Epilogue
In the car driving toward his office, John Brillard suffered mixed feelings of chagrin land alcoholic hangover. Ann sat next to him, Sue on the outside of the front seat.
Twice their father started to begin a conversation, but each time the words failed him.
They arrived at his office building, parked the car, and rode up to his suite in the self-service elevator. Then, just as they entered the door, Ann, oblivious to her sister's presence, turned to her father, twined her arms around his back and pulled him toward her parted lips.
For a second-no more-he resisted and then surrendered to the hot demands of her feverish lips.
"Oh, Daddy," she gasped as the embrace ended and she reached down to rub one hand over his hardening genitals. "Let's do it again . . . here . . . now.. . . "
He took a pace back, started to speak, but was interrupted before he began by Sue's angry voice.
"So that's what it was about at breakfast. I get it now. You two were fucking last night!"
"What's it to you?" Ann snapped.
Sue had already pulled the shirttail out of her jeans and had unzipped the fly. As she fairly ripped the clothing from the slender curves of her adolescent body, she continued to talk.
"I'll tell you what it is to me!" she screamed. "I'm not letting you get first dibs on everything. Come on, Daddy, fair's fair. If you did it to her, do it to me, too."
She was completely naked now, standing before him with her fists resting on slender hips, her small, almost arrogant breasts jutting forward in womanly demand.
John Brillard looked to his naked fifteen-year-old daughter for a long time before he sighed and took a pace backward to lean against the receptionist's desk.
She was a vision of adolescent perfectionsmooth, tender flesh, half mature young woman, half still partially child-the kind of Lolita-type vision that a thousand men might dream of. And here she was, offering-no, demanding-of her own father.
Without the alcohol of the previous night he could only feel shock. What, he wondered, had his children been doing while he and Martha were away? They had tasted the fruits of mature sex life, yes-but they seemed to have been poisoned by them.
Despite the lure before him, he couldn't comply. He was totally impotent. Part of him-a tiny gray serpent buried deep in his mind-regretted it, but the great body of his thoughts was happy.
He shook his head. "No, Sue," he said. "Put on your clothes."
The young girl stared quizzically at her father for a moment, then, almost reluctantly, started to obey. As she dressed, he began to talk softly to both her and Ann.
He told them about his knowledge of their weekend, explained his own drunken behavior of the night before and then began to speak of philosophy.
Their virginities could never be replaced, but they could not continue to destroy the family. Now that they had tasted carnal pleasure, there could be no return to innocence, but they must confine their physical joys to the world outside the family.
On the drive home from the office the three were still silent, but the heavy sense of oppression had vanished. At home John Brillard found his wife wearing a nightgown now, lying alone in the bed they had shared for years. He wanted to confess to her about his behavior with Ann, but something in her eyes-something new and very tenderstopped him.
He looked down on her and thought of how beautiful she appeared, but there was no lust in him. For the first time in his life, he experienced a feeling of unfamiliar tenderness begin to flow through him. He leaned over the bed and gently, slowly, kissed her on the forehead.
"I never knew," he said. "I always thought of myself.. . I never.. . . "
She reached up to run delicate fingers along his arm. "It's all right, John," she said. "There's time . . . lots of time."
He sat down beside her on the bed and leaned to kiss her mouth. This time there was no animal lust in the contact of his lips, only the butterfly tenderness of gentle love.
As she sighed under him, he almost cursed himself for not realizing it before. If he had only been gentle and tender with her. . . .
But he did not linger on the thought. As she had said, there would be time . . . lots of time.
Downstairs, both Sue and Ann paced back and forth through the living room for a few minutes before Ann turned to her younger sister.
"Shit!" she said.
"What's eating you?"
"He's right. That's what's eating me," Ann said. "Dad's right."
"He may be right," Sue said, "but I'm not going to play around with a stinking old vibrator the rest of my life. I mean, it's all groovy to stay cherry all the time and never know what a cock feels like, but once it's in there-"
"I know. I know!" She paced back and forth two more times, pondering a decision for long moments before spinning around to face her sister. "The hell with it," she said finally. "The hell with them all. I'm not going to be a damned hypocrite no matter what they say. I've been going steady with Harry for almost three months. It's time I showed him how I really feel.'
She walked to the telephone, picked up the receiver and dialed. She waited for three buzzes, then heard the instrument lifted at the opposite end and the warm familiar voice of Harry Morton, the boy who had called her the day before.
"Harry? . . . Look, I'm sorry about yesterday, I mean real sorry . . . maybe we could get together for a while today . . . oh good.. . . "
She listened for a while and then looked over to where Sue stood petulantly biting her lower lip in obvious hurt frustration.
"Oh, Harry . . . I wonder . . . do you have a friend? Well, I just thought. . . . Sue's getting to be a real big girl now. . . . Good! In an hour, then." She smacked a kiss at the phone's receiver, then hung up and turned again to Sue.
"He's coming over with a friend of his," she said. "And guess what?"
"What?"
"His folks are away for the rest of the day. He has the house all to himself."
It took Sue a few seconds to realize the import of her sister's words, but when she did, a slow, sensuous smile lifted the corners of her pert mouth.
"I guess there really is a big world out there, after all," she said.
"Yeah, baby," Ann said as she took a pace closer to her kid sister and squeezed one of her hands affectionately. "A great big, wonderful world."