Chapter 7

I could go into all the noises they made, but I'm sure you have a pretty good imagination. I don't think I could spell most of them anyway. I guess they were probably pretty typical kinds of noises for parents to make in a situation like that. You know how I said I say some pretty weird things when I get mad? Maybe I get that from my mother, because one of the things she screeched - and that's not too strong a word - was that if we'd been getting along they were going to take us to lunch with them, and she ended up screaming "But after this, young man, I'll never feed you again!" I admit that I thought about pointing out that you couldn't get along any better than Heather and I had been, but for once I just kept my mouth shut.

They calmed down eventually, primarily because neither Heather nor I defended our actions in any way. I mean we were busted, and we knew it. And trying to explain it with them foaming at the mouth wouldn't have done any good at all. We also stayed naked, sitting on the side of the bed, my hand gripped tightly in hers, between our hips. Eventually Dad told us to get dressed. Mom stopped talking suddenly, which was good, because she needed a breath or two. She was almost blue. Then she said "Yes. Get dressed," and frowned.

Heather just put a T shirt and some panties on, while I went to the kitchen and retrieved my clothes, which had been abandoned on the floor. I didn't know where else to go so I went back to her room. Our parents had finally run out of things to say to us and now they were talking to each other.

"Excuse me," said Heather, clearly and firmly. They looked at her. "When do you think you're going to want to hear what happened?"

"We know what happened!" snapped Mom.

"Do you?" asked Heather. I couldn't believe that the "danger danger" element was creeping into her voice. "Do you have any idea how this all came to be? Do you have any clue as to whether this is the first or hundredth time? Wouldn't you like to know how it is that two perfectly normal kids who used to fight like cats and dogs could end up like this?" Her voice had started to rise in register.

"Don't you take that tone with me young lady!" Mom started, but Dad reached out and put his hand on her arm.

"Yelling won't solve anything," he said softly. He looked at Heather. "You don't need to yell either."

"I don't want to yell," she said. "I want to talk."

"How can we just talk about his," wailed our mother.

Heather wasn't shy at all. "Well unless you're going to get a gun and just shoot us, you have to do something else, and since we're going to be involved in whatever you decide to do, I'd like to talk about it before you decide. What I have to tell you might not make any difference, but I'd at least like to be able to say it."

"I don't see how you can possibly justify what we just saw," said Dad.

"I'm not going to try to justify it," said Heather. "I just want you to know how it happened."

"How long has this been going on?" asked Dad. He winced when he asked it, like he was afraid of the answer.

"Since about ten minutes after I woke up from the coma," she said softly.

"You're blaming this on the coma?" Mom sounded insulted.

"No, I'm not," said Heather. "But the coma had everything to do with it. Will you listen to us?"

"Us?" I said. She was doing fine by herself. My life was already over. I was just waiting for the door to slam shut on my cell.

"You have to explain your part too," she said.

Which is how we ended up skipping lunch.

All that time to think had made Heather pretty good at it. I think that's why she decided on a course of action so quickly when we got caught. We could have just hung our heads and taken our licks, whatever form that might have taken. But she had fought her way to my side and while she'd tried to describe it to me, I couldn't really grasp how hard it had been for her to win her way home. That battle was being repeated now, though none of the rest of us knew it then.

Basically, she didn't want to lose what she'd fought so hard to get to.

It turned out that Heather had never actually described to our parents what it was like in the coma, where everything was misty and it was easy to just stay there. She had told them she could hear them speak to her and had liked it when they read to her, but she hadn't described my part in her recovery.

Now she told them of her cocoon, and how after they stopped reading she just drifted ... sometimes forgetting what had just happened. Within minutes both she and Mom were crying and Dad kept clearing his throat and rubbing his nose. She made it sound like every time she took a step forward, she slid two steps back. At the same time she described how comfortable it had been to just stay there, even though she knew there was someplace else she needed to be. She painted a picture of a helpless girl ... lost ... but so close to home.

Then she smoothly slid me into the picture.

"I was there one day when I heard a new voice. I knew that I should recognize it, but it was hard at first. He was reading to me, and then he stopped and just told me the story in his own words. That's when I realized it was Bobby. It was like I'd forgotten about Bobby, and hadn't realized how much I missed him until he was there, talking to me. And suddenly I wasn't so sleepy any more and I wanted to talk to him."

"But you two fought like the dickens before your accident," said Dad.

She blushed and looked down. Now that I think about it she had to be acting, because what she was thinking about was old hat by then. But our parents didn't know that.

"I was embarrassed because of how I felt about him," she said.

"Embarrassed," my mother repeated.

"One time when the girls were here for a sleepover they were ragging on me about what it must be like to live with such a cute brother. I didn't think he was cute, but I didn't say anything. Judy wanted to know what he looked like naked, and of course I said I didn't know."

"You didn't," agreed Mom. "Did you?"

"Remember when you used to let me help you change his diaper?" asked Heather. Mom nodded and smiled. "His little penis always fascinated me, and you played with it sometimes, remember?"

Now it was Mom who blushed. "That's different, Dear," she said.

"Oh I know that," said Heather, suddenly sounding about fourteen instead of almost seventeen. "But I always wondered what it looked like as he got bigger. But I didn't know. And then Regina said that when she'd come out of the bathroom he was going in to take a shower. And they came up with this idea to raid the bathroom - you guys were watching TV - and we all snuck down there and went into the bathroom, and Judy opened the shower door and they all laughed because he was embarrassed."

"Of course he was," said Dad, frowning. "I'm disappointed in you for doing it."

I decided that maybe she needed a little help, so I raised my hand. It would have been funny except my mother said "Yes, Bobby?"

"The reason I was so embarrassed was because I was ... um ... excited?"

"Excited." My mother sounded confused.

"All her friends were so hot, and whenever they came over I got ... excited. So I went into the shower and I was ... um ... you know ... taking care of it."

Mom got it and blushed. "Oh!" she said. Dad tried to hide a smile.

"Anyway I was in there doing that when they opened the door."

Heather came back in seamlessly.

"And he had changed so much!"

Our parents glanced at each other. Dad said "Well of course."

"It was the first one I'd ever seen," said Heather. "And it made me feel all funny inside. And the girls were all giggling and pointing. And I knew I shouldn't be interested, but it was so ... interesting."

"That's when she called me pencil dick," I said. It just came out, and I felt my face get hot for having said "dick" in front of my mom.

Heather sat up straighter. "What else was I supposed to do?" she asked, sounding like she was the victim here. "I couldn't very well say 'Wow, move over, girls. I want to get a closer look!'" She looked at each of us in turn. "So I called him that and told the girls it was time to go, before we got caught."

Heather went on to describe how, each time the girls came for a sleepover, Bobby was a hot topic of conversation. Most of the girls lamented that he was a year younger and she left the impression that it was because of these girls seeing me as a boy that made her think of me as a boy too ... who just happened to be her brother.

Of course she covered the bases by saying that she felt guilty for thinking about me that way. I was her brother, after all, which was why she masked her true feelings by being cruel and bitchy to me. She actually used the word "bitchy" and my mother didn't even flinch. So that got us up to the point of the accident, and why, when she heard my voice in her coma, it meant so much to her. She glanced at me and I knew it was my turn. I wasn't as good at this as she was. I hoped the truth would work for us. Well... most of the truth.

"I didn't know about all that," I said. "All I knew was that whenever she was going to have a sleepover I'd get to see a bunch of hot girls. But the funny thing was that when I saw them all together, Heather was just one of them. And I thought she was the cutest of them all. I thought that was pretty weird at first, but she was smart, and pretty and a lot easier to talk to than any of the rest of them. But I couldn't tell her that, because I knew she'd laugh at me and call me names. She always did."

Heather nodded and looked sad. Boy she was good.

"So anyway, when you said I had to read to her, I started to, but the book was boring, so I read her a comic book instead. And she just laid there. She looked like my sister, but the best part was missing." I looked at Heather. "So I guess I kind of told her how I felt about her. I didn't really think she could hear me."

My mother, who had been staring right into my face, turned to look at Heather.

"He talked about everything," said Heather. "He talked about how pretty he thought I was and he remembered things we did when we were little. He told me how he had fantasies about the girls, and he cried when he said he had them about me too. He wanted to undo my pajamas and see if I was as pretty as he was sure I must be."

She'd launched right into that one! I thought she'd escalated things too quickly because my parents both jerked and looked at me.

"But he didn't," said Heather. Both parental heads snapped back to her. "I could tell he wanted to, and he knew I couldn't do anything to stop him, but he said he loved me too much to do something like that. I could tell he felt awful. And I knew how he felt because I was curious about him too."

She told them about all the things I did to avoid talking to her about sex and improper fantasies. She made it sound like I was an addict going cold turkey (which wasn't far off the mark) and then she told them about how I'd given her only very proper massages, and worried that if I changed her PJs that it would be like violating her privacy. She made me sound pretty good.

"And then one day he came and apologized because he'd masturbated in the other room. Cathy had delivered a pizza and he brought her to see me and after she left he'd been excited. But while he was doing that, he said he kept thinking of me. He was crying and I felt so sorry for him. I wanted to talk to him ... to tell him it was okay ... that I wasn't mad at him. He kept saying I must hate him, but I didn't and I wanted so badly to tell him that that I kind of surged against the mist."

Her eyes got wide and unfocused. "He kept talking, and I kept feeling like I'd gotten a little closer to him, until I felt like I was turning towards his voice. If he'd have stopped talking I'm sure I'd have just gone back, but I wanted to be there with him so badly that I tried harder than ever before."

She blinked, and slowly her shoulders relaxed.

"And suddenly I knew I was in the room with him. I opened my eyes and there he was." She looked intently at Mom and then Dad. "Bobby talked me back here. Because I loved Bobby so much, and because he was hurting so much ... I came out of the coma."

Mom leaned against Dad. Her eyes were glistening. Dad's nose and throat were all itchy again, based on all the coughing and rubbing he did.

Heather rushed the last part.

"I told him he was wrong ... that I didn't hate him. I told him how I felt about him and somehow we kissed and it was so wonderful and it didn't feel wrong at all. He had saved me, and I didn't care what anybody else thought about it. He was my man."

I thought she'd pushed it too far with the "my man" comment, but apparently adults have memories of their own that are close to what she was talking about, so they could empathize with her.

Don't get me wrong here. It wasn't over, and everything wasn't sweetness and light from then on. It was still incest, and neither parent was suddenly willing to just toss aside a lifetime of attitude about that.

But somehow Heather had managed to come as close to justifying what had happened as it was possible to get.

Then what we call "The time of limbo" set in, as our parent digested all the information at their disposal ... and moved toward deciding what the hell to do about it.

The time of limbo lasted for about three weeks. Mom did all her work at home. She took Heather to the pool for physical therapy. They didn't demand that we avoid each other completely, but it was clear that if we got caught even so much as looking fondly at each other, there would be hell to pay.

Heather had her period, to Mom's obvious relief. The 4th of July was a pivotal day because we all went to the city park that evening to listen to the town band play all the typical music, and watch the fireworks display put on by the local merchants. What made it pivotal was that Heather went to sit with her friends, and a bunch of boys came to hang out with them. One sat by Heather ... quite close ... which was observed by Dad, who pointed it out to Mom. I heard him say "I can't take it. Knowing that she's sexually active is going to drive me nuts." They whispered for a while and then the fireworks started and they watched.

But in the days after that Mom did a lot of talking with Heather, and Dad did a lot of talking with me. They asked a lot of questions ... personal questions. Dad wanted to know who else I was sexually active with. I laughed, and he didn't take that well. He got over it, though when I convinced him I hadn't even kissed any other girl besides Heather. He wanted to know why, if we were so lovey dovey, there had been that week of screaming. I told him about our efforts to stop what we had been doing up to that point. He wanted to know what we had been doing up to that point. I learned a new term, trying to explain it to him: mutual masturbation. He learned why I had suddenly gotten so interested in my friends, and tennis, and riding my bike, and why Heather started acting like a bitch again and hibernating in her room.

Eventually he got around to asking me how many times we'd had intercourse. I explained that the first time had been an accident, where things got out of control and stuff happened that neither of us planned. He had no problem accepting that.

"To be honest, the second time ... the time you caught us ... was kind of an experiment because neither one of us could remember very much about what happened the first time."

He laughed, and then looked horrified and threatened me with broken bones if I ever told my mother that he'd laughed at that.

He wanted to know why I hadn't used a condom. I wasn't sure what Heather was telling Mom, so I stuck to the truth. I reminded him that we hadn't planned the first time. I told him we argued about it afterwards and that we'd agreed that nothing else could happen unless I had a condom.

"Then why weren't you wearing a condom when we caught you?" he asked.

And that is how our parents found out that we had only had sex two times ... on the same day ... the day that they grounded us until we could learn how to get along.

About two weeks before school started we were eating supper and Mom announced there would be a family conference afterwards. It had been easier to engage in abstinence, since getting caught screwing my sister's socks off. The same was true of Heather, though I bet her dildo got a workout. I know my hand did. But it wasn't as bad as stopping the first time had been.

Mom and Dad sat together on the love seat, which Dad had pulled to face the couch. Mom told Heather and me to sit on the couch. We sat ... about a foot apart.

"Your father and I have talked," said Mom. Then she looked at Dad and didn't say anything else. He looked a little stunned, like things had just gone way off plan. He looked at her, and then at us, and then at her again. Then he seemed to regroup and faced us again.

"We thought about counseling. But the feelings you have for each other are genuine and, at least to some degree, understandable. That doesn't mean they are wise, and it doesn't mean they are acceptable. But all a counselor would do is try to get you to convince yourselves that you don't actually love each other in that way, and that's stupid, because you do." He looked at Mom again. "Besides, we'd rather nobody outside the family found out about this."

Mom looked sharply at him. "That's not why we're doing this," she said.

"Look," he said to her. "They've been remarkably honest with us. I think we should be honest with them too. They were a lot more adult about all this than most kids would be."

"There is nothing adult about having promiscuous sex with your sibling!" snapped Mom.

"You had your chance, and you passed it off to me," said Dad, sounding disgusted. "Now be quiet, woman, and let me finish."

I expected Mom to blow up, but she didn't. She took a deep breath, and clamped her lips together.

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