Dr. Gardinier insisted that he wasn't going to conduct an interview with a patient while a large entourage were all standing around distracting him. Joyce didn't trust me to be open and forthcoming with the doctor. Cindy was probably hoping to gather information about my condition for her family.

We spent fifteen minutes getting my vital signs taken, and this included being measured for height and being weighed. Next, he took an oral history of my health up until the present. I told him I'd had my tonsils removed when I was either eight or nine and had measles and chicken pox at the orphanage when I was in second and fourth grades. I told him I wasn't aware of any allergies and considered myself in excellent health, other than the spells that had begun over the past two days or so. He made me describe the shaking, asking me many questions about what I was doing when they occurred, how long they lasted, and whether or not there were other feelings I had left out that might somehow be associated with the shaking.

I answered everything he asked, being as honest as I knew how to be. I even told him of the short spell I encountered in the shower that morning. As I spoke I watched him making notations on a pad in front of him.

"This is a puzzle, Mr. Parsons. Most medical problems are. The more relevant information you can give me, the easier it will be for us to solve the puzzle. Tell me about any past drug use you've engaged in."

"I really prefer Kenny to Mr. Parsons, Doctor. I have tried beer, and some wine. More wine than beer though, usually only with my meals. I've never tried pot, pills, cocaine or stronger illegal drugs like that. About all I've ever had was aspirin and some cold and cough syrup."

"Very well then. Have you ever been subject to convulsions or any sort of seizure before?"

I told him about that time I'd kind of flipped out when Shirley and I had our troubles, back when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. I described everything I could remember, from what Mama, Gerta, and Shirley had told me. While I was telling him this I remembered that the doctor Mama had called to the house had given me some kind of drugs to make me calmer and ease my depression. I told the doctor about this too.