Not This Time
32
Grown Up Kids
“MOM, CAN I USE THE CAR?” Emily called as she hung up the phone. She was sixteen years old with her driver’s license and I found that once again if I wanted to go anywhere, I rode the bus. On a Sunday afternoon in July, though, all I wanted to do was go to the bedroom and lie naked in front of the air conditioner. Hmm. Robin was with a friend’s family at the beach. Lily had volunteered to run Charlotte to a friend’s house over on Sheridan Avenue. Bruce was puttering in the garage. Maybe that air conditioner could get a workout this afternoon.
“Where are you going?” I asked responsibly. Just keeping track of the six of us required a calendar in my head.
“Um… just out to Lake Minnetonka to meet some friends. We’ll probably go swimming.”
“What friends?”
“Uh… Ted. Lisle is coming, too.”
“Ted invited you and Lisle to Lake Minnetonka?” I asked.
“He sort of invited me. He watches birds, you know. He told me he’d teach me how to spot loons on the lake,” my daughter bubbled.
A wave of vertigo washed over me. I’d been here before. Willa. When so much was different, could this first date of my daughter’s be so close to the same? Déjà vu all over again. It always took me by surprise. I sat at the table and did my best to continue the conversation with Emily.
“And Lisle?”
“Well, John sort of invited her to swim off his parents’ boat.”
“So, you are double dating?”
“Date?”
“Emily, a boy invited you to go birdwatching with him. A boy invited Lisle to go swimming on a boat. Don’t you think that qualifies as a date?”
“Oh. I guess so. Can I go?”
“Of course you can. But do Ernie and Margaret know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get Lisle on the phone and make sure she tells them because I’m going to call to make sure they’ve agreed. Then we will talk about the rules.”
“Mo-om.”
“Don’t worry, honey. I’m not going to interfere with you having fun. I just want to make sure you are safe and prepared.”
“Prepared?! We’re not going to have sex!”
“I meant for emergencies. Like what are you going to eat while you are swimming off the boat?”
“The boat?”
“Do you really think you are going to spend all your time birdwatching while your best friend and her boyfriend are laughing and splashing in the water?”
“Oh.”
“And honey…”
“Yes, Mom?”
“The answer is yes. You can use the car. For your very first date. Ever. I love you.”
When I talked to Lisle’s parents, Ernie was set to drive them in the Lincoln and stay on shore watching them the whole time. I discouraged him. Margaret discouraged him.
“Ernie, you can’t drive your daughter on a date in the pimp-mobile,” Margaret screamed at him. “Never! Ever!” Eventually, both Emily and Lisle thanked me.
“There are no children in the house,” I said when I stuck my head in Bruce’s garage workshop.
“Really? That’s unusual.” Dense.
“I’m going to spend some quality time in front of the air conditioner in the bedroom.”
“That’s cool.” Clueless.
“Naked.”
“Oh?”
“With Lily.”
“Oh!”
“Just in case you develop an interest.”
The interest developed rather well. With three children, after-school activities, work schedules, volunteer work, school, and friends, it seemed like we didn’t spend nearly enough quality time with just the three of us. Lily was already naked when I got to the bedroom, stripping off my sports bra and shorts. Walking from the July heat into the air conditioned room had predictable results for both Lily and me. We spent our first few minutes standing in front of each other with just our lips, tongues, and nipples touching. When we paused to catch our breath, we found Bruce standing next to us showing his appreciation.
We went to the shower and I washed Lily’s hair while Bruce washed mine, his cock wedged nicely between my butt cheeks. Lily and I had made a concerted effort to regain our shapes when the kids started school and even though I was a little broader in the bum than I’d been as a teenager, I was pleased that Bruce was turned on. We switched so Lily and I could wash Bruce’s hair. That took as much time as washing ours since Bruce wore a ponytail that extended below his shoulders.
“I love you, my darling wives,” Bruce whispered when we lay in bed. “I am so lucky to have found you.”
“I want to feel you in me,” I sighed. “Now. Please.” Bruce rolled on top of me and I felt his marvelous cock part my folds to slide into my hot center. I tugged at Lily to straddle my face. It was a favorite position for all of us. And as I looked up into the moist flower of my wife, I couldn’t help but think how much I enjoyed licking her and how different it was than when I was a frightened nineteen-year-old. Somehow things had changed so that when I touched her clit with my tongue, not only did she get excited, but I got more slippery as well.
Bruce noticed the difference as his cock glided more fluidly.
“Our lover is getting turned on because she’s licking you,” Bruce whispered to Lily.
“I’m getting turned on because she’s licking me,” Lily responded. They kissed and we were all too busy to talk any longer.
In other news, I mortgaged my house and the shelter for as much as I could get in 2009 when rates dropped below 5%. I knew they’d go lower, but I needed the money to invest in other properties that were coming on the market. Housing prices started dropping in 2009 and I bought two apartment buildings in the Washburn Neighborhood. Those were two of the twelve buildings that were picked up at fire sale prices that year. The previous owners were already mortgaged to the hilt with loans advanced by banks that couldn’t support the notes in the final years of the Bush presidency. They filed bankruptcy and let the properties go to banks that were happy to get thirty cents on the dollar for their loans. Jim followed my lead and bought five apartment buildings. Gordon bought three more. The last two were purchased by Ernie Anders. He immediately turned them over to Jim for management as did Gordon and I.
My baby was graduating from high school.
And my other babies were finishing fifth and sixth grades. They had three happy and proud parents. Even though Emily had shocked us in April, just before her senior prom. I couldn’t believe she chose to address all three of her parents at once. She waited until everyone was in bed before she knocked on our bedroom door. The three of us had just settled into bed but hadn’t turned out the light yet.
“Moms and Dad, can we talk?”
“Of course we can, sweetie,” Bruce said. “What’s on your mind?” We were lying with Lily sandwiched between us, but we’d long-since learned to wear something to bed unless we locked the door.
“Well, I guess I’m eighteen so I wouldn’t have to talk to you about it, but I’ve always talked to you about everything, you know? So, anyway, I’m a little behind many of my classmates, but I’ve always been really careful and… well, I want you to know that I think I’m going to become sexually active.”
Bruce started to sputter, Lily giggled, and I rolled my eyes at both of them, hushing Bruce with my finger.
“Thank you for telling us, honey. You’re a big girl and have shown you are responsible. Is there anything you want to ask us?” I said. My heart was breaking, but I wouldn’t let her know that. She’d come to us in trust and love. And she was older than I was when I started… shit!... almost nineteen years ago.
“Well, kind of,” she continued. “Actually, sort of two things. What’s the difference between all the different kinds of condoms at the drugstore? I know the basics, but there are like fifty different brands and kinds of condoms and how do you ever buy the right one? And why are they flavored and glow in the dark and ultrathin? How are you supposed to choose? And will I need one or a dozen? I’m so confused!”
“The boy should always have a condom or not get to go that far,” Bruce declared.
“Honey, girls are as responsible for their own health as the boys are. You should always know what’s being stuck in your vagina,” Lily admonished. Bruce groaned.
“But she’s our baby.”
“Bruce,” I said. “Maybe this is too much for you.”
Emily just reached over and hugged Bruce.
“Thank you, Daddy. You know I’ll always be your little girl, but I’m grown up now, too.”
“I know, sweetie. And I’m very happy for you. I didn’t think it would be this hard to see you grow up. But I’m so proud of you.”
“I say we take a field trip,” I said. “We’ll go down to the drugstore and look at the selection, explain the types, and you can choose.”
“I want to go!” Lily said enthusiastically.
“Bruce, your opinion is important. Can you do it?”
“For our girl? Of course I will.”
“Oh, goody. Can we do it tomorrow?” Emily asked. We all agreed and figured we could do it while Robin and Charlotte were in their afterschool swimming class.
“What else is on your mind, honey?” I asked. “You said there were two things.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s kind of personal.” She’d gone through the whole condom discussion without batting an eye, but now she was blushing scarlet.
“Go ahead, honey. We love you.”
“Um… How does it work? I mean, I know where a penis goes and all that sort of stuff. I mean… with… like three of you. I mean, with two girls and a boy?”
Oh. My. God.
We finally got the whole picture on prom night when Emily and Lisle were picked up by their date, Carl. Ernie and Margaret had come to our house with Lisle Saturday afternoon so the girls could get ready together. Once they left, the adults planned to have dinner together. It was a first for our families. I’d known them now for ten years and still didn’t completely trust Ernie.
The park had changed in that time and the new joint effort to improve the housing management was just getting under way. I had to admit that even though Ernie still cruised the park several times each day and evening, we no longer seemed to have a flesh market there. There were actually people—couples—who strolled through the park in the evening. I knew there were still drug deals going down, but even that seemed to be less.
Ernie was not prepared for one guy to pick up both girls and pose for pictures in every combination we could put them in. When Carl escorted the girls out to a town car to go to dinner, Ernie was still staring and asking, “Which one is his date?” Margaret pulled him aside and explained the facts of life to him. We’d all managed two glasses of good scotch before the shocked look finally faded from his face.
We didn’t renovate the apartments under Loring Properties. Many of them still had four or five college students living in them. But we started a general maintenance program to fix problems—leaks, faulty wiring, inefficient furnaces, broken windows, doors, and locks. That was only about ten percent of the housing in the neighborhood. But more and more, other owners followed our lead. When they tried to raise their rents, their buildings fell empty. Neither the neighborhood nor the apartments were of a quality to support higher rents. We hadn’t made it a new yuppie community.
Gordon and Carla put together several legal papers that allowed the apartments to be rented to multiple people without one person being responsible for the entire rent. That had always been an issue with the apartments rented to a college student who then rented out rooms to two or three others. Usually the person who had the master lease ended up not paying anything until one or more of the subtenants moved out without telling anyone. Then the original lessee would be stuck with the entire rent for the apartment and would get later and later with payments until he or she was evicted. That was also a lengthy and costly process.
Of course, it wasn’t just college students who rented the apartments. All manner of low-income people, formerly homeless, out of work, and just in transition rented from us. We treated them all the same, which included regular cleaning of the halls and common areas plus a clause in the lease that allowed us to inspect the apartment once a month. The thing is, we never threatened people or talked about the condition of the apartment. Our monthly inspections had a specific cycle of sign-offs that included checking the water pressure, heat, drains, and power of every unit every month. People soon came to realize that when we found something in our monthly inspection, we fixed it, even if it was just a leaky faucet. They started keeping their spaces clean so we could get to the breaker boxes, the faucets, and so on. The inspections also saved two lives the first year because we found tenants who were seriously ill.
We got four more buildings through urban development grants, and two other owners put their buildings under our management.
One of our biggest innovations was to have the post office install a mailbox at the corner in front of the shelter. Not a drop box for mailing letters, but a bank of boxes like you find in an apartment building. Volunteers built the little shelter that protected the boxes from the elements. We started a program of giving our homeless mailing addresses. Their street address was the same as the shelter. It was as if they had an apartment there. They could leave the key at the shelter, but they had an address.
We employed vagrants to weed flower beds, paint railings, and wash windows. And we gave them an address. We didn’t pay for time, but for jobs done. We wanted people to point at projects they’d completed and know they got paid for doing that work, not for holding a paintbrush for eight hours. I talked to Carla, and we acquired another building in which homeless men and women could rent an apartment and pay for it with very little labor. It filled pretty quickly and the winter of 2012 saw it full and thriving. Six of our formerly homeless people had landed new jobs and moved to regular apartments. We were transforming a neighborhood without displacing the neighbors.
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