Art Something
11
First Date
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my Lady Annette,” I said as I pinned the corsage on her dress. She was so beautiful.
“You remembered! Wait, how did you even know?”
“Um… you know that Fay and I aren’t banned from talking to each other since Thanksgiving. We talk a couple of times a week and she let it slip.”
“I’m going to get her back for that. We talk a couple of times a week, too. I told her that I didn’t want to tell you when my birthday was because I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to do anything special.”
“Um… well, I already kind of had it planned before I knew,” I said. “It just made it special.”
“Pen! You were going to do this without even knowing it was my birthday? Why?” she asked.
“Um… I…” Damn words! What do I say? “You always do nice things. I paint. I don’t pay enough attention to you. Or to Morgan. It’s hard. I try. At Thanksgiving, I knew I wanted to do something special. Just for you, Annette. Because I love you.”
We almost didn’t make it to the ballet. But later that night, making love to my Lady was the most beautiful thing I’d ever done.
“What would you like to do this weekend?” I asked Annette. School would be out for the holiday at last. My new piece of art was finished and Ms. Clayborn liked it. I’d shown her a photo on my cell phone of the one I was working on at home and she was pleased that I was working in the same style when I wasn’t at school, too.
“Uh… I can’t go out this weekend,” she whispered to me. I looked at her and about a million things went through my head all at once. My breath caught and my heart thumped. Was Annette going to break up with me? I’d looked forward to having her stay with me, right through the holiday break. Of course, she had to spend time with her family, too. I knew we wouldn’t be sleeping together every night. But… “Shh. Pen, don’t panic, my love. I need to go to the University for the weekend.”
“Why? School is out there, too. Fay will be home this weekend.”
“Noooo… Well, not until Sunday. Pen, I’m going to spend the weekend with Fay. We’re ready. She’s staying Friday and Saturday night so I can be with her.”
“With her?”
“Like I’m with you, Pen.”
“Oh!” Of course! They’d both told me they would become lovers and that the first time it would be just the two of them, like it had been just Annette and me our first time. “All weekend?” We’d only spent a night together the first time.
“Don’t be jealous, Pen.”
“I’m not. Not really. I’m sad that I can’t be with you, but I’m not jealous of you being with Fay.”
“Remember how much time you and I spent together during the summer and all fall before we made love?” Annette asked. I nodded. “Fay and I haven’t had that kind of intimate time together. We’ve been close for years, but we have only kissed and touched each other when we were with you. When you and I made love, we’d been kissing and petting for months. We’d had orgasms together. You’d sucked on my little nipples and I rubbed your erection through your underwear. And even though we’d never done it, we knew how the parts fit together. Sure, there are different positions, but they mostly all involve your penis in my vagina,” she giggled.
“Or my tongue in it,” I reminded her.
“Or your penis in my mouth,” she added. “The thing is, we knew the basics. Fay and I have to discover everything. We want to. But when it comes down to actually putting my face between her legs and licking… Pen, what if I’m disgusted by it? What if she thinks I smell bad? What if we just can’t do it? We’ll never survive!” Tears started leaking out of Annette’s eyes and I pulled her to me. Technically, we were out of the school building and nearly to her car, so I tilted her chin back and kissed her.
“There’s always love,” I said. “It takes us places we never thought we’d go. I love you, Annette.”
“I love you, Arthur Pendragon. Um… I know it’s a school night, but do you think you could spend the night at my place tonight?”
Friday night, I kissed Annette goodbye as she got in her car to go to Fay’s. “Have fun, and bring my sister safely back to our bed Sunday,” I whispered.
“You know,” Annette said, “you’ll have to do the same thing soon. Once Fay and I have made love, it will only be you and she that remain apart. Think about that, darling. Sometime over this holiday, you’ll make love to your sister.” Annette giggled when she felt my response pressed against her pussy. “And then, the three of us will be able to share it all together.” She kissed me again and got in her car.
“Mom and Dad,” I said at dinner, “I want… Um… I think I’ve gotten taller. My bed is too small and it’s giving me a backache. Can I get a bigger bed this weekend?”
“Taller?” Mom said.
“Backache?” Dad added.
My bed was what was known as a super twin. It was plenty long enough and my parents knew it. But when Fay and Annette and I were in it, we had to pile on top of each other. Or they piled on top of me. I was always afraid I’d push Annette out of bed when it was just the two of us. Of course, at her house, in a standard twin that she’d slept in since she was eight, I actually did roll out of bed. My face was burning up by the time my parents finally got around to answering me.
“Is your room big enough for a bigger bed?” Dad asked. “We should go take some measurements after dinner.”
“All new bedding,” Mom sighed and shook her head. “And when she sees it, I suppose Morgan will want one, too.”
“Um… I don’t think she’ll care,” I said. I blushed again. Mom squinted her eyes against it.
“Let’s go,” Dad said as he cleared his dishes from the table.
Without disturbing too much of my art space, we managed to put a queen size bed in my room. Bed, Bath, & Beyond had a nice supply of linens that came in a matched package. I noticed Mom made sure to put a spare set of pillowcases in the cart to match each set of sheets I got. That gave me an idea and I’d have to come back to the store. I was glad that fire trucks and cowboy patterns were only found in twin sets or I’m sure my mother would have chosen one of them just to tease me.
I spent some time Saturday morning working on a new sketch of Morgan and Annette, based on the poster painting I’d done of them at Thanksgiving. I was becoming more comfortable with mixing my real models with the aspects of my dreamscape paintings. They weren’t in bed in my sketch, but in a wild jungle. The trees held features of city skyscrapers in their trunks. The foliage created a bed for them.
When I’d drawn for a while, I stripped my bed and disassembled it. The guys from SleepKing would arrive with the new bed before noon and promised to set it up and remove the old bed. I cleaned my room and even changed the curtains on my window to match the new bedspread. I removed the drying line for my poster paintings and took another box of them to the storage area where all the paintings from my life were kept. I looked at the shelves of boxes. Each one was labeled with the timespan on it. Inside the boxes, I knew each painting and drawing had a date written in pencil on the back. Fay had taken it upon herself when I first started drawing and painting to label each one. When she left for college, she reminded me to do the same with all my new art. A painting or two and sometimes more each day for twelve years. Sketchbooks, drawing pads, newsprint, charcoals. Dad had walled off a room in the basement where the paintings were stored up off the ground. A few years ago, Mom had bought plastic storage boxes and transferred all the art out of the cardboard boxes and into the airtight replacements. Close to forty bins were on the shelves and there was another dozen empty ones in the corner. I stored the box I’d brought down and grabbed an empty. When I turned away from the storage room, my mother was standing behind me.
“Why, Mom?” I asked.
“Why what, dear?”
“Why did you start storing all my little scribbles and colors? Most parents hang them on a refrigerator for a few days until they are replaced by something new. Why did you think this was important? There’s over eight feet of boxes in this room with space for more. Why did you think my little scribbles would be worth this archival effort?” I asked. It was overwhelming. I didn’t even remember what was in most of those boxes.
“Like most of the good things in your life, it was your sister’s idea,” Mom laughed. “Not that your parents didn’t appreciate your efforts and consider your scribbles, as you called them, to be important pieces of major American artistry, but each time I hung one on the refrigerator, it would stay for a few days and then disappear. I happened to see her one day. She thought she was being very sneaky. She took the picture and ran to her room. I followed her, of course, because parents are always taught to watch out for sibling rivalry and I didn’t want her thinking she could destroy your artwork.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said firmly.
“No. I found her with a stack of your paintings piled under her bed. I asked her why she was hiding your artwork under her bed. She said, ‘You throw it away. Don’t touch!’ It turned out that one of your pieces that was hung on the refrigerator had been in an accident. It was splashed by a dropped box of orange juice and was totally ruined. I’d cleaned up many things, photographs and magnets, that were on the door, but had dropped your picture in the wastebasket. Morgan had rescued it, dried it with paper towels, and hidden it. From then on, she took your drawings—many of them before we even got a chance to see them. I told her that I didn’t ever mean to throw away your art, but that it would be damaged in a pile under her bed. So, we went to the store and got our first storage boxes. She kept them under her bed for the first two years, but there was no room for the next box. When we moved here, Dad built this little storeroom, with Morgan’s help, and we switched to plastic airtight containers.”
“Wow. I can’t wait till she gets home tomorrow,” I sighed.
“Son? What are you doing sleeping in here?” Dad asked. “You have a brand new bed.”
“It’s not my bed, Dad,” I said softly. He’d found me asleep in Morgan’s room. “It’s our bed. I didn’t want to sleep in it until they were with me.”
Dad sat on the edge of the single bed, a twin to the one I’d just disposed of. He held my eyes with his gaze and sighed.
“It’s going to happen, isn’t it?” I just nodded. “We knew it would.”
“Is that why you sent her away for the fall? To keep us apart?”
“Yes and no. Morgan le Fay was spending more and more nights in the bed of Arthur Pendragon. And often wearing fewer and fewer clothes. Did you know she started asking us when she could marry you when she was just eight years old? Your mother and I explained to her that she couldn’t marry you because you were her brother. We explained about laws and how she’d grow up to find someone she could marry.”
“That sounds like Fay… er, Morgan.”
“I know your pet names. Who do you think suggested them?” Dad laughed. “Morgan listened to everything we had to say and I’m sure she understood it. Then she looked at us and just laughed. ‘That’s just silly,’ she said. ‘We don’t need a wedding.’ And that was it. We didn’t insist she stay on campus to keep you away from each other, exactly, though I’m sure that’s how it seemed. We did it so you would both be sure to be deliberate. When something is constantly available, it’s easy to just assume that you should have it. It’s like keeping a candy dish on the end table. We couldn’t expect you to not want to sample it. In the same way, we didn’t want the two of you to have sex, to make love, just because you were available to each other. Son, if you do this, make sure it is for the right reasons. She will assume you are married. No, there won’t be a wedding. But when she makes that commitment, it’s for life.”
“To both of us,” I said. Dad raised an eyebrow. “I got a bed big enough for three for a reason, Dad.”
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