She gave me a wan smile before saying "I know. As hard as it is for me to ask, I can only imagine what it's like from your side. If you don't mind, I'll go on back to work now…"
"Of course not.", I answered. We'd gotten to the door, and she'd said goodbye, when I told her
"I'll have an answer for you by tomorrow evening, Andrea."
She gave me a half-smile and said "Thank you, Gary. Whatever you decide, you made a good neighbor."
I was still thinking about what she'd asked, and what she'd said, when Emma and Gail turned up late that afternoon. They spent a little while playing in the pool (topless, of course) before coming inside and ridding themselves of their wet suits to sit with me. After they'd directed me to the middle of the couch, they parked themselves on each side before leaning against me and pulling my arm around themselves. Gail put my hand on her breast, but Emma was content to simply hold my hand between both of hers as the three of us watched television.
As I sat there with their nude bodies next to me, I thought about us — them and me, I mean.
How cute I'd thought they were when I first saw them. Going with Bill (sometimes) and Andrea (almost always) to some of their various activities. Watching them as they'd grown up — and out. How my benign and private lechery for them had come to be at least partially fulfilled.
I thought of what I knew of them — their characters and personalities; their intelligence and honesty and good humor. I remembered telling them that I loved them… and only later coming to realize how true that was. I also remembered the times that I'd been witness to some of the tantrums and fits they'd thrown, and how I knew that either of them could turn into a genuine Class-1 pain in the ass, if it suited her. The way I'd felt when I'd talked to Andrea after the movie came back to me, too. With one hand on a firm young breast, and the other between a pair of soft, cool hands, I thought about them and me — and what I wanted and hoped for them.
Neither of them had any idea of how deep and turmoiled my thoughts were, since I kept enough of my mind "on watch" to be able to respond to their questions and comments, jokes and gentle teasing. When it was time for them to go home, both simply got up and got dressed; when they came over to give me a kiss on the cheek, I gave each their usual soft pat on the butt before kissing them back. Once they were gone, I was soon lost in my thoughts again.
I think that Andrea might have given Gail and Emma some reason to stay home the next day; I spent it by myself until Andrea came over a little after supper. I made each of us a drink, and we sat at opposite ends of my couch facing each other. After we'd each taken a sip of our drink, I told her "I've got to tell you, Andrea, that was some kind of request for help you made yesterday.
I thought about it until I went to bed last night, and damn near all day today. I don't know how many times I swung back and forth between 'yes' and 'no', and how many reasons I thought of why I should or shouldn't do it. But when push got to shove, I only had one thing that I needed to use to figure out how to answer — and that was 'which would be best for them?'. When I used that as the most important question, there was only one thing that I could say — I'll do it. I'm scared I'm gonna fuck it up, I don't have the faintest idea if I'm going to get it right with them, and I damn sure haven't got a clue of how it's going to work out. But what I do know is that I love them, and want the best possible for them, and that I'm ready to do whatever it takes to help them become the best people they can be."
Andrea's relief was plain on her face, and I took a breath before telling her "I know you're worried that you've somehow screwed them up, but I don't think you have. I said that I want to help them become the best they can, and I think I'm getting a couple of winners to start with; I think all I'm going to be doing is putting the final polish on a couple of very smart, very pleasant, very pretty young ladies — you've already taken care of the hard part for me. I can only hope that whatever I accomplish with them, it's what you would do."
"Thank you, Gary. Right now, that means a lot to me, coming from you."
"You haven't told me, yet, how much contact you want to have with them; all you really told me yesterday is that it's best if they're not WITH you. So I'll tell you right now, before either of us says anything else, that as far as I'm concerned, the three of you have as much contact and communication with each other as you need or want — you can call them, write, email, send smoke signals, use carrier pigeons, or whatever else as often and as long as you want, just as they can. I'm going to take my cues from you — if you tell me you're having a rough time, I'll find a way to get them to back off as much as you need, for as long as you need; or if you need to cut back or stop for a while, then I'll help them understand that it's not because of them. Ditto for visits… come here, or bring them there, either is fine with me. I'm seeing myself as a substitute parent, not a replacement, and I will be acting that way."
She started to sniffle, and I got up to get her a small hand towel from the kitchen. When I handed it to her, she managed to smile at me. After she'd blown her nose and dried her eyes a bit, she told me "I… I was a little worried about that — that my problems might make you think they'd be better off without me. I guess I should have known better than that; I'm sorry."
"No, don't apologize. I thought you might BE worried about it; that's why I made sure and told you what I did. Andrea, both of us want what's best for those two. Obviously, we don't agree exactly on what that 'best' IS, so I think we're going to have to make sure we don't start just assuming things. I'm damn sure going to let you know what's on MY mind, and I'm going to trust you to let me know where we differ, and how much. To give you an idea of how I'm going to go at this, let me say that this is how I'm figuring to go at this, for now; if you or your therapist think something else would work better, then that's what we'll do. Okay?"
She gave me a smile, and said "That sounds fine, Gary — I know we're going to be making up a lot of this as we go along, and that things may well change one way or another along the way. I just want you to know that I do trust you to decide on your own what's right for them, when all else fails."
I simply nodded my head in acknowledgment of her trust; a moment later, she said "While I'm here, I think we'd better figure out how to make all this happen. I know they aren't going to be happy about me going away, and we're going to have to try to make this as easy and painless for them as we can. I… I should tell them why I have to be away from them — at least, a little bit, so they know that I'm not leaving because I don't love them, or they don't start thinking that they've done anything wrong. I think it's going to be hardest on you, since you're the one they'll be coming to with the questions I can't answer, or that they don't want to ask me — on top of trying to comfort both of them. You being a programmer and everything, I've always known that you're more organized and structured about things like that than I am, so I'd like to hear what you think, and then we can work it all out."
I said that was fine, and after going over it in my mind for a little bit, gave her a rough outline of how I thought things should go. Over the course of the next couple of hours, we went through it over and over, working out details, filing off the rough edges, shuffling things a bit, and generally getting ourselves working together. When we were done, we went through the finished plan a couple more times, making sure that both of us were using the same words to mean the same things, and that we were in complete agreement on the various details. Unsurprisingly, we still had to clarify a couple of things and explain what each of us meant by some things, but we got it done. All that was left was to actually put the plan into action; it was a simple matter for us to agree on when Andrea would kick things of with a talk to Emma and Gail.