"Me for showering and getting dressed," I said, as I swung open our door. It seemed like a week since I had worn normal, dry clothes. I admit, I was going to miss the intoxication of three nude Lorraine women, but the precedent had been set; this family never would be the same.
Behind me, Susan's sigh was emphatic. "Me, too, Tommy."
"I'm wearing my only clothes," said Sandra, but I could use a fresh-water wash; I can't tell if I smell of seaweed or fish or semen or all of them."
"If you've all calmed down, now..." Stephanie began. "I think I'll dress and borrow a car, okay?"
"Not okay," said Sandra wearily. "Not mine.
"Not mine," said Susan.
"Well, I can walk as far as George's place," said Stephanie angrily. "What is this control trip with you two?"
Sandra turned to her. "Just for a few minutes, will you listen, for a change? I am your mother, you know."
Stephanie stood silent, fists on her hips, defiantly patient.
Sandra said: "I would like to tell you, and Susan and Tommy, what has been going on with me." She added, "I mean specifically my sex scene—that's actually non-sex scene—since your father died. And I might explain that I did not have an entirely uneventful virginity before I was wed."
Stephanie frowned slightly. She had a characteristic gesture, probably unconscious, while deciding what to say. Her right hand came up and cupped her left breast, gently massaging its nipple. She said, as though reading out her own thoughts, "And then, I'm next, right? You tell, and then I explain why I'm an out-of-control nymphomaniac?
"Right?" she insisted. "That's the goal of this exercise?"
Her mother said, conversationally, "You never knew that I was in the Marines, did you?"
"What?" demanded Stephanie, almost shouting, dropping all pretense at blasé lack of concern.
"In the fucking Marines, Mom?" It was Susan, from the bottom of the stairs, who had paused on her way to a shower.
"Oh," I murmured. "Well, that explains some things, anyway."
"I never mentioned it. I was dishonorably discharged."
But she added quickly, "But it wasn't my honor," laying an emphatic palm on her chest. "I was screwed."
"You don't mean literally...?" I paused.
"If we can get dressed, mix a few drinks, and postpone the next orgy for about an hour, I will tell you," said Sandra.
"Fine with me," said Stephanie. "This is more interesting than inciting Toy Boy George to caveman behavior."
"Thank you, dear," said Sandra. "Just an hour."
"And I tell mine, too?"
"That is up to you, Stephanie. I hope so. I show you mine, you show me yours."
"The only thing I haven't done is suck your clit," said Stephanie. She already was headed toward the stairs.
"And between mother and grown daughter, that is not ordinarily viewed as cause for reproach." Sandra could keep up with Stephanie sally for sally.
Susan stepped aside, letting Stephanie go first, lingering at the bottom of the stairs. When we heard Stephanie close the guest-bathroom door, Susan turned. "Why is she so sick?"
"She's testing on us everything for which she ever thought or feared we might condemn her—disown her," said Sandra slowly. "She has probably wondered for 10 years what her family would say if they knew how she was acting."
"Yeah," said Susan. "I see that. Yeah."
"And I am expecting you and Tommy, if called upon, to tell all," said Sandra.
"Sure," said Susan, with a shrug. "It isn't very titillating."
***
"I was a little old," said Sandra. "Twenty-one when I enlisted."
We had taken our customary positions around the coffee table, Susan and I on the sofa, Sandra and Stephanie in the two easy chairs opposite us. Sandra held a dirty martini with three olives; the rest of us white wine. Generational difference.
"I really wanted to do it. 'Desert Storm' had gone down that year and everyone felt, 'Hey! We've got a great military. Heroes. Shock and awe.' Remember, the country had been living with Vietnam for decades. America beaten. Wrong cause. Napalmed people. Let down our allies. God-awful situations in Cambodia and in the Vietnam with the boat people. Ugh! War!"
I said: "All the heroes back then had been long-haired war protestors, self-righteous draft dodgers, and hippies on LSD. Also, brave little guerrilla fighters for independence. Until they took over in Cambodia and we found out that they were genocidal communist mass murderers."
"Yup, all that," said Sandra. "Perhaps we were ready for something new. Desert Storm seemed to blast all that away in 48 hours of U.S. invincibility.