Chapter 1: Jacob's Story

I watched as Julia White came into the ice cream shop/drugstore and apply for a job as a helper at the soda fountain. She was in my class in school, and although I knew who she was, I had never really had a conversation with her beyond "Hi." I was the soda jerk and had been for all of last summer and throughout this, my senior year. Summer was coming up again and that was why Julia was looking for a job.

She was nice looking with her long blonde hair and regular features. She still had to get rid of her baby fat. Hopefully she would slim down and not go on to add more weight. I considered her figure and decided that she wouldn't have to lose much baby fat to become a beauty. Her breasts were not overly large, just about right for her frame, but they looked soft. She did have nice long legs and the cheeks of her butt were nice, but again looked soft. There was a lot of action both top and bottom when she moved around. Time would tell what kind of a woman she would turn into.

Mr. Burrows came up to me and asked if I knew Julia and I said I had seen her around. "Jake, I hired Julia to work with you on the soda fountain. See if you can get her trained before Easter next week. The place will be packed for the holiday. You are in charge and it will depend on you as to how much help she is to you."

"Good, I need someone. Hi Julia, I'll start by showing you where everything is before you will actually be making anything. We do get awfully busy at times. There isn't much room and it is crowded back here behind the counter so we will be bumping into each other a lot. If we can get a routine down, that will make it easier."

"Jake, I have never worked like this before so I'm bound to make some mistakes. I will try very hard and not make things too difficult for you."

Julie, as she preferred to be called, did well and Easter was the easiest holiday I had ever had. That night at closing I complimented her on her efforts. She threw her arms around me and kissed me as a thank you. "Jake, you explain things so well and never get mad when I screw up. You didn't even yell at me when I dumped the chocolate syrup into the marshmallow tub. It is going to be so much fun working with you this summer."

That kiss sent me home thinking about Julie. What can I say? I was a horny teen-ager. I think Julie felt it too. For the first few times together after the kiss, we tried to avoid bumping into each other behind the counter. Then we were back to--if we bumped--okay so what. Then Julie started bumping into me on purpose and we made a game out of it. By the middle of May we were hugging and kissing regularly.

I carried condoms to the Senior Prom but never expected I would get a chance to use them. I didn't expect to get drunk either and neither did Julie. Someone spiked the punch bowl at the dance and then we went parking afterwards. A buddy of mine in the next car said he had some extra beer and I could have the balance of a twelve pack. I said no, but Julie disagreed and went over to his car and brought it back with her.

Two beers apiece later, we had got beyond fumbling and were getting down to business. Julie was hot and needy. I was having difficulty getting the cellophane off the condom and when I did, I couldn't manage to get it on. "Jake, forget the damn thing and just put your thing in me. You can pull out when you get too close."

I had good intentions, but I couldn't pull out with Julie's legs wrapped tightly around me. Especially when she said, "Don't stop. You'll leave me hanging. I need you in me."

Julie informed me she had missed her period on graduation day. She went to the doctor and he confirmed that she really was pregnant and a week later we had to tell our parents. Talk about a war that this started. The Whites wanted Julie to have an abortion. My folks, the Hansons, agreed with them. We both were screamed at and of course my parents blamed Julie and her parents blamed me. Then they each tried bribes by promising to send us off to college if we would do as they asked.

I wanted to marry Julie and Julie wanted to marry me. Over everyone's objection that is just what we did. Mr. Burrows, our boss, was the only one that seemed to care about the predicament we were in. He moved me off the soda fountain and into the stockroom for the drugstore which paid a little more money. He found a place for Julie in the office.

The situation made us grow up fast. Every cent we had went towards living expenses. We figured and figured and again Mr. Burrows came through with a place for us to set up housekeeping. He found us a small mobile home in one of the local parks that we could rent.

I felt sorry for Julie. Her parents pretty much disowned her, hardly even acknowledging her if they met. My Mom was the same with me. Pop, well he used to drop in occasionally if Mom was out of town and he knew she wouldn't find out about his visits. All of this hurt Julie more than me, for she had been her parents 'baby girl' and being estranged from them really took a toll. With me, I was always Mom's fair-haired boy or no damned good. She bounced from one extreme to the other. I was used to her mood swings and got to where I didn't pay her as much attention as I could have.

As time passed, Julie and I became closer and closer and we were settling into married life pretty well. A life that didn't have much future for either of us, I know, but we were reasonably happy. Thanksgiving came and neither set of parents invited us. Mr. Burrows did, so we spent Thanksgiving with him and his family. Julie cried all night and this was the first time I had seen any major regret from her about us getting married.

A week before Christmas Julie aborted our baby boy child. I thought for a time I was going to lose her too. Months went by and she went in and out of depression. For some reason she felt I was to blame for our loss. Maybe she always blamed me for getting her pregnant, I don't know. We had a consultation with the doctor after Julie had been through several rigorous examinations. Julie found out she would be unable to bear children--ever. This should have drawn us together, but instead we were further apart.

Immediately after the loss of our baby, both sets of parents were at us again with their bribes as a way to split us apart. Only it was 'divorce' this time. Julie was the first to cave in to what they wanted, except for one thing. No divorce. She would do what they wanted and leave me, but she said I was the one that had to divorce her. If I didn't want a divorce then she would stay married to me even if we never lived together again. Other than that, she would do everything they asked of her.

We had this discussion about her not divorcing me the day she found she had been accepted to a college in the East. I assumed we would be divorcing and with my parents' blessing, I had applied to a college in the West that Julie and I had originally talked about going to before the May mishap.

"Jake, do you want a divorce?" This was the final time I would talk to Julie for many years. It happened on the eve of her leaving.

"No Julie, I have loved having you for my wife because I love you. I'd like to think that you are out there waiting for me, even if it is twenty-five years from now."

"You really would wait for me that long? We can make a pact then. Twenty-five years from now, I'll be standing right in front of the soda fountain and we will decide if we want to get back together. In the meantime, we will live our life as single people, except that you and I know we are married. We can be committed to whoever we want, but it has to end in twenty-five years."

I looked at her. I was incredulous, but she was serious. "I can't be celibate for that long."

"Neither can I. All I'm saying is that you have to be free twenty-five years from today. If you want to change the pact, you can get in touch with Mr. Burrows and leave a message. I'll do the same, otherwise we won't see or speak to each other until then."

Julie was getting more and more beautiful every day. I knew there would be men out there that would want to marry her. I would give her less than a year to get word to me asking for a divorce. Until then I hoped she had my heart and I had hers, little as it might be.

I was crying when she walked out the door in the morning to where her father was waiting to take her to the bus. All I had was this last night to remember her by for the next twenty-five years. I would relive every moment of it many times over and over in my mind and cherish every second of it.

I settled into college life. My parents paid, I made sure of that. My Mom finally realized she had lost some of me by being so intractable over Julie. I sometimes felt they were trying to buy my love back. What I really needed to make me happy was Julie. After a few months of blue funk since arriving at college, I said to myself, I might as well make the best of the situation. My grades started improving and Mom and Pop thought that I was getting over Julie. I wasn't, I was just making the best of a bad situation.

I chose the insurance industry as my career. It wasn't too hard to learn and it was sure to be lucrative. Finishing school, I was employed by a firm that insured mostly homeowners. It was run by a widow whose husband had died the year before. She had two young children, a boy, seven, and a girl, eight. The widow, Miriam Crumbly, was nice enough, but somewhat out of her element with no husband and two kids to raise.

Both children had been born after she was thirty and I would guess Mrs. Crumbly to be about forty-two. One of her salesmen drank a little more than he should. He had been hired by her husband and was a friend to both when the husband died. The natural progression, and what he wanted and believed was his due, was to marry Mrs. Crumbly and take over both the business and her. She didn't see it and wasn't having any of him.

I was twenty-four the year Mrs. Crumbly called me into her office and spoke. "Mr. Jacob Hanson, I want to know more about you. I've looked at your personnel file and I see you are married. You don't list your wife's name. The only note in the file on who to notify if anything happens to you is a Mr. Burrows. Are you gay and is he your partner?"

I about choked and laughed. "No, Mr. Burrows is my friend and former employer. I really am married and to a woman. For reasons I don't want to go into, I love her dearly and deeply, but we are estranged. Some year in the future we may get back together and go on with our lives."

"When would that be? I have a reason for asking."

"Twenty years from now unless she decides to divorce me. It has been five years since we parted. I thought she would ask for a divorce before now, but I'm beginning to have hopes that she will still be my wife when we reach that date."

"Does this mean that you are going to be without sex? I can't believe anyone would shut himself off from the other sex for that long."

"That is pretty personal, but I will answer. No, I can go with anyone that I am attracted to. I just don't want to be committed when it is time to return to my wife. She has the same freedom as I do. Foolish isn't it? That's the way it is though."

"It does sound crazy. Do you want to tell me any more about the situation?"

"Not much. My wife does go by her married name of Mrs. Jacob Hanson--Julie to her friends and me of course."

"Let me understand this. If you became sexually attracted to me, or me to you and I convinced you to bed me, then there is nothing holding you back?"

"Something like that. You wouldn't be getting my heart, or not much of it anyway, because I've already given that to Julie. Why, are you interested?" I knew I was pushing Mrs. Crumbly, but she had been asking more personal questions than I wanted to answer. Also it was stirring up feelings in certain parts of me that I had tried to keep tamped down.

"Not really. I would like two things from you. First I want you to rise up to be business manager here in the office. Of course you would have to fire Tim. He is getting bad for business because of his drinking. The other thing I would like is for you to move into my home and during your off hours, bond with my children. They need someone younger in the house. Someone to play toss and catch with, as far as Stevie is concerned. Millie needs a father figure even more than Stevie does. She is ten and just needs a man around like her peers have."

"I'm pretty young for the office job. Are you sure I'd do alright?"

"I'm sure. You get along with all of the salesmen except Tim. You also make more sales and your suggestions on advertising have been right on the money. You're getting that job whether you want it or not."

"Okay, I'll take it, but you have to let me deal with Tim in my own way. The other, how are you going to explain that to the people here?"

"No one will ask, but I will tell them why just as I have you. Whether we become more than what the public sees we will decide at some future time. Now I'm asking you to call me Miriam. Crumbly is a horrible name. If I hadn't loved my husband as much as I had, I'd have married someone else just because of the name." Miriam smiled as she said this. She was lying, I suspected. The name was on the agency and she was proud of that.

Miriam announced the change that afternoon just after lunch and left soon after. Everyone congratulated me except Tim. When everyone had gone back to their desks, I quietly asked Tim to step into my new office. He slouched in and plopped down in the chair across from my desk. "Tim do you need this job?"

"Of course I do. You're the new boss and I know you have never liked me, so I guess I'm out the door." He sullenly looked at me and then down at the floor.

"I've been directed to fire you because of your drinking. Do you really need the booze or is it just habit? Give me an honest answer."

Tim sat there and pondered. This time when he spoke, he looked me right in the eye. "I don't know. I'd like to think it was just habit. When Bill died, it took the heart right out of me."

"Bill was Miriam's husband, right? She told me one time that you were her friend before you started drinking. She asked me to fire you, not because she wants to, but because you are becoming a liability to the agency. I don't think she really wants it to happen. Is there any way you can drive home the loss of her husband any harder than her having had to make this decision? First she loses him and then she has to lose you too. If you could stop drinking, I'd consider keeping you. I understand at one time you were the top salesman here. I'd like to see you be that again."

Tim stared at me. He knew he was a red hair from not having a job. I decided to gamble and continued, "I'm going to give you the job of insuring that building down in the tenement district. See what you can do with it."

"Do you want to see my figures before I sign them if I think everything is okay?"

"No. You know more about the insurance business than I do. I'll take your figures. Just be ready to defend them. We can lay off some of it if we need to. That should help some."

"I'll do my best, Mr. Hanson." Tim headed for the door.

"Tim, call me Jake. We are a team here."

Miriam had planned on being absent so she wouldn't be around to face Tim when I fired him. Tomorrow she was going on vacation with her children. I had a lot to learn about being the manager. I think Miriam was testing me. I can say for sure, I was well tested. When Miriam returned, though, I had some impressive figures to show her. Not only that, Tim surprised her when he stepped into my office where Miriam and I were discussing business. He was surprised too because he hadn't seen her come in either.

Tim was cleaned up and clear-eyed. He stopped and looked at her and said, "Miriam I'm so glad to see you. How was your vacation? How are the children?" He went to her and gave her a hug before she knew what was happening.

Miriam looked over his shoulder at me. When Tim turned away from her I said, "Some of those numbers I just showed you are because of Tim. We find we are working very well together. He has helped me a lot in getting organized here in my new job."

When Tim left, Miriam turned to me. "How did you do that? I thought he was on the skids. One of the hardest decisions I ever made was to have you fire him. I come back and he is still here and you didn't do as I directed. How come?"

"Remember Miriam, you said I could deal with him in my own way. That is what I did. Are you sorry he is still here?"

"God, no. I wish you had called me though and warned me. I almost hated coming in today knowing I wouldn't be seeing him. He has stopped drinking too, hasn't he?"

"Yes. I guess your husband's death hit him harder than anyone knew. When I pointed out to him that he was hurting you, he snapped out of it."

"I'm glad. Jake, would you like to come to dinner tonight and meet my children? You will have to sometime. Why don't you pack a toothbrush and some sleepwear. You can stay over if it gets late. You don't have to, I know, but the option is there." She hadn't been looking at me, but she did now.

"I'd love to. What time?"

"Dinner is at six. Come a few minutes before and I'll put together something to drink."

I ended up staying in a two-room apartment in the back on the second floor. The kids had bedrooms on the first floor. Miriam's bedroom was in the front, down the hall from mine.

At one point Millie questioned if I was going to be her new daddy. I said no, I was already married to a lady I loved very much. That seemed to settle that for a few years anyway. The office suspected that maybe I was Miriam's consort or concubine. Actually, she was mine as much as I was hers. She didn't want to marry and I couldn't, so we were a good fit for each other. I was of a later generation than Miriam and the sexual mores were much more liberal. I taught her things that her husband would have frowned on. Miriam was at first shocked by them, then acquiesced when I promised to stop at any time. Finally she demanded that they be a part of our lovemaking. This was always at night and out of sight behind closed doors.

The children were perfect for me to be a companion to. My time with them kept me from remembering that I had a wife somewhere. I could hear at anytime from Mr. Burrows that Julie wanted a divorce. This was the only thing, other than not being with her, that troubled me. It was like a sword hanging over my head.

I fathered the kids as best I could, learning as problems were presented. All through childhood, through puberty, and the teen-age years with all their highs and lows of heartbreak for kids growing up, I mentored them. I defended them when Miriam thought they were wrong and chastised them when they really were. The year that Millie was twenty, I had ten more years to go before seeing Julie again.

As always, things don't go as planned and are sometimes embarrassing. Millie came home crying late one night because a friend of hers had been killed in an auto wreck. Coming upstairs to find her mother for consolation, and not finding her in her room, Millie came down the hall and into my room. Thank God she hadn't opened the door fifteen minutes earlier. Miriam and I were still basking in the afterglow of a very gratifying session.