What Were They Thinking?
6 The Unexpected Agreement
WE DIDN’T WANT to have a heavy discussion in the car about Brian’s relationship with the two girls from Kokomo. He had obviously been communicating with them far more frequently than I was aware. Thankfully, they were a hundred miles away and none of them had a driver’s license.
Of course, if Brian wanted to visit, I could probably be persuaded to drive. The memory of Anna’s soft bosom pressed against mine when we hugged made me rub my legs together in the passenger seat of the car.
There was no chance of a confrontation with Brian over his weekend at the ranch, since our return home was synchronous with Betts’ return from her summer on the horse show circuit. At that very minute, the countdown began. We had two weeks to get her packed and shipped off to Purdue. It sounds like a long time, but time has a way of collapsing in the presence of Hurricane Betts.
I had no time to worry about who my son was dating and no time to fantasize about her mother. Oh, damn! Did I even think that? I needed to focus on getting my daughter out of the house.
As matters happen, my mother fell sick that week and I had to take the week off work just to take care of things. It looked like I would have two weeks of vacation time used up just tending to my mother, my daughter, and running my son back and forth to the fair. Brian’s introduction to cooking with Hannah had led to a real attachment to the kitchen. With my son cooking nearly every day, I was worried that Hayden and I would pack on pounds over the summer—especially when Brian started baking bread two or three times a week. But he was learning about balanced diets as well and both his parents dropped a few pounds. We were both feeling quite healthy.
I was getting a little tired of tomatoes at every meal as Brian narrowed down his selection for his 4-H Foods demonstration. Bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches on fresh bread. Sliced tomatoes with olive oil, mozzarella, and basil. Cold tomato soup. Tomatoes stuffed with chicken salad. Fried green tomatoes. Sesame tomato and cucumber salad. And my favorite, a bloody Mary with Brian’s own fresh seasoned tomato juice. Still, I was looking forward to his demonstration at the fair on Tuesday as the end of tomato season.
When Betts found out about Brian meeting Jennifer and Courtney at the dude ranch for the weekend, she nearly went ballistic. Until she stood up to Brian and discovered that she was now shorter than her little brother. There were some threatening interludes as the two faced off with each other, but things calmed down enough that Betts agreed to take Brian and his date to the fair on Sunday—along with the fresh loaf of bread.
In the contest of wills, Brian declared to Betts that he didn’t have a girlfriend and he could date a different girl every week if he wanted. A bold statement for a kid who couldn’t drive. But it was also a relief. He spent an awful lot of time with Hannah Gordon last year and was heartbroken when they broke up. It was healthier, in my opinion, for him not to form such firm attachments. If I saw such attachments begin to form, I might even suggest that we take a day to go to Kokomo. To get him focused on the girls there. Not for my own benefit, of course.
I couldn’t believe I was thinking this way. Eight years ago, Hayden had an affair that nearly tore us apart. When his mistress called and asked me to agree to sharing my husband, I boldly told her that the path to sharing Hayden lay between my legs and not to call back unless she was ready to put her face there. It had been a key element in saving our marriage and before long, a prime ingredient in our fantasies. I’d teased Hayden with the idea that I was bringing my friend Joyce home to eat. He’d never met Joyce, of course, and when he finally saw her at Cary’s wedding he cocked and eyebrow at me and shrugged. She did have a pretty voice and apparently, Cary found her newly trim body to his liking.
But was I really contemplating what it would be like to have another woman share my marriage bed? Or was I simply allowing a fantasy to take on too much shape? I shook it off as I watched Brian make his cold tomato soup at the fair demonstration. He did well, but there was a redhead who was more a performer than a cook, in my opinion, and edged him out of the first place slot. I was agape when Miss Polly invited both kids to be on The Homemaker’s Hour the next day. It seemed there was a glint of mischief in the eyes of the two. She was baiting him and he was rising to it.
Well, there was another day off work to run Brian around getting ingredients and then arriving the next morning at eight to get his demo set up.
And the mischief began.
Candace fired the first salvo at Brian by accusing him of stealing her lines but confessed that the tomato salad he recommended kept her brother’s fingers out of the struts of her Eiffel Tower cake. Brian returned fire by suggesting that coring the garlic would leave his breath sweet enough for Candace to kiss. There was a chemistry between the two that let them play off each other all the way through the demo and interview.
I wasn’t surprised when Brian suggested that he’d like to spend the rest of the day at the fair. With Candace. Well, what kind of trouble could they get into at the fair?
There was a flurry of phone calls that afternoon and evening as concerned girls lit up the lines to see if it was true that Candace was Brian’s new girlfriend. Betts was no help. Even the girls from Kokomo called. I called Anna late that evening. We. I was sitting in Hayden’s lap in the recliner and we held the phone between us as we talked to Anna.
“You don’t mind my giving the girls permission to call Brian, do you?” she asked. “They pestered me all afternoon until I finally gave in.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem. It was a good reminder to Brian that he’s sworn not to have a girlfriend this year,” I laughed.
“Hmm. Jen and Court are now declaring that he is their famous TV star boyfriend but they are just part-time girlfriends to him.”
“Part-time? How does that work?”
“Marilyn, I have to tell you that Jen and Court are… Well, I don’t think they are actually sexually involved with each other… yet. But they have been closer than sisters for a long time. I see them holding hands and see a peck on the cheek now and then. I have never seen them interested in a boy until Brian. For some reason, they seem to think he is someone they could share. Which I suppose makes each of them part-time. But I couldn’t help but overhear their phone conversation tonight. I think they believe they could share him with someone else as well,” Anna said.
I was flushed by the time she finished this little description. Her two girls sharing my son? If she is okay with that…
“How does that sit with you, Anna?” Hayden asked, covering my discomfiture.
“I’ve had some time to adjust to the idea that my daughter and her friend could feasibly be lesbians,” Anna sighed. “There were times I almost wished they were. Dealing with another girl is so much less messy than with a boy. And I don’t have to worry about either of them getting pregnant. Though, Courtney’s parents and I agreed to get the girls on birth control anyway. You can’t be too safe in this world. What I was saying was that thinking of the two girls together makes it a little easier to imagine them sharing a boy. I’m not sure how it would work, but it does fuel the imagination.”
“We’ve been thinking about that for some time,” I said. “Perhaps it’s not as strange as we were raised to believe.”
“Why don’t we keep in touch on a regular basis, Anna,” Hayden suggested. “We might even get together occasionally… Just to compare our perceptions of how things are developing.”
“If Brian takes after his parents, I’m not too worried,” Anna laughed. “Um… I like the idea of keeping in touch. I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks. Can I call after ten? I’d rather the girls not listen in.”
“That would be lovely.”
Brian’s announcement on television Thursday that he had five girlfriends still blindsided me.
Brian and Hannah had said they were boyfriend and girlfriend a year ago, but they were children. Their ‘dates’ were playdates in the purest sense of the word. Neither the Gordons nor we ever worried that Hannah and Brian might misbehave. It simply wasn’t in the cards. And we’d had plenty of opportunity to play cards together and with Dennis and Abby Hopkins. Our children were a major topic of conversation.
But as I looked out at all the kids in Crystal Lake on Labor Day, I was filled with the sudden awareness and… dread… that we were no longer dealing with children. We were dealing with young, beautiful, hormone-driven teens. When I saw Hannah get off Brian’s shoulders and give him a kiss on the cheek, it was sweet. But when I saw that incredibly beautiful and buxom blonde he’d taken to the fair get on his back, all my senses went on high alert. I could see little blonde babies in their future. I clutched Hayden’s hand and his eyes followed mine. I heard him groan.
“Do you want to ride around on my shoulders out in the lake for a while?” he whispered.
“Don’t tempt me.”
We knew Rex and Maria Davis casually. They were expected to join the picnic later in the afternoon. We had known our children were friends but we didn’t really frequent the same circles. We’d met Rex, a young real estate lawyer at the time, when we subdivided and sold the acre to Ford Barnes next door. His older daughter was about the same age as Jessica. But I don’t think any of us had anticipated that our kids would one day date. I certainly didn’t anticipate the kiss Rose gave Brian when she dismounted his shoulders to make room for Brenda Lenox. I shuffled myself over to the pavilion where we needed to get food on the table for the twenty-some teens we’d gathered at the lake. I lost sight of my son but figured he couldn’t get into much more trouble than what I’d already seen. They didn’t call this Crystal Lake for nothing.
“I think it’s all okay,” Hayden whispered as he petted me in bed that night. I was still mildly disturbed by the sight of my son kissing a girl. Especially one who was so obviously mature. Hayden found the spot near my collarbone with his lips. It made me shiver and lubricate whenever he kissed me there.
“Why are you confident, oh husband of mine?” I asked as I tried to attack his ear. I could already feel his hardness against my thigh and I was pressing my legs open.
“I watched today. I agree that we need to keep an eye out but Brian did not spend more time with any one girl today than with any other. And the girls did not focus all their energy on Brian. I don’t believe all those girls are immoral. So, I imagine they are all, if not as innocent as Hannah, at least not overly sexually active. The boys seemed to respect boundaries most of the time, though I suspect there was more than one pass being made in the water. Some of those breasts are hand-magnets.”
“I have magnets in my nipples right now. Lip magnets.” I dragged Hayden’s face down to my breasts and his lips had no difficulty attaching themselves to my nipples.
If Hayden believed the kids were mostly innocent, I’d go with that.
I didn’t expect either Brian’s or Betts’ freshman years to be quite so chaotic. At least not the first week.
I didn’t really expect to hear a peep from Betts until Thanksgiving. She’d been gone all summer with her friend and her horse. Certainly, it wouldn’t be that difficult to adjust to college life.
“I’m homesick, Mommy,” she cried on the phone Thursday night. As soon as Brian had hung up the phone from his latest conversation with the Kokomo girlfriends, it had rung and Betts was crying in my ear.
“Honey, it’s only been ten days. It will get better.”
“But they’re mean to me!”
“Who?”
“The other girls in the dorm. They call me an aggie bumpkin.”
“And what’s wrong with that? You’ve lived on a farm all your life. There is no shame in it,” I said. I’d already reached for my purse. I’d go teach those bitches a little respect.
“They wanted me to go to a fraternity party. But when I got there, it was all guys pawing on girls and trying to get them drunk. I ran back to my dormitory without telling anyone. I don’t want to get pawed and lose my virginity to a drunk I’ve just met. I won’t!”
Well! That gave me pause. I’d about given up all hope that my daughter had remained a virgin. But if that was what she wanted me to support, I was there for her.
We had a long talk that night. I wished we’d had it before she left so I could put my arms around my little girl and hold her while she cried. But perhaps if she’d been looking in my eyes she wouldn’t have slipped up and mentioned Brian having caught her over a year ago giving oral sex to a boy. So that was it! She professed that he’d given her a wake-up call and she realized that she wasn’t on a good path. We talked until midnight and I finally got her settled enough to go to bed.
Saturday, Brian hit me with something all new. I’d taken a call from the Kokomo girls Friday night while the kids were at the game and dance. The message was short and concise. “Tell Brian we signed the agreement.” The next day, Brian had ‘a suggestion.’
“Hannah won the trip from the paper this month and asked me to go with her,” Brian said.
“Just the two of you?”
“No. Not exactly. We thought we’d ask Jennifer and Courtney to meet us there if they can. Of course, they might not be able to because they were there… uh… this summer.”
“Brian, you aren’t pushing Hannah, are you? I know you are a little more advanced or maybe well-educated than I expected at fifteen, but Hannah isn’t.”
“No, Mom. We signed an agreement.”
“The call last night from Jennifer said to tell you ‘We signed the agreement.’ Suppose you tell me about this.”
What Brian brought to me was a sheet of paper signed by fourteen of his closest friends spelling out that they could all date each other and all promised to abide by the terms of the agreement. It wasn’t legalese and it wasn’t a binding contract, but the kids had promised things like respect, no jealousy, explicit consent, no sexual penetration, and several points that would govern how they interacted. I remembered Hayden’s words that the kids were not immoral and respected each other. I almost cried.
“I like the ‘no penetration’ clause. Brian…” I started. I backed up to regroup my thoughts. “There are fourteen names on this list and only four are boys.”
“Plus, two girls in Kokomo.”
“Aren’t you a little outnumbered?”
“Should I complain?” The brat could act so innocent. Somehow, I managed to keep from laughing outright. I fought for self-control and managed to get my concern out.
“I can see the benefit in this. We used to call it ‘playing the field.’ Only you’ve narrowed the field. It’s going to be tricky keeping to this agreement—especially the no jealousy part. That’s what I’m worried about. Will Hannah get jealous seeing you with other girls on a special weekend for your birthday? She is a very special girl to us and we are so glad you are still friends.”
“Hannah suggested it and I asked her the same question. She likes to be with us, but she just doesn’t like anything that is remotely sexual—I mean like kissing. Even hugging or holding hands is something that we only do occasionally. Mom, I would never do anything in the world to hurt Hannah. I know I’m too young for these feelings and that’s why we all agreed to write the agreement so we protected each other. But I love Hannah. I will never hurt her.”
“You are too old for your age, Brian,” I said. Perhaps it was something about being a younger sibling. Maybe it was Jessica or the fact that he’d been bullied for being small. His actions when he saved Jessica, when he’d engineered the take-down of the gang that beat him, when he rescued Jennifer when she fell from a horse… Or the way he kissed Rose at the beach. My son was older than his biological age would indicate.
I reread the agreement and thought about the added names from Kokomo. And at that point, I quit worrying about whether it was right or wrong for my son to spend a weekend with three girls at a dude ranch. If Jennifer and Courtney were at the ranch, we’d see Anna again. Her cheerful smile, casual wit, and bright blue eyes were all I could see as I stared at the agreement. Maybe we could come to an agreement as well.
“See if you can arrange for Jennifer and Courtney to get there at the same time we do so the mothers can all meet.”
I checked in with Saul Gordon after Brian had contacted his Kokomo girlfriends and he already knew about the agreement. Hannah had shown it to him in its first draft and signed draft. He’d offered a couple of suggestions that had been incorporated into the document.
“I’d like to see a couple points tightened up a bit,” he sighed. “It’s not like I suspect Hannah would agree to anything beyond holding hands or a quick peck on the cheek, but you know I’m conservative enough that I’d like to have all of them exercise a little more restraint than no penetration.”
“Yes. It’s too easy to get out of control,” I agreed. “Maybe we can gently guide them instead of imposing our will. Brian seems to have written the document, with a lot of input. I think he’ll see the problems first off.”
“I think Brian is one of the most responsible teens I’ve met,” Saul said.
“What do you think about the weekend at the ranch idea?”
“Well, once again, I don’t fear for Hannah’s safety. She is a strong-willed girl. But all things taken into consideration, I’d like to see at least one other local girl join the group. You know. It’s a matter of comfort when Brian already has a relationship to… What are their names?”
“Jennifer and Courtney. We’ve met them and their mother.”
“Well, Brian’s pre-existing relationship with them could lead to Hannah feeling like an outsider. She’s been seeing a lot of Samantha Cortales this summer. Do you know her parents?”
“Oh, yes. Lily and I served on a refreshment committee in Brian’s second grade class. She and Sly are nice when you get to know them. I’m not sure what Sly’s job is, but he’s an imposing man and says he works in security.”
“I’ll suggest Hannah invite her and perhaps you and Evelyn can work on convincing Lily.”
As I expected, just after ten o’clock, the phone rang. Hayden and I had it sitting next to us as we snuggled in his recliner.
“Hi, Anna. What do you think?”
“I talked to Bill and Crystal Price, Courtney’s parents. We cross-examined the girls. Do you know about this agreement?”
“I read it for the first time today. Our minister had read it and even provided some input. I think they’re serious,” I said.
“You’ve mentioned Brian being older than his age,” Anna sighed. “I just wonder what will happen when he gets a couple of girls who are more mature than their ages. But I believe, and Bill and Crystal agree, that the girls will be responsible. They’ve already been to the ranch twice with Brian, even though we didn’t know about it at the time. At least this time they are being up-front about it and not trying to contrive something behind our backs. I guess I’m okay with it.”
“Anna, there are fourteen names on the agreement plus your two. How would you feel about meeting some of the other mothers? We could drop the kids at the ranch and then spend the weekend here with other parents.”
“Really?” There was a brightness in Anna’s tone that I wasn’t fully expecting. “If you’re sure I wouldn’t be a burden, I’d love to spend the weekend with you!”
I wasn’t sure that was exactly what I meant. Or perhaps Anna had cut to the core of what I did mean.
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