Chapter 277: Living in the Mansion

Saturday, September 3 to Sunday, September 25, 2005

The days that followed were hard on the females, and obviously had been on the moms during the time we'd been away too. There was a GREAT deal to be done (I was told, as I wasn't actually involved in much of it and didn't see much happening). Julia and Carol both got frantic over their respective areas of responsibility, with Mom and Vanessa having even more to worry about. One good thing was that my Lower Half was fully furnished (my WING'S Lower Half, I mean. My anatomy was unfurnished and happy to remain that way). So my girls didn't have to worry about crockery, placemats, laundry powder, and God knows how many other pieces of minutiae. They even had spare minutiae from the Upper-Half, some of which had been put in the Lower Half (we were well supplied with toilet paper now), or moved to the Main House (it didn't have enough toilet brushes, to continue the fascinating toilet focus).

The Anderson's and Williams' old homes were keeping all their furniture and minutiae, so the Main House needed everything, from beds down to toilet brushes. The moms clearly wanted upmarket stuff - even toilet brushes - for the mansion. They appeared worried and stressed about everything they needed to buy, but I strongly suspected they were enjoying themselves, judging by their animated conversations, most of which they seemed to think were very exciting, even when about inane items. One topic that initially got a lot of my attention was the planning for my new bed. Getting it was a sizable project in itself, as it and the bedclothes were made especially for us. Julia wanted it to be impressively BIG, to convey the right image about me. I thought she was overdoing it, but I could think of a few uses for a large bed so I didn't try to curtail her excess.

The dinnerware was another item that had the moms in a major tizzy. If you thought choosing what mansion to buy was hard, you should've seen the drama involved in choosing the dinnerware! How it could possibly be more traumatic to buy a dinnerware than the entire house it went in, was something that I never understood. Mothers can be excessively irrational at times, even for females. It had to be a big dinnerware, as there were five people living in the Main House (the four parents and Donna), plus the four of us in My Wing (including Ava, who would often stay overnight). The Boys and their girlfriends visited frequently, so the dinnerware had to cater to at least thirteen people. Plus, I soon learned, they expected to have some large dinner parties.

"So," I told them, "just find a set you like and buy three or four of them."

After that I left mother-stuff up to the mothers, rather than make apparently silly suggestions. Don't ask me why it was silly; I never got that straight. I just know that choosing the set was a major drama for the mothers. Meanwhile we used the two sets taken out of My Wing. They did the job perfectly well, in my unexpressed opinion.

Multiply the dinnerware drama by a few hundred to get an idea of what sort of state the females other than Donna were in. Donna was too busy having a great time with Patch to be concerned about anything else. I wisely said nothing about my outdoor hot tub, or about anything else that I thought essential, as I was well aware that that my idea of essential didn't even show up as a distant blip on the females' radars. Left to themselves, they'd be happier, I wouldn't get in trouble, and everything would eventually be done to their satisfaction, which would certainly include my satisfaction. If I had any doubt about that, I only had to look at my study.

Progress was slow, but it was sure and damned good, especially in my master bedroom. Julia went to town decorating our bedroom. She "went to town" many times, and when Corvallis didn't have good enough stuff, she went to bigger towns to look at what they had. But eventually it all started coming together. The bed arrived pretty quickly, with half a dozen spare sets of sheets, so we started sleeping in that room. We were premature doing that, because Julia hadn't even decided on the carpet for our bedroom yet, but she was tired of walking back and forth from the Lower Half to the master bedroom's closet (first day home, Julia had hung all her clothes in that closet).

The bed, by the way, was RIDICULOUS! It was as wide as two king-sized beds! The room was very long, so there was no trouble fitting the bed in, but its being twice as wide as it was long looked bizarre. Damned near my whole soccer team could've slept in it; which was NEVER going to happen! Me and six or seven girls was a much better idea. It was so large it was an embarrassment. Julia, Carol and Ava (especially Julia) thought it was an entirely appropriate, clear statement of their pride in my prowess. I must admit that I was very much looking forward to trying it out at its full capacity, but it was still embarrassing. The parents and Donna all got a good laugh out of it.

[Speaking of Donna and matters sexual, I should mention that the "Wonderful Mind Reading Aliens That Know Donna's Not Yet Ready For Sex" plan was working very well. Donna raised the topic of her having sex with me a few times, but we all had absolute confidence in the Boss Blob's statement that it would be bad for Donna. Even Donna had to admit that it (whatever it was) had known highly personal stuff about her sex-life, so it was hard to argue that it hadn't known what it was talking about. Donna tried a few times to find out what the full story was, but we totally refused to say even one word about it, except whenever she raised her having sex. That rapidly became rare, as Donna had been convinced by the alien, although she hoped it would let her have sex after it checked her when she turned fourteen. I somehow doubted it, unless Donna's emotional maturity improved quickly. I'd be leaving Corvallis about then, so hopefully that'd be removing her temptation for a few years, ideally four of them.]

Carol's work on her three assigned bedrooms progressed nicely. She had buckets of advice from the mothers and Julia, plus Carol visited the homes of damned near every girl that went to our school. I'm exaggerating somewhat, but Julia thought it was an excellent way of helping Carol, and an excellent way of getting word of my new mansion spread around. As a result, we were visited by literally dozens of girls, who'd all told Carol, "I can't give you the best advice until I've seen the rooms." When that'd first started happening, I'd assumed the girls were using that as an excuse to meet me for some flirting and maybe hanky-panky, but most of the girls brought their mothers with them and were clearly far more excited about seeing all around our new homes and discussing Carol's project than meeting a mere boy.

My huge bed was repeatedly embarrassing. Obviously "Carol's Bedroom" was set up to look as if she occupied it, so our visitors thought it was just Julia and me that slept in the aircraft carrier-sized bed. The bed was so big and Julia so small that I could lose her in it, so many of the visiting mothers thought we were strange. Julia sometimes explaining that "Mark is very athletic" didn't really help.

Having two families living in the same house was considered strange too, and there were some funny looks at that. One thing that helped with that was that Prof and Vanessa were a whole generation older than my parents, so we explained it as a pseudo-grandparent thing. The mansion was mine (everyone was told that), so my parents obviously would live here. Our story was that Prof and Vanessa were doing so for a year or so, before they moved back to their own home, to keep an eye on their 17-year old daughter, and because they liked treating me as their grandson and getting to know me better, considering I might be their son-in-law one day. That was accepted by the mothers pretty well, although it required us to dilute that story with their daughters as soon as we could. We definitely didn't want them to think I was out of their reach.

I very much enjoyed living in our new place. I slept with Julia and Carol every night (that alone was FANTASTIC!), and sometimes Ava too. The four of us thought our new sleeping arrangement was fantastic.

Mom and Vanessa were scheduled to cook alternate weeks, but that turned out to be very flexible. If one of them had been particularly busy, the other would take over, or they often cooked together. Mom wanting to improve her cooking skills was one of the reasons, but mainly because the mothers enjoyed chatting, and they might as well do that in the kitchen while they were preparing dinner. What had been somewhat boring drudgery for them became a social activity and enjoyable for them. So the Andersons got to enjoy a higher quality of daily food than we were used to, so another of my appetites was being well catered to.

There was a lot of work around the property, which kept Dad and me very busy. The Boys were often roped in too, especially when Vanessa started getting the garden into shape. It was amusing to see how much the two mothers' styles differed. With my mom, if something needed doing, she, Dad or I would do it. Vanessa was far more likely to hire someone. As Vanessa explained, "We're older, we can afford it, and neither Prof nor I have ever been handy."

The Andersons' do-it-ourselves attitude had been necessary for many years when money had been tight, but that reason no longer applied and everyone wanted the work to get done much faster than we could do it ourselves, so Mom eventually got used to hiring people.

Dad did make the secret doors at either end of the tunnel himself, mostly because he thought it was fun. The doors were 'invisible' (i.e., didn't appear to be doors), and were secured by the equivalent to what I called level 2 when talking about the safe's accessibility. The doors opened easily from within the tunnel, as the unlocking button was on the door handles. But from the outside of the tunnel, getting access to it required the pressing of a button hidden near the doorways, giving about five seconds to open the door before the electronic locks reactivated.

In the Main House's basement, the rack that held the pool cues was moved to be beside the doorway, and the button built into the underside of one of the rack's brackets. It was at waist height, so easy to press but out of sight unless someone was crawling on the floor. Dad even put three fake buttons on the equivalent place on the other side of the bracket and on the top bracket. Pressing the button only produced a soft click as the lock was disengaged. The door itself didn't move until it was pushed, so it was unlikely the door would be discovered even if the button was pressed by accident.

Dad did a similar thing at the other end. There was a wide hallway if you turned left just before going out the back door, the hallway going down the southern wall of my study. At the right side of the far end of the hallway was a door that led into the underground garage, with the left side being the secret door that accessed the tunnel. Having a blank wall there would've have looked funny, so there were some clips holding a few raincoats. It was a natural place for people coming in from the garage to hang them. One of the clip's screws was really the button. Dad had cut off the head of a screw and glued it to the top of the button, so it looked like any other screw. Pressing it unlocked the door, and further pushing opened it. Both tunnel doors were self-closing with padded doorstops to be quiet, and the lights were the outdoor motion-sensor type, so came on whenever anyone entered the tunnel.

It was a good setup, but not a perfect one. Visitors who were at the wrong place at the wrong time would see the secret doors being used. In the Main House, they'd have to be in the games room to see, but in my wing they'd get a look just by being inside our back door or having come in from the garage. The most obvious problem was that there was no way that anyone inside the tunnel could tell if the Main House's games room or my wing's hallway were occupied before pushing the secret door open from the inside. Dad had the idea of putting motion sensors in those two rooms, with an indicator light just inside the tunnel. Or if we were REALLY worried, a CCTV (Closed Circuit TV) system, so we could see who was on the other side of the doors. We weren't too worried though, as the times we used the tunnel - first thing in the morning to go to breakfast and at night - there usually weren't any strangers around. Everyone was under orders to keep quiet about the tunnel, with only Donna worrying us as she wanted to show it to her girlfriends. It wouldn't have been the end of the world, but we preferred to keep it quiet.

In case you wonder about Ava, she knew all about the tunnel. The only thing she didn't know about was the safe because that might be used to hold Big Three Secrets stuff. Speaking of Ava, during the day she was at our place more often than not. She was heavily involved in the furnishing work, and very helpful too. The cooperative attitude she had to Julia and me applied to our parents too, so they thought she was great.

Ava was great in every other way too, so toward the end of summer I had a little idea. Julia and Carol totally approved - I got some nice kisses for it - so I went back to the jeweler's I'd gotten our wedding rings from and got him to make another one which was about half as red as ours were. Ava had been to the wedding, knew what the red symbolized (blood, to represent our life, as in lifelong commitment), and she'd appreciate the half-red nature of her ring. We didn't make a formal big deal out of giving it to her, but we did spend several minutes telling her how much we appreciated her and how happy we were to have her in our lives. It was a very nice moment, so the hankies I'd packed my pockets with got used. Ava was the only girl with a half-red ring, and she greatly appreciated our making her special importance to us so clear. Ava picked the restaurant for dinner, and we concentrated on giving her lots of attention all evening, until she fell asleep with a smile on her face.

About two weeks before school restarted, the mothers decided that the house was well enough furnished that they wouldn't be shamed by anyone seeing it, so they started inviting people around (previously people had mostly invited themselves). We started having a few dinner parties. Most of them were for the parents' friends, and they usually invited half the guests each, so they'd mix and mingle. This house could handle large dinner parties, once the agonizing decision over the dinnerware was made, so twenty to thirty people for dinner wasn't uncommon, roughly ten each of the Andersons' invitees, the Williams' invitees and the usual residents. I quickly got tired of being asked about roulette and being tortured, so my girls and I sometimes had dinner in My Wing.

Unlike Julia, the four parents didn't make an issue over whose name the property was in. It was referred to as "The Andersons'" in conversation, with Prof and Vanessa saying they were long-term guests. There wasn't much point in all their friends knowing the house was in my name, because I didn't interact with those people. I probably never would, because I'd be going away to a university and God knows where after that. If the Binion's incident came up - which it always did - a short mention was made of Prof's original cover story that it was all luck.

One of the mid-week dinner parties we had was for a bunch of Ava's friends. Mostly girls, but she'd invited some guys and most of the girls brought dates. It was in the Main House because my wing's kitchen and dining room couldn't handle much more than the four of us who lived in my wing. Afterward we moved outside and had a nice couple of hours hanging around the pool and spa pool.

More than half the attendees would be in my classes too damned soon (not their fault; it was the school's for restarting too quickly), so I made sure I was on my best behavior, circulated well, acted like a good host, etc., all to make a good impression. That I owned this place made a good impression to start with, as did the size of my bed, teenagers tending to have different opinions about sexual matters than girls' mothers. When I returned after having changed into my bright yellow Speedos, that made a strong impression too, few of this group having seen my body before.

By the end of the evening, some of the boyfriends were looking decidedly worried whenever 'their' girlfriends talked to me, which they very often did. Ava's graphic description of the good use I put the big bed to had seemed amusing at the time the grand tour had taken them to my bedroom, but by the end of the evening the guys had quite a different opinion of that. Julia's having several times loudly mentioned that she actively encouraged me to do whatever I wanted with other girls didn't provide much reassurance to the guys either.

Ava had boasted that she lived here and slept with Julia and me "half the time" (actually about a third). As the evening progressed, so did the amount of envy Ava received. As did how often that envy was acted on, as I received several expressions of interest. I was a semi-good boy, doing no more than telling them that I was interested in their interest, but now wasn't the time to act on it. "We'll have opportunities all year long, so best to be cautious while your boyfriend is here." Or if they hadn't come with a boyfriend, "I have to keep circulating. People would notice if you and I disappeared for a few hours." I hadn't decided what to do about the soon-to-be-senior girls. Theoretically, any that were interested in me should create a pipeline group, but I'm not rigid about theory when a particular girl is easily capable of making me rigid, as several of these girls were. But whatever I was going to do, I wasn't going to do it tonight; not right under the guys' noses to spoil Ava's dinner party.