Adding mom to the mix results in excitement and drama.
Everyone is over 18.
Thanks, as always, to LarryInSeattle for his help.
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"Mom!" Donna screams as she leaps up and runs toward our mother with outstretched arms. "What are you doing here? I can't believe you're really here!"
Mom returns Donna's hug with a motherly embrace and pat on the back. Emoting is not her style.
"I'm happy to see you, too, sweetheart. I see no one has gotten around to dressing. How about coffee? Anyone gotten around to making coffee? I don't smell any so I'm guessing the answer is 'no'."
She harrumphs but you don't need a gift for reading minds to know she's bubbling over with happiness and as about as far from irritated as it is humanly possible to be. I climb to my feet.
"I'll get another pot of coffee going, mom, but first let me introduce you to Mark and Julie."
"Gary, I know full well who Mark and Julie are. Go get the coffee going darling. I can give them a hug all on my own. Scoot."
She shoos me away with one flapping hand. I ignore it, step around Donna, and lift mom off her feet in a bear hug. She squeals and bats at my shoulders but she has tears in her eyes and rests the palm of her hand over my heart when I set her down. Terry is waiting.
"Hi, mom," he whispers. She pats his cheek and hugs him.
"I'm sorry, baby boy," she says as she steps away. She includes Donna and I in her gaze. "That includes you two as well. I'm sorry."
"For what?" Donna asks.
"For not being close to you for so long. I needed some time to sort things out after your father died. I was avoiding you. I was drawn to Haiti and I think you've all begun to understand why, but that was only part of it. I saw too much of your father in you. It was too hard. I ran away. That's why I'm sorry."
Terry stares at our mom but speaks to Mark.
"Hey doc, you know anything about senility? My mom seems to have stripped a gear or two while she was away."
"Hush," she smiles at him. "You aren't too big to spank, you know. Although," she continues with what can only be described as a devilish smile, "perhaps you'd enjoy a spanking more than you ought." She pats his flaming cheek again. "Go on you three. I want a few minutes to get to know the doctor and his princess."
Mark and Julie have been standing quietly behind us. They have manners. You don't remain sitting on your ass when someone enters the room. Mark offers mom his hand. She sweeps it aside and gives him a hug.
"Young man," she says as she steps back. "Don't be bashful just because you happened to be nude. We know too much about each other to settle for a handshake." She turns to Julie with open arms and Julie steps right into them. When they step apart, my mom raises both of Julie's arms and looks her up and down. She might just as well have been checking out Donna's choice of a prom dress.
"My dear, you are simply beautiful." Julie smiles her thanks and gives mom another hug.
"Come on," mom instructs and leads them back to the couch. "You two make yourself comfortable. I'll pull over a chair so I can see you both."
She waves a hand at Mark and I know he was getting ready to ask if they should go get dressed.
"Don't be silly. Sit down. I'd join you but after spending most of the day in a plane and then a car with an air conditioner that wouldn't keep an ice cube cool I need a shower before shedding any clothes. I'll join you all later."
We gather in the kitchen. I can hear the murmur of voices from the great room. They're chatting away as if they've been friends for years. When the coffee is ready, I fill up mom's mug. She hasn't been to the cabin in years but that old porcelain monster with its spider web of coffee-stained cracks will always be "mom's mug". She takes it black. To her mind, the habit of adding cream and sugar to coffee is a certain sign of the collapse of civilization.
I hand her the coffee and ask Mark and Julie if they'd like a refill. They don't.
"You hungry, mom?" I ask as Donna and Terry wander over.
"No thank you." She gestures with the coffee mug. "Make yourselves comfortable. Mark and I were just trying to figure out how far back our last common ancestor was."
I take the other chair. Terry sits on the end of the couch. Donna, appearing unperturbed by our mother sitting right in front of her, leans her naked side against her brother's naked hip. If that bothers mom she keeps it to herself.
"You buy all this doc? That were all cousins or something?" Terry asks, trying to peer around the girls to look at Mark.
"Don't you?" is Mark's reply. "You had the same dreams, visions, whatever they were. Julie and I are distant cousins. You three are closer cousins to her than I but still not that close, though, not to sound like a broken record, but a lot closer than a random group of four people should be." He looks across the room and out toward the lake. "The interesting thing is," he continues. "Across all those years, I don't sense any of the health issues that degree of consanguinity," He pauses, "consanguinity means..."
My brother interrupts him. "No offense doc but we know what the word means, 'blood relative'. I'm a lawyer, Gary's a lawyer, Julie's a nurse, Donna's a med student and our mother has a degree in comparative literature. Just because we're from Texas don't mean we ain't got no education."
I keep an eye on the doc. His face is calm but his words are a bit clipped to my ears.
"No offense meant on my part either but seems like I can't win. If I use a medical term I'm pompous and if I use a lay term I'm patronizing."
"It's not a problem doc," I tell him with a shake of the head. "Talk how you want to talk. If you loses us we'll say something."
"Anyway," he continues, "given the closeness of some of the relations one would expect to see some of the diseases associated with intermarriage among families. But there isn't, no hemophilia, no mental or physical defects, nothing, unless you count the weird psychic connection as a defect."