'If not, I can arrange to have you transferred. This is your senior year, and it's important that you maintain your grade-point average.'
'My classes are fine.'
'That's good.' Mother Margeaux nodded. 'That's good.'
Penelope said nothing. The three of them sat silently for a moment.
'Is there anything else you wish to tell me?' Mother Margeaux asked.
Penelope shook her head. 'No, ma'am.'
'I'd better get back to work, then. Thank you for coming in, Penelope.'
She was dismissed. The conversation was over. Mother Felice stood up. 'I
guess we'll see your other mothers,'
'You'll do well this year,'
Mother Margeaux said to her daughter.
'You'll make us proud.'
Penelope nodded, following Mother Felice out of the office. She did not notice that she was sweating until they stepped into the hall.
Although Mother Sheila was out somewhere in the fields, overseeing the collection of representative samples of today's harvest, her other mothers were in the testing area of the main building, supervising the analysis of grapes which had been picked this morning. A team of analysts sat at a long counter in front of the window, testing the balance of the must in order to make a preliminary determination of this year's product potential while her mothers looked on.
'Penelope's home!' Mother Felice announced, closing the white door behind her.
Mother Margaret was quietly conferring with two of the analysts. They both looked up at the announcement, smiled absently, nodded, waved, and continued talking. Mother Janine, however, immediately stopped what she was doing and hurried over, her spiked heels sounding loudly on the tile. Penelope felt herself tense up. Mother Janine reached her, threw her arms around her, and hugged tightly. The hug was a little too long, a little too unmotherly, and Penelope anxiously held her breath. As always, she tried telling herself that Mother Janine really loved her and cared about her, but what she told herself and what she felt were two different things. There was something disturbing about her youngest mother, something she could not quite put her finger on, and as soon as Mother Janine let go, Penelope stepped back and away.
'I missed you,' her mother said in that cloying little girl voice she used when talking to Penelope. 'I always hate it when summer ends and you have to leave us and go back to school.'
Penelope nodded, said nothing. The truth was that for the past two weeks she had not seen Mother Janine except at breakfast and dinner. She didn't know how her mother could miss her.
'Did you meet anyone yet? Any cute guys?'
Penelope frowned. 'It's only the first day.'
Mother Janine laughed, a strange sound that segued from the high falsetto of a child's giggle to the low chuckle of a deep-throated woman. 'Never too early to start.'
'Yeah.' Penelope nodded and turned toward Mother Felice. 'Well, we'd better go, let them get back to work.'
'Okay,' her mother agreed.
'We'll talk at dinner,' Mother Janine said. 'I want you to tell me all about your day, everything^ that happened.' She gave Penelope's shoulder a small squeeze.
'See?' Mother Felice said as they walked across the small lawn to the house. 'That wasn't so bad.'
Penelope grimaced and said nothing.
Her mother laughed.
The two of them parted at the kitchen. 'Now I'm going to the Garden,'
Penelope said. She grabbed her books from the kitchen table and went upstairs to her bedroom. Her feet were silent on the heavy carpet as she walked down the long hallway. She glanced into the open doorways as she passed and noted as always how the tastes and personalities of her mothers were reflected in their bedrooms- Mother Margeaux's sleeping quarters were simultaneously imperial and practical, the warring values represented by a huge bed with an intricately carved oak headboard and a large, simple desk topped with neatly stacked piles of paperwork. The off-white walls were decorated with framed original prototypes of Daneam labels. Next door, Mother Sheila's room was the most mundane, filled with bland contemporary furnishings that looked as though they could have come straight out of a catalog photograph, and a single framed print on the wall that always reminded Penelope of hotel art. Mother Margaret's room decor was the boldest and probably most interesting, with its ultra- modern bed, non-dresser, and startling juxtaposition of Old World folk art and original paintings by young Native American artists, but it was in Mother Felice's bedroom that she was most comfortable. Cluttered with lace and flowers, antiques and needlework, a shiny brass bed in its center, the room was crowded and at the same time light, airy. It was a friendly room, and it suited her favorite mother perfectly.
Mother Janine's bedroom had no furniture at all, only a bare mattress centered on the red tile floor. The undecorated walls were painted a deep, unreflective black.
She had never liked going into Mother Janine's room.
She reached her own bedroom and threw her books on the bed. Grabbing her journal and pen from the dresser, she went back downstairs, walking through the library and opening the sliding glass door to the Garden. Or what her mothers called the Garden. To her it had always been much more than a garden. To her it was a sanctuary, a refuge, a place where she could come to relax and to think and to be alone. Her mothers seemed to recognize her feelings and to appreciate her kinship with the location.
The Garden had originally been the place where in the summer they read or sunbathed or just lounged around, but over the years their involvement with the area had become less, their visits more infrequent.
It was as though they had tacitly agreed that the Garden was her domain and not theirs, and gradually they relinquished their control to her.
For this she was grateful.
She glanced around the walled yard. In the center of the quadrangle was a fountain, an exact replication of a Hellenic fountain discovered in the ruined courtyard of an old villa by Mother Margaret on one of her trips to Greece. Spreading outward from the fountain like spokes in a wheel were Mother Sheila's medicinal herbs and rare flowering shrubs, the even rows of greenery subdivided by the purposeful placement of various Old World archaeological artifacts and folk sculpture purchased by her mothers over the years. There were several benches within the Garden, but Penelope had always preferred sitting on the edge of the fountain, listening firsthand to the burble of the water, feeling the spray of light mist against the skin of her hands and face.
Although she hadn't said anything to Mother Felice and probably wouldn't, the question of her mothers' sexual preference had come up again today at school. Last year she had nearly been suspended after fighting with Susan Holman, who had called the product produced by their vineyards 'Lezzie Label Wine.' She and Susan had no classes together this year, but in the hall after lunch she had heard Susan loudly say something about 'the Dyke Factory' while her tough blue-jeaned cronies laughed hysterically. She had ignored the remark, continuing on to class as though she hadn't heard. But she had heard. And it hurt.
It always hurt.
What made her feel worse was that she wondered herself sometimes if any of her mothers were lesbians. That had been the rumor around town for years, and it was not beyond the realm of possibility. Each of her mothers went out periodically on dates, but for all she knew that could have been a cover-up, merely an attempt to maintain respectability for the sake of the business. There were no serious men in any of their lives, and there never had been, at least not in her lifetime.
Besides, her mothers were ... well, weird. She hated to admit it, but they not only seemed peculiar to outsiders. They often seemed strange even to her.
Particularly Mother Janine.
Of course, if that was the case, if they were lesbians, one of them had to be bisexual. Or had to at least have done it once with a man.
Unless she had been adopted.
No, she was not adopted. Of that she was certain.
She sat down, dipping her fingers into the cool water of the fountain pool. She called them all 'mother,' but
