by Donna Callea
“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 goin
g 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.
Chapter 4
David
Politics as Usual
None of us wants to go to the rally. The adults, of course, don’t come right out and say they don’t want to go. Mama just acts real bitchy to everyone, and the dads fake headaches, hide out in the garage, pretend they can’t find their dress shirts—stuff like that—while Simon whines. But when it’s time to go, we all go.
We have to. We’re Gardeners. Grandma is running for Parliament, and we have to be there as living proof that she’s got a loving, do-gooding family.
Shit.
I hate this sort of thing. I don’t know why Grandma believes she’s The Designer’s gift to the people of Ontario Region. I take that back. She doesn’t believe it. She just wants to make everyone else believes it, so they’ll vote for her. The way I see it, if Grandma is the best The Designer can do, we’re all in trouble.
“You can’t wear that skirt,” Mama tells Rebekah, who just turned 14. “It’s too short. Too much of your legs are showing.”
“My legs are almost completely covered,” Rebekah insists. “See. My boots go almost to the hem of the skirt.”
“Not good enough. We’re going to be up on stage with Grandma Gardener. Please change.”
“She’s not my grandma,” Rebekah grumbles under her breath. But she’s gives in, and goes back to her room to change.
Girls Rebekah’s age are required to be covered from the neck down when they go out now. It’s a new ordinance. For their own good, we’re told. As if no one will notice that they’re girls if there’s no detectible skin between their chins and their shoes.
At home she wears whatever she wants. Which can be a problem, too.
The other day Uncle John caught Papa Andy staring at her while she was all curled up on some cushions, wearing a loose, sleeveless nightgown, reading a book. It’s been really hot and humid lately. After dinner we usually all strip down to our shorts, except for Mama and Rebekah, of course. I’m sure Rebekah thought she was sufficiently covered up in that nightgown. And it did cover her up from collarbone to toes. But the material was light, and all the windows were open letting in a breeze. And you could tell she didn’t have anything on underneath.
Uncle John didn’t have a fight with Papa Andy or anything. He just said, “Hey, Andy, she’s your daughter now. Remember?”
Then, later on, I noticed Papa Tom, Uncle John, and Papa Andy having a quiet, private conversation in the den that I’m pretty sure was about Rebekah. Uncle John is actually my father now, since he married Mama when they came to live with us. But I still think of him as an uncle. He’s too new to the family to be considered a father, in my opinion. And no one minds that I still call him Uncle John. Simon, though, calls him Papa John. Simon never thinks for himself. He’s only six now, but I’ve got the feeling he�
�s always going to let people tell him what to do. He’ll make a wonderful seventh husband for some bossy woman when he grows up.
Rebekah and I almost never spend any time alone together. No one spends time alone around here. It’s too crowded. And I’m careful not to stare at her the way Papa Andy did. It’s strange, though, living in the same house with her. I think about her when I shouldn’t. I think about her in ways I probably shouldn’t. Sometimes I don’t think about anything but Rebekah.
Mama has found her two other girls to be her friends. They’re about her age, and they do things together sometimes. I don’t know what they do. Girl stuff, I guess. But Rebekah says she doesn’t really feel comfortable with them. The other two have been friends since they were little, and she feels like an outsider. I think the only person Rebekah is going to need, or feel comfortable with when we’re older, is me.
At the rally, Grandma looks us all over before we go on stage with her, and gives us some last minute instructions. She wants to make sure we won’t embarrass her. Then she stands behind a podium on the right side of the stage, while we fan out behind her, along with my three old grandfathers, and my three new grandfathers, who are younger than my dads.
On the left side of the stage are Grandma’s opponent and his family. He seems nice enough. If I were old enough to vote, I think I’d vote for him.
If you’re male, you have to be at least 25 to vote, and part of a family. Women can vote at 18 if they’re married. I guess that’s because 18 is the age girls are supposed to start families, but you never hear of a man becoming a husband unless he’s at least 25.
Single men don’t get to vote. There are some protest signs about that at the rally. They say “Equal Rights for Males” and “End Gender Bias.” I have to agree. But mostly I zone out during the speeches.
The one good thing that would happen if Grandma won, is that she would have to move to Toronto, since that’s the capital of Ontario Region. She’d be in her glory there thinking up new ordinances. Who knows, someday she might even wind up in Chicago, which is the capital of the entire Great Lakes Coalition. Each region’s parliament sends a representative to Chicago, and it might as well be Grandma.