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Message-ID: <40039asstr$1040652608@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: anon584c@nyx.net (Uther Pendragon)
Reply-To: anon584c@nyx.net
Subject: {ASSM} rp "Forget All That 06" {Pendragon} (MF rom wl lac) [6/12]
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 09:10:08 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
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IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to 
read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do 
something else.

    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.

    If you have any comments or requests, please E-mail them to 
me at anon584c@nyx.net.  

     If you save erotic stories, and you prefer that other 
household members not be exposed to them, I recommend that you 
use a file zipped with the PKZip option -spassword.  (Where the 
password that you choose would, presumably, not be "password.")  
This still leaves the titles of the files and the fact that they 
are encrypted open to anybody.

    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 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 mother 
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 old 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 father 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 college 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 Mother 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 man 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 man 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 movies in ten 
months.  Not that movies 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 mother said, "your father 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 TV 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 parents 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 famous 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 sister 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 
grandmother, 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 old 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.  
She got a small spoonful.  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 father 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 family 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 mother 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 parents 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
2002/12/23

This is the sixth segment of the last story (so far) in a 
series of stories about the Brennans.

More of the story can be found at:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/fat_c.htm
Parts 7-9 

The first story in the series is:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/forever.htm
"Forever" 


The directory to the entire series is:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan.htm
Brennan Stories Directory 

The directory to all my stories can be found at:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/index.htm

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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