Sunday April 7, 2002

I woke up, momentarily disoriented. I wasn't sure where I was, and for a horrid second I thought I was upside down again, since I was sitting up. I felt something warm pressing against my side. Things snapped back into focus as I realized it was Jenny, and I was on the couch in the family room. The lights were out, and so far as I could tell, Jenny and I were by ourselves.

I shifted slightly, and Jenny spoke up. "I'm awake."

"Hi, everyone else go to bed?" I asked.

"Mary, Elizabeth and Shannon went home. The others went upstairs a while ago."

I turned towards her, saw her smiling at me. "You and me, together again," Jenny said.

I think she meant it to be funny; instead, her voice cracked. I leaned close and kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, just for a second.

"You okay, Jenny?"

"Do you think I'm terrible?" she asked.

I shook my head, a little mystified. "No, of course not."

"The other day, they asked me what I wanted to do about funeral arrangements for my parents," Jenny paused. "I told them they'd kicked me out, they should get in touch with the others in the family and let them decide. My dad has an older brother; my mom two younger brothers and a sister."

"Jenny, if there was ever someone who had a right to just let them go, it's you.

"I'm not sure any more about some things, but I do believe in right and wrong. What they did, what they let your brother do, was wrong. You did a good thing, getting out of there when you did."

She hugged me, hugged me tight.

"Tom, could we do like we did the first night? Just curl up in bed?"

I smiled, resisted the urge to lean close and kiss her on the forehead and say of course. "Yes, Jenny. With me, it will always be what you want, not what I want. I'm fine with just knowing you're next to me, and safe. In fact, I'm better than fine with it."

The hug was repeated, only much, much harder. I stood up, gave her a hand up off the sofa, and didn't try to hold onto her. We went up the stairs and into my room. I stripped down to my underwear, Jenny put on a nightie.

"Thank you, Tom," she whispered. "Thank you."

I glanced at my clock, it was after one in the morning. "You should sleep. Dad wants to go to the zoo later. It's going to be a warm day; odds are we'll come home exhausted."

She spooned in behind me, putting her arm around my waist. "Good night, Tom."

"Good night, Jenny."

I slept soundly, and while I could remember dreaming, my dreams were ephemeral, dreams that I couldn't remember at all when JR came to wake us. My sister had an idea she wanted to try, and wasn't interested in hearing our opinions. "I want us all to take a shower together. Just washing and touching... not getting carried away."

I didn't want to tell JR that I didn't think it was going to work, because she was so bubbly happy and enthused about the idea.

It didn't really work, either. A regular shower enclosure just doesn't have enough people for three people at a time. One person was at the end, chilled. Another person was getting drowned and the one in the middle, splashed.

I was really proud of JR, though, because when we were drying off, she said, "Well, that was an idea whose time hasn't come."

"The shower's too small," Jenny said, looking serious.

JR snorted in derision. "The shower's way too small!" We all chuckled at that.

It was an idea that had been perking in my head for a couple of days. "JR, what would you say if we moved to a new house? One with bigger tubs?"

She slapped me playfully on the butt. "I don't think I want to move just to get a bigger tub. And I sure don't want to change schools."

I contemplated if Uncle Craig or Mom had mentioned home schooling to JR. So, since I was curious, I just out and asked.

JR snorted. "Mom might like Uncle Craig, but he's such a jerk! No, I don't want to give up my friends at school! No, I don't want to study how to live the life of the rich and famous! Not for Joanna Ferguson! Not going to happen! I told them where they could put the idea!"

"But what about a larger house, close to here? There are a whole slew of them."

"You mean the country club houses?" JR asked, and I nodded, because that was what I'd been thinking. Some of them were like small castles; dozens and dozens of rooms.

I turned to Jenny. "What do you think, Jenny?"

"It's not for me to decide," she said, sounding like Mary the night I'd been in the accident.

I was going to speak, but JR beat me to it. "Jennifer! Aren't you forgetting you're an orphan? Mom and Dad are going to adopt you? You became a member of this family right after you moved in. Please, Jennifer, please. You're not just our friend, you're our sister, too!"

Jenny started to cry softly, and we both hugged her. That didn't last long, because Dad bellowed up from the bottom of the steps that he wanted to go see animals. So, we went to our rooms to dress.

I've never understood what my dad sees in going to the zoo. He's an engineer! You'd think he'd find looking at displays of desert tortoises, mountain lions, deer, elk, antelope and the myriad other critters that live in the desert boring. Instead, it seems to fascinate him.

Once, back in sixth grade, I'd made the mistake of voicing my opinion to him. He'd grinned, and the next thing I found I had to do was make a list of all the animals at the zoo that lived in Arizona.

It might sound like a simple thing to do, but the first night he'd checked it, and told me I had less than half. He told me I'd have to write a one-page paper on each animal that I missed. We'd went back the next day, and I learned a lot about the zoo that I'd not known before. I'd not seen the rodent collection before, for instance. I didn't like the bird tent, either. You tended to come out daubed with bird poop.

How did I do? My father is really smart, really, really smart. He added a hundred and fifty names to the list I'd already made, that had more than two hundred names already on it. I'd not gone into the insect or spider buildings either.

So, we spent the day, wandering the zoo. It was clear that Jenny had never been before, so JR and I took turns taking her to places we really liked. About one, we met at the restaurant, sat at an outside table and had lunch, then back again looking at everything, even the birds. Jenny really liked the bird tent; she was utterly fascinated by the riot of color, the sounds of their songs and chattering.

Around four, we were all suffering the usual zoo day afflictions: sore feet, aching legs, and entirely too much sun. The only member of the family who was at all chipper was Dad, which was something that always amazed me.

Mary had invited us over for dinner at her house, and we went straight from the zoo there. We got to listen to Shannon play her violin for us, while Mom and Mary worked on the last preparations for dinner.

Pot roast. People make jokes about pot roast, but that's because they aren't all that smart. Mary had put the roast in a baking pan; the roast perched on a rack. She'd put an inch or so of water in the base of the roasting pan, plus carrots, potatoes, garlic, onions and celery.

Not only did we have some killer roast beef, but the soup she made from the veggies was just as good.

I know all this stuff because Dad made some stupid comment about how Mary really knew how to roast beef. Some people, Dad averred, actually boiled the meat; obviously he thought boiled beef was terrible. Mary explained what she'd done to cook it. The water kind of half steamed the beef, while the oven was baking it. It was cool, seeing Dad looking silly.

Mom called Kim after we ate, while the five of us kids took care of the cleanup chores. Kim and Penny were back; Aunt Shirley had followed them in her car as well. Tomorrow evening Mom told everyone we would have a big dinner at our house, with everyone coming.

Again, the sheer logistics was daunting. Our family was five. Mary's was three. Kim and Penny, my aunt and uncle. Twelve for dinner? It was I thought, going to be interesting for sure, because we only had eleven dinner plates; one of the double set having given it's all months before when JR had dropped it.

Elizabeth had been talking to Jenny; all of a sudden they were talking up Elizabeth's idea of eight person Scrabble. You can't play Scrabble with eight people, or so the rules said; the game was designed for four people.

I was sent home to fetch our game set, while everyone else was sitting around, enjoying after dinner conversation.

Karma, fate... call it what you will, but it works in strange ways.

I got out to the first big street, and there was a funeral procession going by, going the way I wanted to go. Since a left was impossible, I made a right, planning on circling around. My thought was that rather than just sit and wait, it would feel better driving.

I'd gotten well along, when my cell phone went off. I mean, when the phone rings, it's kind of ingrained. You answer it, right? Except I was driving Mom's car and it was a pain to drive one handed.

"Tom, this is Miriam."

"Hello, Miriam," I told her, realizing as I did, that I needed to pull over. "Miriam, could you give me a second to pull over? I don't want to talk and drive at the same time."

"Sure."

So, instead of turning north on Central at McDowell, I went straight. It took a couple of blocks before I found a parking lot I could pull into. "You still there, Miriam?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to disturb you on a Sunday evening, Tom, but I was wondering if you could come by my office tomorrow after school. I'd like to talk to you about what you'd like to do about investing your trust funds."

I nearly blurted out that I thought Uncle Craig had been clear enough. Start changing things so as to run up transaction fees, and it wouldn't be good. Then I remembered two important things. I wanted to ask her what Uncle Craig had said to either her or her boss. That, and it wasn't fair if I made a rash judgment, based on no evidence.

"Sure, Miriam. How about four tomorrow afternoon?"

"I'll see you then," she told me, hanging up.

I put the cell phone back on my belt, and sat thinking for a second.

Like I said, these things might be what Elizabeth deals with every day. For me, it wasn't like that.

Yes, I sat there in the parking lot I'd pulled into, thinking.

The sign on the building finally penetrated my thoughts. Garish, red letters three feet tall. "Lease Expiring! Close Out! Huge Inventory Clearance!" Then beneath that, in letters equally red and tall, "Hartfield and McComb, Agents." With a telephone number to call for inquiries.

I'd seen this building since I was a kid. A huge red brick edifice, one that I'd been told had started existence as a Jewish Temple, but the congregation had declined until they could no long support the building. For the last couple of years, the downstairs was a very large pawnshop, with general office space upstairs.

It was about two miles from the high school, a bit more than that to JR's middle school. In any case, it was April; I was tolerably sure that dealing with a lease or buying a building takes some time, but if it was a done deal, the sign would have come down.

I wrote down the phone number, then scooted home, got the game and headed back.

You think playing Scrabble with one set of letters is exciting? Try it with two!

There were some killer words on the board, plus some killer scores. My problem was, I'd much rather have a cool word than a good score. I mean, 'MEANIE' is cool, but worth practically nothing. Get that X in AXIS on the right triple letter square, and you can take the points to the bank.

Fate, karma, it happened again. I had a lot of vowels, I made use of them, filling in simple words here and there. For whatever reason, I finished using all of the available letters first.

There is something terrible about watching people continue to play the game, where you know the best you can do is fourth, and that was if everyone ate their letters. Which they weren't doing.

My cell phone went off again, and I lifted it up. "Tom," I spoke.

"Tom, this is Eleanor. Do you have a minute?"

"I have several minutes. I'd tell you that I'm losing my shirt playing Scrabble, but you might misinterpret it."

She laughed, "Shirt, eh?"

"Shirt," I confirmed.

"I talked to Marcus Stewart hyphen Jones this evening. He runs a teen outreach program in south Phoenix. He will give you an orientation on Tuesday, if you're still interested in seeing what they do."

"I'm interested. What time and where?"

The address I got was in South Phoenix, on Baseline just off Central; a small store front in a mini mall with a big grocery store at five pm. I told her I would be there, and thanked her.

Dad was out by then, grumping, since he was not going to be one of the people who finished ahead of me.

"I have an appointment back at the bank tomorrow after school," I announced. "I can chauffeur, but then I have to split. Tuesday, I'm doing something personal. I'm going to drop everyone off after school, then go downtown."

The last wasn't the whole truth and nothing like the truth, but if I told Mom or Dad where I was going, they'd worry. Downtown was a fib, but better than the worry.

Jenny got one point less than Elizabeth, JR was tied with Mary a few points back. Mom had beaten me; at least Dad got to finish ahead of Shannon.

It was a work/school night, so we left a little after nine. I gave Mary a solid kiss and she returned it. Then Elizabeth and I simply held each other, looking each other in the eye. There was something cosmic about us; I'd already figured that out.

At home, we were ordered to bed, forthwith. I for one, was suffering from extensive zoo time, plus a long, long three weeks.

There were the usual hugs and kisses before we were to climb between the sheets. Mom and Dad went off, hand in hand, grinning like I imagined I had, contemplating JR's pussy for the first time.

I was, in spite of it all the myriad surprises in the last few weeks, unprepared for what happened next.

JR and Elizabeth vanished in tandem to the bathroom; something that didn't excite much curiosity on my part. A few minutes later, they returned. Instead of more hugs and kisses, they stood together, but not touching.

"Tom," JR started, "you're the coolest guy I know. The most understanding."

Jenny nodded.

"JR, if you just want to go off to bed by yourself, that's fine. If you want to snuggle together, and nothing else; that's fine too. Whatever you want."

"Tom," JR said firmly, "shut up!"

I blinked, and then nodded. JR didn't usually get upset at nothing.

"Jennifer and me... it's that time of the month. Both of us at once. Actually, Mom too."

My first thought was stark terror. My second thought was schizophrenic delusion. I had to be dreaming, this wasn't really happening.

"You said the other day you haven't had a period before." I tried to keep my voice from rising.

JR made a face. "There's a first time for everything. I wasn't in a hurry, and now I know why. This isn't much fun."

"But..." I gargled, unable to go on.

"Tom, I know," JR said, hugging me. "We talked about it, didn't we? The bad news is that you were right to be concerned. The good news is, we were lucky. I was lucky. Mom is going to make an appointment for me at the doctor and then we will see what we see."

"I don't know what to say," my voice was forlorn, I felt worse. Once again, my own words had come back to haunt me.

"Tell me that you love me."

"That's no problem," I told her. "I love you. I love you both. But gosh..."

"Yeah," JR replied. "Yeah. The other day, your car got mashed, but you were okay. Today, it's my turn to walk away from what was nearly a major accident. I tell you true, Tom. If I have a daughter, she's going to get the same lectures Mom gave me, plus some of mine. Girls are fine to play with; boys, you just have to wait, take your time. Otherwise you're taking big chances."

Jenny had been sitting quietly, watching us. "Tom, don't beat yourself up over it." It was Jenny's turn to grimace. "I'm going to the doctor too, just for a check up. It's something women have to live with."

"It's something I should have been more careful about," I said emphatically. "When I think about what would happen if JR got pregnant... It scares me. It really scares me."

I'd been careful with Marsha, JR and Penny, asking. By the time I went to the orgy, I'd stopped asking. It had been Sally who told me that she had gone to the nurse for birth control; I hadn't asked. From now on, I was going to ask.

"Well, I'm going to deal with it, and I do want to be with you again, so I will take precautions," JR told me. "I think we should just snuggle up now and get some sleep. Tomorrow is a school day."

We traded hugs, then Jenny wrapped around me from behind, while I did the same thing with JR.

"You really need a bigger bed, Tom," JR murmured, once we were comfortable.

"I think you said that before. But, I'd need a bigger room. I'm thinking about that."

"Mmmm," she said sleepily. "Night Jenny, Tom."

A round of good nights followed, and I lay awake for a few minutes after I was sure they were both asleep.

There were simply too many things to think about; it was hard to keep track of them. But, like I'd told JR the other day, I didn't know what I could do. I liked each and every person I'd slept with. I was beginning to understand that while my hormones could drive my interest, if the interest wasn't there, the hormones didn't get far.

Someday I suppose, I'll be old and toothless, no hormones. I wasn't in a hurry to get there. The world wasn't perfect, I wasn't perfect, but the world was pretty nice and I tried to do the best I could. I let sleep come them, content.