Jess was a Bitch Ch. 10

"Of course, it's different," Jon spits back, leaning toward his father. "I'm not her father. I'm her brother. I don't have power over her like you do."

"Fine, all that means is I can't initiate it. You don't have any power over your mother. So, if you want to fuck her, it's alright? Like punching, it's okay to fuck up but not down? If Jess comes to me and asks me to fuck her, that's okay? All that matters is that the person with power doesn't ask first? It's that simple?"

Jon opens his mouth but no words are forthcoming. The anger in his eyes is replaced by confusion. He collapses back into his chair, eyes, and mouth, closed.

"I have something of a different perspective," Travis offers. "It strikes me that the hypotheticals you propose James, effect more than just, say, Jon and Gloria, in much the same way what I do, or Caitlin does effects each other. We don't have sex outside of marriage individually. It's as a couple or not at all. Setting aside the power slash authority differences, Jess asking to have sex with you has major implication with regards to Gloria that having sex with Jon does not." Travis takes a swig of his beer. "That makes it more complicated."

James rolls his eyes. "Fine, I'm divorced or my wife is dead. Now may my daughter fuck me?"

"Jess said you don't hate us. Maybe she meant you don't hate her," Jon says softly.

"Don't pull that bullshit on me, Jon. You know I don't hate you and if you don't there's not much more I can do that I haven't already done to prove you wrong. If I didn't love you and your sister I wouldn't care."

Jon has no reply.

***

The three women flip to lie on their stomachs.

"I don't want to leave Jon when we go home."

"I know that, dear but what choice do you have?"

"Stick it out. Not worry about what people say."

"And children? You've always said you wanted children or was that simply to show me you'd be a better mother than me? And your friends? You're prepared to lose most of them?"

"Mother, I don't have any friends," Jess snaps bitterly.

***

"I can't make you believe I'm, we're, not sick. I'm not smart enough to debate you. What I know is I love Jess and she loves me. She makes me a better person. She completes me in a way I never imagined. Fuck, I never understood how incomplete I was until the past week. I can't imagine any other person fulfilling me that way Jess does. I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense or makes sense but doesn't change anything for you."

This time when Jon gets up, Travis doesn't stop him.

***

Jess pushes herself up and off the lounge chair. She hurries to the water and splashes her way toward the surf. Caitlin remains where she is.

"Well, I fucked our afternoon up royally," Gloria growls.

"No, actually you didn't," Caitlin replies without bothering to turn her head. "Jess brought it up. You responded. And your response was in regard to issues she's going to have to deal with. She may decide that those issues aren't enough to sway her but that needs to be an active decision, on both their parts, not something they just slide into without thought."

"You think they should stay together."

"Yes, Gloria, I do. If you'd asked me about a brother and sister in love with each other a month ago I'd have wrinkled my nose in disgust like anyone else. I see the two of them in a different light. I saw them and the love between them before I knew they were brother and sister. I don't have that brother-sister image of them hardwired into my brain like you. I think that makes a big difference."

Jess returns and pats her body dry. She hands her mother the bottle of sunscreen. Gloria applies the sunscreen without speaking

***

As Jon walks away from the patio, James deflates, sagging against the table and holding his head with one hand. "Am I wrong?"

"Yes and no," Travis replies softly after taking a sip of his beer. "I think you're wrong in the sense that I don't feel as if Jon is taking advantage of Jess, or she him. That's the gist of the concern with your scenarios. The question isn't whether or not society will look askance at their relationship, that's a given. You posited the assumption that society's view of any incestuous relationship as being morally wrong as irrefutable. My lodestone for the morality of a relationship is, 'does one party take advantage of or injure another'. Perhaps that's too simplistic to cover the messiness of human interactions but I find it a useful starting point. In the case of Jon and Jess, my answer to that question is 'no'."

"I refuse to believe it's that simple."

"James, do you believe Jon is in love with Jess, not just enamored, but in love? I can't imagine that you view their relationship as nothing more than sex."

James is quiet for so long Travis wonders if he'll answer and if he does will it be truthful.

"Yes," James sighs. "I believe they are in love."

***

"Do you think I'm more like you or dad?"

Gloria snorts. "You're your father with boobs and a vagina."

Caitlin suppresses a smile.

"I agree," Jess says, nodding. "And I think Jon is a lot like you."

Gloria hesitates, then nods.

"You fell in love with daddy. Why is it so strange that Jon and I fell in love, if we're both so much like the two of you? We didn't mean for it to happen, any more than you and daddy did. What if dad had been black, or Muslim. I don't think that would have stopped you."

"No, but a white woman marrying a black man, or a man of a different religion is not nearly as taboo as what you propose."

"It once was, wasn't it? If you'd married a black man a hundred years ago in this country, you would've have been just as ostracized."

Gloria opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again and then shrugs. "I need another margarita."

***

Jess finds Jon on the patio. She's exhausted. Jon looks beat. He's staring at his painting. It's finished. Jess scans it and feels her eyes fill. She hears the patio door of her parent's room slide open. Her parents are holding hands. She glances at them. She can tell from the look on her father's face - he's seen the painting. They stand beside her. Jon doesn't look up or move. Gloria's hand goes to her mouth.

It's her face she's looking at and James'. Both are filled with such longing and misery that, like Jess, her breath catches in her throat.

"They're your faces," Jon intones flatly. "And your emotions but they're also my emotions, our emotions."

He rises, kisses his sister's cheek and shuffles past her to disappear behind the listless curtain hanging across the doorway.