A Chat

"You think she was ..."

"I don't know and I don't care," Sue said firmly. "The only things I know about her are that she was accepted into the Nurse-to-Doctor program the hospital set up, and now she's in Chicago at a trauma center. I send her a Christmas card each year, and I send a Christmas card to the married woman with four kids who operated on Linda and put her lung back together, and I'm damn grateful to both of them. But I wouldn't take either one of them into my bed just as a thank-you, and neither of them would do it anyway."

Mikie's eyelids flickered. Sue suspected he was wondering what Sue and Linda did in bed together, and addressed it.

"I could bet you fifty bucks that those guys who want to see Linda and me 'making it' would be totally grossed out and run like hell if they even just saw us kiss. We're nobody's fantasy girls."

"So you wouldn't ..."

"Go to bed with you either?" Sue replied. "No. I know it wouldn't be bad. Linda knows how your mom and dad make love ... women know those things. Genetically, you have everything right in your head and you'll treat a woman well. But I can't fall in love with you if I'm in love with Linda, and I took a vow long ago not to fall in love with anyone else."

Michael frowned. "My dad was married before. Carol and Stephanie are my 'half' sisters."

Sue smiled. "All I can say is that I'm different from your dad. Hell, after his first wife died, he met Linda on the job and they were a couple for several years. The only thing Linda really says about that is that each of them taught the other to love again. I can't prove it, but I think Linda had a major crush on your mom. Not right away – she still really cared for your dad and she practically adopted your sisters – but I came across a file when Linda was an Internal Affairs lieutenant and your mom was accused of raping a woman."

Mikie's jaw dropped.

"Your dad didn't know about it at the time. It was a blackmail setup. I asked Linda about it, and she said it was the first time she had ever met 'the second Mrs. Gibson' – she had stayed away from the wedding so she wouldn't show up your dad, and then they all worked in separate divisions. But when Linda read your mom's file, she realized what kind of woman Pat really was. She went on a one-cop crusade to clear your mom's name before Mike could find out about the allegations. Then she reached out to Mike again, asked him to realize what kind of woman he'd married. She loved him like a brother now – more than she'd ever loved him in the past." Sue smiled. "You were conceived not long afterwards. I know your parents don't talk about it, but Linda is convinced God wanted them to realize what they had found in each other before He gave them a child together."

"I'm ... a miracle baby? I know Danny and Bobby are."

"Michael," Sue said gently, "I've watched you from the day you were born. You have your faults, but you care about people and want to help them. I bet you think about Rachel Underwood and wish you were her boyfriend."

It was true. Sue continued. "But you're not going to give up everything to help somebody. You live for yourself too. I can't imagine you having a clingy girlfriend who can't live without you. I can imagine you having a girlfriend who loves you with all her heart and can still let you go do whatever you have to. Your mom and dad do that for each other, and I get the feeling you idolize them."

Michael mumbled an acknowledgment, but he was still worried. "Sometimes ... they scare the living shit out of me. They're so damn perfect. I'm scared every time I don't do well in class or on the field ..."

"Do they terrorize you?" Sue said in as neutral a tone as she could master.

"Terrorize? What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't be hiding from them up in this tree if you didn't fear them. I don't know that your dad never jacked off, or your mother jilled off, but I'd be incredibly surprised if they didn't. I jill off. So does Linda."

Mikie was tempted to ask how come, but he didn't. Sue continued.

"You want to ask how come? I can tell you. Linda and I have an agreement. If either of us isn't ready for sex, we don't do it. But we can bring ourselves off, either openly or in private.

"Sure, your mom and dad can punish you. But I don't think they will. And I think the worst thing you can do to them is be terrorized by them just because you don't think you can live up to their standards. You know they make love. Moms and dads don't stop doing that, at least not the ones who have loved each other from the beginning.

"Maybe your mom and dad don't need images to get themselves turned on – I very seriously doubt they do, and someday I hope you won't either. But they are too good people for you to just think they're perfect and that you're automatically bad for doing something questionable." Sue sighed and smiled. "I took educational psychology in college. I might have been a teacher if my money had held out."

"Sue ... question?"

"Go ahead and ask."

"Did you ever have ... an ideal woman, or an ideal guy?"

"I presume before Linda? Yes. Josh was the ideal guy for a while, then the student council president, and there was a smart guy in my economics class in college. The ideal woman – I didn't have a specific one, I just visualized her. Debbie came close, but we were too different and we just drifted apart. I forgot all that ideal-woman stuff when I met Linda, because she wasn't anything like the woman of my dreams, but I fell in love with her more deeply than I ever imagined in the dream." Sue paused.

"But Linda and I actually met the woman I'd dreamed of. Linda and I were with her together. She's the third woman I slept with. The only other person either Linda or I have ever ... wanted to be with." She switched the conversation.

"How about you? Do you have an ideal woman? Someone you know now, or someone you've put together?"

"No, a real woman. Bright red hair, really full of life, looks like she could beat up a bear, but very sweet and tender once you get to know her. Speaks with a little bit of an Irish accent ..."

"Bridget O'Brien?"

Sue asked this in astonishment, because Bridget was that third woman. She had made a truly memorable visit, spending two nights with Linda and Sue and making love to both of them as if they were one person, which they certainly felt like. But Mikie had been all of five years old at the time. Sue wasn't even sure if Mikie had met Bridget. And just a few days afterward, Bridget had disappeared while on a mission.

"I remember her, sort of," Mikie said. "Mom remembers her real well, and she told me Bridget was really nice and really liked all of us. Last year, I asked Josh Crane to send me a picture of her from when he and Samantha and another cop were on assignment, just before she came down here."

"Do you jack off to that picture?" Sue asked. She might well have masturbated to Bridget's photo herself, and she thought Linda would have joined her.

"No," Mikie said simply. "Mom says she disappeared just a few days after she visited here."

Sue nodded. "She was tracking a serial killer, a really nasty one. She was talking with all of us when she had a flash of insight as to where the killer was going to strike next. Linda and I got her on a plane and gave her a lot of special equipment. After that ..." Sue suppressed a sob. "After that, the killings stopped, but nobody heard from her again. I'm afraid she and the killer took each other down. If your mom hadn't gone into the hospital to have your brothers right about then, we would have thrown a memorial service."

Mikie nodded back. "I figured. I don't want to ... disrespect her. But if she were around, I'd really like to go on a date with her."

Sue realized Mikie didn't know about her and Linda with Bridget, or that Linda and Mike's mom actually had been lovers – Linda hadn't let on, but women know these things. Sue vowed Mikie never would.

"If she were around now," Sue said, "I don't know what she'd look like. Would you still be in love with her if she were my age?"

Sue was fudging. Vampires never age. If Bridget were alive, she'd be 21 until she was killed. Sue assumed Mikie didn't know about that side of Bridget's character – just as well, she thought. Bridget had been all woman.

"I really think so," Mikie said. "There's just something about her. I like Rachel and I like some other girls a lot, but I want to know Bridget. Mom had her totally figured out, and I trust what Mom says about her. If she was around now, she'd be the one."

Sue asked: "How come Rachel looks away when you look at her?"

Mikie again had a question he didn't want to answer. "Maybe I said some things about her. Not the real bad things, but stuff about her boobs and how I'd like to feel them, and cup her ass, and kiss her."

"Directly to her, or did it just get around?"

"No, never to her face. Guys and girls never say that straight out. I did wonder if she was a really good lay, and I said some things like I would hump her if I got the chance."

Sue swung her head back and forth. "If she doesn't think you're a total asshole and maybe stalking her, she's a better young lady than most. I wonder if it's gone too far and she'll be scared of you all her life."

This took Mikie like a slap in the face. "Holy shit. Am I right about girls being real sensitive?"

Sue shook her head again. "Just think of what you'd feel. If I talked about your ass and your dick and other stuff, you'd climb clear to the top of this tree and promise to starve to death."

Mikie was silent for a long time. "She really is pretty nice."

"Tell you what," Sue said. "You help me find out who's pushing porno at the school, and I talk to Rachel myself. I'll help her however I can, and I'll try to convince her you really like her and want to be friends with her."

Mikie thought. "Okay. I can't tell you his name, but he's got an orange-and-silver backpack and he does his dealing from it after school in the alley between Jackson and Van Buren streets. Pictures and DVD movies."

"Fair enough," Sue said. She thought for a while.

"You like Rachel, but you don't want to sleep with her. Is there any girl you're really hot for? Some girl you look at and just have to spank your monkey?"

Mikie's lips twitched. "Nobody in particular."

Sue smiled. "Unfair question. Your hormones are raging. Someday you'll slow down and not feel horny all the time, but you don't know when. It happened to me a couple years back, but women are different, they don't get full hormones until they're 35 or so. But there really isn't anyone you just gotta have?"

Mikie smiled. "Not 'just gotta.' Would like to, but don't have to."

Sue looked at Mikie with great seriousness.

"I can't hold you to this. Nobody can. But would you promise that you won't have sex with a girl – and that means anything, jacking off, sucking off, fucking one way or the other – unless you and she know you're in love? No doubts? And if you break up after you do it, you won't have it in for her? Michael in the story practically ruined his own life by jealousy of Kath. If they were married now, they'd probably be divorced or deeply unhappy."

Mikie thought it over. "For you –" he corrected himself – "For me, I'll try to do it. Maybe you don't know how naked I felt just there in the bathroom, imagining some girl there with me."

"Maybe I do," Sue corrected. "It's scary as hell. Even today, even with Linda, I get the shivers sometimes. She's still so beautiful, she knows what it was like to have children, to have a boyfriend, to have a husband, to have a girlfriend, and yet she bares herself for me and I do it for her. Whenever it doesn't feel just right, we don't do it. If you'll feel the same way ..."

"Okay," Mikie said.

Sue stood up, and then stopped.

"How come that door was broken anyway? Your dad's a great handyman. Unless he wanted to talk to your mom while one was in there and the other was in the bedroom ..."

"I don't think so. Damn if I'm gonna ask."

Sue had a thought. "That's a relatively new bathroom, isn't it? Didn't they take something out of Bobby and Danny's room to make it?"

"Son of a -!!!!"

Mikie choked off the references to his brothers being sons of a bitch, since after all their mom was his mom. But he had a real good idea that one or the other had planned a crude practical joke for later that evening.

"We'll find out," Sue promised. Her eyes glinted.

Two hours later, after Bobby and Danny had been assigned many extra household chores for rigging the lock on the bathroom so they could "accidentally" walk in on their mom on the throne, Sue left the house with Linda. Linda naturally asked what Sue had been up to.

"I could tell you for myself, but the rest is strictly in confidence. Let's just say I talked to somebody," Sue replied.

"Well, I talked to some people too," Linda said. "Mike and Pat were surprisingly agreeable to us going over and watching them make love, and them watching us make love. As long as nobody touches anybody else."

"I wouldn't expect any more," Sue said warmly. "We don't have to do it anytime soon, just whenever it feels right. I thought it was important, but I know better now.

"Those days when you were with Mike and Pat, they were good days for you and I'm so glad for you. But you and I have each other. And when we get home, I want to tell you and show you how much I love you."

"Is that part of what's in confidence?" Linda asked.

"You guessed it," Sue said. She was blushing.

(The End)