Incest Inc Ch. 01

"The Ice Queen?" his wife asked curiously. "What about? A promotion?" Her eyes lit eagerly. "I've said for years you're wasted where you are. If you wanted, you could be a VP by now."

"No, it wasn't anything like that," he said. He shook his head. "I don't know how to explain it. It was-"

He was interrupted, somewhat to his relief, by the clear sound of Angie's voice carrying up the stairs.

"Pizza's ready!"

*****

"So what did you guys do today?" his wife asked, taking a bite of her salad.

Despite the humble origins, it was a decent meal. Angie had baked a batch of breadsticks to go with the pizza, and Jason had made a lightning run to the local grocery store, coming home with some pre-made salad.

Shannon shrugged, and Scott sighed. His oldest daughter spoke four languages, and was well on her way to double degrees in comparative linguistics and ancient folklore. However, it was a rare occasion when she could be persuaded to speak above a murmur. Shy almost to the point of invisibility, she preferred the company of books and the internet to live people.

Which was quite a shame, Scott thought in a moment of rare honesty. Shannon resembled neither her mother or himself, taking after her maternal grandmother instead. Rather than Beverly's dark brown hair and pale skin, or his own light brown hair and ordinary coloring, his oldest daughter had honey-blond hair that spilled past her shoulders in a sweet wave. Eyes the blue of the sky at twilight were fixed on her plate, and her skin was lightly tanned.

"How about you, Jason?"

"It was work," his son said. A few weeks removed from his freshman year at the University of Illinois, he was spending the summer with a local construction firm, getting some hands-on experience in preparation for his goal, which was to become a mechanical engineer, designing huge, city-spanning projects. "I did a walk-through of that new building they're putting up on the river, not too far from your office. How about you, Pop?"

"I did some work on putting together a proposal to rebuild some schools in Mosul, in Iraq," he said. "Now that they've kicked those bastards in ISIS the hell out of there, we need to get the educational system functioning again. Nothing makes people think things are back to normal like sending their kids back to school. The UN and the EU are already pledging a big chunk of money. That will help get the ball rolling. We hope to start taking bids in the next few weeks."

"Maybe you should go there, Jason," his twin commented.

To Scott's ears, it seemed that Angelica was making a helpful suggestion, but Jason rounded on her angrily. "Screw you, Angie," he snarled. "It's seven o'clock. Shouldn't you already be tied to someone's bedpost by now?"

His red-haired daughter gasped, her eyes widening with hurt and anger. "What the fuck, Jason! I was trying to be nice! Isn't that what you want, to build things?"

"Sure. In America. Not in freaking Iraq. I'm sick and freaking tired of you being on my ass all the time, Angie. Why don't you go out and screw some rando and leave me the fuck alone?"

Angie spluttered angrily, her well-endowed chest rising and falling rapidly under the thin cloth of the t-shirt she wore to the dinner table. She stood, her hands splayed on the walnut surface as she glared across it angrily at her twin. The cut-off shorts she was wearing clung to the firm round globes of her rear. "And I'm fucking sick of you of you acting like I'm sleeping with half the people in town!"

"Then keep your pants on for a change," her brother said nastily, sneering at her. "You think the stories don't get down to Champaign? Every few days I had some guy in my face, wondering when you're going to visit, because he saw pics of you on facebook or twitter."

"Better that than pretending girls don't even exist," she snarled, losing her temper entirely. A few feet away, Shannon shook her head silently. "Or boys. Fuck. We don't even know if you're in the closet because you might as well not have a cock at all."

Jason leaped up. "You-"

"Enough!!" The sound of his hand hitting the table was a whip-crack in the dining room. Four pairs of eyes stared at him, round and shocked. He pulled his wallet out of his pants.

"Get the hell out of here," he said, throwing a handful of twenties on the table. "For one god-damn night, I don't want to listen to you bitching at each other. Go to a movie, go out to eat, drive around town, I don't care. Just get the hell out of my hair. I'm sick of it.

"And when you come back, I want you to act like adults, not a bunch of damned six year olds."

Shannon stood up and walked out immediately. Jason took one look at his face, and quickly followed, leaving the money on the table. "Dad," Angie began, her eyes wide. "I'm sorry. I just-"

He shook his head. "Not tonight. Go hang out with some friends. Or do something else. I don't want to hear it. Just go."

Angry tears welled up in her eyes, but she raised her head, stalking out of the room without a second glance. A few seconds later, he could hear the sound of the front door closing and two cars pulling away from the house.

Shannon took Angie with her, he guessed.

Ashamed at his outburst, he sank back into his seat, staring at the half-eaten plate of pizza.

*****

"Well," came the slightly amused sound of his wife's voice. "That was unexpected."

"God, Bev," he moaned, letting his head sink into his hands. "What's wrong with us? What's happening to us? We used to be happy. Didn't we? When did it all fall apart? I can't take this much longer."

"Hey." He heard the sound of a chair scraping back across the floor. Suddenly she was there, crouching down beside him. A pair of slim arms wrapped around him, and he clung to her tightly. "We're okay, honey. Really. We are."

"Are we?" His eyes were bitter when he raised them to her face. "Are we really? I know I'm not the man you thought you were marrying, Bev. I can tell. The last few months..." he trailed off dismally.

"Now that the kids are grown up, maybe we should think about a divorce."

Beverly blinked. Inside her mind, she swore at herself for the way she had pulled away from Scott over the last several weeks. Their once-easy intimacy had slipped away like water draining out of a tub, leaving little time for affection or lovemaking. The reasons seemed good at the time. Her job, never easy, had become a serious drain on her time and energy. She had been promoted to the head of her department at the hospital, as well as beginning therapy sessions for several difficult cases. And there was also the pro bono work she did for outside organizations, trying to determine who might be the best fit for certain positions.

"I'll agree to a divorce," she said steadily. She hoped her voice was calm, because her mind was a churning riot of fear. "But only if you want it. I certainly don't." She laid her head on her husband's shoulder, taking comfort in his warm, solid presence. He had no idea what he did for her. How his place, steady at her side through over twenty years, had been a bulwark against her past. She put her hands on his cheeks, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I love you," she stated, trying to force him to hear the sincerity in her voice. "And I'll never stop."

He sagged in relief. "Thank God." He blinked rapidly. "Because I don't think I could handle the bachelor life, Bev.

She smiled. "I remember. I think you survived on frozen waffles and canned soup. Remember when I bought you that cookbook for your birthday?"

He grinned wryly, imitating his confused tones at the time. "What am I going to do with this?"

She combed her fingers through his hair, taking comfort in his touch. "What's got you so worked up, Scott? I can't remember the last time you blew up at the kids like that."

"It's...I...Veronica at work..." He stuttered and stumbled to a halt, then took a deep breath. "Veronica Miller made an offer at work today. Not a promotion. And not an affair, either," he said quickly.

"Of course not," she replied easily, sitting on his lap and cuddling close. "That woman would never do anything so crass. Especially not in a work environment where anyone could see. If she did, it would be done professionally.

"And you'd never accept, either," she murmured into his chest." I don't think it's emotionally possible for you to betray a trust."

"Ah, the joy of being married to a psychologist," he said. "Nothing like having your motives dissected like a frog on a lab table."

She raised her eyebrows. "I do try not to think too much about my own family," she said, "but when you're discussing divorce and tense as a spring, it's hard not to go into therapy mode." She slid off his lap and stood up. "Want to come into my office and talk about it?"

He opened and closed his mouth, looking profoundly uncomfortable. "All right," he said at last. "Let me just go out to the car for a second. I'll meet you up there."

*****

Scott sat tensely in his chair, waiting for the explosion.

Beverly and he had each claimed rooms for their home offices when they had bought the house, several years ago. His was on the second floor, on the opposite end of the house from the bedroom he shared with his wife. Bev had chosen a sunroom on the ground floor, light and airy, with windows that looked south and east. She loved getting up early in the morning, watching the sun rise, and going over her case notes before heading to work at Hinsdale Central Hospital.

Now, watching her flawless profile as she carefully leafed through the leather-bound dossier he had brought in from the car, he wondered if he had made a profound mistake. Beverly was a child of the city, born to parents who were happily irreverent and uninterested in religion, unlike his own upbringing. Much more cosmopolitan than he was, she accepted things that had shocked him to the core when he left the small farm town he had been born in for college.

They had met through mutual friends. After two unsatisfying years as a teacher, he had left the education profession, falling into a job at the foundation almost by accident. He had found, much to his surprise, that he had a talent for organization and negotiation. A few weeks after he had started the job, he had let himself be dragged to a party by a co-worker. Still trying to get used to life in Chicago, he had thought it would be a good idea to not be seen as some sort of anti-social recluse.

Beverly was a cousin of the woman hosting the party. They had met, talked, and then kept talking until the party was over and her exasperated cousin all but kicked them out of the Wrigleyville apartment. He had been fascinated by her long, cool elegance, the way she glided through the room as if she owned it. Beverly, in her own turn, had told him months later that she was charmed by his small-town courtesy. It had also helped that they had things in common, such as the fact that they had each graduated college at an early age. Scott had skipped a year in grade school and had graduated college at twenty, taking additional summer classes to finish four years of schooling in three years. At the time, Beverly was tearing through the psychology program at the University of Chicago, only a few months away from obtaining her master's degree.

They were married barely a year later, to his friends' surprise and her parent's pride. Shannon and the twins had come along in due course. And up to a few years ago, he had thought he had the American dream. Lovely wife, beautiful home, and intelligent children whom he was fiercely proud of.

But it all seemed to be slowly unraveling now.

Beverly put down the binder and looked at him over the rims of the wire-rimmed glasses she had recently begun to wear for reading. He found the fashion, for some reason, unbearably sexy, as if his wife were a slightly oversexed college professor who was going to make him do some 'extra-credit' work.

"Well," she said quietly, her eyes slightly amused. "This is a singularly...interesting...document." She tapped the binder with one well-manicured fingernail. "The foundation offers us half a million dollars for each child we bear.

"Provided, of course, that they are the products of what is commonly referred to as an incestuous relationship."

He returned a lopsided smile. "As my grandpa used to say, I didn't know whether to shit or go blind when Veronica told me about this. I have to admit, I ran out of there like my tail was on fire."

He shrugged. "So that's what got me so worked up. The idea that she thought I'd go for this..." He shook his head. "I didn't even realize I still had it until I was in the car and on the way home. I'll take it back on Monday and tell her thanks, but no thanks."

"No, you won't At least not until after we have discussed this as a family." Beverly's voice was stern.

"What?"

His wife sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her head was tilted as she examined her husband. "Sometimes, Scott, your upbringing is a real problem.

"Half an hour ago, you were shouting at your children, demanding they act like adults. But now, here you sit, taking their choices away as if they were still in grade school. Shannon's twenty-one now. The twins are nineteen. They are more than capable of making this decision for themselves.

"How would you feel if you found out that someone had made an offer to make you financially independent when you were in college, but that your family had decided that you weren't competent to make your own decisions?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. Trust a psychologist to cut straight to the point. "I...hadn't really seen it that way."

She nodded. "I know. They're still our kids, no matter that they're all grown up. We want to protect them. But this," she said, tapping the binder with one finger, "is an opportunity, no matter how you feel about it personally."

"An opportunity? They're offering us money for sex, when you get right down to it! How is this different from prostitution?"

"And why is prostitution illegal?" she countered, eyes gleaming with the light of battle, as they always did when they matched wits. "Why is sex fine when it's between adults? Or even when it's filmed? But the second a man pays a woman for it, it's suddenly a crime? I see them, Scott, every day. Sad, lonely men who only want a little happiness and intimacy. They are taking their freedom and their reputations into their own hands every time they visit an escort." She shook her head. "You'd think that this country had enough troubles without worrying what people are doing with their genitalia."

He gaped at her. "So...you're saying you're okay with this?"

"I'm saying that, as the mother of these three children, I'm in favor of whatever makes them happy, as long is it doesn't hurt them or anyone else. And you should be too. I'm not going to encourage it, mind you. But we would be negligent as parents if we didn't give them the opportunity to choose."

She smiled at him. "Scott, we both know that the family is a social construct, meant to protect the younger and weaker members from those outside its boundaries. But Shannon and Jason and Angie don't need our protection any more. They're able to make their own decisions."

"But what about...a defective child?"

"If you had bothered to read the entire proposal, you would have noticed that the foundation has acquired our health records." A quick grimace. "I'd like to know how they did that. But it appears that we have a clean genetic history. No chance for flipper-babies here."

He sighed, shaking his head, and she took pity on him. "Cheer up, baby. They almost certainly won't go for it. But at least they'll concentrate on something other than driving each other crazy for a change."

"I wish," he grunted. "Anyway, when this is over we're going to have the same situation. I can't deal with this until they go back to school, Bev. What the hell is eating the three of them?"

"Don't you mean the five of us?" She studied him for a long moment. "We all have our issues. You know I don't like playing armchair psychologist to my own family, but I will if you want."

"Please. Because if we don't find a way to deal, I'm going to kill one of them." He reflected for a moment. "Probably Jason. The way he jumped down Angie's throat tonight pissed me off."

"All right, then." A small smile, quickly hidden, played at the corners of her mouth. "Well, let's take the most obvious problem first." Her finger pointed. "You."

"Me?"

"You," she nodded. "You've been fighting your damn inferiority complex where the two of us are concerned for as long as I've known you, Scott. Somehow you've convinced yourself that you don't deserve me. That I could find a better man than you at the drop of a hat. That I am always thisclose," she held up a her index finger and thumb, the two separated by less than an inch, "from dropping you and walking away.

"Part of it, I'm sure, has to do with money. I had it, growing up, and you didn't. And social standing."

She raised her hand to cut off his response. "I'm not going to tell you it's ridiculous, or stupid, or that it hurts me that you could misjudge me so badly after all this time. I can't change your way of thinking. All I can do is assure you that I do love you. I love you for who you are, not some version of yourself you think you should be, or think that I deserve."

He blinked back tears. "All right." His voice sounded raspy in his ears.

"If I were your therapist, I'd tell you to find some activity that you were good at, that would help build up your self-esteem. And do it more often. Golf. Writing. Cooking. Whatever works for you. The more validation you get from outside, the less likely you'd be to think I'm going to abandon you for the terrible crime of growing up in Freeport."

She held up a second finger. "Next, Shannon." She smiled. "Being an introvert isn't a problem, Scott, unless the people you're around insist on making it a problem. Shannie's more comfortable in her own head than she is around other people, that's all. There's millions of people like her." Her lips twitched. "She's perfectly fine. She's not going to show up on the five o'clock news, accused of losing her shit and running down people in the street."

"Well, it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for," he said with a smile. "So you think she's all right?"

"I said so, didn't I?" Her face was pensive as she considered her oldest daughter. "Though when she falls for someone, Scott, I think she's going to fall hard." She drummed her fingers for a second on the desk, bringing back unpleasant memories of his interview with Veronica. "She's a good kid. No. Even better. She's a good woman. So bright she's scary, and healthy and attractive and funny as hell when she actually comes out of her shell a bit. When she finally sets her sights on a man, he better watch out."

He shrugged. "And what about the twins?"

His wife sighed. "Those two. There's days when you're not the only one tempted to knock their heads together, honey.

"I'm not one of the old-school Freudians, who think sex is at the root of all psychological issues, but old Sigmund might have had a point with Jason and Angie."

He sat up. "You don't think they're-"

She waved a hand at him. "Of course not." she fixed him with a keen eye. "Tell me. When did Jason and Angie first start fighting all the time?"

"God. It must be about three years ago now."

"Right. Which was right around the time Angie became sexually active."

He dropped his head into his hands. "Argh. You did not need to tell me about that."

"Yes, I did." He looked up at the tone in her voice. "Come on, Scott. I know you'd like to be happily ignorant where the kids' sex lives are concerned, but this is important.