Chapter 18

Sweet little Susan's turn:

"You did WHAT?" Alan asked me.

I took a breath. The guy actually sounded disturbed. "I gave some of Terri's writings to the English professor who's working with us." I looked at Tina. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Alan, she didn't do anything wrong, you know."

"I know. I'm just surprised." Alan smiled at me.

"You know they'd have figured it out when she started school in the fall," Tina said.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right."

"Do you forgive me, Alan," I said, using my best 'little girl' voice.

"Yes, I forgive you. And save that voice for Jason."

Giggle. "I don't need that voice for Jason. If I use it too much, he breaks into pieces." He does. I love having Jason in my life. And he is so easy to get going. He adores me. That's apparent. I don't know if it is as readily apparent that I adore him.

But there's Terri, too. Terri's kind of like the communal daughter. Well, not really. She spends most of the time at Tina's place, being Alan's daughter, after all, but it seems like every day Terri makes the rounds. Sometimes she only stops by to say 'hi', sometimes she's with her friend Rachel. That's on days we don't have a big confab going at the pavilion in back, or one of the informal meetings in the restaurant before they open for dinner at five.

You wanna know one good thing about it? Jason loves 'er. And tells me we need to have at least one like that. We talked. We both graduate, I get a couple of years on the job, then we work on the creation of a little collaborative effort of an offspring and pray that he or she will be the doll that Terri is.

This college thing is stressful. I talked to Jason. "Baby doll," he said, "you're doing things that I didn't do. All these interviews and the departments pushing books on you and then testing you. I didn't do that."

"I know, honey," I said. "But I'm caught up in the whirlpool now."

"Merry-go-round," Jason said. "Once you're on it, getting off before it stops can be painful." Jason knows. He's talking to people at the college, too, trying to get some credits ahead of his own ambition to convert from Engineering Technology to full blown Electrical Engineering.

I kissed him, not one of those 'take me to bed and make me knot the sheets up' kisses, just an 'I love you and you're a lovely part of my life' kiss. "Baby, we don't have to kill each other. You have a good career if you stay just like you are. And I could be a plain ol' freshman..."

"Shush!" he said, returning my kiss. Okay, maybe there just might be a call to wreck the bed soon. "Don't waste that mind of yours on mediocrity. Let's see how far you can go, and how fast. But don't burn yourself out."

I know about 'burn-out'. We, us, the community, we've talked to the guys who've actually done the work: Alan, two Dans, about people who burnt out, who crashed and burned, and why. Lots of reasons turn up, and a lot of them had to do with lack of support networks. When I look at our group, I see support networks out the kazoo, as Jason says.

All this closeness is something! I mean, it used to be me and Tina, just good friends, then Cindy popped up and said 'sisters' and then 'community' and then Nikki showed back up in Tina's life, and by inference in ours, too. We used to be happy with a phone call or a Skype session and those odd weekend trips. Then we tossed my Jason in, and then we all moved down here.

Cindy says 'critical mass'. "You take an isotope of uranium. If you put a little bit here and a little bit there, spread out, it's no problem. Bring enough of it into close proximity, and it starts heating up. Chain reaction." And she smiles. That's classic Cindy. I knew about chain reactions and critical mass. Cindy's the one who takes that idea from one venue and drops it in the middle of another. And makes sense.

Anyway, we like being together almost every day. For example, Cindy needs to go to the campus for a meeting. Rarely does her Dan take her. Usually it's me or Tina driving, but we usually squeeze the whole crew into one car so we all go together.

I'm trying to figure all this out. My sisters were products of somewhat similar and almost tragic backgrounds. If there's anybody who might have a reason to be withdrawn, I thought it would be one of them, but every one of them seems to thrive in the group setting. Our biggest problem is that we all need some alone time with our spouses, but we've reached an equilibrium over that. Text messages precede knocks on doors, after eight-thirty is off limits, that sort of thing. By this stage of the game, everybody's been 'caught', always by phone call. That's always the possibility, you know. My sisters and I are quite active in our relations with our husbands.

I heard stories about newlyweds. Asked Mom. She sighed, smiled at me. "Uh, Susan, I suppose that's part of The Talk I'm supposed to have with you," she said. "I loved your Dad. He loved me. We were young and energetic and yes, every day, every night, every chance we got, and we made sure we had lots of chances. It was completely new to me and almost new to him and we ... there were days I was raw. And that didn't stop us."

"Then it's normal to, like, ALL the time?"

"Normal, sweetie. And expected. And appreciated, don't you think?"

"OhGodYES, Mom. I love Jason and..."

"Don't be graphic, dear," Mom said.

"Oh, I'm not, Mom. But I asked the rest..."

"And they said?"

"Pretty much the same thing."

"Even Cindy?"

"Especially Cindy. She said it was magical."

"Fourteen," Mom said.

"Mom, you've met Cindy. The only thing fourteen about her is her age. And Nikki's only a year older."

But that's all part of life and we recognize it and make allowances and life is good. Some evenings I notice that Terri's over at our apartment watching one of Jason's animated movies on our big-screen TV and he and she are laughing. Okay, I laugh too, maybe not quite as much at the movie as I do at my twenty-something husband laughing out loud. And some of the looks Terri gives him. And I know that one of the reasons Terri is there is that Tina and Alan have a little time together to themselves.

That was another conversation. "Does Terri slow y'all down?" I asked Tina.

Tina smiled. Lovely smile, she has. "A little bit. I miss the 'naked on the sofa, any time' thing. And at night, I'm ... we're both a little less vocal. Terri's got good hearing, you know..."

"Oh, yes," I said. "Great hearing. And asks questions."

"Well, she KNOWS that we do it. Says 'That's one of the things that couples do. You an' Dad are married. So you do that because you love each other.' And she asked me what YOU asked me."

"What?" I asked, not exactly surprised. Terri's very insightful. Precocious.

"If having her around affected how her dad and I interacted. Her word. "Interacted." What'd'ya do with a seven year old who uses words like that and knows what they mean?"

"You answer her. What did you tell her?"

"I told her that having her around showed me how much Alan loved me that he brought her to live with us. Which is true, you know."

"I know," I said.

"Little darlin' didn't let it end there."

"Mmm, okayyyy," I said.

"She said 'What about other stuff? Like bedroom stuff?' and I said that we were doing okay, just fine. That's when she just got those big blue eyes going and said that she might enjoy going to the movies with you and Jason or spending an afternoon with your Dad or Mom."

I giggled. "Yeah, she told me. Sitting right there between me an' Jason, she said she was going to enjoy the movie with us and you and Alan were going to enjoy the privacy."

"That's my daughter," I said. "And if she bothers you by coming over too much, let me know, okay?"

"Tina, the kid calls before she comes over, and I have told her 'no' before. And she's okay with that."

"And Rachel's a relief valve, too."

"Oh, yes," I said. "And both of 'em together? Hilarious."

"Or Terri and Cindy or Terri and Nikki," Tina said.

And that's where I had the discussion with Tina and Alan. I mean, I am proud, a proud aunt, I guess, and if bragging about my beautiful niece is wrong, well ... but I bragged to a professor at a major university and showed her some of the work of a seven ("ALMOST EIGHT!") year old mini-me and now Alan and Tina are going to get a phone call from the psychologist who interviewed Nikki and Cindy. I thought that Alan was mad at me at first, but he ended up smiling.

"Like trying to hide a lit candle in a dark room," he finally said. "We only got a taste until she moved in with us."

Tina smiled. She's got a lot of different smiles. Most people do. This was her smile where she knows she's ahead of the game. "Come on, baby. Remember at Christmas when we played Monopoly with her. I was worried she wouldn't be able to keep up with the numbers, being seven and all that. I offered to help. You remember the look I got?"

"She's got an independent streak, I guess," Alan said.

"She's got an 'I can do this myself' streak," I said. "Ever since I've known her."

"That's a good thing," Alan said. "Just so she knows how to treat people well."

Tina said, "Well, she got along fine with Shara. She gets along fine with Rachel. Shara was just a normal kid. Rachel's a bright one, but not like Terri. But she seems to adjust."

My phone rang. Well, it didn't actually ring, it played a happy little tune that identified the caller as the most wonderful guy in the world. Alan and Tina both smiled. They knew who it was. "This is your fault," I said. "Hi, baby!"

"Hi cutie!" he popped. I could feel him smiling through the phone. "We're on the way back. Maybe half an hour."

"Goodie!" I said. "I miss you. Got us a casserole in the oven. One of Mom's recipes."

He laughed. "That takes care of ONE appetite."

I blushed. I knew what the other appetite is. Yes, I know. And I still blush. And that makes Tina giggle.

"Stoppit! Now I'm blushing!"

"And it's so cute when you do that," he said. "Who're you with?"

"Tina and Alan."

"Alan can control himself. Tell Tina to wipe that smirk off her face!"

"Jason says stop smirking at me," I told Tina.

"TIna, stop picking on Susan," Alan snickered. "She's still a newlywed. She's allowed."

"Am I allowed?" Tina asked in her best 'little girl' voice.

"Of course you are." He kissed the top of her head. "Let's see ... where's our daughter?"

"Oh," I said. "She's over at Cindy's since Dan 1.0 and Jason went to Birmingham today." That was the deal with work. The utility company that used us a couple of weeks ago was happy with our company's preliminary effort. I don't know if they were as happy as Jason and I were that ONE day, but still, you know. They want us to do another area, so that's what Jason is doing today, he and Dan. I'm hoping I'll be able to go with him, but now I'm starting to do college stuff. At least a lot of this area is within reasonable driving distance, so I get Jason at home most nights.

And there's Terri. When she overheard us talking about him having to stay overnight without me, Terri popped up, "I can stay with you on those nights, so you won't be alone."

"Awww, sweetie! If Tina and your dad will let you, that would be wonderful." I was actually charmed that she'd ask. Terri's, in Cindy's words, the community kid. Not like an orphan, more like a child of an extended family. Alan's daughter, but the rest of us love her to pieces, especially Tina. And to tell you the truth, hanging around Terri is slightly more surreal than dealing with Cindy and Nikki. Cindy's bad enough. You know the stereotype: Cute girls are supposed to be dumb. And Cindy's like this little pixie thing, cute as a bug, and when you hear her talk, you're hearing things that do NOT belong in the head of a fourteen year old girl.