Dominoes 109a: Dad

It felt wonderful to sing again, using my voice, my own voice, without feeling like someone else was going to shift it into Bass at any moment. Caleb even noticed and sang louder, with me. Poor Ralph looked so out of place. Caleb was glowing, and Ralph kept looking at him.

Finally the torture was over, for Ralph, and we were done singing. Mother and Jenny went upstairs, Ralph in tow, to bathe and put the twins to bed. Dad sat down on the couch, “So, Caleb, you finally popped the question? What did it take you, two weeks?”

I was just pouring myself some sparkling cider, and I almost spilled it. “What?”

“Keeping secrets from her already?” Dad asked with a grin, “an excellent policy. Sorry I spilled the beans.”

“What secret?” I asked Caleb, my hands on my hips.

“I, uhh, I asked your father a few days ago, you know, if I could marry you. When you told me to read your journal and you… well, I figured you must have figured it out.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” I thought back. “Maybe I sort of did, I mean, maybe I did notice that you changed a couple of weeks back. You got even more nervous around me, even more than usual.”

Dad laughed, “Poor Caleb. But, all’s well that ends well. Somehow you finally got up the courage to ask, eh? Tell me, what did you do? Get drunk?”

Caleb flushed, “No. It was Bobbi, actually. She…” he blushed.

“Was THAT what did it?” I said. “A little peep show and you proposed?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean…” He stopped, and took a drink of his cider. “It wasn’t that I got all hot and horny… I did, but that wasn’t it. It was just if you were willing to do that for me, just to encourage me… And then I read your journal, and realized that you were all mad at me… I knew I couldn’t wait any more. I didn’t want you mad at me.”

Dad looked quizzically at me, “Peep show?”

“I, uh, I came down to breakfast in my underwear.”

Dad raised his eyebrows, “Oh? And Caleb happened to come over for breakfast?”

“Well, I sort of invited him.”

“I see! That might do it indeed. I am surprised that my rather shy daughter did that, and that her mother allowed it. Did some girlfriend put you up to that? Or maybe your mother, getting desperate?”

“Or her mother what?” asked Mother, coming down the stairs.

“No, Mother was kind of freaked out. No, it wasn’t Mother. It was this dream I had. This really weird dream.”

Jenny and Ralph came down, “Well, I think the twins like Ralph,” Jenny said. “He tells a mean bedtime story. I didn’t think they would let us go.”

“So, what was this dream?” Caleb asked, but I blushed and shook my head, looking at Ralph and Jenny. “Oh, sorry. Maybe later.” He said, looking very awkward.

“Well, again, congratulations,” Father said, raising his glass, “may you bear us many grandchildren, and soon.”

Everyone raised their glasses, but Ralph looked confused. “Are you…” he blushed and stopped.

“Spit it out man, “Caleb said, slapping him across the shoulders. “‘What is it?”

“I mean, you aren’t married yet… are you…” he took a deep breath and, bright red, said, “Are you sleeping together?’

“Ah,” Dad said, looking back and forth between Ralph and Jenny, who was also blushing. “I guess you don’t know our strange views.”

He settled back. “In the beginning,” he intoned, and Jenny and I laughed. This was so Dad. Even Mr. And Mrs. Jones grinned a bit (I mean, the older Mr. And Mrs. Jones). “Jenny’s mother and I used to be something close to what you call ‘hippies’,” he said. “A short phase, near the end of our college careers, and not exactly our personality. But, anyway, we ‘came together’ during that time and I, at least, was loath to end our relationship when we both woke up to reality. And then we started attending church where, quite frankly, we were rather deceptive… calling ourselves ‘Mr. And Mrs.’ Even though, in our own minds and certainly if the church members had known about it, we weren’t married.”

“Two things happened after that, at almost the same time. The first was that I, we really, began to become rather attracted by this ‘Christ’ person and what he had done for us.”

Ralph nodded. He had always attended our church, I mean the church my parents and I went to. I looked at Caleb. I would be going to a new church, now. Anyway, so Ralph was fairly familiar with the gospel and all that sort of thing. We didn’t do ‘testimonies’ in main church but we were familiar with them in Sunday School and camp and all, so he was familiar with this sort of thing.

“Long story short, we got ‘saved’. But, at the same time, I was rather busy studying this whole marriage issue, and I was very unimpressed by what our culture had to say about it. Remember, I came from ‘hippy’ness, throw off societies assumptions, and all of that? So I looked at our assumptions in light of what Scripture had to say and they were all wrong, or at least I couldn’t see how they could be right. In the end I talked to the pastor about it. Poor guy, he was so excited that we had just ‘come forward’ and suddenly he was having to defend his view of a ‘church marriage’. And in the middle of it he found out we weren’t ‘married’ and he said we would have to stop living together. And I said there was no way I was doing that… Roberta was already born by then, and I wouldn’t’ have anyway, so, in the end, we had a rather abrupt departure from his church.”

“So, you aren’t married?!” Ralph asked, looking back and forth from my mom and dad, bright red.

“In God’s eyes they are, young man,” Mr. Jones said, seriously. The only thing necessary for a marriage is the permission of the father of the bride, and they had that.”

Indeed, Grandpa had been rather a hippy himself, in a very old fashioned way, and he had been thrilled with Dad. Less thrilled when they had ‘gotten religion’ but he had ‘gotten religion’ himself a few years later.

“So, yes, Dude, we’re sleeping together,” Caleb said, suddenly, causing me to blush furiously. “And so, any day now, we might make ourselves a grandkid for somebody.”

“Are you, aren’t you using protection?” Ralph asked, blushing again. “Do you want to have a child so soon?” I began to have a bit of respect for this kid. I had never really liked Jenny’s relationship with him but this conversation showed me he had some real guts.

“Protection?!” Caleb said, “Last thing in the world we need is protection!” He hugged me tight and said, “Seriously, Dude, we want children. We’ll never use ‘protection’ as you call it. Children are a wonderful gift from God, to be refused at your own peril.”

 

“Well, I’m glad we got that settled,” Dad said, “Now, the next question is, when is the party?”

“Party?” Ralph said….

—

“I have to pee,” I said. “I drank about a gallon of sparkling cider.”

The Jones were gone, Ralph had gone, Jenny had walked him out and then gone up to her room, and Mother had gone up to shower, leaving the three of us in the living room.

“Well, maybe it is time to break up our little party,” Caleb said, in what he no doubt hoped was a casual tone. A tone which failed, as Daddy laughed.

“Poor boy!” He said, “How very rude of us. Take your husband upstairs, my darling, before he explodes.” And, laughing, he got up and started putting the glasses and things away.

I looked at Caleb, who was blushing. But I had no time for blushing boys and raced upstairs. I really had to pee.

“Hey, Jenny,” I said, popping into the bathroom and racing over to the toilet. “How’s it going with Ralph?”

“Oh, fine,” she said. “He was totally freaked out by you and Caleb.” A knock came at the door,

“Bobbi?” I looked at Jenny, who shrugged,

“Come on in, Caleb,” I said. He came in, looked at Jenny in her night shirt, and stood, awkwardly, against the sink and tried to watch me while pretending not to watch me. I decided I wanted a shower, and wanted to tease Caleb, so I started to strip off. Jenny, grinning, finished brushing her teeth and went off.

I was in the shower when he pulled the curtain aside on one edge, “About that dream,” he said.

“What?”

“That dream, the one you had, the one that got you to leave me your journal and all.”

I turned toward him, “You want to know about the dream? Hardly what I thought you wanted to talk about on our first night together.” He blushed, and looked so downcast, that I reached out and kissed him, getting his shirt all wet. “I’m sorry love, I fully understand why you would want to know I went nuts this morning.”

“It all started like this…”

 

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