Being A Jerk For Halloween

by Lubrican

Chapter : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Epilogue

Epilogue

That summer was one I'll never forget. Both of us had summer jobs, to save up as much money as we could before college. We were hoping to be able to have some kind of car, but that was mostly dreaming. We wouldn't need one, really. Gramps' house was only five blocks from the campus, and the only purpose for having a car would be to come home now and then. Since Gramps only lived a couple of hours from us, Dad said it would be no trouble to come get us for major holidays.

I worked at a car wash that summer, which was great for beating the heat and getting some sun, but not in huge doses. Robbie got a job at the library, putting books back on the shelves and cleaning up the reading areas and whatever.

We had time to go to the lake, which we did frequently. Sometimes we arranged to meet other friends from high school there. Sometimes we did not. It was a reservoir, held in by a dam, and used to supply the city with water. It was fed by a river, which meant a lot of people fished there, but not all that many people chose it over a nice, clear pool, for swimming in.

Which meant there were lots of places along the shore where a boy and girl could spend a little private time.

No ... I'll never forget that summer.

On the day Dad took us up to Gramps' house, to start our college experience, we already knew that he might not be there. Though he was retired, once in a while he still did some consulting of some kind, and he had already said he would be on a job that weekend. Orientation at Bramley was going to start on a Tuesday, with Monday being the day people were supposed to move into the dorms. He said he might be back, but that if he wasn't somebody would be there to let us into the house.

We didn't think much about it when he said that.

Dad, probably trying to pretend this was all no big deal for him and Mom (who had cried when she hugged and kissed us goodbye,) waited while we carried our own suitcases up to the front door, and rang the bell. He said something about how we were all grown up now and didn't need his help. I'm sure he was trying to make us feel grown up. When he saw the door open, he waved and started back home.

Had he known who was going to open the door for us, I think he would have stayed. Of course that could have caused a little problem. You'll see why in a little bit.

"Hi! You must be Bobby and Robbie. I've heard a lot about you!"

Her voice was high enough to sound like she was a heck of a lot younger than she was. And it didn't match the appearance of the body it came from at all. That's because, standing before us with a smile on her face, was a woman who was maybe twenty-five, wearing all black. Her hair was short and a deep shade of some kind of bluish purple, that swept down over the right side of her face, hiding that eye. The eye I could see was hazel. Her skin was the kind of white that suggests she might be an albino, except there was an undercurrent of pink in it that said she just kept out of the sun. The exposed ear had two studs and a small hoop in it. The black T shirt she was wearing exposed two tattoos. I looked down, expecting to see biker boots, but she was barefoot, and her toenails were painted bright pink.

She stepped back. "I'm, Anna, your grandfather's housekeeper. He's not back yet, but I can show you where you'll be staying."

"Great," I said. I think Robbie was still staring.

We had been in Gramps house before, of course, but not for a few years. He usually came to our house to visit, because it was easier. With four of us all on different schedules, it was almost impossible for us to all find a time when we could go visit for any significant amount of time. Gramps, on the other hand, had nothing but time if he wasn't on a job somewhere.

So we were familiar with the house. It had three bedrooms. Gramps used the big one. The last time we'd been there, one of the smaller bedrooms had his desk and papers in it, which was boxes of stuff from his former career as a detective. The other one had odds and ends in it. We just assumed they'd been cleaned out and that we'd each get one. Since all three bedroom doors were within ten feet of each other, we had already resigned ourselves to having to behave a lot more than we wanted to.

As we got into the living room Robbie said, "I didn't know Gramps had a housekeeper."

The woman looked over her shoulder, which tossed the hair off her face. She was pretty in a porcelain doll kind of way. "Yeah. I've worked for him about a year now."

"Oh," said Robbie, in a voice that I recognized as meaning "Why didn't I know this already?"

But the woman didn't take us toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Instead she took us to the door we'd never been through. It went to the basement, and had always been locked in the past. We had asked him about it a dozen times. Every time he came up with a different answer. It got to be a game for a while. We'd get there and ask, "Why is the basement locked? What's down there?" When we were young, he said there were monsters down there and it was locked to protect us. Mom yelled at him that time. After that he said he kept a unicorn down there, but that he wasn't allowed to show it to us. Mom didn't care for that one either. She didn't mind "Storage and dust," but then the next time it was right after he retired. "That's where I keep the bodies of all those bad guys I caught, but couldn't prove anything on. Been stackin' 'em up for years." Mom just groaned and said "Dad!" We were twelve then, and were smart enough to know he was BSing us. We were also smart enough to know he was never going to tell us what was really in the basement. I think we lost interest then, because we hadn't asked him the next couple of times we'd been there.

The door wasn't locked this time, though. When she pulled it open we both sucked in noisy breaths of air. She turned to look at us, a questioning look on her face.

"We've never actually been down there," I said.

"Not surprised," she said. "From what I hear the guy was real big on his privacy."

"What guy?" we asked together.

"The guy who used to rent the apartment down there from your grandfather," she said.

I expected something dark and dank, like a dungeon. But it wasn't like that at all once we got down the stairs. The basement was only under half of the house, and one wall was on ground level. I couldn't believe it. Then I thought about it and realized that the only place Gramps had ever let us play was the front yard, which was fenced. We'd never been around in back of his house.

It was just one big room, really, if you didn't count the bathroom. Along half of the outside wall was a counter that looked like any kitchen counter in any house. Then there was the door, leading out into a small back yard, almost surrounded by trees and rough terrain. And on the other side of that was a window with a bed under it. The bathroom took up half of one end of the room, and two sliding closet doors took up the rest. In the part next to where the stairs came down from above was a little area with a short divan and a recliner, facing an older TV and a couple of bookcases.

"It's not much," said the woman. "I never met him, but I guess the guy who lived here was one of your Grandfather's partners, or co-workers or something like that who got shot on the job and couldn't work any more. Your grandfather fixed this up and let him live here until he died a couple of years ago. He said he rented it, but I know Gramps, and I don't believe he ever actually collected any money from the guy."

"You called Gramps Gramps!" said Robbie, who was staring all around her.

"Yeah. He said you guys call him that, and it fit, so I just call him that too."

"But he's not your Gramps," objected Robbie.

The woman smiled for some reason. "You are correct about that. No argument there."

I was looking at the bed. It was a queen sized bed, bigger than the one back in either of our rooms. "And Gramps said we're going to live ... down here?" I asked.

The woman stopped smiling. "He didn't think you'd object. When I came here, part of our agreement is that I get one of the bedrooms upstairs. I have a seven year old son, and we just naturally put him in the other one. This has a private exterior entrance, and we both thought you'd prefer having that kind of independence. Were we wrong?"

Robbie had turned to stare at her, her mouth hanging open.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Why would Gramps let you live here? Why would he talk to you about where we would prefer to live?"

She smiled again. "Your grandfather said you might react this way. He said to tell you that I am his live-in housekeeper, and that he would explain it when he gets back."

Robbie, perhaps being more socially aware than I am, did what she thought she was supposed to do in this situation.

"But there's only one bed!" she objected. She was a good actress. She sounded really shocked.

"He said you might react that way too," said Anna. "And he said that, if you did, I could tell you what he calls me sometimes."

"Calls you sometimes?" I asked. This was starting to get weird.

"Yes, just ... sometimes," she said.

Robbie threw up her hands in frustration. "Well what?"

Anna smiled widely. "He calls me Ruby ... but only sometimes."

Well, you've figured it out by now, of course. Gramps had a girlfriend.

He'd managed to keep her on the Q-T for a year. Not even our parents knew about it. They did know about the basement apartment, but we didn't find out about that until the next time we went home. And by then, Anna was living in the basement apartment with her son, Trey, and Robbie and I were in the upstairs bedrooms.

Except we weren't. That was all for show. Gramps and Anna had no secrets, and she knew about Robbie and me. Which was why she didn't care if we knew about her and Gramps. Later we found out just how deeply he had been scarred by what happened between him and Great Aunt Ruby. Which is why he was determined that Robbie and I would have a chance to work through what we were feeling. I think he expected us to get it out of our systems or something. Why he would think that is beyond me. He hadn't gotten Ruby out of his system. Anna even knew that. I think that's why she didn't mind role playing while they had sex, pretending to be his sister.

And it was impossible not to know about her and Gramps. Especially at night, because his bedroom was right over our room, and Anna was even noisier than Robbie was.

But that's how Robbie and I learned that it was possible for us to live together, and that nobody thought it was odd that we had that living arrangement, as long as each of us was known to go out with a member of the opposite sex now and then. It was easier for me than for Robbie, because all I got the reputation for was being a nice guy who didn't push it, and was good friend material. Robbie was popular with the guys, but they all wanted what I wanted. So after a while the only dates she could get were with the guys who thought they were hot stuff and could break down her infamous resistance.

But it worked out well. Our parents expected us to want to come home and "get away from the grind." I think they only came to see us at Gramps' three times in four years, and they never stayed overnight, so who actually slept in the upstairs bedrooms never really came under scrutiny.

Actually, the first problem we had popped up six months before graduation, when statistics caught up with us and we became part of the seven percent of those who depend solely on the pill for birth control, and for which it fails.

Robbie spun it by just lying, and saying that "The father of the child dropped out of school and hasn't been seen since." Her reaction was to cry a lot when she was around Mom, and lean on her brother, praising him for "his stalwart and non-judgmental support."

Initially, that was all well and good. I mean our parents were proud of both of us for facing adversity and supporting each other.

But we didn't count on Mom inviting Robbie to move back home "for a while" to have the baby under circumstances where she can "get acclimated" before she goes looking for a job and gets over her disgust with men in general.

What saved us was that we had both interned for an up and coming company in Indianapolis the summer before, and we both got job offers just after Robbie found out we had killed a rabbit.

So she has bravely declined Mom's gracious offer. I believe her response was something like "I got myself into this mess, and I'm not going to ask my parents to get me out. And an offer like this may not come again if I let time go by after graduation."

We'll share a house, of course. I mean we are just starting out in the working world, and it makes sense to share expenses. And I can help with the baby, which will give me some experience so that, when I finally find the right woman, I'll have a leg up on fatherhood. But naturally that won't be until I get my career firmly established.

Robbie's already practicing her lines about how men don't want to date a single mother, and how she doesn't have time for dating anyway, because of work and raising her baby and on and on and on. She thinks we can fool our parents for at least three or four more years.

I'm not so sure about that.

But we'll see.

The End

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