Folie a Deux, Episode 05

As you may have deduced by the fact that I have written this chapter, I am alive. It's been a long and painful few years for me, but I finally find myself in a place where I can finish this story and move onto new ones. For those of you who've sent me supportive messages during the interim, thank you. It was always a delight to see fan mail. In addition, I've recently learned that many of the answers I sent oat using the feedback system were not received, so I apologize for that.

For those of you new to this story, it won't make a lick of sense unless you read the previous parts. Also for those of you new to the story, the unusual format is a very deliberate creative choice; if you like it, awesome, and if you don't...well,not much I can do about that. Not all my stories will be this way, so please check back when I get others up on the site.

Folie à Deux

Episode 5: Pressure

*

The screen is dark as we hear the voice of a young woman whom we recognize as Olivia Larsen. "In a documentary or something, I remember I heard an Abraham Lincoln quote."

We see in closeup the face of a beautiful young woman, or at least a young woman who would be beautiful except for the yellowed pouches beneath each eye that speak of a healing trauma -- her slightly-crooked nose gives a clue to the nature of that trauma. She has a lovely, expressive mouth, soaring Classical cheekbones, and wavy, bright red hair pulled back from her face.

"I can't remember the context," Olivia goes on, "but he said dealing with something was like holding a wolf by the ears -- you didn't like it, but you didn't dare let it go. And I always remembered that quote because, you know, it's a vivid image and you get what he means right away. But when I heard it, I was like, 'Why the fuck would you grab a wolf by the ears? The fix you're in is your own fault.' I always thought that it was kind of stupid because of that." She sighs. "And then I went and grabbed a wolf by the ears."

We now see a title card in white letters against a black background:

Folie à Deux

Episode 5: Pressure

After a few moments, the title card is replaced by one reading:

August 5

Back to Olivia. "I'd spent so much time and energy on this, on wondering if it was really happening and how to get concrete proof, that I never stopped to consider what would happen if I actually, you know, got the proof. And then I got the video of Mike and mom going at it and...well..." She holds up her hands, fists clenched around imaginary wolf ears.

"What did you want to do?" comes from offscreen. The voice is that of the female interviewer from the first and third episodes.

Olivia gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I kind of wanted to go back in time to stop myself from getting that video."

"After all the effort you'd put into it," the interviewer asks, "why would you wish that?"

"Because...look, I'd spent a month being pretty convinced my mom was having sex with my brother, and that was weird and uncomfortable and it made it awkward to be with them. But I didn't actually know anything. I could tell myself I was wrong. I could hope I was wrong. But then I got the video..."

Olivia is replaced onscreen by the video we saw before: a cellphone video of Mike atop his mom, both naked, Mike's hips rising and falling in rhythm to Emily's pleas to fuck her and fill her with his cum. The clip lasts about 10 seconds.

"And once I had it, I had no idea what to do with it," Olivia said. "I mean, seriously, no idea at all. It made me sick just to think of it."

"Because of what your mother and brother did?"

"No. Well, kind of that too, but mostly because now I knew what they were doing and I had to decide what I was going to do about it. And all of my options were lousy." She pauses to scratch her nose gingerly. "The first thing I thought was that I had to tell dad right away. That was the...'right' thing to do. But then I realized that if I did that, I'd be destroying the family and maybe sending mom and Mike to prison. Incest is illegal in Minnesota. What they were doing was wrong but I didn't want to see them in jail because of it. But even if dad didn't go to the cops, he'd still get a divorce and probably never want to see Mike or mom again. And he'd be shattered, and it would be because I told him."

She pauses as if considering something, then reluctantly adds, "And just from a point of view of pure self-interest, if word ever got out that mom mom and brother were having sex, I would never be able to show my face in school again. I had another year of high school and I cared an awful lot what other people thought of me. If people knew...well, I'd have dropped out of school. I couldn't have faced anybody who knew. Funny how that kind of thing gets less important when you get out on your own."

"So If not telling your father, then what?"

"I gave it a huge, endless, horrible amount of thought," Olvia sighs. "I mean I got no sleep that night, I just spent the whole time staring at my ceiling in the dark. I could only come up with two other reasonable courses of action, and they both sucked."

"What were they?"

"Well, the first was I could just do...nothing. You know, let it ride and hope it just faded away before dad or anyone else found out."

"Did that seem realistic?"

Olivia frowns. "No. I mean, I wanted it to be realistic because that would be the easiest thing for me personally. Like, by far the least agonizing. All I'd have to do is be quiet until they stopped and I would never, ever have to think of it again."

"But?"

"But they weren't going to stop. I mean, I was a kid and I knew they weren't gonna stop. They were..." She trails off in a sigh. The interviewer waits as the moment stretches out uncomfortably long, and then Olivia finally says, "Mike was going to be living at home for his first year in college because he was going to a college in the Twin Cities and there had been some kind of fuckup with his scholarship, like the room-and-board part of it. They didn't have a dorm room for him and we didn't have the money to get him his own apartment. If he had been planning to go to, like, USC or something, then maybe. It would have been another few weeks and then he'd split and there would be a mandatory cooling-off period between them. But with him still living under the same roof, it wasn't going to change." Another pause, then, "They were in love."

"You knew it was love and not just sex?"

"Well...I mean, you can't ever really know if two other people are in love, can you?" she shrugs. "But it looked that way to me. It looked really obvious, the way they were giving each other goo-goo eyes and finding excuses to be around each other when before Mike would have, like, gone to his bedroom to be on his phone and mom would have found a book to read. My mom giggled at his stupid jokes. She giggled. You know my mom; does she seem like a giggler to you? They weren't just after each other's bodies. I've never seen two people more in love."

"And if you had left it alone and it had come out?"

"Then it would be even worse than telling dad."

"So what did that leave?"

"I had to talk to them," Olivia says simply. "Or...well, no way I was talking to Mike about it. I had to talk to Mom. And if I was gonna rip off that particular bandaid, I needed to do it soon or never."

Next we see a white woman somewhere in the vicinity of 40 years of age who bears definite familial resemblance to Olivia. She has striking features: a square jaw, a pointed and cleft chin, high cheekbones, and large, expressive, deep brown eyes. Her mouth is generously wide and her lips are gorgeous, with lipliner a shade darker than her lipstick to accentuate their ideal shape. Her nose is perhaps the only thing about her face that isn't perfectly proportioned -- it is a bit too big and a bit too prominent. Her face is framed by a mane of unruly blonde locks that tumble just past her shoulders, and it is obvious that she seldom has good hair days. She is wearing a dark green blouse with a faint pattern on it that is obviously present but difficult for the camera to discern.

Below her face appears the legend Emily Larsen.

"Do you recall August 5th?" the interviewer asks.

"It is burned on my memory," Emily says dryly in a lovely, rich alto.

"What happened that day?"

"I went out shopping to replace Lou," she says, and we see a photograph of her looking perhaps 10 years younger standing next to the open door of a minivan. It was obviously chilly when the photo was taken, based on her jeans, jacket, and gloves, and the trees in the background are holding onto only a handful of dreary brown leaves. The photo has the legend, Emily's Chevrolet Lumina minivan, "Lou," was destroyed in an accident. "I wanted to get a jump on things to narrow down my choices before I took Bob shopping to help with the final decision."

Now we see a photo of a happy-looking, handsome man with dark brown hair and icy blue eyes, labeled Bob Larsen.

"Your husband didn't want to accompany you car shopping?"

Emily smiles fondly. "It's a long story and not particularly interesting. Suffice it to say that was how we had always done things."

"And after the car shopping?"

"I came home," Emily says."I had dropped Bob off in the morning so I had the car for the day. I walked into the kitchen and found my daughter sitting at the table with her hands clasped before her and a very...stern look on her face."

Back to Olivia, who looks slightly embarrassed. "So yeah, I had spent the entire night figuring how to approach this conversation. Because it's a conversation I really didn't want to have, but if I was gonna do it, I needed to do it right, right? So it had it all rehearsed in my head, like...like I was seeing it in a movie, seeing me having this conversation like I was an actor or something. What I'd say, what mom would say, what I'd say back. How I'd...scold her or whatever. How we'd both look during the conversation. I even...oh God, this is so stupid...I even dressed up for it."

"Dressed up?"

"Yeah, like in a...like a church blouse and a skirt and..." and here she covers her face and adds, "heels, high heels, like...like I was a parent in a cheesy family TV movie. Oh man, it hurts to remember, so embarrassing. I had the top button buttoned and everything."

"She was dressed...unusually, for her," Emily says. "Especially during summer, if she wasn't wearing her work uniform or lacrosse outfit, she was wearing tee shirts or a bikini or something else light and exhibitionistic. And she never wore the...formal sort of clothes she had on then if she could possibly help it."

"What did you think?" the interviewer asks.

"For an instant I was taken aback," Emily says, "and then I began to think she was in very bad trouble."

"So when she walks in," Olivia says, "I give her this stare and I say, 'Sit down, mother. We need to talk.' Just like that, all deadpan and hardass. And then she flips out."

"Oh, the terrible things I thought at that moment!" Emily says as we see her again. "I sat down and took her hands in mine and began assaulting her with questions."

"Like what?" the interviewer asks.

"Whether she was alright, whether she was hurt," Emily says.

Cut to Olivia, who says, "If I was in trouble with the police..."

Back to Emily. "If one of her friends had been hurt or killed..."

"Whether I was pregnant," Olivia laughs. "She asked if I was pregnant! Now I had expected her to be all meek and fake-innocent, like the teenagers in the shows when their parents confront them about drugs or whatever, but she was barely letting me get a word in edgewise, all 'We love you,' and 'You can tell us anything.' And she just kept asking these questions, like whether I had stolen something, if I had broken something expensive, and it was all I could do to keep saying no, no, no!"

"I had to a large extent stopped being a mother to my son when I became his woman," Emily reflects. "It is difficult to be the parent in the relationship when you are becoming more and more submissive to your child, as I was becoming with Mike. But I was still very much a mother to Olivia, and my maternal instincts for undue alarm were wholly and impressively intact. In fact, I may even have overcompensated somewhat."

"So I had lost control of the situation," Olivia chuckles ruefully, "and in record time, too. She was hitting me with all these questions and assurances and I didn't even know what end was up, and then all of a sudden I just blurt out, 'I know about you and Mike.'"

Back to Emily, who looks somewhat uncomfortable. "I was raining my maternal love and concern down upon Olivia when she suddenly shouted, 'Mother, I know what you and Mike are doing."

"She shouted it?"

Emily nods. "Rather loudly. And, as the saying goes, that shut me up."

"So mom just, like, freezes," Olivia recalls. "Mouth open, middle of a sentence she never finished, like pressing pause on a Blu-ray. And for a long, long second she just looked at me with, I don't know, confusion or denial or something. And then aaaaaaall the blood drained out of her face. Her face went through white to gray, like the color of a corpse."

"What were you thinking at that moment?" the interviewer asks Emily.

"Nothing that I can recall," Emily replies. "All I can remember is a feeling like vertigo, of the world spinning away from me. Everything seemed very remote. It felt like I might faint."

"That lasted for a few seconds," Olivia tells us. "Seemed longer. Then she shut her mouth so hard her teeth clacked together, like in a cartoon or something. It made my teeth hurt. And then came the denials, the 'I don't know what you mean.' I was like, are you really gonna make me say it out loud?"

"I knew immediately that Olivia knew the truth," Emily muses. "I suppose I knew deep down that Mike and I must eventually be found out. We had taken so many chances when we might have been caught that eventually one of those chances was going to come to fruition. But to be confronted with it was...terrifying."

"What did you think might happen?" the interviewer asks.

"Logically, of course, I knew that things could get very dire indeed," Emily said. "There existed the very real possibility of prison time. At the very least I assumed I would lose my marriage, but scandal, loss of career, loss of friends and associates, public humiliation, I knew all of those things were potential consequences. And in spite of all of that, in the moment, all I could think about was Mike."

"In what way?"

"All of those dangers applied equally to him," she tells us. "In addition, he faced the loss of his entire future, just as he was starting out in life. His college would surely drop him and his prospects would be shattered. And...and I might lose him."

"As a son?"

"No...no, not as a son," Emily says slowly. "As I said before, part of the mother-son bond was lost when we became lovers. That was inevitable. But the part that remained could never fray, never be lost no matter what. Even if we never saw each other again, that part of the bond we shared would never disappear.

"Rather, what I feared was losing him as a man, as a lover. I thought of losing whatever future we might have together. And so, even though I knew immediately that it was no use, I still tried to lie."

"Yeah," Olivia says dryly. "No worse liar in the whole world. So when she was all, 'I don't know what you're referring to,' I explained that I knew she was having sex with Mike."

"Oh, hearing it said by someone else, especially by my darling baby girl," Emily sighs miserably. "I thought I might die. And still I denied it."

"So we go back and forth a bunch of times," Olivia tells us. "I just wanted her to admit it but she wouldn't. I told her I saw them and she was all, 'I don't know what you think you saw, but...' So finally I brought out my phone and played the video for her. That did it."

We see Emily looking slightly shaken. She is not looking at the camera, but rather at some point down and to the left, She is silent, but after two seconds she opens her mouth, only to shut it again before speaking. Several more seconds pass before she finally says, quietly, "Since these interviews started, I have been dreading this moment -- discussing this moment, I mean. Even now, years later and after everything that has happened, it is still...uncomfortable to think about. Acutely so."

"Why?" the interviewer asks.

Another pause, then, "The shattering of a fool's paradise is always miserable. Up until that moment I could avoid thinking about the...wider ramifications of the actions Mike and I were taking under the delusion...no, the lie that it only affected the two of us, that we were hurting no one else and it was no one else's business. As Mike later said, love makes you stupid, and Mike and I were madly in love with each other. That had made us very stupid."

Back to Olivia. "I thought I'd been ready for whatever reaction mom would give me. I'd rehearsed it all in my head, right? But when I hit play on that video, she just..." Olivia sighs and shakes her head slightly. "She just...imploded. Have you ever seen someone you love more than you can say just crumple and collapse into themselves? Well I have, and it is fucking awful."

"And then?" the interviewer asks.

"After a few seconds I turned it off. She didn't ask me to, I just couldn't take seeing what it was doing to her. I never wanted to hurt her -- Mike either! I just wanted to make them see what they were doing and knock it off before it hurt everybody...especially me, honestly. So we just sat there. I was hoping she would take the lead and say something, like an explanation, but she didn't. She just kept staring at my phone. I don't think it was more than 15 seconds before I talked, but it was the longest 15 seconds of my life...up to then, anyway."

"And what did you say?"

"I asked her why, and then she told me."

"I told her everything," Emily says. "Not the...mechanical details between Mike and I, of course. No, I told her about what had happened with the accident and with the bikers, and how Mike and I had tried to control ourselves and how it had never worked because we had found something perfect, and about how we had finally just given in and fallen in love with each other."

"All of that?" the interviewer asks.

"It was not a monologue," Emily says. "We spoke for almost an hour and a half. She asked many questions, and I answered every one of them to the best of my ability. Once I admitted the truth, I felt...compelled to tell all. It felt...not good, precisely, but it was a great relief to tell someone about what had happened during the previous six weeks. I hadn't realized how much I had needed to speak to someone about it. Keeping a secret is a terrible burden."

We return to Olivia, who blows air upward from pursed lips so that a lock of her blaze-red hair bounces. "Well shit, that was a hell of a conversation."

"What did you think?" asks the interviewer.

"I thought...Christ, I thought everything under the sun at some point. It was a lot to take in. I felt just awful for her and Mike, because...look, I have tried many times to put myself in their places, hers and Mike's. What if it had been me and Mike instead? What if it had been me and dad? Or hell, me and mom? What if it was me and a child I had made? I don't have kids so I can't even imagine what it feels like to love someone that utterly, much less how it would feel to be forced to fuck that kid to save our lives. But if I had been put into that position and then found out that Mike or dad or mom or my kid was my soulmate? That we were perfectly compatible and the sex was so good it broke my fucking brain? How the hell could I deal with that? What kind of stupid shit would I do in that situation?"