Colleen – chapter 02 – part-04

“It’s the same thing in a marriage. Love is a living and breathing thing. Barbara made the same promise to me that I made to her. The vows say ‘forsaking all others.’ She knew before she made her choice what it would do to our relationship, but she did it anyway. My love for her is just as dead as that child in the intersection.”

“What could she say that would make a difference? That it was just sex and not love? That she loved me but had to have someone else’s dick inside of her? That infidelity is acceptable in a marriage? That because I loved her I should accept that she would screw anyone anytime she felt the urge? That type of relationship might be OK for some people, but not me. I don’t believe any of that. It’s all a line of horseshit by someone who won’t accept responsibility for their own failure in a relationship.”

“I suppose that on some level maybe Barbara still loved me when she got pregnant by another man…she loved me…but not enough to put me first, to be number one in her life. If there was something wrong in our relationship, she obviously didn’t love me enough to come to me and try to work it out; she just didn’t care. That’s why your love is so different, because I know that I am number one for you. I don’t for one second doubt how you feel. I know you will never betray me.”

I had to pause for a moment to digest in my own mind what I had just said. Colleen gave me a gentle kiss on the lips and sat back, waiting for me to continue.

“Barbara never said it out loud, but I knew that she was jealous of you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Who knows. Maybe because it is so easy for you to be beautiful, it comes natural for you. She always felt that she had to work at being glamorous. I think she was jealous of how close you and I are…maybe that’s why she did what she did…I don’t know. The sad thing is that she had no reason to be jealous…I was in love with her, but she chose to destroy that.”

We sat on the bed facing each other, just being silent together when Colleen took both of my hands in hers and squeezed. She smiled and spoke.

“When we were younger, I used to brag to all of my friends about how cute my little brother was…and still is I might add. I never did feel the same way about the twins as I did about you. They were always just my brothers, but you were special to me. Always have been, always will be.”

I nodded my head in agreement. “Yeah, same here. As far as the incest thing goes, it’s really not part of the equation. I don’t get all hot fantasizing about hopping into bed with Mom…”

“Please, that’s not a good mental picture for me.”

“…and I’m not standing around drooling at the thought of all the nieces growing up…”

Colleen laughed. “That certainly puts my mind at ease.”

“…the only important thing is that we love each other, no matter what our biological relationship is. I really don’t understand this ‘soul mate’ thing I’ve heard people talk about, but I do think that you and I were meant to be together from the very beginning. The fact that you and I are brother and sister was just a bad accident on the part of nature. I want to tell you something that Mike said to me a long time ago.”

“What’s that?”

“One night when we were in college, Mike and I were sitting around talking, being philosophical, solving all the problems of world and we ended up talking about the family and stuff. Mike said, ‘I’m sorry Bobby, you’re my brother but Jimmy is my friend.’ I never really understood what he was saying until I came back from Chicago. You’re not my sister; I don’t think you ever have been. You’ve always been my friend, and now you’re my lover. Does any of this make any sense?”

“Yes it does.” She leaned in gave me a small kiss. “Thanks, I feel a lot better.” Colleen lay down, pulling me with her. She reached over and turned off the light. In the quiet of the darkness she held my hand and whispered, “I am never going to let go of my friend.”

The relationship between Colleen and I was always good, but the conversation we had that night cleared up a lot of the lingering issues both of us had in the back our minds. It added a new dimension and depth to our love. But…

Gradually, something else began to creep into the back of my consciousness. I couldn’t put my finger on it, I just felt that something was missing and I didn’t know what. The more I thought about it the more it eluded me. For several weeks I struggled with it, trying to find the answer. Even Peterson and Miss Jennings commented that I seemed to be preoccupied.

It sounds like a scene in a low budget movie, but the answer came to me in a dream in the middle of the night. I sat up in bed with a jerk and yelled out, still half asleep. Colleen didn’t open her eyes, just groggily asked, “What going on?”

“Nothing honey, go back to sleep.”

I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. Now that I knew what was wrong, I had to figure out how to correct it. I spent the next few weeks playing out different scenarios in my mind, rejecting most of them, looking for the perfect plan that would fix everything.

Then one night I was in the kitchen cleaning up when Colleen walked in after putting the kids to bed. She stood there watching me for a few moments before she spoke.

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something is bothering you. You’re quiet all the time and half the time you don’t even hear me or the girls. Now what is going on?”

I was having trouble finding the right words. I stood there looking at her before I spoke.

“I want to get married.”

The expression on Colleen’s face couldn’t have been any worse if I had punched her in the stomach. Her eyes slowly got bigger and her bottom lip began to tremble. A tear rolled down her cheek then she turned and walked out of the room with out saying a word. I heard her walk down the hallway and close the bedroom door.

I tossed the dishtowel onto the counter and went to the bedroom. I stopped, took a deep breath before opening the door and stepped in. Colleen was sitting on the edge of the bed; her arms wrapped her mid-section, rocking back and forth holding our unborn child. Tears were pouring down and she was shaking when she looked up at me.

“How could you? You promised me.”

“How could I what?”

“You promised me that you would never cheat on me, who is she?”

“Who is who?”

“The tramp…the slut you want to marry.”

My head was starting to spin, everything had gone terribly wrong. Colleen’s face was in her hands and she was sobbing uncontrollably. I walked over and knelt on the floor in front of her. I carefully pulled her hands away from her face then held it between my own.

“You are.”

“I am what?”

“It’s you. You’re the slut I want to marry.”

Colleen sat straight up and snapped her head back with a look of total shock.

“ARE YOU CRAZY?”

“No…I’m not. I’ve never felt so sane in my life. Colleen, I love you and I want you to marry me.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“Why?”

“Why? Because it’s against the law, that’s why.”

“So?”

Colleen was frantically looking around the room, trying in her mind to latch onto something that would bring this moment back into reality. As her breathing began to slow down her eyes settled on mine.

“There is no way we could get married.”

“Sure there is. All we have to do is get a marriage license, invite Reverend Stevens over, she says a few words for us out in the garden and then we have a nice party. Pretty simple actually.”

Colleen was having trouble assimilating what I had said.

“We can’t just waltz in and get a license.”

“Sure we can, it’s easy. Here, let me show you.”

I went over to the dresser, took Colleen’s wallet out of her purse and removed her driver’s license. I pulled my wallet of my back pocket and took out my own license. I sat down on the bed next to her and held them out for her to see.

“This all we need.”

“What?”

“Look, when we get the license, we only have to show them identification to prove that we are who we say are, we don’t have to provide a copy of the family tree. What name does it say here?”

“Robert Mathew O’Conner.”

“And what name is on this one?

“Colleen Margaret Wilkowski.”

“Ok, who in San Miguel knows that we are brother and sister?”

She had to think about that for a few seconds. “No one as far as I know.”

“Alright then. As far as anyone knows, we are two unmarried people living together, we had a baby and now another one is on the way. We want to make the ultimate commitment to each other and publicly say we are in love, what’s wrong with that?”

The look in Colleen’s eyes told me that she was not having any better luck in processing any of this.

“What about Mom and the twins?”

“Now that does have me worried a little, but I’m betting that if they can deal with us having two children together, then they will be able to cope with us getting married. What do you say? Will you marry me?”

Colleen stared at me for a few minutes then got up and walked over to the closet. With her back to me she began to undress and said, “I can’t deal with this right now, it’s making my head hurt. We’ll talk about it later.”

When she had finished undressing, she came back and stood in front of me in all of her naked glory. There was a confused look on her face and her hand was rubbing her forehead.

“Christ, the father of my children is a raving lunatic…I’m going to bed now.”

Colleen got under the covers and rolled over with her back to me. She lay there quietly then spoke.

“And don’t you ever call me a slut again.”

The next morning Colleen was unusually quiet at breakfast. When she met me at the door before I left for work, I tried to talk to her but she put her hand over my mouth and shoved me out the door. When I got home that night it was just as bad. She interacted with the girls but completely ignored me. Even the kids were picking up that something was wrong. They didn’t say anything, just looked at us with questions in their eyes.

I sat on the sofa trying to read as Colleen put the kids to bed. After fifteen minutes I had read the same paragraph a hundred times and still had no idea what it said. I had given up when Colleen walked into the room and stood in front of me, her protruding belly in my face and staring down into my eyes. I waited for her to say something to me.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes what?”

She rolled her eyes, looking up at the ceiling for a second and then back down at me.

“Yes, I will marry you. Apparently insanity runs in our family. I hope we haven’t passed it on to the girls.”

She turned and walked away. At the doorway she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

“Bobby, it’s time for bed. We have a lot details to discuss.”

And we did discuss the details, but first we…well, let’s just say that we did lots of other stuff before talking about a wedding.

After two pregnancies for Colleen, telling the family about the wedding was a piece of cake. Sharon and Mi Lin were startled at first but that quickly turned to delight. Mike just smiled and under his breath said, “It’s about time.” Jimmy rubbed his temples with his fingers for a long time before he looked at us.

“You do realize that I’m a deputy sheriff, don’t you? I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear anything you just said.”

Mom’s only comment was, “You two only do these things to make my hair turn gray. How can we help?”

For all of the bravado that I had shown to Colleen when I first talked with her about getting married, I was terrified when we went to get the marriage license. Colleen and I drove to city hall one afternoon and walked up to the appropriate window. An old lady who was somewhere between eighty and death was behind the counter slowly writing something on a form. It seemed like she took hours before looking up at us.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” I said. “We need to get a marriage license.”

She looked at me, then at a very pregnant Colleen who was holding Noelle.

“I should think so,” was all that she said before handing me a form to fill out.

Once we had returned it to her, she gave us the license, showing us where to have the minister and witnesses sign, telling us to return it within thirty days of the ceremony for it to be recorded and become legal.

Because of the circumstances, the wedding was kept exceptionally quiet and very small. Since there were three kids in our house and another on the way, Sharon and Mi Lin took charge so that Colleen wouldn’t have to deal with any of that stress. For obvious reasons, the wedding would be in our back yard in San Miguel, too may people in Santa Teresa knew who we were.

Sharon and Mi Lin made numerous trips to San Miguel to take care of everything and Colleen was having a blast spending time with her two sisters-in-law. Mom made the trip with them half of the time and there was so much laughter going on that I had a hard time believing they were getting any work done.

A couple of days before the wedding I got a call from Mike. After exchanging pleasantries, Mike asked his question. “Have you guys got your rings yet?”

Rings. I leaned over and began pounding my forehead on the top of my desk.

“Jesus, Mike. I didn’t even think about getting rings. What am I going to do now?”

“Relax little brother, I’ve got you covered. Some how I knew you wouldn’t remember. I will bring the rings with me on Saturday.”

The day of the wedding started out crappy. It was early fall and there was gray fog everywhere, but by 10 AM it had burned off leaving the rest of the day bright and sunny. The temperature us just right for wearing a suit without working up a sweat. Bill had built a small arbor in the backyard that was now completely covered with climbing roses. At 4 PM that Saturday afternoon, I stood in front of the arbor with Reverend Stevens waiting for Colleen.

For the actual ceremony, the only people there were Mom, Jimmy and Mi Lin and their two daughters, and Mike and Sharon and their three daughters. The only additional people were Harold Peterson and Miss Jennings from the office plus Frank and Linda with their daughters from next door. Frank and Linda had bought the house next to us about a month after I came from Chicago. Their two daughters were the same age as Meghan and Molly, and we had all become close friends.

We heard a small noise and we all turned to look at the back door. The first one to walk out was Molly who holding a small bouquet of flowers in her hands. Meghan was next and she was holding Noelle who was sound asleep on her shoulder. All three of the girls were in the new dresses that Mom and Colleen had bought for the occasion and they were very far off the top of the cute scale. The girls walked to the arbor and waited. Then Colleen stepped out.

Stunning – breathtaking – there aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to describe what I saw. Colleen was wearing an ivory colored dress made of raw silk that fell below her knees. It was devastatingly beautiful in its simplicity. It displayed every beautiful line and curve about Colleen including her pregnancy. While everyone else was smiling at how wonderful she looked, I was struggling to take a breath without wheezing, she was that beautiful.

As Colleen took her place next to me we turned to face Reverend Stevens. On Colleen’s left was Meghan, holding Noelle and next to her was Molly. Just as everyone moved in and formed a semi-circle around us, I felt a small hand slip into mine. I looked down to see Patricia who was now four years old looking back up at me.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“You didn’t have anybody on your side,” she smiled back in reply.

The gathering settled down and waited for Reverend Stevens to begin. As she opened her little black book Patricia leaned in and in a clear voice innocently informed the Reverend, “My daddy says that now Aunt Colleen is going to be an honest woman.”

The entire group was struggling to not break out into unbridled laughter except for Mike whose face had turned bright red and was trying to hide behind his wife.

The ceremony itself was very short. When it came to the point of exchanging rings, I glanced over my shoulder at Mike who smiled and pointed at Patricia. She was very slowly and carefully unbuttoning the flap covering the pocket on her dress. She reached in and handed two objects to the pastor. She said her blessing over the rings then handed one to me and one to Colleen. We looked down at what lay in our palms and both of us gasped.

It was our parent’s wedding rings.

We both looked at Mom who was smiling and nodding yes. We said our vows and exchanged the rings. The rings fit perfectly, as though they had been custom made specifically for us. After the last prayer, I kissed my new bride.

I felt Patricia tugging at the hem of my coat and she was wiggling her index finger at me to bend down. Cupping her mouth with her hand she whispered into my ear.

“Are you still Uncle Bobby?”

I picked her up, swung her around and kissed her on the check.

“Yes sweetie, I will always be Uncle Bobby.”

The caterer’s that Sharon had hired began putting out the buffet and the other guests began to arrive. We had invited about twenty other people but we didn’t tell them it was a wedding reception, we just said that it was a formal garden party. It was evenly divided between our friends in the neighborhood, my closest co-workers from the office and several of Colleen’s clients. Soon the newcomers knew that Colleen and I had been married, secretly we were counting on the rumor mill to spread the news. The live-in boyfriend finally married the nice widow woman.

As soon as we could we found Mom to ask her about the rings.

“I want you to have them. I talked with Jimmy and Mike and they agreed with me. The rings are yours now.” She paused for just a second with a small smile and said, “I know your father would want you to have them too.”

The party went into the evening with Mom and the twins meeting most of our friends for the first time and everyone having a good time. There was one incident that happened where I could not have foreseen the future disaster in store for me.

Mike and Jimmy met Harold Peterson.

I have a used set of golf clubs and play eighteen holes maybe once or twice a year, almost always with my brothers. I don’t play very well so it is not something I enjoy doing a lot of. After nine holes, my score is something that a professional bowler would be proud of, somewhere around 280 or 290. The twins are the opposite. They are fanatics when it comes to golf and every year they spend a fortune on new clubs and greens fees. As I said, once or twice a year they harass me into a round of gold. The problem with this is that I am by far the best one of the bunch. After years and probably thousands of dollars spent on lessons, they simply continue to get worse.

And then they met Harold.

Harold Peterson is possibly the only person on the face of the earth that could be more obsessed and worse at golf that Mike and Jimmy. I now had three people constantly nagging me to be the fourth man on Saturday mornings. Sharon and Mi Lin tolerated this small personality disorder of their husbands and knew that it was perfectly harmless as long as everyone wore a crash helmet. Harold on the other hand, was a widower with no one to keep him on a short leash and occasionally would slip into an uncontrolled frenzy at the mere mention of golf. It was inevitable that I would raise my number of golf games to five or six games a year. Colleen simply smiled and gave me big hug.

“Maybe you can give the boys a few pointers.”

By nine o’clock everyone had left, the caterers had cleaned up and the only one who was still with us was Mom. She had taken a weeks vacation from teaching her second graders to stay with the girls in San Miguel while Colleen and I went on our honeymoon.

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