Sundry Days (2 page)

Chapter 2

David

A Day at the Beach

Someday I’ll marry Rebekah, and I’m going to be her only husband.  I’m not going to share her.

She’ll be with us at the beach today. That’s what I’m hoping.

Papa Tom, Papa Ryan, Mama and I have been planning this all week. They said if the weather’s good on Saturday, we would go to the beach.  Every day, for a week, Simon has been asking, “Is this the day we go to the beach?  Is the weather good?”  He’s only 4, and doesn’t really understand how long a week is, or what day it is.  He was all excited this morning, when we told him yes, this was the day, and the weather was going to be good. Papa Ryan attached extra sun cells to the rover, and we all piled in.

We’re going to the big lake, Lake Ontario—not one of the little lakes that are closer to home. The beach is wider, and the sand is a lot better.

Rebekah and her dads will probably be meeting us. They do things with us sometimes.  I didn’t ask Mama or my fathers before hand, because I didn’t want them to think I was hoping to see Rebekah at the beach, but I am.

I’ve known her all my life, and I like everything about her—the way she talks to me like I’m a smart person.  Which I am.  The way she laughs when I act silly, just to make her laugh.  The way she looks.  Rebekah is 12 now, two years older than me.  But she doesn’t treat me like a kid.  Except when she acts like a kid, too.

It’s a long drive to the beach.  About an hour.  And then, after parking the rover in a grassy area—near another rover that looks familiar—we walk a long way over the dunes and across the soft, warm sand to the shore.  Papa Ryan carries Simon on his back.  Mama has a blanket and a stack of towels.  Papa Tom carries a big basket full of food and drinks.  And I’m in charge of the sack containing a ball, shovels and pail, and other beach toys.

When I see Rebekah and her dads already settled on a blanket under a big umbrella, I break into a run.

I’m one of the fastest kids in my grade at school. That’s not bragging.  It’s true.  Running is my favorite sport.  Then swimming, I guess.  Not in the lake so much.  We don’t come here that often. But there’s a big pool at the rec center in town, and I’m in a swim club. Mama and my dads tell me to just have fun, and not be so competitive.  But I like to come in first when we race. Our coach says we’re racing against ourselves, not against each other.  It’s only important to do our best and to be the fittest we can be.  But everyone knows who’s the fastest.

“Rebekah!” I call out, as I run toward her.  “I thought you’d be here.”

She’s happy to see me, too.  I can tell.  Rebekah is a few inches taller than I am, but someday, I’m going to be taller than her. That’s a given.  Her long, reddish hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing a beach hat like mine, tied under the chin with a big brim to keep out the sun. But her ponytail sticks out. She’s got on a beach coverall that’s also like mine, except hers is green, the color of grass.  Mine is blue.  Everyone wears a coverall at the beach, even Mama.  It’s for sun protection. And modesty.

Rebekah hugs my mom, and says hi to my fathers and Simon. The adults get settled on the blankets and Simon starts digging in the sand.

Then Rebekah and I go into the water.  We don’t swim.  We just splash around and duck into the waves and talk.

When Rebekah’s hair is dry it almost sparkles in the sun, like parts of it are on fire.  It’s a color that’s hard to describe. Brown that’s been mixed with orange and red and gold.  When it’s wet, though, it just looks brown.

I notice that Rebekah is starting to grow breasts. I can see the shape of them when her coverall gets wet. They’re not that big, but they’re definitely there.  I’m careful not to look at them.

“I’m glad we came today,” she says.  “My dads have been driving me crazy, and it’s really boring at home.”

Rebekah has just two fathers, no brothers, and her mother hasn’t lived with the family since she was a little girl.  One of her fathers, Uncle John, is the brother of Papa Ryan.

“You don’t know what it’s like, David, being a girl.  I hardly ever had anyone to play with when I was little, and now I have no one to talk to, and no friends.  I haven’t been to an actual school, with actual people, since sixth grade.”

Rebekah gets taught at home by her dads.

“I hate school,” I say.  Which isn’t exactly true, but I think maybe it will make her feel better.

“Yeah, but at least you get to go to the rec center for sports.  I miss doing that.  Do you want to race?”

We swim from a point where we’re both treading water because it’s over our heads, to the shore. I get there first. Then we decide to race on the sand.

Rebekah’s a runner, like me.  She’s actually pretty fast.

We run from the shore to the grassy area, and back again. There aren’t many people at this part of the beach today except our families. Then we splash around in the waves again and see who can float on their back the longest.  After a while, we dry off, sit on the sand where Simon is digging, and we help him build a tower.

“Rebekah is growing so fast,” my mother says to Rebekah’s dads.  No one says anything about how fast I’m growing.

“Yeah, she’s growing up too fast,” says Uncle Danny. 

Sometimes I try to listen to what the adults are saying.  But it’s usually not that interesting.  They talk about work, and people they know, and town stuff.

We eat lunch, and then three of the dads start playing catch, while Mama and Uncle John take Simon into the water. He’s a little afraid of going under, I think.  He can’t swim yet. But Uncle John and Mama each take one of his hands and jump him over the waves, which he likes.

Mama and Uncle John seem different when they’re together, happier or something.  Rebekah notices it too.

Rebekah and I keep digging in the sand by ourselves for a while, building things.

“Am I the only girl you know?” she asks.  “As a friend, I mean.”

“There are two girls in my class,” I say.  I don’t remind Rebekah that I’m only in fifth grade. “But they’re not really my friends,” I add.

“Hey,” I ask her, “do you know why girls stop going to regular school after sixth grade?”  I never really thought much about it before, but now it occurs to me that it’s kind of strange girls get taught at home after sixth grade.

“It’s just the way it is,” she says. “Because of puberty.”

“Oh, yeah,” I nod my head, trying to act like I understand, which I don’t really.  Not that I don’t know about puberty.  My dads have talked to me about how my body is going to change in a few years.  I know how girls are different.  I know about sex.

I just don’t understand why girls have to be so—I don’t know—

and why you never even see any after sixth grade.  They’re rare, that’s the word one of my dads used.  They’re special.  Not like boys.

Probably I won’t be the only one who wants to marry Rebekah, when she’s grown up.  I bet there’ll be hundreds of boys lining up to be her husbands. It’ll be like a contest, a competition, even though we’re not supposed to have competitions.

If it is a competition, I’m going to win.  And I’m not going to share her.

Chapter 3

Susannah

Domestic Disturbances

I’ve got all kinds of information, strategies and techniques in my bag of tricks.  I’m a certified family counselor, after all.  I’ve been practicing for more than ten years.   Tom and I spend our days helping people who struggle with family issues.

So why can’t I help myself?  Or know what to do when it comes to my own family?

I don’t think Tom knows what to do, either.  Not this time.

“We have to think things over,” he says, wavering between husband and counselor mode. “It’s important to look at this from all angles, to make sure it will work for everyone involved.  There isn’t going to be an easy answer.”

He just doesn’t want to come right out and say no. And I don’t either, even though my gut instinct tells me very clearly that it’s not a good idea.

My niece, Rebekah Laurelton, needs a mother.  Her own mother has been out of the picture since she was three.  Danny and John want her to come live with us, even though they say they’ll miss her terribly.

It would be best for her, they both believe.  No one has said anything about it to Rebekah yet.  But Danny and John are pretty sure she’ll happily agree.

She’s not happy now, they tell me.

Well, what 12-year-old girl is happy?  That’s what I want to know.

I’ve known Rebekah since she was a baby.  Her mother, Dora, was my friend.

Dora just couldn’t take it anymore.  She married Danny when she was 18, and Ryan’s brother, John, two years later.  They were supposedly compatible.  That’s what all the pre-marital evaluations indicated.  Similar backgrounds.  Shared values and interests. Personalities that appeared to mesh.

But Dora never really wanted to be a wife, let alone a mother.   She just did what she was expected to do, and then hit the jackpot the first time she allowed herself to become pregnant.  A girl.

I think she must love Rebekah, must have loved her.  How can you not love a child you’ve birthed and cared for through infancy and the toddler years?  Dora, however, was determined to live another life, her own life. And she loved herself more.

She was depressed, she said. I didn’t doubt she was. People sometimes get depressed. They work through it.

But when she told me, right before she left, that she thought Rebekah would be better off without her, and so would Danny and John, I told her that was a load of crap.

Not very professional of me to use those words.  Not very evolved.  But Dora Laurelton, in my opinion, had absolutely no right to give in to her urges and desert her family. Which doesn’t really matter, since that’s what she did.

She went to live somewhere on the coast of Tennessee, and no one here has heard from her since. Dora considered herself an archaeologist, and said she was heading to an outpost to join other “archaeologists”—most of them female, I think—supposedly looking for remnants under the sea of ancient civilizations that got swallowed up in the wake of all the major seismic activity after The Great Flood.

Maybe it’s important work.  But so is mothering a young girl.

Danny and John are good fathers. They’ve done their best. They want to do the right thing for their daughter.  But lately, things have gotten complicated.

It’s Danny who’s the biological father of Rebekah. Unofficially, of course. There’s never supposed to be any talk of biological fathers.  I know that before The Great Flood, it was possible to do paternity tests. But even if it were possible now, such testing would be unthinkable and totally unethical.  It would alter and upset family dynamics. Sometimes, though, there’s no mystery about whose sperm was responsible.

Rebekah looks exactly like Danny.  She has his eyes, his smile, his hair. There’s no mistaking where that gorgeous red hair of hers came from, even though Danny keeps his very short and is starting to bald. The resemblance is obvious to anyone.  And having clearly fathered a girl, he’s considered a great marriage prospect.

There’s a theory going around that men who’ve fathered girls may have a better chance than most of doing it again.

If you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s extremely rare to find any families with more than one girl child.  But that doesn’t stop some people from wanting to do a little experimenting.  Nobody’s going to stop them. After all, our society desperately needs more females.

Danny told Tom and me at the beach the other day that a woman in Rochester proposed to him, and he’s decided to accept. She currently has only two husbands, and is associated in some way with the medical center there.  She’s a researcher, I take it.

Maybe she thinks gingers have something special in their semen. Which would be interesting, but not very helpful to society as a whole, since redheads are as rare as girls.

I don’t know what she’s going to do with him, other than have sex with him day and night, and try and wring a girl out of him.  Her other husbands are no doubt thrilled. But Danny says he likes her.

Rebekah, however, refuses to join that family.  Can’t say I blame her. And she’s old enough.  She has the right to refuse.  But John doesn’t think he can handle rearing his daughter on his own.

So they’ve asked us to take Rebekah.

I’d like to help.  Really, I would.  I’ve offered to spend more time with her, to do more.  I just can’t go along with her moving in with us.  Not now.  Not with a clear conscience.

Why?

That’s the problem.  I can’t give the real reason without thoroughly insulting and/or upsetting people I love.

I’m pretty sure that John wants to move in with us, too.  He hasn’t come right out and proposed.  He’s only asked us to take Rebekah.  But it’s clear he wants to be my sixth husband. Ryan, of course, would approve, since he’s John’s brother, and they’re still very close.  They’re both carpenters and work together.

As for me, I like John a lot.  The truth is, I more than like him. I’m very attracted to him, and have been ever since I met him, when Ryan and I married.  He and Dora were already married by then.  I don’t understand why I have these feelings for John.  He’s physically attractive, yes. But so are my current husbands.  He’s also very gentle and funny and kind. But there’s something more.  Something indefinable.

I sense that he’s attracted to me as well.  Whenever we’re together, he acts as if I’m the most wonderful woman he’s ever met. 

Of course, he hasn’t met that many women.

I suppose after Dora, anyone would be an improvement. But the way he looks at me… Well.   If I’m being honest with myself I have to admit I long to be with him and I want very much to welcome him to my bed.

But John is not the problem.  My other husbands would accept him.

If it were put to a vote now, Seth, Sam, and Andy would almost certainly vote yes, along with Ryan. Seth is a stay-at-home dad and spends all his free time writing novels.  Sam is a dentist.  And Andy is a teacher.  They’re all very civic minded, and don’t require a whole lot of attention from me.  They’re easily satisfied. Plus our taxes would go down, and our housing allowance would go up.  Ryan and John could build an addition to the house and do some other improvements, which would be nice.

If John became my sixth husband, I think I could make it work, conjugally.  Keeping everyone satisfied—or at least not terribly dissatisfied—would be challenging but not impossible.  And there are techniques to keep jealousy at bay.  Every woman who’s had premarital counseling knows them

The real problem is Rebekah.  She wouldn’t be a good fit, no matter how nice it would be for me to have a daughter.  And Tom and I know it.  We’re both counselors.  Our education has focused on domestic issues and we understand what can go wrong.

For one thing, Rebekah is already 12-years-old.  Pretty soon she’ll be a lovely, nubile young woman.  Girls don’t get married until they’re 18. So that means, for six or so years, when Rebekah lounges around the house or comes to breakfast in her nightgown, Tom, Ryan, Sam, Andy and Seth will have to avert their eyes and pretend they feel nothing but fatherly.

Probably they would feel nothing but fatherly. They’re all good men.  But only Tom realizes at this point, how distracting Rebekah is bound to be.

As for David, he’s already infatuated with his cousin, who isn’t really his cousin, after all.

It wouldn’t be fair to any of them, or to Rebekah.

My big mistake is telling my mother about my dilemma.

“Of course you have to add John and Rebekah to your family,” she says. “Do you want to leave that poor man out in the cold?  Did you glean nothing from the Women’s Conference?  We’re at crisis levels, Susannah.”

I know we are.

“You and Tom are family counselors.  What kind of family counselors are you, if you can’t successfully enlarge your own family for humanitarian reasons?”

Hmmph.  As if she’s ever been motivated by humanitarian reasons.

After my brothers and I grew up and left home, she added three husbands to her household.  But not because she wanted to help save the planet.  The new Mr. Gardeners are all just young, handsome, muscular sex objects for her, if you ask me.  Which she most certainly hasn’t. They were available because they didn’t make the grade when they were evaluated at 25, and aren’t considered husband material for young, fertile women.  But they do make nice playthings for a bossy, self-involved, pillar of the community like Mama.

My own three fathers have long been neglected by her. They’re now portly, balding and complacent.  But they’ve still got feelings.

“Mama,” I say, “do you think Daddy, Abba, and Papa are happy with your domestic situation?”

“What a thing to ask.  What’s the matter with you, Susannah?”

“I don’t know.  I just wish things were different.”

“Well, they’re not. So just do what you have to do.”

I don’t know why I let my mother influence me.

I don’t know why I give in, and ultimately vote yes.

Damn The Designer.  This is no way to live.