Chapter 9

Joyce, Shirley, and Brenda brought the babies downstairs for dinner. The girls were holding them all as they lay sleeping in their laps, while we ate.

My Dad and Mama had listened carefully as I started giving them a brief outline of my idea for spinning off the bread and cereal bakeries.

At first, Mama didn't like the idea at all, but when I explained to her the benefits we'd get from donating the remaining stock to the charitable trusts, she started to come around. Mama understood that control was the biggest part of ownership. We wouldn't own the bakeries, but we'd still have control over how they were run. We'd be able to select our own management team.

We decided to make Joyce the trustee for all of the new charitable trusts involved. This was mostly Mama's idea. I think she meant it as part of her system of checks and balances on me. She was determined to keep Joyce and me tied together in as many ways as she could.

I passed a sheet of paper over to Mama, showing her the current projected return on our invested capital, with the vending business alone, and then what it currently was, with the vending business, and the three bakeries we would be divesting. She liked the huge difference in the two returns. When she was done looking at the two columns of figures, she had Brenda pass them to my Dad.

"We'd still hold the controlling interest in the bakeries, Mama, except now the profits from it would go to pay for the work we're already doing with the group homes. By keeping control in the charitable trusts, I can continue doing my profitable grain trading. We wouldn't have to worry about paying any taxes on most of those earnings either. Every penny of income from our shares in the bakeries would be available for us to invest in the group home kids, or in other kinds of charitable things. We could give scholarships to whoever we wanted to, without having to worry about whether we could write it off or not. The bakery employees have plenty of kids that could use a little help with their school expenses too. These trusts wouldn't have just one specific purpose the money could be used for."

"Could we give Shirley a scholarship from this money?" Mama wasn't concerned about the money for Shirley's college, she just wanted to see if the trusts were as practical as I'd been saying.

"Joyce probably shouldn't give her one, but Frank certainly could. He's the trustee for one of the tax exempt trusts that Uncle Bunny created. He could award Shirley a full ride scholarship. I could have Joyce transfer her charitable trust funds into his trust. It would just be a dispersal from one charitable tax exempt trust to another. We would just have to make sure the money we sent over to Frank's trust was earmarked for a different purpose than Shirley's scholarship. It wouldn't be hard at all, and I have some ideas about having Uncle Bunny's trusts help out the local Meals on Wheels program that helps some seniors with getting better nutrition."

"What effect will this have on the credit line I've negotiated, Kenny? What will happen to that?" Dad had gone to a lot of trouble getting all the funding set up for the vending and baking expansions. He had needed to pledge all the corporate assets just to pull it off. We were in hock, up to our eyeballs, but Dad had every penny of that money he'd borrowed out there working hard for us, and it was making us a big return.

"The spin off won't be for another year, at least, maybe as long as three years away. These things need to be done slowly, and carefully. By that time, the vending business that we'll be retaining, after the spin off, will be half again as valuable, as what the current value is. The longer it takes to do the spin off, the more valuable both types of holdings will become. The expansion is helping both businesses. Remember, Dad, the vending operations left for us, after the spin off takes place, will be valued at a lot higher multiple than what we now have is valued at. Banks take rate of earnings, and profit margins into consideration when figuring value. We might end up being worth a lot more under this new valuation, even after removing the value we'll lose from our divestiture."

"Do you have a plan for employing all this money we would be raising from selling the sixty two percent ownership of the bakeries we'd be spinning off?" Dad was always looking for new money to feed his expansion plans. He was deliriously happy to be able to grow at a rate of twenty-five percent each year. He'd be delighted to continue with it, just as long as he could find the money to finance that growth.

"I'd want us to put all of it straight back into the vending expansion. With the money you've been making from our expansion, we can't afford to slow down."

"What changes will you have to make to the trading you've been doing?" Dad was satisfied with my answer about where the money should go.

"I'll start looking into other trading possibilities. We can make good money trading in the other ingredients. It doesn't need to be limited to just the grains. There is world sugar, all the different cooking oils, coconuts, mixed fruits. How many different kinds of flour do we use now? Nuts, syrups, and all the different dried fruits and fruit flavorings. All of that is being traded on live markets somewhere. There is always money to be made from us trading the ingredients we use, especially when we have a real long term underlying need to use them. We have that need, and we also have almost the perfect vehicle for storage, using the rail cars. I want to retain all our privately owned grain storage too. We need to trade more aggressively, when these grain prices are historically low enough for us to begin storing it for our later use. We can make several million dollars a year just from buying and holding for our own later use. We can start brokering grain ourselves, to other big bakers. We haven't been taking advantage of that part of our assets."

I looked around the table. Mama, Joyce, and Brenda were listening to Dad and me talking. They were interested in it, and listening attentively to what was being discussed. Emily and Shirley, on the other hand, were bored, and neither was making any attempt to hide that fact.

I looked right at Joyce, until I was able to finally catch her attention. I made an exaggerated swing of my head around the table, while my Dad spoke of annual projected quantities of ingredients we'd need for the vending products. Even I had trouble being very interested in a dry recitation of pure quantity forecasts. Mama didn't though, and neither did Brenda. It had to be something that the females of the Chalmers bloodline inherited.

After dinner, Joyce got me alone in the library, and asked me why I wanted her to look at the people at the table, while my Dad was talking.

"Brenda has the same interest in business as us, Joyce, but the other two really aren't interested. Business is a large part of what we do, it shouldn't be something that members of our group find boring. It isn't enough that we're all compatible in some ways. It isn't enough that we love them, or that they love us. Ask Mama, she's spent fifty years listening to her father, brother and my Dad talking business almost constantly. She never gets tired of it either. Brenda fits in with that, but Emily and Shirley never would. This thing of yours, it isn't going to work, not the way you're hoping for."

"Both those girls love you, Kenny. They'll fit in enough to live with us. If you're right, and they later get so bored that they decide to leave, we'll still have you, me and Brenda left. It won't be like everything got all smashed up."

"You aren't thinking this through. Having kids with them would complicate that kind of solution, Joyce. They aren't going to be willing to leave us without taking away their children. I wouldn't want to face something like that."

"Kenny, it's only you that thinks they'll ever want to leave. If you and your parents had been talking about golf, it would have been Brenda, Emily, and me that would have been looking bored. You should see the look that you and your father had on your faces when all of us women were talking about sweaters before."

"Aren't you going to give me just a little something, Joyce? I need something so I don't feel like I'm being run over with a steamroller. I'm ready to agree to all the parts that make good sense for us."

"What do you mean give you a little something? I'm already giving you everything, Kenny. All of this is being set up for you."

"You're giving me everything? Then why not take some of it back? I don't need or want all that you are offering me. Take back all the parts that give me a houseful of the X's. You, me, and Brenda, that's more than enough."

"You don't really mean that, you know you don't. You need to think about the rest of us too. Do you think about what Brenda and Emily's preferences are? They want to be together. I promise, I'll give you anything you really want, anything, as long as it's good for you to have it."

"You're playing with me now, Joyce. What you just said, it sets you up as the judge of whether what I want is good for me or not. You aren't paying any attention to what I'm trying to tell you. You've got everything worked out in that head of yours, and you're planning on controlling everything."

"No I'm not. If you give this a fair trial, I won't have to control anything."

"Do you have some kind of map I can look at, a map to this happy path you've chosen for me, or is it mostly whatever you decide I need at any particular moment?"

"I'm on the happy path, so are the twins, and all the X's and any babies they have. We've all agreed that we'll do anything we can to make you happy. You don't trust us to make you happy."

"Are you all going to take care of me, like I was some kind of pet you had all adopted? Is that what you think I need to be happy?"

"That isn't what we want at all. You can do anything you want to, as long as it makes you happy, and it's good for you. Like today, when we made love in the limo. Wasn't that what you wanted? Seeing the twins, and talking business with your mom and dad? How about having all of us here at Mama's house, so we could give you a proper welcome home? We try to make you happy, Kenny. We don't want you being sad like you were before."

"Give me an example of what I can't do. How could I slip off your so called happy path?"

"You can't send any of us away from you. You can't deliberately do things to hurt any of us, or yourself."

"I can fuck any of the X's, but not anyone else? Are you managing all of that part of things too?"

"I don't think about it like that. It depends on who you'd want to fuck, I guess. Do you have someone else you want to sleep with, Kenny? Someone you met in Delaware?"

"No. I just meant how far are you going to go to control what I do."

"We don't plan to control you in that way, or to try to stop you from doing whatever you want to. Not unless we see that it's starting to hurt you, or make you sad again. We won't interfere in how you run the business. None of us will tell you what you should do with your money. We want to help you, and we want you to love us, like we all love you."

"I might decide that I want to just pull up stakes here, and move to Florida. What would happen if I decided to do that?"

"We'd all move with you. We're your family. You decide where you want us to go, and we'll go there, as long as it's with you, and it's what you want."

"How about if I get tired of the lot of you, and want to take some time off to be by myself?"

"You can, if that's what you really want to do. Do you want to go off somewhere, without us again?"

"I guess I don't, not if I'm able to. I want to be free to go away if I want to. I'd like to be able to decide for myself how best to run my life. I'm getting better at managing some of the bad stuff."

"We all talked about that, too. While you were gone to Delaware this time. Not all of us think it's fair or right that we force ourselves on you like we're doing. We decided that we'd try it together for one school year, all of us, like we are now. When school's done in June, we'll let you pick who gets to stay, and who has to leave. Whatever you decide, that's what we'll do."

"Tell me where you stood on this, Joyce. How did you vote?"

"We didn't vote, Kenny. We talked about it. We all think it would work, all of us together, but we can't convince you to give it a fair test. I like the idea of all the X's being together with you. Sometimes I get jealous, like right after Shirley came back from Philadelphia. I'm sure they were all jealous when I told them I was going to pick you up at the airport, alone. We fight about what's fair. Shirley was thinking about leaving, because she thought you didn't want her in the group. Now though, she wants to stay again. Emily wants to pick what she will do and not do, mostly with who, not what. She makes me mad sometimes, because she makes some things harder for all of us. She isn't willing to put up with some of the things the rest of us agreed to."

"What has she said she wouldn't put up with?"

"She doesn't want anybody doing anything with her or with Brenda, except for you."

"What does Brenda say about that?"

"She says she's going to do whatever you want her to do, and not do whatever you tell her not to do. When we were all talking about that, she got mad, and she told Emily that she'd give her some money to go live by herself, if she was going to continue causing trouble for the rest of us. Emily started crying when she said that."

"That's why this won't ever work. Emily told me that people don't like everyone the same. She's always going to feel like it's okay for her to pick and choose who she does sexual things with. I can't blame her, not if that's how she feels. Just because you and I would do things with all of them, that doesn't mean they'd want to do things with all of us."

"Brenda says she will, and Shirley said she'd try, but she asked me to get you to make her really excited first, before we do any girl things to her. She's willing to try it, but she doesn't think she could do it, not unless she was already really hot."

"Did you X's discuss what happens if I decide I only want to have sex with you?"

"We didn't discuss it like that. We talked about what we'd do if you decided not to do anything with any of us."

"What did you decide?"

"That we'd all stay together, and wait until you changed your mind."

"What would happen if I decided to only have sex with Shirley?"

"I'm not sure. I hope she'd tell you it wasn't fair, because we all love you. That's what I've told you."

"You told me that, but we had sex anyway."

"Only after you had sex with Shirley first."

"Are you going to come sleep with me tonight?"

"Yes, if you want me."

"What about tomorrow night?"

"Tomorrow night is Emily's turn, and the next night is Brenda's. Emily told me that she and Brenda would like to have both nights together, with the three of you."

"I'm not sleeping with Emily tomorrow, or any other day, not until she changes her attitude. What happens if I do that, decide not to sleep with one of the X's?"

"You can't sleep with any of us, not if you don't sleep with Emily on her day."

"For just that day, or until I decide to sleep with her?"

"Just that day. You can always refuse to sleep with whoever you want to. We're not going to force you to fuck us."

"That's good, because if you did that, I couldn't live with that rule. If I understand you correctly, you and I can sleep together every fourth night, and I don't have to sleep with any of those other girls, except I need to get Brenda pregnant, so I'll need to sleep with her too."

"That might be okay with Brenda, Kenny, but it isn't okay with me. We want you to give this group thing a fair try. That means you need to do things with all of us."

"That's enough questions for now. I'm getting sleepy. Send the X's home, and lets go to bed."

Joyce left the library, and went over in the living room to talk with Emily and Shirley. Brenda was upstairs with all the babies. Five minutes later, Emily and Shirley came down with Derek, and left in Emily's car. Joyce and I had already said good night to everyone, and so we went up the stairs to my bedroom.

"Brenda and I want her to spend the night with us, Kenny. If you don't want to, she'll go home. You get to decide."

"Does Mama know you were going to spring this on me, Joyce?"

"She knows that Brenda might be spending the night too, but we never talked about what any of us would be doing. We'll lock the door."

"I'm going to tell you we can't do that tonight. I need to talk to Emily before we do anything with Brenda. I'd like to spend my first night back with my own wife, just like we were a normal couple."

"I'll tell her. You've got all her hopes up with this talk about making her pregnant, and she's in a good part of her menstrual cycle for that right now. Can I at least tell her that you'll be sleeping with her on Sunday?"

"No, because I still need to talk to everybody first. I'm worried about what to do with Emily. You X's have all these ideas, but you don't really have any plans about what to do when something goes wrong. We need to all sit down together and have a discussion. I think you'll find that not everybody thinks like you do."

"Can I tell her that you want to get her pregnant, but not until we've all had a meeting to discuss everything?"

"Joyce, just let me tell her myself, okay?" Joyce just nodded to me as I walked into my old bedroom. Bunny and Little Bertie were both fussing and crying in their cribs, so Joyce swept past me and went to help Brenda, who was holding Bunny, and trying to calm Little Bertie by talking to her. When Joyce picked up Little Bertie and took her over to the bed to nurse, Brenda and I drifted over that way too. Bertie was a greedy little eater, and when they both were hungry at the same time, Little Bertie always wanted to be the first to be fed.

Joyce put some pillows under her head and placed Bertie down next to her, with Joyce's nipple fastened between her lips. When the two of them had a comfortable rhythm going, Brenda lowered Bunny to the other breast. Joyce put an arm around him too, and held him steady across her side. There is something about watching a woman nursing a baby, and it is even stronger when it's two babies, and they're both yours. It isn't necessarily a religious experience, but it isn't that far from being one. Watching Joyce feeding the twins made me feel closer to her. It also made me horny, although I'm not sure why.

"I want to do that." Brenda was watching Joyce feed the twins just like I was.

"Wait until the babies get their fill first." Brenda turned and slapped my arm. I grabbed her hand and held it at her wrist. "Joyce was telling me what you both had planned, Brenda, but it can't be tonight. We all need to get together and talk about some problems I'm worried about first. After, if everything gets settled, I'd like nothing better than to have the three of us in one bed, doing things together, like we did that other time."

I could see that Brenda was disappointed. I hoped she understood that what any of us did would affect everyone else too. There was no sense getting started, not if we couldn't all agree to the same things. I felt like I needed to get Emily to take a firm position and stay with it. Shirley had also looked very uncomfortable when Joyce was touching her breasts, at my request.

It was easiest for me, and I realized that much. If there was another guy thrown into the mix, I could never go along with it. I knew Joyce could see the same things I did. I didn't understand why she still wanted to try it. Of all the girls, I thought Emily was more into girl things than the others, followed by Brenda, with Joyce a very close third. Brenda was the least possessive though, and that had to be an advantage for her. I didn't know how far Shirley would be willing to go either.

After the twins were fed, and back asleep, Joyce and Brenda walked together down to Brenda's car. Brenda was subdued, not really responding to me when I wished her a good night. Joyce was back up in my room, inside of five minutes.

"Brenda's upset, Kenny. She thinks you're rejecting her again," Joyce and I had gotten undressed and were in bed. I wanted to concentrate on making love, and to just enjoy being able to sleep with my wife again. I wasn't in the mood to talk about Brenda and her feelings of rejection. By rights, Brenda and the other X's should have allowed the two of us to spend a quiet weekend together, at least. I'd been gone for a month.

Somehow, we had gotten away from it being just an idea that Joyce and I had been arguing about, and were discussing together. Now it was all the X's jockeying with each other to get what they wanted. Joyce had lost control of them, and I had never had any.

Rather than get into it with Joyce, I started kissing her. She continued to try to get some sort of verbal dialogue started, but, after awhile, my insistent kisses wore her down, and she decided to just relax and leave our discussion for a later time.

Saturday, I drove Joyce and the twins home at nine and picked up Shirley. We all played golf. I was rusty again, but I managed to beat Dad and Shirley. Mama shot a sixty nine, fleecing me out of three hundred dollars. She got Dad for the same amount, and I managed to get him for a hundred too.

"I need more than two strokes a side Bertie. I just don't get to play enough to be able to play to my handicap. You should at least give me enough so I have some chance of winning. Don't you agree, Kenny?" My Dad looked over at me, hoping for my sympathy and support. Since even before Uncle Bunny had died, Dad had been losing pretty steadily to Mama and me when we played together.

"Dad, when you keep playing the same people for money, you need to look around to find out who the sucker is. If you can't spot one, that means you're probably the sucker." I saw the look Dad gave me. I thought it meant that he'd be finding the time, somehow, to get out to the practice range and hit some golf balls. I hoped he did. He'd probably do a better job at work if he took some time for himself, to go out and play and relax.

I drove Shirley back to Uncle Bunny's house. I drove slowly, because I wanted to ask her about her feelings about this whole group idea we were thinking of giving a try. I didn't start out with easy questions either.

"Shirley, you didn't look very happy to have Joyce playing with your boobs. Is that girl thing going to be a big problem for you?" I watched as she sat up a little straighter, taking some time before replying to me.

"I'd much rather not do anything with any of the other X's, Kenny. I already told them that. I don't really think any of them want to do things with me either. If it wasn't for Brenda and Emily liking to do stuff together, we probably wouldn't even be setting it up that way."

I disagreed with her, but I didn't tell her that. Joyce was as much responsible for wanting to do girl things as Emily or Brenda were.

"Joyce told me the four of you want to give it a try the way we talked about doing it before, when you were pregnant with Derek. When we were talking then, all the girls were talking about them doing things with each other. Mostly, it was Brenda and Joyce discussing doing things with Emily too. I've done things with Joyce and Brenda together, and some things with Emily and Brenda together. In those combinations, it worked out pretty well."

"I told Joyce I thought I could do things, if you already had gotten me excited first. You know how I get, Kenny. If I was already excited, it might not matter so much to me. I don't think I could just hop in bed with another woman and start doing things with her."

"If you were going to do something with me and one of the X's, which one would you prefer?" Shirley was staring straight ahead, but her cheeks had suddenly flushed with a bright pink color. I waited for a few seconds as I pulled into the driveway of the house, "You don't have a preference?" I could have sworn I heard Shirley groan as she leaned a little forward, and then pushed back against the back rest. "You wouldn't do it with any of them?"

"Brenda, because she's so pretty, but Joyce too, because she's nice, but she's so tiny."

"Not Emily?" She shook her head back and forth, saying with this motion that she wouldn't do it with Emily. "Even if not doing it with Emily meant we wouldn't keep this group idea alive?"

"I could leave. I told Joyce I would leave if that meant everyone else could get along better. I'm not looking forward to the other stuff, just to doing things with you again."

"What about if you stayed with us, but didn't do anything with any of us?"

"Joyce said we couldn't do that. I don't think I'd want that either, not if all the rest of the X's were doing stuff with you."

"Let's go inside. We can have a little meeting with everyone, and we'll all talk about what each of us wants."

Inside, Joyce and Brenda were in the kitchen. Emily had all three of the babies on the floor, on top of blankets in the living room. Derek was asleep, but I saw that Little Bertie was still awake, and I saw Bunny's hands moving, although I couldn't see his eyes. I went over and picked up Bertie, to take to the sofa with me.

"Joyce tells me that you want to limit who you do things with, Emily. Shirley does too."

"We shouldn't have to have sex with people if we don't want to." Emily never had trouble telling you what she thought. I remembered that I had liked that about her in the beginning.

"You won't get an argument from me about that. I feel the same way that you do. I think we need to have a meeting about it. Have everybody make a list of who they want to do things with, then we'll see how things match up together."

"I know what you're going to do, Kenny. You're going to leave my name off of your list." Again, Emily was trying to create a problem out of her fears rather than any actual occurrences.

"Sometimes, you shouldn't have sex with people, even if you do want to. Sometimes, if you do have sex with them, it creates too many other problems. I'd be perfectly happy to just be having sex with Joyce. It wouldn't cause me any problems if we left it like that."

Joyce and Brenda drifted into the living room. Joyce was frowning at me.

"Are you having a meeting without us, Kenny?" Joyce and I had discussed our contrasting positions. Joyce was afraid I'd work on each of the other X's separately, and get them to change what they had agreed to. Joyce was smarter than I was, and she could always anticipate my next moves.

"Only a discussion right now, but since we're all here now, we can make it a meeting. Emily and I have found something to agree on. She thinks people shouldn't have sex with people that they don't want to have sex with. Shirley feels the same, and so do I. It looks like only you and Brenda want to have all of us having sex together."

"You need to think about what you said, Kenny. The girls can't live with us, and still have other boy friends. Brenda can't do things with Emily, and still be part of our group. These are things you said to all of us."

"All right. I'll take all of them back. Shirley and Emily can date whoever they want to. Brenda can too, once we make a baby for Mama to spoil. You can't date though, Joyce, so don't even try to suggest it."

"You're not giving the group idea a real chance, Kenny. You're making it so it's going to split up." Joyce was angry and frustrated. I had already started realizing how much effort she had been putting into trying to keep everything together while I was gone. Brenda was upset too. Only Emily didn't look upset. Shirley had gone over and picked up her sleeping baby. She was sitting on the other couch, holding her son, rocking back and forth with him. She looked over at me and then back to her son's face.

"We don't all want the same thing. It doesn't work when people are all pulling their own separate ways. Sex isn't any fun when someone tells you that you need to do it, and who with. We shouldn't have to try to arrange a system so everybody gets a chance to do it with everyone else."

"They all want to have sex with you."

"I've had sex with all of them, but that was before, when it meant something to each of us. It isn't the same now, ask Shirley."

"I already talked to Shirley. She thought it was fine. It doesn't have to be the same. Who said it always had to be the same? Only you. Brenda, was it different when you did it with Kenny that time in the office?"

"You mean because you were there too?" Brenda didn't understand the question. I doubted if she had even given it any thought. If the sex was good, to her the rest didn't matter. That's what I thought at least.

"Sex with Kenny. Was it the same, better, or worse, when you did it with him at the office? Compared to before, when he was your boyfriend?" I think Joyce realized she was asking the wrong person that kind of question.