Bentley Little - Dominion

"You don't hate me?"

"You don't hate me?"

"No," she said. "Of course not."

"I don't hate you either."

Penelope looked toward the house, met his eyes shyly. "My mother said I

could drive you home alone this time."

"Good," Dion said.

He meant it. He had nothing against Penelope's mother, but the drive home last time had been extremely uncomfortable. Penelope had been in the backseat, right behind him, but he'd still felt as though he was alone in the car with her mom. Her mother had done most of the talking, asked all of the questions, and most of those questions had been strangely personal. Or just plain strange. There had seemed something vaguely sexual about the way she'd smiled at him, something promising or threatening in the way her eyes had examined him. In a bizarre manner she reminded him of his own mom, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He had quickly revised his initial impression of her. And he had been grateful when the car had pulled up to the curb in front of his house and he had gotten out.

He'd said nothing to Penelope, of course. And this time when he'd seen her mom again, she'd seemed once more a typical, if slightly mousy, housewife.

But he was glad he wouldn't have to ride in a car with her again.

"I'll get the keys and tell them we're going," Penelope said.

"Okay."

He followed her up the steps and into the house.

Penelope turned out to be a good driver, a safe and cautious driver. She drove with her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, and she slowed for yellow lights. Dion found himself smiling at her conscientious concentration.

She must have seen him out of the corner of her eye. "What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing."

"Are you making fun of the way I drive?"

"Of course not."

She turned on her blinker to make a left turn. "I don't drive that often, you know."

He laughed. "I never would've guessed."

She left the engine on as she pulled in front of his house and put the car into Park.

"We didn't get much studying done," Dion said, picking up his books from the seat between them.

"No," she admitted. He looked at her, wanting to touch her, wanting at the very least to shake her hand and say good-bye, but he was afraid to.

"Do you want to come in?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head, as if shocked by the offer. "I couldn't. I

have to be straight back." She looked embarrassedly down at the steering wheel. "Besides, my mothers wouldn't like it."

"Mothers?"

"Huh?"

"Mothers. You said your 'mothers.' "

"Did I?"

"Yes. And you said it before too."

She blushed. "Well, I guess that's how I think of them. I mean, I know it seems weird, but they all take care of me. The women of the combine share business duties, and they also sort of share family duties too.

It's ..." She shook her head. "No. That's not exactly true." She sighed.

"I might as well be honest with you. I've never told anyone this before, but to tell you the truth, I don't know which one's my mother."

He stared at her incredulously. "You're kidding."

"No. It's true. I mean, I sort of adopted Felice as my mother because I

liked her the best, and for school and things I need to have one mother.

But to me they're all my mothers, and I don't know which is the real one."

"Have you asked?"

She shrugged. "Indirectly. But it's sort of an awkward subject. It's probably the way most people feel when they try to talk about sex with their parents. It's tough." She looked at him. "I didn't really even care until recently. It probably sounds strange to you, but I was brought up this way. I've never known anything else. So to me it seems natural."

"Natural?"

She smiled. "Almost natural."

"But why? It's just so .. weird."

She shrugged. "My mothers believe that I will turn out to be a healthier and more well-rounded person if I am not subjected to the family pressures that everyone else experiences. If I'm not forced to play a traditional role within our household, I will not be locked into playing a traditional role in society." She smiled sadly. "I guess I'm sort of an experiment."

Dion shook his head.

"A failed experiment."

"I don't think so. I think you turned out very well. And surprisingly normal."

She laughed. "Normal, huh? You know that you're probably the only person who would call me that."

"That's because other people don't know you as well as I do."

She reddened, looked away, and impulsively he reached over and touched the back of her hand resting on the seat. Her gaze jerked immediately up, her eyes locking on his. They stared at each other for a moment. Her skin felt smooth, soft, cool beneath his fingers. She pulled her hand out from under his.

"I'll see you in school tomorrow," she said, putting the car into gear.

"But--"

"I have to go."

"Still have those same old parental restrictions, don't you?"

Penelope laughed.

He got out of the car, closed the door. "Good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye. I'll see you in school."

She waved as she turned around, and he watched the car cruise smoothly down the block until it disappeared with a blink of red taillight around the corner.

April sat in front of the television, waiting for Dion to re: turn.

The TV was on, but she was not paying attention. She was thinking about her son, about the way he was growing older, growing up. She saw him in her mind as a child, then thought of him going out with a high school girl, holding the girl's hand, kissing her. It was an uncomfortable thought, and one she did not like. She knew it was normal and natural and that it was long past time that Dion showed some interest in the opposite sex, but she still didn't feel good about it.

She was angry at herself for thinking this way. She had always promised herself that she would not be an overprotective mother. So far it had not been a promise that was hard for her to keep. If anything, she had been underprotective, leaving him too much to his own devices. But then Dion had never needed much supervision. He was not the kind of kid to hang out with the wrong kinds of friends, or party or drink or use drugs.

The things she had done.

Now, though, she worried. It was not that she didn't trust her son. It was more mat ... Well, she hated to admit it, but she was jealous. She knew what Margaret would say if she told her about it. She knew all of them would laugh at her, would tell her it was time to let go, time to stop coddling her son, but she couldn't help wanting him not to change, wanting him to remain forever exactly the way he was now. There was nothing sexual about her jealousy. It was nothing like that. It was just that, for all of his brains, for all of his intelligence and sophistication, for all of the things he'd been exposed to, there was still something essentially naive and innocent about him, something that she alone knew about, that he shared only with her. She didn't want that to change. She didn't want that to disappear.

A commercial came on the television, a commercial for a nationally known brand of wine made here in the Napa Valley. Her eyes focused on the glass of chilled white wine shown sweating on a redwood table before a barbecue.

A glass of wine sounded good right now. It sounded very good. She needed to relax a little, to stop brooding over this situation. What was it Margaret had said about the medicinal value of good wine? She stood up and was about to walk into the kitchen when an unwanted memory of the other night burst upon her. She sat shakily down.

Not all wine was good.

She heard Dion's knock on the front door, heard his machine-gun ringing of the doorbell. She hadn't heard a car pull up, hadn't seen it through the window. She'd been too preoccupied. She stood up again. "Coming!"