by Selena Kitt
“I just want you to know,” he said, when he minimized the last photo. “It’s taking every ounce of self-restraint I have not to take you. Right here, right now.”
“What’s that?” I pointed at the screen, looking for a distraction. There were thumbnails at the bottom, and they weren’t pictures he’d taken on the beach.
“Oh, those are some of the other pictures I’ve taken.” He clicked on another folder, flipping through some of the other photos. Some were of Mrs. B—I recognized her body, although I’m sure he didn’t think I could, since I wasn’t ever supposed to have seen her naked. There were other women too. I even recognized Dani and Mrs. B together, although I couldn’t see their faces.
“What about that one? She looks…” I reached over, clicking the laptop mouse, bringing the picture full screen before he could stop me.
I gasped out loud, covering my mouth with both hands.
“You weren’t supposed to see that.” He closed it quickly. Not just the photo, but the laptop too.
“Doc!” I exclaimed. “That was Mrs. Holmes!”
He winced, nodding.
I wasn’t supposed to know that the other woman I’d seen in the photograph was Mrs. B either.
“She was so young!” I whispered, staring at him.
“It was in college,” he said. “That’s… that’s where we met her.”
“You… and Maureen Holmes…” I was incredulous. “And Mrs. B?”
“Yes,” he admitted, setting his laptop aside on the nightstand, turning to me to take my hands.
“But not me,” I whispered, looking down at my hands in his, lifting my gaze, meeting his eyes. “Not me.”
“Gretchen!” he called.
But I couldn’t listen. I went into my room and shut the door, ignoring his knock.
I curled up, pulling the covers up to my nose, wondering what in the world was wrong with me. Because, clearly, it was something. The Baumgartners said they loved me, but it wasn’t really true. They wanted me—I felt it, I knew I wasn’t crazy—but they wouldn’t act on it. I didn’t understand. They’d been with—my God, who hadn’t they been with? Dani, Ronnie, even Maureen Holmes, who was the most fundamentally Christian, straight-laced woman I’d ever known. She obviously hadn’t been on the straight and narrow in college.
Doc said it wasn’t about me, but it was. It had to be.
When I heard the baby crying and Mrs. B called me, I got up and went downstairs, because it was my job. I took Holly and made her a bottle, curling up on the couch and feeding her while Mrs. B ordered a pizza. We were supposed to barbeque steaks and hamburgers on the grill, but it was still storming.
Janie and Henry decided on The Princess Bride, a family favorite, and we put that into the DVD player and watched it while we ate pizza in the living room. Mrs. B wanted the baby, so I handed her over, cleaning up paper plates, putting the leftover pizza in the fridge. I did all of that on autopilot, just going through the motions. Doc stopped me in the kitchen when I was cleaning up, trying to explain, but I couldn’t listen. It hurt too much.
It was still raining when bedtime rolled around. I got the kids into pajamas, their teeth brushed, tucking them in at the end of the hall. The baby slept in a Pack’n Play in my room and she was already out, sucking on her fist in her sleep. I heard Mrs. B call my name as I headed down the hall to my room.
“Everyone tucked in?” she asked.
“Safe and sound.” I stuck my head in, seeing them sitting up in bed, watching TV. “I’m going to turn in.”
“Goodnight, Gretchen.”
I went straight to bed. I just wanted to close my eyes and disappear. Maybe when I woke up, this week would be over. Outside, rain pelted against the side of the house. As bright and gorgeous as the day had been, tonight was just as turbulent and dark. All of my hopes, even my expectations, about what would happen with the Baumgartners, had blown away with the wind.
I heard Doc and Mrs. B talking, their voices low. If I had to listen to them have sex tonight, I was going to kill myself. I thought about going downstairs to sleep on the sofa, as I listened in on their conversation. I had forgotten to shut my door and theirs was slightly open, as usual.
“She feels like it’s her fault.” That was Doc.
“Oh Doc, no,” Mrs. B protested. “Did you tell her?”
“What do you want me to say? ‘I’m sorry, Gretchen, we love you but we can’t be with you because Carrie’s afraid we’ll lose the baby?’”
I blinked, frowning at the wall.
“I know you think I’m being stupid.” Mrs. B sighed.
“Not stupid.” Doc chuckled. “A little overly cautious, maybe.”
“Once she’s ours, Doc, I won’t worry so much,” she pleaded with him. “I just don’t want anything to go wrong. If I lose this baby…”
“We’re not going to lose Holly.” He sounded resolute.
“But… we could.”
“Carrie, anything could happen.” He sighed. “I could walk outside and get struck by lightning.”
Thunder crashed, followed by a flash of lightning, as if to prove his point. They were quiet for a while, the sound of the television filling the gap. They were watching Seinfeld.
“I feel awful,” Mrs. B said.
“So does she.”
“Oh Doc. What are we going to do?”
“I love you,” he told her. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You know what I want,” she cried.
“Yes,” he replied softly. “I want Gretchen too.”
I felt my heart swell at this revelation. Was it really true? They did love me? They did want me? It was just Mrs. B’s fear of some social worker coming along and taking the baby because they found out the Baumgartners were polyamorous that was keeping them from acting on it? Not that I blamed her, really. The social worker who had been assigned to the Baumgartners was a very straight-laced sort. She reminded me, in many ways, of a young Maureen Holmes. And the requirements and background checks and home visits had been extensive and rigorous.
Mrs. B was right—if we were all lovers and anyone did find out, they would take Holly back. I closed my eyes, feeling tears stinging my eyes. I couldn’t risk them losing the baby. I would never do that. I wasn’t going to jeopardize Holly’s future for my own selfish pleasure. So once again, the thing I wanted most, I couldn’t have.
“We can’t, Doc,” Mrs. B said, and I nodded in agreement, feeling tears slipping down onto my pillow.
“Yes we can.” Doc’s words didn’t change my mind—and I knew they wouldn’t change hers either. But what he said next made me doubt. “What we can’t do is live our whole lives afraid of something that may or may not happen. What kind of life is that?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I wish I knew what to do.”
She said she didn’t know, but she did. I knew too. Even if Doc wanted something different—even if we all did—there were more important things.
That’s what I told myself as I buried my face in my pillow and cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Seven
I don’t know why I was surprised when we ran into Maureen Holmes at Dairy Queen. They vacationed in Key West every year around Christmas. What should have surprised me was the fact that it had taken so long for the Baumgartners to run into her the first time. Still, when we ended up in line together, it was more than a little awkward, for so many reasons, not the least of which was the fact she’d fired me, and the Baumgartners had turned right around and hired me.
And, of course, there was also the fact that now I knew what Maureen Holmes looked like without her clothes on.
Awkward.
Especially since Doc and Mrs. B and the baby stayed in the car while I took Janie and Henry up to the window to get ice cream. I decided to just pretend I didn’t see them, but that didn’t work for long because Janie recognized Rebecca Holmes and struck up a conversation with her, and Henry then started talking to Rebecca’s brother, Isaac
, and Mrs. Holmes had to notice me then. It took her a minute. Not to place me, I don’t think—she recognized me when she looked at me—but to make some sort of sense of why I was paying for the Baumgarter kids’ ice cream. Thankfully, the Baumgartners saw what was going on and got out of the car, bringing the baby with them.
“Maureen!” Mrs. B smiled brightly, Holly on her hip as she approached. “How are you?”
“Hello.” Maureen gave her a smile back, although it wasn’t quite as bright. “I assume you’re at the time-share?”
Doc hung back, watching, not saying anything. He just nodded to Mrs. Holmes and half-smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes. The kids were already gathered in a little group, the girls talking about boys, and the boys talking about sports. Janie and Henry loved Key West, but the older they got, the less they got along, and they really missing having friends around. And I missed it for them, because I had to break up and redirect the constant bickering or we’d all go insane.
“Yes, same old place.” Mrs. B laughed, bouncing the baby. The sun was in Holly’s eyes—she must have taken her hat off in the car—and she was fussy. “Are you, James and the kids here for long?”
“Just a few weeks.” Maureen tucked her short hair behind her ear, glancing over at the kids. They’d gravitated to one of the picnic tables, girls on one side, boys on the other, chatting between licks of ice cream. “You know, our church does a vacation kids camp here every year.”
“Oh that’s right.” Mrs. B used her hand to shade the baby’s eyes, but Holly was now fussy and didn’t want to be soothed.
“Here, I’ll take her, so you can talk.” I held my arms out for the baby and Mrs. B handed her over.
“So, Gretchen is working for you now?” Maureen Holmes gave me a cool glance as I carried the baby, putting her up over my shoulder—a position she loved, because she could see everything—as I walked toward the picnic tables to join the kids.
“What does a nosey pepper do?” Henry asked.
The kids all looked at him, then at each other, their ice cream cones in various states of melting in the hot, Florida sun.
“Gets jalapeno business!” Henry exclaimed and everyone cracked up.
I smiled, rolling my eyes, glancing back at the Baumgartners and Mrs. Holmes. I couldn’t help looking at her differently since I’d now seen her naked. Granted, those photos had been taken years ago, but still. I couldn’t believe that girl and this woman were the same person. The Mrs. Holmes I knew thought sex was exclusively for procreation and that anything else was a sin. I think their religious ideas mostly came from her husband, who seemed even more into it than Mrs. Holmes. At least she slipped up once in a while and took the Lord’s name in vain or let profanity slip, but I’d never even heard James Holmes say “goshdarn” let alone “goddamn.”
I couldn’t imagine restricting myself to the level that the Holmes’ had. Not only could they not have sex unless they were making babies—and Mrs. Holmes couldn’t have any more kids, had had a hysterectomy due to a cancer scare years ago—I couldn’t figure out what they said to each other when they were having sex? How did you fuck without saying, “Oh God!” at least once? I don’t know, maybe it was okay to say it in the middle of sex, if you were praising Him? I didn’t think the Holmes’ even had sex anymore, since Mrs. Holmes’ operation. I’d never heard them, in the entire time I’d lived with them.
Mostly, I felt sorry for the kids. Isaac and Rebecca were spoiled rotten brats, but it wasn’t their fault. They had to live with Maureen and James Holmes. I thought they would have been better off adopted out somewhere rather than have to live under that kind of repression. They were going to grow up to either be just like their parents and raise repressed kids just like them, or they were going to go absolutely wild once they got out of the house. I was betting in the latter. In fact, I once told Ronnie I thought Becca Holmes would end up pregnant before she was out of her teens. Probably sooner rather than later.
“I’ll ask my mom if we can go!” Janie said excitedly, already hopping up off the picnic table. I hadn’t been paying attention to what they were talking about, but I put a hand on her shoulder, sitting her back down.
“Ask your mom what?”
“Becca said there’s a huge fair, today and tomorrow! They have face painting and a bouncy house and rides and everything!”
I glanced up to see the “adults” were still talking, but they were moving closer to us, walking toward the picnic table.
“Can we go, Gretchen?” Henry asked. “Please? Pretty please? Ask Mom for us! She’ll listen to you.”
“I’m not sure if you really want to go to this fair,” I said, frowning.
I knew exactly what they were talking about. The Holmes’ church—which wasn’t really a church at all, more of an offshoot of a regular church that had gone all cult—sponsored a trip every year to Key West for the kids. There was a week-long camp where they played games, sang songs, swam with dolphins, memorized Bible verses, and prayed a lot, and in the end, they had a big celebration where they hired clowns and had fair rides and all sorts of things kids love.
The kids earned “points” all week long to “spend” at this fair. One of the ways to get the most points was to bring non-religious friends with you to camp, or even to the fair at the end. They believed that teaching children their beliefs from a very young age was the best way to convert them to the “ways of Christ.” I’d heard it enough when I lived with the Holmes’—had pretended to be “saved” myself, so I wouldn’t have to listen to Mrs. Holmes proselytizing all the time. They’d only hired me because they’d known my aunt and thought I was already part of their religion. My aunt had died—complications of Lupus—the year before I got the job, so they had no idea I was lying through my teeth.
“I know the kids would just love it!” Maureen smiled at Janie and Henry, standing behind her own daughter, petting her dark head. “I can have them back tomorrow.”
“We can go?” Janie was bouncing in her seat.
“Please, Mom!” Henry was already begging. “Please! Please!”
Mrs. B looked at Doc. He shrugged, an “it’s up to you” sort of gesture.
“I guess I don’t see why not…” Mrs. B hesitated, glancing at me.
I shrugged too.
It wouldn’t kill Janie and Henry to be around the Holmes’ for a day or two. You didn’t get converted in a day. And if I knew those two, they’d come home with all sorts of rancor at the idea of anyone trying to convince them to do or believe anything. I didn’t like Maureen Holmes, and she didn’t like me—not anymore, not since she’d found condoms in my purse and fired me for assuming I was having premarital sex, which I was, but that wasn’t the point—but I didn’t think she was evil or anything. Just sadly misguided and slightly delusional, like most fundamentally religious folks.
“Great, I can pick them up in an hour.” Maureen glanced at her watch. “Same old place?”
“Yep, same old place.” Carrie smiled. “It was good to see you, Maureen.”
The kids couldn’t sit still the entire ride home. They couldn’t talk about anything but the fair and playing with the Holmes’ kids. I helped Mrs. B pack an overnight bag for each of them.
“Gretchen, are you okay with them going?” she asked as we carried the bags downstairs, putting them on the kitchen table.
The kids were out back, working on their sand village. They build one every year, and it got more and more elaborate. This year, there was a castle with a moat.
“I know they didn’t treat you very well.” She went to the refrigerator to get a wine cooler. “But she is an old friend.”
“It’s fine, Mrs. B.”
“Will you please start calling me Carrie?” She brought two wine coolers over to the table, handing me one.
“Sorry,” I apologize for forgetting—again—about her request. “Um, I shouldn’t be drinking this, should I?”
“One wine cooler won’t hurt you.” She winked, clinking h
er glass with mine. “We’ll be without kids for the night. Well, almost. And Holly’s finally started sleeping through.”
I took a swig from the bottle, loving the fruity burn down my throat.
“We were really close once, you know,” she told me.
I nodded. I knew just how close they’d been.
“What happened?” I asked.
“She was engaged to James at the time. The man she’s married to now. For a while, I thought they might break up. That she might… I don’t know, break free of that life?”
“Yeah.” I remembered when my aunt had joined the church, how gradual the slide was into crazy, until before you knew it, the person you once knew didn’t exist anymore.
“I don’t mean to be judgmental.” Mrs. B drank her wine cooler, looking out the back sliding door at the water. “If she was happy, I’d think it was wonderful for her. I have nothing against religion or spirituality. But… does she look happy to you?”
“Oh, I know she isn’t.” I shook my head. “She’s a very angry, bitter person.”
“That just makes me sad.” Mrs. B sighed. “Do you think they’ll be okay with her?”
“Oh, they’ll be fine.” I waved her concern away. “There will be some sort of pressure to convert, there always is. At every gathering, there’s a preacher who does a call up to the pulpit for the unsaved to accept Jesus into their hearts and all that. But Janie and Henry are old enough to know their own minds. And thankfully, they’ve had your influence. They’ll be fine. And they’ll have a blast at the fair. It is a lot of fun.”
“It broke my heart, the way they treated you.” Mrs. B frowned. “I can’t even imagine, firing a girl in her twenties for suspecting she was sexually active? What did they think, you were going to be a nun?”
“No premarital sex allowed.” I tipped my wine cooler up, taking another drink. “No non-procreational sex actually.”