Magnus and His Family (Chapter 10)
Kathryn M. Burke
Adele didn't waste any time in having the heart-to-heart talk with her mom. The very next day, she went over to Somerville to have it out with her. Jenna lived in an apartment in a not particularly prosperous part of town—but it was about all she could afford after leaving her husband, and in some strange way the seediness of the place, and of the general neighborhood, seemed to suit her mood. Adele had never liked it—it gave her the creeps—and she also sensed that it really wasn't a good place for her mom. They would have a lot to talk about.
Jenna let her daughter into the apartment with some nervousness and trepidation. She made a token offer of coffee to her daughter, which Adele declined.
"So," Adele said with a big sigh, "you and Magnus . . ."
"I don't want to talk about that!" Jenna said irrationally, as if that wasn't the very reason why Adele was there.
"Mom, come on," Adele said, almost rolling her eyes. "We gotta talk about it. In a way I'm glad it happened, because it makes things easier."
"Wh-what do you mean?" Jenna stammered.
"Mom," Adele said heavily, "you've been pretty unhappy after you split from Dad. Why don't you just admit it? I don't really know why that happened, but maybe you need to start thinking about what you want to do with your life."
Jenna's eyes blazed. "You have no right to talk to me like that, young lady!"
"Mom, we're both adults. We—"
"Especially since you slipped into that man's bed so easily yourself!"
"It was quite a different situation. Anyway, what's done is done. What we need to do is figure out how we're going to proceed."
Jenna eyed Adele with a sudden sense of alarm, even fear. Even now, she could hardly bring herself to raise the issue that was uppermost in
her
mind.
"Magnus," she said, as if uttering the name of some damned soul—"does he . . . does he really
sleep with his own daughter?"
Those last words were uttered in a harried whisper.
Adele sighed again. "Yes, Mom, he does."
Jenna melodramatically slapped a hand over her mouth. "Omigod! That horrible man! And that poor girl!"
"Mom, it's really no big deal."
"No big deal!"
"Mom, Kristen's an adult, just like us. It was
her
decision to begin sleeping with him. And they do it out of love—nothing more. They have a wonderful relationship; they both feel a lot better, physically and emotionally, because of this. I'm not saying everyone should do it. This is a special case, and it works for them."
Jenna listened to this speech with increasing agitation—but then, all of a sudden, she seemed deflated.
"Okay," she mumbled, almost to herself, "if you say so."
"The question is," Adele pressed, "what
we're
going to do. Or, really, what
you're
going to do." With a twinkle in her eye, she added, "You seem to have gotten along with him pretty well."
"Stop that!" Jenna cried. "I—I didn't mean for that to happen. He—he seduced me!"
"And he seems to have done a good job of it. He's just a big teddy bear, isn't he?"
Jenna was on the point of agreeing, but for the sake of her self-respect she couldn't bring herself to do so.
"He made me feel so—so small and weak," she complained.
"Oh, Mom, don't be silly," Adele said. "He's just used to doing that. What do you expect him to do?"
"Especially," Jenna muttered, again more to herself than to her daughter, "when he—"
When he entered my bottom.
"I was so helpless."
"Mom, listen to me," Adele said urgently. "I may not have much experience in this department, but I've been thinking a lot about this.
"You know," she went on sententiously, "women have made a lot of advances in the last several decades, going all the way back to when we got the right to vote. And now we're showing the world what we can do! I mean, there are way more girls than boys in college, and we've made huge strides in so many other ways. We've shown that we're just as smart and capable and determined as any man. There's practically no job—well, except maybe playing football—where we can't compete on more or less equal terms with a man.
"But in the area of sex—well, I think we have to take a back seat."
"Why do you say that?" Jenna said sharply.
"Because," Adele said, as if playing a trump card, "of the fundamental inequality of the sex act."
"What the dickens are you talking about?"
"Mom, think about it.
A man can enter a woman, but a woman can't enter a man.
That's it in a nutshell."
Jenna opened her mouth as if to make an objection, but after a few moments she shut it. She could think of nothing to say.
"Even when a woman's on top—and I love being on top, let me tell you, and Magnus loves it too—I'm still putting
him
in
me;
I'm not going into
him.
And so, the woman almost always ends up being more or less passive—or 'helpless,' as you say—when it comes to sex. The man does most of the work; we lie there and take it. I'm not saying we should just sit back like a corpse and take it; but really, that male organ really does dominate the action, and dominates
us.
That doesn't mean that a man is 'better' than us or 'superior' to us; it just means he goes into us but we don't go into him.
"So I say, let's just go ahead and let men dominate in this one area! What's the big deal? It takes us so much effort to make headway in other fields—why not just take it easy and let the guy do what he wants in bed? Doing that might actually energize us for going out into the world and taking over. Because we
are
taking over, you know. So the poor guys are just left with taking charge in bed—and they're welcome to it!"
This incredible speech left Jenna slack-jawed. She sensed there was some lapse of logic somewhere, but for the life of her she couldn't identify just where.
"Okay, fine," she said, dismissing the subject. "There's still the matter of what to do about this whole situation."
"Yeah," Adele said with a smirk, "especially since you jumped into bed with Magnus so fast."
"I didn't jump into bed with him!" Jenna said, outraged. "He—he carried me upstairs, threw me on the bed, tore my blouse off, and—and had his way with me!"
"But he made you come first, didn't he?"
Jenna was aghast. "How did you know that?"
I can't believe I'm talking about orgasms with my own daughter.
"I know him," Adele said smugly. "It's his way. So unselfish of him."
"It's just his way of buttering up a girl—I mean, a woman—so that he can, you know . . ."
"No, no, it's really sweet. He cares more about a woman's pleasure than his own." Then she gave her mother a sly look. "I see he also went into your butt."
"Oh, God!" Jenna exclaimed. "I can't believe I let him do that!" She looked pleadingly at her daughter. "Adele, I—it's been so long since I . . ."
"Yeah, I gathered that. Magnus says a woman gets pretty crabby if she doesn't get regular sex."
Jenna just hung her head.
"Look, Mom, it's okay. We all have these urges. And there's nothing wrong with a guy like Magnus satisfying us all."
"Just what are you suggesting?"
"Oh, Mom, it's obvious! You move in with us."
Jenna was thunderstruck. "You—you can't be serious!"
"Of course I'm serious! I mean, you hate this cruddy little apartment. You've said so millions of times yourself. Magnus has a big house, and there's plenty of room."
"I'm not moving into the house of a man I've known only for one day!"
"Yeah, but it was a pretty eventful day, wasn't it?"
"You stop that kind of talk!"
"Come on, Mom—it'll be fun!"
"Look," Jenna said desperately, "maybe—maybe I'll go over there for a week or two and see how things work out. That's the best I can do."
"Okay, that'll be fine."
Jenna looked askance at her daughter. "Um, what exactly will the sleeping arrangements be?" But she knew the answer to that.
"We each get him two nights a week—you, me, and Kristen. The seventh night—well, who knows?"
"You mean we're going to be some sort of harem," Jenna said in a hollow voice.
"You can think of it that way, I guess, but it's really not the way it is. There's so much love in him, I suppose he needs more than one outlet."
Jenna just shook her head.
So you think that's how it is? Well, I have my doubts about that.
*
It was in mid-November, when Kristen went to a strip mall she didn't frequent very often to get some stuff for Thanksgiving, that she almost ran right into her brother Paul.
He was coming out of a sporting goods store, having just bought a new pair of sneakers, when he rounded a corner and all but collided into his sister as she was rounding the same corner in the other direction.
"Omigod, Paul!" she cried happily.
"Kristen," he said more reservedly. "It's been a while."
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry, I should have kept in better touch—but things have been pretty hectic."
"Yeah, me too."
"I guess football season's in full swing at Lorimer."
"You bet. We're doing pretty well."
"That's great!"
"How're you doing?"
Kristen looked up at her brother. When they were younger, she admired him almost to worship; and a vestige of that sentiment still remained. They had used to confide in each other on almost every possible subject, but their parents' divorce had caused a rupture in their own relationship that both regretted and didn't exactly know how to repair.
"Um, well," Kristen began, "maybe we should talk about that. Do you have some time?"
"Sure, I guess."
I have some stuff to talk about too.
"There's a coffee shop across the parking lot. Let's go there."
They headed to the place. It turned out to have booths on one wall, which made for a certain amount of privacy. Both of them sensed the need for a little quiet talk away from any possible snoopers.
And yet, as they parked themselves on opposite sides of a booth after ordering lattes, they found themselves strangely tongue-tied. In fact, it seemed they couldn't even look each other in the face.
"So how are you liking college?" Paul said, to try to get the conversation going. "You just started at Manhattan, didn't you?"
"Yeah. It's been great!" Kristen said. "Pretty hard, but lots of fun. I'm literally feeling my brain being stretched with all the new stuff I'm learning!"
"Yeah, I felt the same way when I started. Met any new friends?"
"Sure! There's this girl named Adele who's—" Kristen stopped abruptly.
Who's moved in with us, and shares Daddy's bed.
"Who's what?" Paul said, confused.
"Nothing. I just like her a lot. She's loads of fun. How about you?"
"Oh, nothing special. One of my friends, Curt Mansfield, is a really nice guy."
