My most viewed post

You probably know that Google provides statistics of how many page views my blog posts have received.  The post that received the most views was Elly, Episode 10.

Elly is an important character in the Helen story.  (To save you from having to look it up: the Helen story starts off with Helen trying to hitch-hike her way to her freshman year in college, and a young couple picking her up.  The young couple is Janet and Jason Kolb, newlyweds, on their way back from their honeymoon.

Somehow, Helen and Janet begin a passionate secret affair.  When their Cherokee loses a muffler coming into Illinois, Jason takes the car out to be repaired, and the two girls go crazy, and engage in mind-blowing sex.  Janet had been straight all her life, and Helen, of course, being just about sixteen, would have had her mind blown with any sex at all, having been a total virgin.

As it happens, they're on their way back for Jason to teach at a school right in the town in which Helen's college is situated, in Eastern Ohio.  Helen gets permission to stay with Janet and Jason, to save on room and board, and Helen has an eventful freshman year, with Janet mostly off balance.

Janet's mother, we learn, had been Helen's mother's lover when they had been in college, twentyfive years before.  Janet's mother is overjoyed, not surprisingly, when she learns that Janet and Helen have become close.  But back in Kansas, Helen's father is still in a deep depression after the death of his wife some years before.  Janet's mother, Elly, takes a deep breath, and calls the widower, John Nordstrom (Helen's dad), and invites herself over, to try and comfort the man, and help him put away Helen's late mother's things, and put the house to order, after some four years.  Elly had never met John, since the two women had kept up an affair for all that time, continuing to meet in secret once a year.  Janet's mother, once she has seen young Helen, is half in love with the teenager, and is eager to meet the husband of her lover, Sylvia.

John manages to greet Elly graciously, and they mourn Sylvia together.  Elly is able to get John out of his funk, and leaves for home, thoroughly satisfied with her mission of mercy.  But John is now totally in love with Elly, who, even in late middle age, is a lovely woman.

When the New Year rolls round, and Easter Break, John is invited to join everyone at the home of Elly and Tom, Janet's parents, where Helen and Janet and Jason are also visiting, so that everyone can be together.  When the kids return to school, not only have Jason and Janet gotten pregnant, old Elly is also pregnant, by John Nordstrom.  This is the fact that makes everything so complicated.

Jason Kolb is called up, being in the Army Reserve, and sent to the Balkans.  Before he can see any action, he dies in a plane crash.  Janet is devastated, but she is on the brink of delivery, and keeps herself together for the sake of the child.  Meanwhile, her mother Elly, too, is pregnant, to her great embarrassment, and Elly travels to Janet's home, so that they could help each other.  On Christmas Eve, both women give birth.  Janet names her child Elly, after her mother, and Elly names her child Tomasina, after Tom Krebs, hoping that her husband will forgive her infidelity.  The two little girls grow up together, and call themselves The Twins.

Helen loves little Elly very much, and after Elly's sophomore year in College, she has a falling out with both her Twin Tomasina, and her mother, Janet, and comes to live with Helen.  She's been suspended from her university, so she has registered for courses at a local community college, and has had a good junior year.  The story opens as Elly begins to work part-time at a suburban supermarket.

Kay