"Forget All That 4-6" {Pendragon} (MF rom wl lact)
FORGET ALL THAT
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to
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This material is Copyright, 1997, by Uther Pendragon. All
rights reserved. I specifically grant the right of downloading
and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long
as this notice is included. Reposting requires previous
permission.
All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as
public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination
and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.
# # # #
FORGET ALL THAT
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
Part Four:
Continued from Part Three.
The Brennans participate in what Bob, in his more cynical
moments, calls Mammon-mas. I dreaded the trip home in the train
with all the loot they would give their first grandchild for her
first Christmas. They also, however, pay attention to the
religious aspect. On the last Sunday of Advent, we all made it
into church during the prelude.
The Kitten behaved a little better than she does at our home
church, but Bob still had to take her into the narthex and carry
her back and forth. His relieved him at the end of the
sermon, and was surrounded by his friends commenting about how
sweet she was when the rest of us came out.
At Sunday dinner, my attention wandered to a sound from the
next room, but I decided that The Kitten didn't need me. When I
was paying attention again, Bob and his were talking about
bubbles. It took me a minute to see that they weren't talking
about *her* bubbles. It was economics. "1987 did it," Bob's
father was saying. "People learned then that a sharp drop could
be recovered from. The problem is that they learned that one
*would* be recovered from. There is still air in the US market,
but it will leak out. Can it happen without a 'whoosh'? I don't
know."
"Bob was telling me," I said, "that you could show that the
claims I read are wrong that stocks are a sure thing for the long
run. I didn't get it all."
"I don't know it all," said Bob. "I only remember the joke
and the conclusion. 'Mr. Morgan, Mr. Morgan,'" he said in a
falsetto. "'What will the market do?'"
"'Son,'" his answered in an artificially deep bass,
"'the market will fluctuate.' Well," he continued in his usual
voice, "the market has fluctuated ever since. This is easier on
paper than it is across the table..."
"You never spared me across the table," said Bob.
"And who would want to spare *you*?" his asked.
"Anyway, I'm not going to spare her, only apologize in advance.
"This is easier on paper than across the table, but there is
a simple formula for the value of this year's stock market in any
future year."
"That sounds like it would make you a fortune," I said.
"No!" he said. "The formula is the product of multiplying
four numbers together. It is impossible to know those numbers,
but it is possible to estimate their range.
"The first number is GDP, or the value of everything that
the country produces in a year. The second number is the
percentage of the GDP that goes to corporate profits. Multiply
these two together and you get the corporate profits for the
year.
"The third number is what we call the price-earnings ratio.
This is more usually applied to a single stock, but here we mean
the ratio of the value of the stock market in that year to the
profits which support that value. Because the stockholders can
put a quite different evaluation of the same profits. Multiply
that number times the first two, and you get what the stocks of
that year are valued at.
"The fourth number is the percentage of stocks that year
which actually exist this year. Because companies continually
issue new stock and new companies come into being and issue
stock. So in any year, the stock includes stock which didn't
exist the year before. If the stock market is worth twice as
much in fifty years, that doesn't mean that the average stock
bought this year is worth twice as much. Also stocks disappear
through failures.
"Okay. Now there are four numbers. The first one increases
over time, usually but not always from one year to the next, but
increases in the long run. The fourth number almost always goes
down. The numbers in between generally fluctuate. The
percentage of the GDP which goes into profits fluctuates slightly
except in real recessions, when it takes a plunge. If Brewster
would be working at 70% of capacity, we'd have -- not 70% of the
profits -- but a disastrous loss.
"Anyway, aside from a few years, that percentage fluctuates
within rather narrow bounds. The price-earnings ratio, however,
is a roller-coaster. This year it hit highs that it hasn't seen
in recent times.
"Now, the snake-oil salesmen point out that, historically,
this product has increased over almost any twenty-year period.
The history, with apologies to our historian," he nodded to Bob,
who nodded back, "includes the price-earnings ratios of the past.
Buying into a market with P-E ratios above fifteen is a sucker's
game, historically. Individual stocks can support it by growing
much faster than the economy, but the market cannot."
"Y'know," Bob said, "the philosophy of history considers
'History' to only mean the written analysis of what happened in
the past. It's a useful distinction, but we don't own the word."
Great, just what my mind needed. A summary of economic theory
followed by lecture on philosophy and semantics.
"That's nice, dear," Katherine said. And the subject
changed.
Undaunted by his previous experience, Bob's insisted
on feeding The Kitten her cereal and fruit. She wore a bib with
"Grandpa's angel" on it in fancy lettering. *We* hadn't brought
it. He wore his suit pants and dress shirt, which was tempting
fate. Fate resisted temptation no better than the rest of us do.
Bob hauled his upstairs for an undisclosed purpose.
That meant that he had mailed my Christmas gift to her and meant
to wrap it now. Just why this needs the heavy hand of secrecy
every year, I don't know. Bob specializes in clothes in a
package that rattles and tiny gifts in large packages.
Packing them in suitcases tends to crush the packages, and
mailing them would be worse. (I can imagine postal inspectors
calling the bomb squad after x-raying one of his specials.)
Mailing them unwrapped so I never see my gift makes sense.
Pretending that I haven't figured out what he is doing doesn't.
Not after ten Christmases, one of which involved a gift which had
to be mailed back North, it doesn't.
On the other hand, Christmas is a matter of tradition.
Bob's brought The Kitten back in after washing off
the disaster. I will say this for her, The Kitten readily
forgives the people who try to inflict baby food on her. He sat
down in his armchair and began a this-little-piggy game. He
stopped when she tired of it, turned her so that she was facing
him, and recited "Plus que possible, ma poule noire, ..." I was
intrigued. French verse that I hadn't heard before. He followed
it with the English version, significantly different.
"What is that from?" I asked.
"The Black Hen is a poem in various languages in a book that
we must still have. You'd like it." Actually, nobody in the
Brennan considers it possible that people won't like a
book. This man's son thinks that *Decline of the West* is the
sort of book that one can't put down and that *Scientific
American* is good popular reading. However, the books that the
Brennans recommend are surprisingly often good reading; go
figure! "Kate," he called to Katherine who was just coming back
down stairs, "where is 'The Black Hen'?"
"She's in the relative-when laying eggs. Is that a trick
question?"
"You know what I mean. Where is the book?"
"The book, dear, is *A Space Child's Goose*. It
isn't my book. I have enough trouble keeping track of my books
and library books in this house." She had a point. Everybody in
the had a stack of books by their beds which they had put
aside because something came up which meant looking in another
book. At home, I limit Bob to four. When there are five books
in his stack, I put the bottom four back on the shelves in the
living room. When I was vastly pregnant, so pregnant that I
could get almost anything from him that I wanted, he put them
back on my request.
Bob's changed to the game where he tries to catch The
Kitten's nose with his finger while she tries to impale her eye
on the finger. "You should let her play on the quilt while she
still wants to be in your arms, dear," Katherine said. "Never
let her get sated." He obeyed, but settled back where he could
watch.
"Are you happy about your decision?" he asked.
"Do you mean The Kitten instead of full-time school? I'm
quite happy. My greatest unhappiness is dread that some of this
might be taken away from me. I have a husband whom I love and
loves me, a child whom I love and who needs me. I'm not certain
that it is love at this age. I and mine are reasonably healthy.
We make enough to keep us warm and fed and such. What more could
I want?"
"A house of your own," said Katherine, "a car of your own --
I mean 'ta auto.'" (She meant "ton automobile.") "You might want
jewels or a fur coat or a housemaid or a nanny."
"A housemaid would be very nice, a nanny would be awful.
I'd like a to come in and change her and then go away. A
house with a yard would be nice when she's walking. If I won the
lottery, I could figure out how to spend it. If he won the
lottery, Bob wouldn't quit teaching; you know that."
"But," Bob said from the foot of the stairs. "I would take
every summer off and spend it taking my to France."
"You could spend alternate summers with us," said Katherine.
"Jeanette and I could go to France and leave The Kitten with
you here. We're really de trop."
"It's a deal," said his father. "When can we expect her?"
"I was thinking of the terrible twos and most of her teenage
years." That brought the subject to a laughing close. I shivered
and reached out to knock on the table. We have so much.
The Kitten gets fussy late in the afternoon, even when the
two of us are alone. The difference on this trip was that her
fussiness took the form of wanting maman. I took her upstairs to
nurse her, looked at the rocker, and decided for the bed instead.
With the covers rolled up on one side and me on the other, she is
totally safe in the middle of the bed. Besides, she is unlikely
to try going far from me in those moods. I lay down with her on
my and spoke to her maybe three times. Bob woke me an
hour and a half later.
"Do you want supper?" he asked. I did. He called down,
"Ten minute delay." Then he changed The Kitten while I was in
the bathroom and getting my top back on. I don't often use the
nursing bra in private.
"Sorry," I said when I joined the table.
"Don't be," said Bob's father. "You were caring for our
grandchild. For that matter, caring for our daughter-in-law is a
priority, as well." Now, that is not a warm emotional statement;
but it's a genuinely loving one.
After supper, the conversation moved to church that morning
and then the mechanics of getting The Kitten to the Christmas Eve
service. That moved on to our church in Michigan. Bob mentioned
that I had joined and had been attending more often.
"That's backwards," I said. "My attendance went up first,
and then the baptism, and then I joined. I couldn't see any
reason not to. Actually The Kitten was the reason that my
attendance increased."
"Yes, dear. start thinking about what sort of
circles they want to raise their children in."
"That isn't it at all. If I went to church with Bob more
than once a month, the next time that I slept in, people would
tell me that they had missed me. This would embarrass me. So
once I had slept in, I had reasons to avoid attendance for a
while. The Kitten is a great excuse. I can sleep in, and the
next week it is all her fault. I'll bet the first time she goes
to church with her while I sleep in, my attendance drops
again."
"Or," Bob said, "as soon as actually sleeping-in becomes an
option once more." I don't know. I think that I had just shown
that sleeping around The Kitten was quite possible. When she
gets to the crawling stage, I could set up a child-proof area,
move in with the sleeping bag, and let her choose her own feeding
times. But that was too nebulous to suggest then.
My attention drifted away, and they were comparing former
pastors when it got back. Which was a good excuse to let it
drift again. Soon The Kitten wanted to come back to the
familiar. "Maman," she said when I held her.
"That's right, darling," said Katherine. "That's mama."
But The Kitten had definitely said "maman."
"Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?" asked Bob.
The agreement was unanimous. Even the conversation tailed off,
and the three of us went upstairs soon thereafter. "Happy?"
asked Bob.
"Very," I said. As I had told his mother, I wasn't
continually happy or ecstatically happy. I was usually
contented. "Bob, I'm scared."
"Why? What can I do?"
"We have so much." He came over to hug me.
"We aren't taking it from others," he said.
"But what if we lose it?"
"Then it would be stupid to not have enjoyed it while it was
there," he said. "Look at Mom. She enjoys every day with my
father. It might be the last. And The Kitten is surer if not so
sad. She won't be a baby much longer. Let's enjoy her while she
is." I'm sure that his words made sense, but his hug was the
only comfort.
Three is a crowd in a twin bed, even if one of them is tiny.
Rather than risk The Kitten on the edge, I laid her between us.
Bob held the bed frame all the time I nursed her because, I would
guess, he was in danger of falling off. He was right at the top
of the bed kissing my forehead or hair occasionally. Mostly he
patted me or rested his arm on my side. I felt much better by
the time The Kitten was done.
I went to the bathroom and made my preparations for the
night while Bob changed The Kitten. We used to change her both
before and after feedings when she was newborn, but in those days
she ran like a spigot and also had more delicate skin. These
days, we try for a change right before sleep but make an
exception if she is smelly or really wet before the feeding.
"Y'know," I told him when I came out, "you have done more
changes than I have since we came here."
"My decreed that you wouldn't do any changes at all
unless their changing her would mean one of them would have to
invade our privacy. She figures that one person handling the
input doesn't balance three handling the output anyway. They
aren't interested in lowering *my* workload; but they have. When
both of us are around and awake, I had *better* do the work.
Otherwise I'll spend Boxing Day at Mickey D's. She's right,
anyway. You do more than your share of the work."
"Not counting that you earn our income."
"Well, that didn't affect housework when you earned all of
our income." That isn't quite the same. In those days, he was a
full time student. These days, he does the breadwinning and I do
most of the housework and child care, mostly child care.
"You're sweet," I said.
"And I have motives for being sweet."
"Not with your pants off, you don't." He was laughing when
he kissed me.
"I love you like this," he said. He loves me all the time. He
prefers me like this. For that matter, I do too.
We had a nice, long, quiet, kiss with our mouths closed. He
pecked me on the nose, hugged me briefly, pecked me on the
forehead, and came back for a real kiss. He kneaded my butt
while our tongues played. When we paused for breath I said,
"Should we be standing up?" He pulled off the top bed clothes
and motioned for me to lie down. Then he covered me and tucked
everything in at the bottom before sliding in beside me.
This time he stroked everywhere while we kissed. Then he
stroked only my mound and thighs. I parted my legs to ease his
access. He played with my outer lips for a minute before
beginning a frenzy of tongue play. During that, he slipped a
finger between my inner lips. I smiled at his attempt at
sneakiness. I think half the nerve endings in my body are near
there; does he really think that I don't notice?
All those little nerve endings not only noticed his arrival;
they enjoyed it. He stroked toward my clitoris but stopped
short, a little closer each time. Just when I was about to ask
him to keep going, he kissed me so firmly that I couldn't speak.
Then he did cross the magic spot. I gasped. I could feel him
grin at that.
His kisses and caresses were lovely; but, as they became
lovelier they became less adequate. Rather that break the kiss,
I trailed my hand down his chest to ask for more. When he let me
continue across his belly, I knew that we would have more very
soon. He was erect and hard and hot. He was the one who broke
the kiss.
"Do you think that you could be on top this time?" he asked.
I thought about it. The motions of his hand, if not exactly
conducive to thinking, were very conducive to agreement.
"That would be lovely," I said. He moved toward the middle
as I retreated to the very edge. Then I climbed over him. This
position, even after all the years of practice, takes a little
adjustment. He held me with one hand and himself with the other.
As I eased down, he fitted us. I had to move an inch lower in
the bed, but I sat on him until I was totally impaled.
He inhaled with a hiss. "Darling wife," he said. "I love
you, Mrs. B."
I said, "I love you, Mr. B," tightening his favorite muscle
as I said "B." I leaned down so he could lick my breast.
"Gently," I said. He was very gentle, and very loving, and very
exciting. Soon, I had to move.
I concentrated on making the motions that felt best for me.
Bob had taken a while to convince me that this was what he
wanted, but I can tell that he enjoys it. My eyes having
adjusted to the night light, I could see his frown turn into a
grimace. His hand reached between my moving thighs. He stroked
me in time with my motions, first on the lips and then on my
center. Suddenly, I couldn't keep to the rhythm. Flame swept
through me, and I went away into sensation, and into joy, and
into ecstasy.
When I came back, I was sprawled on Bob. He was hugging my
hips to him, the only hug which wouldn't interfere with my
gasping breaths. "Sleep here," he said. I couldn't, but I could
stay for a few minutes. All his careful adjustment of the
bedclothes had gone for naught. He was out of me and all the
mess was running out on him. I didn't even mention that; I know
his priorities.
I had gone from comfort, to desire, to joy, to fulfillment,
to being held in love. Okay, *some* times I am ecstatically
happy.
Part Five:
Bob points out that I am fifty times The Kitten's age and
argues that a week to her is like a year to me. I'm not
persuaded that it works like that. Still, each day is an
adventure at her age. She'd recovered rapidly from whatever
trauma had resulted from the train trip. Katherine, who had
stayed mostly in the background so that her husband could get
granddaughter time, was now an friend whom The Kitten hadn't
seen enough for the past two days. And the beads were still
fascinating.
Bob brought the rocking chair down the first thing in the
morning, and I was ensconced in it when he brought The Kitten to
me. Katherine had made waffles for breakfast again. I ate last,
but otherwise was treated like a queen. Katherine suggested that
Bob and I might want to have some friends over to meet The
Kitten. "Vi is going back Sunday dear. You wouldn't want to
drag The Kitten on that trip." (The train north is late with
notorious frequency. The trip would take less than an hour each
way, but might last five hours including the wait. I did *not*
want to take The Kitten into that.) "Why don't you set up a
party for then. It wouldn't kill any granddaughter time. I can
take care of the munchies."
When we agreed, she reached out her arms and said, "Come to
Grandma Brennan, dear." The Kitten reached out her arms in
return. Bob and I made our list and the calls while she played
with The Kitten.
Lunch was light but on time. Bob and I played hooky again,
leaving Katherine to the baby-food wars. I swear that she was
wearing the same clothes when we returned, and they were
spotless. That woman never fails to impress me. She handed The
Kitten to me immediately on our return. "Maman," said The
Kitten.
"Yes, darling," I replied. "Ta maman." I gave her a big
smacking kiss on the top of her head. Satisfied that I was on
call, she soon tried to see the rest of the room. I can't
believe that it helps to do this lying back with her head upside
down, but that is the method she uses. Half her genes, I
constantly remind myself, come from Bob.
We all moved into the kitchen to watch Katherine prepare
dinner. Bob held The Kitten for a while. He had been doing his
share of the diaper time, but not getting his share of the play
time. "Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?" he asked
for the umpteenth time.
"I believe so, dear," his said. "But I might be
somewhat prejudiced."
"Nonsense. Sober fact."
He was doing "This little piggy...." when I asked his
about his life before I met him. He studiously ignored the
account, putting all his attention on The Kitten.
Those led to what the courting of Jeanette Jacobs
had looked like from the home front. Not much, apparently. "He
said almost nothing dear. From the time that your
permitted him to drive you on dates (and I've never faulted your
father on that, though Bob was always a careful driver) until
the letter arrived asking me to deliver the enclosure to you (and
Bob always was good enough to put some news in the cover letters;
more than half the letters I ever received from him were cover
letters those two summers), I never saw your face. Of course,
you knew that.
"Anyway, when a high-school who misses most of the
football games starts going to every girls' track meet, you
suspect something. It was like the discovery of Pluto. You
couldn't see it but you knew it was there from the behavior of
the other planets. Or was it Neptune, dear?"
"Both actually," said the who wasn't listening to this
nonsense.
"Maman," said The Kitten. Bob immediately gave her to me.
She hadn't intended that, but she is going to learn the meaning
of that word.
"And then," Katherine went on, "there was the time that Russ
set him up for the road-construction job. Russ wasn't half
furious. He'd pulled in a favor from a friend, after asking Bob
if it were a good idea. Everything, as far as we could tell, was
set up. Then Bob said that he had to think about it, and could
he borrow the car the next day."
This is an important event in my relationship with Bob. I
sent a loving look toward him, expecting one back. He was
staring at his flabbergasted.
"Anyway, Bob took him to work before driving to school. He
picked him up after work. He didn't say a word about road
construction. That night he gave Russ the application for the
work, all signed and filled in. Russ said that the only thing
that kept him from strangling Bob was that Bob looked so happy he
doubted that he would have noticed."
Bob looked so shocked that I was glad that I was holding The
Kitten. I don't seriously believe that he would ever drop her,
but still.
"We finally figured out what must have happened," Katherine
continued. "We couldn't fault him for consulting you, although
'The other party did right,' doesn't diminish Russ's anger any
more than it diminishes anyone else's. Just the opposite, don't
you think, dear. It's one thing to forgive your neighbor's
faults and quite another to forgive the damage which your
neighbor does to you with his virtues." She didn't really expect
an answer. Which was nice, since I didn't have one.
"Anyway, all we could were those two preadolescents
whom we drove to those dances. You two were so cute with those
innocent good-night kisses." (Innocence is in the eye of the
beholder. Those good-night kisses involved closed mouths, but
they nearly melted my braces before we got rid of the chauffeur-
chaperons. Then we could touch as well as kiss.) "We'd seen Bob
mature, of course; but our of you hadn't changed.
Brought to consciousness, that couldn't be right." Bob had
recovered by that time. I handed The Kitten back to him.
"Russ, however, was both grateful that you had saved his
bacon with his friend, and impressed that you had taken the long
view. We had come to expect the long view of Bob."
(I don't recall Bob asking directly if he should go away for
the summer. It was whether I thought that we might have a
future. I believe that he was so sure that having a future made
going away the right choice that he hadn't articulated that.
Maybe not. It had been the high point of my life that far, but
not a time of clear communication.)
"Oooh," The Kitten said.
"No, Kitten," said Bob. "It's not August. It's December.
Say day- som-brrrr." To be fair, The Kitten's pronunciation of
"Aout" is at least as accurate as Bob's pronunciation of
"Decembre."
"Does that ever change?" Katherine asked at the third
repetition.
"She'll grow out of it," I answered.
"Yes, dear, but will he?"
"Maman," the Kitten said suddenly. Bob handed her back to
me, and I gave her a big kiss. "Maman," she said happily.
"I am being sorely wronged," Bob said. "My conversation
with my *has* changed over time."
"Hush," I said. "I think that The Kitten has just figured
out the meaning of 'Maman.' Here Kitten, I'm Maman."
"Oooh," she said. I kicked Bob before he could respond.
"It will happen, dear," Katherine said. But I wanted it to
happen *now*. She went back to food preparation, and her next
comment was on the spice she was using. "Powdered ginger loses
half its flavor, but I only use the real root for major feasts.
I wouldn't want to use it around the baby, anyway, since the
juice stays on your hands. Gorgeous smell, though, from chopping
ginger."
Even with merely-powdered ginger, the dinner was a feast in
my book. Chinesish, it featured chicken and vegetables all
stirred together and put on a bed of rice. Katherine, wouldn't
you know, stir-fries in a wok.
After dinner, though, she left us to go to her room and
read. She figured that her husband would monopolize The Kitten.
He did until she wanted the familiarity of her mother. Bob took
the far end of the couch, I lay with my head on his lap, and The
Kitten lay partly on me and partly against the back of the couch.
I didn't trust her near the edge; that has no respect for
the law of gravity.
I was fully ready to doze through another Brennan debate on
politics or literature, but that was not to be. Katherine came
downstairs soon after I got The Kitten back. This must have
reminded Bob; or, perhaps, he wanted both his sources present to
see if their memories agreed.
"Were you really furious with me back before I started the
road construction job?" Bob asked his as soon as Katherine
was in the room.
"Wouldn't you have been?" his answered. "You had
been asked, and raised no objection. I had called in some
favors. My can't work for the corporation, but Jeremy had
taken a job with another firm. He had been an ally, but we had
exchanged no more than Christmas cards for several years. Then I
called him up and asked him to find a job for you. He had to go
down several levels. If you hadn't shown up, he would have
looked ridiculous.
"Anyway, he comes through. Then you ask for time to think
it over, and you want to have the car for that day. Meanwhile, I
keep trying to think what I'll do if the answer is 'no.' So,
finally, you show up in the parking lot at the plant, fifteen
minutes late."
"I was on time," said Bob. "You were still in your office."
"If you were an hour later," his said, "I'd still
have been there. The CEO doesn't wait around in the parking lot.
You come sauntering in, obviously walking on air, and give me the
keys. I'm too afraid of my reaction to ask until we are alone.
So, I wait until I have started the car to ask. I can give our
conversation word for word to this day.
"I say, 'Are you going to take the road job?'
"You say, 'Y'know, I really think she really likes me.'"
I couldn't help laughing. The Kitten complained, but she's
held on through worse. Bob was laughing, too. He reached over
to help me hold The Kitten on.
"Well, you may laugh now," Bob's said. It sounded
like he was near laughter, himself. "It was not funny at the
time. The only reason that I didn't slit your throat on the spot
was that you were so clearly anesthetized that you wouldn't have
felt it. I drove home very carefully under the speed limit. If
I hadn't concentrated on that, I would have been going ninety.
You went straight to your room. At dinner, you handed me the job
app. with your signature. By the next evening, you were almost
normal. Normal for Bob, I mean.
"What could I do? You had decided the way I wanted you to."
"It was mostly my fault," I said.
"Well, you indicated that you might have liked him, unless
there was another out there who I never heard of. (And we
hardly heard of you.) But he could have worked that summer if
you didn't like him. All that sweat would have helped him
forget."
"It was perfectly logical," Bob said.
"I saw your face, sonny boy. Logic had nothing to do with
it."
"Logic had everything to do with it," Bob said. "If I went
to work that summer, I would have had to leave Jeanette. We were
having a wonderful time together, and leaving her would tear me
apart. It would also, I hoped, have cut into her happiness.
(That doesn't sound right.) In the long run, however, I knew
that this job made my chances better all through college. If we
had only another year, it wasn't fair to Jeanette to cut the
summer out of it. If we had a long future, then she would share
the benefit; we could both survive the parting.
"I could swear that I told you that I would take the job."
"I'm not sure that you were communicating very well that
day," I said. "My first impression was that you were asking me
to elope. I wasn't enough to get without
permission."
"No wonder he was walking on air," Katherine said. "He was
newly engaged."
"We weren't exactly engaged," said Bob. It wasn't anywhere
near an engagement. It had been closer to a mutual
that we had each already thought about marrying the other one.
"He was remarkably disengaged," his said. "It was a
miracle that he got the car there without an accident."
"I'm not sure that we ever got engaged," I said.
"Well, dear," Katherine said. "I can remember two kids who
came home from with a date all picked out. If they
weren't engaged, I don't know what they were."
"I don't know," I said. "That day -- the one which bothered
you, sir -- was 'It is possible that we might, perhaps, someday,
be the person that the other would marry.' And we picked the
date in college. We spent most of that semester picking the
date. I don't know that we ever really had a time when we
decided to get married."
"If we had known that the date was up in the air, dear,"
Katherine said, "we might have argued about it."
"Not," said Bob, "if you had known the alternative dates."
It was more complicated than that, to use one of Bob's favorite
phrases. "Anyway, we were engaged by that time. There just
never was a time when we got engaged."
Three Brennans were silent, an event to record for
posterity. Really four Brennans, I'm a Brennan too. The fifth
Brennan saved us from the record books. "Ooh," she said.
"No, Kitten," said Bob. "It's not August. It's December.
Say day- som-brrrr."
"How can you claim that you have changed that," I asked.
Bob ignored me through four repetitions and until The Kitten was
clearly tired of the game.
"How soon they forget!", Bob said. "Originally, I told her
to say Novembre." We all laughed, but my laughter disturbed The
Kitten, who didn't like being shaken and said so. I decided to
take her upstairs. "The rocker is still down here," Bob reminded
me.
"Bring it," I said. It's easy to get used to being served.
Anyway, I was going to use the bed for that feeding.
Bob didn't object in the slightest. After bringing up the
rocker he left for the bathroom and came back in his robe. "Can
I help you off with your slacks?" he asked. That's a service as
well, despite his ulterior motives. I raised my hips to help him
remove my slacks and then my panties. He pulled the sheet up to
The Kitten's waist before coming up to the head end of the bed.
He kissed my nose and all over my face before settling on my
mouth. It was a warm, wet, kiss. The Kitten could go without a
French lesson this night; I liked her father's French much more.
Finally, however, Bob broke the kiss. He scattered some kisses
on my torso, and two on The Kitten. She shrugged in discontent.
"You're wasting those," I said. "Save them for her who
appreciates them more."
"I dunno," Bob said. "The Kitten's wiggles don't prove that
she doesn't like them. Her wiggles when she appreciates
the kisses the most." He swept the sheet off to attack my navel.
It wasn't really fair. He was using a nursing mother's
instinctive protection of her infant as bondage, keeping me
motionless under torture. So I dug Bob under his ribs with my
free hand. He grunted and moved beyond the range of my arm. To
be more precise, he moved to the foot of the bed and started
kissing at mid calf. He raised my leg to make his access easier,
which was not going to work when he got where he was heading.
I went back to murmuring to The Kitten in French. Rather
than anything complicated like the experiences of the day or her
father's degree of progress, I stuck to "Ta maman t'aime, ton
papa t'aime, nous t'aimons, ..." Bob's kisses on my thigh
tickled, but they excited me in another way as well. If Bob
didn't hurry, he'd be in danger of drowning when he reached his
goal. I wanted him to hurry, but I loved the sensations of his
slow progress. My murmurs to The Kitten had become simply "Douce
Catherine, belle Catherine, habile Catherine...."
After a few decades during which I had to resist writhing,
Bob finally reached his goal. He kissed my mound and then lifted
me by the legs to fit something under my hips. I was too far
gone to inquire and too busy with The Kitten, who didn't like the
upset. He kissed my outer lips before parting them with his
fingers. The first touch of his tongue on my inner lips almost
drove me crazy. I grabbed The Kitten, who was almost done, by
her diapered seat. Then I let myself writhe.
Bob stayed with me as well as he could. He licked at my
inner lips until they parted. I was ashamed of the messiness I
could feel down there, but I knew that Bob wouldn't mind. "Oh
beloved," he said before starting to lick it up.
"Bob, please," I gasped out, louder than I had intended. I
couldn't reach for a pillow, I was holding The Kitten with both
hands. Bob stopped the infernal teasing. He licked up my valley
with steady strokes. My tension seemed to build forever; but his
first sweet, sucking, kiss shattered the tension. And it
shattered me. Fire swept through me in regular waves, and I went
very far away.
When I came back Bob was holding me by the shoulders and
murmuring in my ear. "Sweet girl," he said. "Darling bride,
lovely woman, beloved wife. I love you. I adore you. I desire
you. I cherish you. You are the most wonderful woman in the
world...." It was very nice to hear; but, as I lay recovering my
breath and my brains, it sounded awfully familiar. Bob had said
similar things to me many times, but that wasn't it.
This wasn't a major puzzle. I basked in the glow of what
Bob was saying to me and what he had done for me. There was only
this question tickling the outer edge of my mind. Then the
answer came to me. Aside from the language, what Bob murmured to
me was remarkably like what I had murmured to The Kitten.
I tried to keep my laughter silent, but both of them were to
close to miss it. "What's so funny?" Bob asked. The Kitten was
less articulate, but even more disapproving.
"Take your daughter," I told Bob. "I didn't change her."
And why should I change her? Maybe we could stay with his
parents until she is toilet-trained.
While he was changing her, he asked, "Are you okay?" I was
fine. I had attained a climax and a revelation. Oops! I hadn't
inserted the contraceptive.
"No. I haven't had my time in the bathroom tonight." I
would get up in just a second. Meanwhile, I took a rolled pair
of towels from under my seat.
When The Kitten was in her crib, and the Kitten-goes-to-
sleep tape was playing, Bob looked out. "Someone's in there," he
said. He came to bed and snuggled against me. "Will you ever
tell me what was so funny?" I snuggled even closer to him. He
felt nice and warm.
I woke up with a *really* full bladder. I grabbed my robe
on the way to the bathroom. I sat there trying to decide whether
to insert the diaphragm or not. Of course, I hadn't thought to
bring it with me. I had to make another trip to insert it. I
also brushed my teeth and cleaned myself up generally.
Bob's warmth felt comforting after the cool bathroom. He
stirred in his sleep. A hand came out to hold my breast. Since
the nipple was rather sore, I moved it down. After resting on my
stomach for a while it moved even lower. Bob began kissing the
back of my neck. Glad that I had inserted the diaphragm, I
turned on my back.
Bob wasn't awake enough yet to raise himself for a real
kiss. He contented himself with kissing my shoulder while his
hand played with my mound. When he tried to move to more
sensitive areas, I spread my legs to help him.
I was not yet certain that anything was going to happen. I
don't know quite when The Kitten wakes for her middle-of-the-
night feeding; since I usually go through those in a trance
state. If she interrupted us, we probably wouldn't resume. Even
without interruption Bob could fall back to sleep, although the
likelihood of that was decreasing by the minute.
I certainly wanted something to happen. I wanted several
things to happen, in fact. First, I wanted a real kiss. I
removed Bob's hands from my sensitive flesh before rolling over.
I put it back, however. He wasn't awake enough to avoid hurting
that area if I moved into one of fingers, but I certainly didn't
want to suggest that those fingers were unwelcome. Once on my
side, I gave Bob a real kiss. Our tongues met and parted and met
again. Then he thrust his tongue into my mouth. His fingers
became busier below. My lover was awake.
When he had caressed me into readiness, I rolled onto my
back. He didn't take the hint. Instead, he continued to explore
my mouth with his tongue and my valley with his fingers. Beyond
readiness, well into need, I tensed as the heat spread through me
from the fire his fingers were igniting. I didn't want to take
this trip alone. "Bob, please," I cried. He rolled over and
positioned himself. He slipped up and down my valley several
times, then found my entrance. I was so anxious that I pushed
back against his slow entry.
Once he had filled me, he stopped to say, "I love you."
"I love you too," I said. "But I want you to move." He
kissed me first, but he finally began to move in and out. His
slow steady strokes soothed my need. Then they intensified my
need. The fire was peaking within me, moving my hips up to meet
him faster than he was coming forward. The tension spiraled
upward, but couldn't find relief. Aching, I grabbed his hips
with both hands and pulled him into a faster rhythm. That
intensified the ache, and I know that I moaned in frustration.
Then everything shattered. The flame leaped within me,
poured through me in waves, passed out of me. Blissfully sated,
I felt Bob take his last strokes while he was already pulsing and
spurting deep inside me. We rolled over half way, taking his
weight -- and most of the covers -- off me.
My next awareness was of The Kitten's crying. Her diaper
was full; and I shoved the special, only just before feeding,
pacifier in her mouth. She spat it out and cried more loudly.
It works for Bob, but his don't leak when she cries. I
gave up on the diaper. I glanced at the bed on which Bob was
sprawled over a tangle of sheets and blankets. I took The Kitten
to the rocker.
I was nursing a stinking baby, sitting naked on a hardwood
rocker, in a cool room, with semen dried all over one thigh and a
little more leaking out onto the seat. The Kitten was harder on
my nipple than was really comfortable. I was conscious of every
single discomfort.
The individual discomforts, however, couldn't overcome my
general satisfaction.
As The Kitten settled down to her usual rhythm, I told her
about our first visit to Paris, all about it. I usually look
forward to the day when she can talk. However I know that later,
when she finally understands the words, I'll miss these little
uncensored chats.
Part Six:
"Let's leave the rocker upstairs today," I said to Bob.
"The spot is hardly noticeable," he said. Well, *I* knew
that it was there. Katherine wouldn't say a word even if she
noticed it. So I would be sure that she had.
"I won't sit in it down there." Thus there was no reason
for him to carry it down.
We didn't go down for breakfast until The Kitten was fed and
mostly cleaned up. After breakfast, I bathed her in the kitchen
sink. Katherine took her namesake from my hands as soon as she
was dry. "Come to Grandma Brennan," she said. "Let's go get a
diaper." I cleaned up the sink and took the special soap and
shampoo back upstairs.
Bob was settling down with the work we had brought along
with us.
The two of us are collaborating on a book. I start with
photocopies of documents in French, typed, handwritten, or both.
I type this into a word processor, spellcheck it (there are
French spellcheckers, luckily), see whether the misspelling was
mine or in the original, and turn out a fair copy. Then I
translate the fair copy, a quite literal translation.
Bob looks over the English and sees whether it makes sense
in the context. Sometimes he catches a real blooper that way,
but that isn't the only problem. Diplomacy has a technical
language just like any other specialized field. It also has a
formally-agreed-upon set of translations. That way, a treaty
translated from French into German will be translated into the
same English from both the French and the German.
A smooth-flowing English sentence which translates the
French sentence acceptably for a novel may not be the right
translation. A relatively clumsy sentence might be needed in
order to accommodate the agreement that *this* French term is
identical to *that* English term in every case. Bob catches a
lot of that. We have a diplomatic dictionary, and I have
immersed myself in it so I can catch more of these on second
rereading.
Bob knows more about the Fashoda Incident, when the United
Kingdom came perilously close to war with France, than almost
anybody. By now, even I know more about the details than most
historians. But details are only part of it; how governments
reacted depended on party histories and individual biographies.
These depended, in part, on previous issues. The popular press
was important by that time, but salons were still important as
well. Bob has that context, and I don't.
And the Fashoda incident was never the only thing on the
plate of the diplomatic corps. We were not printing the
thousands of pages of the trove, or a very great fraction of it.
However, we were printing the entire document when we printed any
part of it, and arguments over tariffs and incidents of prominent
men of one country who had run afoul of the law in another were
in some reports which also involved Fashoda.
Moreover, while the Fashoda Incident was the most important
event of that brief period, we aren't simply covering that.
There were other matters going on simultaneously, and documents
which shed important light on those will be in the book. These
can be real bears.
A question about the relationship of Germany and Italy or
about Dutch colonial problems can be illuminated by
correspondence in the files of the French foreign office. Simply
figuring out if that information reveals anything requires an
intimate knowledge of what is known now and what is in dispute
now.
Fashoda was, at least, most critically a conflict between
France and the UK. Diplomatic reports from other countries, most
especially Germany were relevant, however. Which means that we
have to check the reports in our documents against anything which
is publicly known about the reports to other governments. Bob
can deal with German when he has to, but those sources might be
hard to find in Michigan.
So I translate more documents than we are going to use, and
Bob goes through those translations and marks them for
inappropriate terms. Then he evaluates whether they illuminate
any outstanding questions. Then he marks down a load of
questions on note cards. Then he takes those note cards into the
library to find some answers. Well, as Ecclesiastes might have
mentioned, there is a time for filling out note cards and there
is a time for crossing off note cards. Without a library, this
was a time for Bob to read the literal translation and fill out
note cards.
I was available for consultation, "Could this sentence
mean...?" Otherwise, I was off work until I was back at my
little computer.
Katherine had The Kitten; I started lunch. "Oh, you
shouldn't have, dear," Katherine said. I actually should have
been doing more of the work, and said so. "Nonsense, dear. I'm
a teacher for more than half the year; I enjoy being a cook on
breaks." (I can believe that she enjoyed making the fancy
chicken for the night before. But tuna salad?) "Although I
admit that I enjoy being a grandmother more. Encourage her to
have children young, dear. Grandmothers have much more fun than
mothers."
"We could form a child-care partnership," I said. "I'll do
the breastfeeding, and you change the diapers." Her laugh
admitted my point.
"You weren't including pregnancy and labor in that balance,
dear. Besides, what is joy for a day can be drudgery for a year.
You and Bob used to go camping, for example." A good point.
It's fun, but I wouldn't want to live in a tent for the entire
year. "Playing with The Kitten is fun, changing diapers
compensates for it. Besides, she is our granddaughter; part of
the care is our responsibility."
She put The Kitten down on the quilt and called Bob. "Tuna
salad," he said. He added "Y'know, we hardly ever have that any
more," before spreading his bread with the catsup he adds to it.
Said catsup is the reason that I stopped making it entirely when
I was suffering the nausea of pregnancy. I never did like to
look.
"You never met a meal you didn't like, dear," his
said. (Oh yes, he has! But I will admit that he has a wide-
ranging appetite.) "Isn't it a joy to cook for appreciative
eaters, dear? Now Vi (I must get into the habit of calling her
Kathleen before tomorrow) went through those stages of regarding
each calorie with horror, but she never went off particular
things. Bob was a fussy eater when he was very small, but from
age nine he ate almost everything which was on his plate."
"And anything in the refrigerator which wasn't clearly
marked," I put in.
"Well yes," she said. "I learned to skip those articles on
clever things to do with leftovers. You know, a third world
family couldn't have eaten out of the *Brennan* garbage can when
he was home. It would have starved a goat."
Now, while Katherine went from huge plenty to tight budgets,
cheese-paring would never have made any appreciable difference.
From the perspective of our early marriage, however, leftovers
were a resource, not a problem. Bob had tried, though; I'll give
him that. Still, his appetite had been a bone of contention. I
wished that I could change the subject; Bob must have felt the
same way.
"I think this thing is coming together," he said. Chez
Brennan, you can change the subject with a nonsequitur. "We have
enough on Fashoda to make the book significant, and enough on the
rest to make the book of general interest. All the dreaming I
did of you up in that room there, I never dreamt of you as a
research assistant." I doubt that he dreamed of me as a cook or
fellow parent either. I know he didn't dream of me as house
cleaner, cleaning isn't one of his dreams.
"Has she been a great help, dear?" Katherine asked him.
"That's one way of putting it," he answered. "The way the
book is shaping up, I may contribute almost as much as she. When
we envisioned it, it was her book. 'Help' doesn't quite cover
it.
"You know it's odd. When you two financed the tape," (He
meant an entire taped course of French with supporting materials)
"we all spoke of it as Jeanette's education. Some tiny fraction
for her. Without it, however, she might have gone on with the
literature." (I doubt that; but any "might have been" might,
after all, have been.)
"I very much doubt that I could have written the
dissertation without that and the radio and the magazines. When
we got to Paris, Jeanette knew what was going on. She was au
courant in a way that most French majors wouldn't have been. The
magazines and the short wave taught her about twentieth century
France in a way that nothing else could have."
"Those magazines were a success then, dear?"
"It was more than Bob said," I answered. "Every year, there
was a subscription to a different magazine, a new subject area, a
new version of the language. I hadn't learned how to deal with
archivists nor how to read bureaucratic reports, but I had
learned how to deal with a new subject. My French was over-
correct, of course; but I'd learned some of the slang. The
course was business-centered, not tourist-centered; that helped."
"Russ wondered whether the gift of the magazines has gone on
too long." I'd wondered the same thing. I'd stopped reading the
magazines during my pregnancy. I had translation to do and
literature to read. I'd stored the backlog and was reading about
half the new issues before the next one came.
"It's clearly too late to worry about this year," Bob said.
"There is a little backlog now. Nice to have someone else in the
house storing magazines. By the summer, Jeanette will have
some idea of her new pattern of living. If the backlog is
larger, then she can read it down after the last subscription
expires. For that matter, Dad must be running out of possible
magazines. We have money, Jeanette can subscribe to one of her
favorites from the selection that he gave her.
"The real gift was the experience. That is permanent. On
the other hand if he gave her *Science*, ..."
"He is adamant, dear. The gift is to her. A lever to
persuade her to read the *Scientific American* might be a
possible gift to you, but taking your side against her isn't in
the cards."
"My father's taking my side against anyone isn't in the
cards," said Bob.
"Now, dear," Katherine said. Bob's would back him
against the world. He would not, however, say so to Bob's face.
"But Bob is right about the magazines," I said. "They were
an incredible gift. So was the radio."
"And the tape recorder," Bob put in. "He always sees how
things will work together." The tape recorder plugged into the
radio so that it could record programs directly. It had two
speeds, and I spent months listening to slowed-down tapes of RFI
news reports. Then, it all came together, and I could follow it
in real time.
"He also wondered about your subscription, dear," Katherine
said to Bob, "even if he thought of it after your last birthday.
It was one thing to give a child going away to who would
have ignored the world if it hadn't been shoved down his throat.
After all this time, it might feel as bad as giving the French
version of *Scientific American* to Jeanette." Now these
subscriptions aren't our only gifts from Bob's father, but they
are significant ones in terms of cost.
"I've thought about that for two reasons," Bob said. "Not
about it being shoved down my throat. He was right in the past.
That wasn't where I would have spent my money. I never objected
to reading *Newsweek*, though. I did think that it might be time
for an assistant professor to buy his own.
"Then this fall, I was ready to drop the magazine
altogether. Four pages to Theresa, and 24 to Princess Di.
Does anyone have a sense of proportion? They tried to make it up
later, but that was so clearly covering their asses that it made
my opinion worse." This was the first time that I had heard him
express this, but it didn't surprise me. I had had the same
reaction at first.
"My first response was just like yours," I said. "But look.
If one of your fellow teachers told you that his neighbor had
just died, and he was devastated, would you tell him that *you*
didn't know the and so *he* shouldn't be concerned?"
"Of course not," Bob said. "But Di was a public figure."
"Sort of. But she was a major part of the experience of
most of the people we know. She was hardly part of our
experience at all. You can't judge their response any more than
you can judge the response of the at work who lost a
neighbor."
"Most of the people we know don't read the tabloids," Bob
said.
"They watch TV. Many of them read *People*. Bob, there are
parts of current common life in which we simply don't
participate."
"Not even your French magazines?" he asked.
"When she died, of course," I said. "And she was frequently
in *Paris Match*. But that was years ago, and I was mostly
learning the words. Some of them weren't even in the dictionary.
Do you remember the Frenchwoman in Boston that I traded language
lessons with?"
"Right. I keep imagining somebody from France trying to
read *Variety*."
"*Paris Match* is not anywhere near that bad," I said.
"Or the sports pages," Bob said. "But do you really think
that we're out of it without the boob tube."
"In some ways. And we haven't gone to the in ten
months. Not that showed Princess Di, nor that this is
your fault." I had called moviegoing off one night *after we had
put on our coats* to go to the theater. Pregnancy has many
drawbacks, but it does have its privileges.
"I'd hardly call it a fault," he said. "Movies are
entertainment, not duty. When you stopped enjoying sitting still
that long, they had no value to us. Anyway, my fellow faculty
members don't go to movies, they go to 'fillums.' But they do
watch TV."
"Y'know, dear," his said, "your thinks that
you are cutting off your nose to spite your face."
"So he's told me. 'What everybody knows is important,' he
says, 'even when it isn't true -- especially when it isn't true.'
Of course, he was only talking about network news. He does have
a point. As doesn't he always?"
"Well that is a connection to the common mindset," I said.
"You'd study what people read in the 19th century."
"Yeah, but the twentieth isn't my century. Are you
suggesting that we get a set?"
"I've thought about that, too," I replied. "The Kitten will
want one in a few years."
"Then you think we should?" Bob asked.
"I think we shouldn't. Let her ask for one and learn that
it's a juvenile thing. Not grow up seeing her hooked on
it."
Bob's laugh was explosive and a little messy.
"Just be glad," he said, "that I was drinking water when you
said that, not chewing food."
"We'll have to teach her not to talk with her mouth full,
too." Suddenly I was overwhelmed with all the things that she
would need to learn.
"Unlike her father," said Bob. "Oh well. 'But Mom, if Bob
didn't eat and talk at the same time, he wouldn't have time for
anything else.'" This was a quotation from Vi. It is a
bone of contention to this day. She feels it unfair that she had
been sent to her room for the night, and then quoted with glee
for years.
"Your was being nasty, dear," Katherine said.
"Thank you."
"She didn't say inaccurate," I pointed out.
This time Bob's laughter was unencumbered. "I'm glad I
married you," he said.
"That's convenient, dear," Katherine told him. "Do you want
me to feed The Kitten again, dear." The latter was to me.
"Please, today it is vegetables. Nothing is open, so choose
anything but peas." The last vegetable had been peas.
"You know, dear, I swore that I wouldn't be that sort of
mgrandmother, much less that sort of mother-in-law."
"I'll take no offense at *suggestions*," I said. Actually,
Katherine had raised two fine kids. I've wanted to be like her
for years. I would be glad for her advice.
"It's not even a suggestion," she said. "It's a question.
I know the medical profession is as faddish about these things as
anyone is about anything. In my day, however, a baby seven
months would be eating supplements two times a day, maybe
more often. I don't doubt that you alone can provide all the
nutrients she needs. I just wonder if the rule has changed. I
know you do what you think is best for her."
"The rule hasn't changed," I said. "It's just such a
struggle with her. And they do say that the baby knows what she
needs."
"Why don't you watch me this time?"
When the time came, she put The Kitten in her high chair.
Katherine took a small amount of beets on the spoon. Then she
made a funny face involving a gaping mouth at The Kitten. The
Kitten, as she has done for months, made the funny face back.
The spoon went in The Kitten's gaping mouth and turned.
Katherine and The Kitten closed their mouths. Katherine removed
the spoon, scraped up the spillage, and made the silly face
again.
The process worked. When The Kitten forgot to swallow,
Katherine said "Nice Kitten" or "pretty girl." Then she stroked
The Kitten's neck. She wiped The Kitten's face occasionally,
although less often than I would have. The Kitten grabbed for
the spoon as often as she does with me; but, because Katherine
only aimed at an open mouth, this caused much fewer problems.
She stopped in the middle to play This Little Piggy. After a
bit, the Kitten made hunger signs with her mouth, just as she
would have if she'd been stopped in the middle of nursing.
Katherine went back to feeding her. I left to repair my
crushed ego.
The Kitten's next feeding, however, was one which Katherine
couldn't manage. Whether or not my brain matched hers, my
mammaries were much more functional.
Bob went with his to pick up a tree after supper.
When The Kitten wanted to participate in setting it up, I took
her upstairs. "Quelquefois, mon enfant, nous sommes les
vedettes; quelquefois nous sommes l'audience." She was not
impressed. She wants to star all the time; and, so far, she
mostly had. "When you are under one," I told her, "being counts
for everything. When you are approaching thirty, you have to do
things well to impress anybody." I sounded just like a mother.
Actually, I sounded just like *my* mother. And I didn't want to
be like her.
"Ne tracasse pas. Tu seras toujours la vedette en mon
drame." And we played active games until she just wanted to
cuddle, and then we cuddled until it was time to nurse. I was in
the rocking chair when Bob came in. He kissed The Kitten on the
top of her head and then me on the top of mine. Seeing we were
preoccupied with each other, he lay across the room watching us
finish up.
"Je vous aime," he said as he took The Kitten to the
changing table. I left for the bathroom in slacks and robe.
This time, I was careful about the diaphragm.
"Oh Bob," I said when I came back in, "Kiss me." He got up,
came over, and tried to reach my mouth. "No. Like you did
before."
"When before?"
"In the rocker. On my head." He kissed me as I had asked.
Then he hugged me lightly around the shoulders.
"Do you need cherishing, ma femme?" I nodded yes. He kept
kissing me above the ear line, murmuring in the pauses. "I love
you," he said. "The Kitten loves you. My loves you. You
found your way around on the Metro. You found your way around on
the MBTA. You found the handwriting book. You found work every
time you looked. You've kept The Kitten healthy and reasonably
happy. Your can't get you, and she can't even look at The
Kitten if she's nasty to you."
"Bob, do you think that that's my problem?"
"How should I know? It's one possible worry. You know the
other half of it?" he asked.
"What?"
"Everybody's very sweet," he said, "about relieving you of
The Kitten's messy diapers, but you're left with her messy moods.
She's a good kid, and happy most of the time. But when she's
grumpy it's back to mommy. And it's unavoidable. But we're
going back home in a week or so. You'll have her sunny moods
then. You'll have her full diapers, too."
He had a point. Two points: it was happening, and it was
unavoidable. The Kitten gets cranky in the late afternoons and
again shortly before bedtime. Then she doesn't like her own
company, and abhors the company of strangers. That was when I
was getting her. The only time I got The Kitten's good moods was
when I nursed her.
Any time that something was wrong, she wanted Maman. And,
by God, when she wanted Maman, she would get Maman. Sharing her
bad moods among adults might be fair to them, but being fair to
The Kitten came first.
And I wanted her to experience her grandparents. I even
wanted her to experience my to a limited extent. It was
part of who she was.
Then too, I *was* getting a respite this trip. The Kitten's
good moods are a joy, but twenty-four hour responsibility is not.
"You are the smartest husband in the whole world," I told him.
Partly, I meant it; partly I was parodying him.
"Indubitably the smartest husband of Jeanette Brennan," he
said. He tugged at my robe. "Isn't this awfully heavy?" He
helped me out of my robe and then my nightgown. Once in bed, he
continued in the "cherish" mode until I was totally relaxed, then
through my relaxation and into an entirely different sort of
tension. His teasing finger stroked up my valley almost to my
center of feeling and then returned to my entrance. I moved my
hips up and down trying to get that extra millimeter which
provides so much more satisfaction. He kissed me deeply before
withdrawing his tongue. Covering my mouth in this way, he
finally stroked the entire length of my valley. I moaned into
his kiss and moved my hips faster.
"Do you want me inside?" he asked. I think he knew the
answer, but he likes to hear it.
"Oh yes," I said. "Now, please." When he removed his hand,
I managed to still my motions. When he had climbed between my
legs, I spread them wider. He stroked up and down my valley
before pausing to look into my eyes. Then he entered me, filled
me, pinned me to the mattress. He blew me a kiss before
beginning his slow strokes within. I let my legs ride up on his
hips and held them there when he withdrew. The exquisite
sensations from my entrance took me back up the heights. I
clasped my legs about his waist and crossed them behind his hips.
The feeling of his motions within, filling me and rubbing
against me, were a comfort, then a joy, then an itch. I needed
more and more. "Vite, vite," I begged him. I pulled him tighter
into me with my heels against his hips.
Then something swept through me. It spread my legs far
apart and slammed them down on the bed. It raised my hips off
the bed and impaled my groin onto his maleness. It shook me. It
tightened my voice into a screech. It scorched its way through
me from my scalp to my toes.
Then it left me completely at peace while Bob grunted above
me and squirted within me. I could make absolutely no movement
as he softened and left me, panted above me, rolled off me,
hugged me awkwardly. Much later, we dabbed at the mess which had
already soaked into the sheet or dried on us.
"I love you," he said.
"Bob could you?"
"I Robert, that one?" How could I ever have called him
insensitive? I snuggled into the sleep position, then nodded.
"I, Robert, take thee, Jeanette, to be my lawful wedded wife.
To...."
Continued in Part Seven.
FORGET ALL THAT
Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
1997/12/27
1999/12/30
2000/10/01
This is the second segment of the last (so far) in a series
of about the Brennans.
The first segment of this is:
fat_a.txt
Parts 1-3
The next segment is:
fat_c.txt
Parts 7-9
The first in the SERIES is:
forever.txt
"Forever"
The directory to the entire series is:
brennan.txt
Brennan Directory
The directory to all my can be found at:
index.txt
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