The Good Mother

She reached behind again, this time to unfasten her bra, but then stopped, her fingers still at the clasp. I could sense uncertainty. She turned her face to the side, her eyes looking over her shoulder, back at me, holding her gaze. She knew I would be watching. Then she turned her face away. Another few seconds of hesitation. She unclasped and drew in her shoulders. The bra slipped down her arms. But she did not turn around.

Only the outside edge of her right breast was in view. A thin curved sliver of linen-white flesh. A five-second glimpse. It jiggled a little. Enough to make me pale, weak, as if I were coming apart. It was more than any view of her I had seen before.

I sat entranced. The long nape of her neck, the pronounced line of backbone, a waist slender, even after all these years. Those white panties. A derriere contoured and soft. She stood, feet together, back straight and tall. Her body spoke of poise and grace, something I had failed to notice heretofore. This was not a commonplace woman. Not any longer. Not to me anyway.

From her suitcase, she held her usual pajama top up to her chest, to cover herself. For a moment her body seemed frail and exposed. I sensed she was about to turn to me. She started to. She let her hands drop to her waist, the pajama top with them. The swell of her right breast beginning once again to appear in my view. Then she stopped again, hesitating. Both of us silent. She turned back, her breast away from me, and slipped on her pajama top. She was going to show me, but changed her mind.

It seemed at that moment as if we hardly knew one another. Strangers meeting for some unspecified assignation. An appointment with an older woman. Why was she doing this? And why was I watching? This wasn't infatuation. Certainly not romance. I was, once again, filled with embarrassment and shame. But desperate for more.

"Why is it you don't have a girlfriend at school?" she asked, stepping to the bed with slow deliberation. "Or do you?"

I explained that I hadn't found anyone to like me, not for very long, at least. "Anyway, by grad school most are already married or engaged."

Her eyes closed as she lay on her back. I undressed, stood beside the bed in my boxers. Putting a knee on the edge of the mattress, I reached up to pull the fan cord above.

"I wish I'd had someone like you when I was young," she said.

The fan blades inched slowly forward. I looked down. Her pajama shirt had bunched up, covering nothing below her waist, exposing her panties just below her navel. Her eyes were out the window, not on me, deep in private thought. As if she were thinking of sitting at one of those sidewalk cafes in some far-flung locale. Such a fineness to the curve of her hips, and the rise of her mons, still subtle but easily seen. So much closer to my view this time.

Her panties were damp from sweat, clinging to her skin, turning the material almost transparent. I saw again the dark patch underneath. And then something else. There before me was the slit between her legs, clearly indenting the panties. My face flushed from this raw view of her sex, but more from such an obvious invitation to let me see. Yet, she was unwilling to meet my eyes. I kept asking myself, what does she want?

We sat side by side, backs against the headboard, passing the wine bottle between us, forgoing drinking glasses. Just swigging, taking turns.

"I like the darkness better," she said, turning off the bedside lamp. There was stillness everywhere. Only the slow turning of the fan above. All else at rest. As if the big house was empty save for the two of us.

Moonlight spilled across the field and into the window, bathing us in subdued tones of white and gray. Our eyes adjusted. The conversation whispery, close to my ear. She surprised me by starting to talk -- first of the farm, the summer heat, then at length about her own life. Slowly, her teenage years in this room unfolded. We let the sweat dry on us. She raised her knees, but kept her feet flat on the mattress. I stole glances at the damp patch between her parted legs, the indentation still prominent, a magical, mysterious crevice so close to me. Surely she was aware that I was looking at it. She had a hint of a new, unfamiliar perfume.

We all grow up with dreams and fantasies. Hers began in this room. A calmness came over her, the nervousness gone.

"I would lie here at night, nights a lot like this, and wish that one of those boys from high school would phone, asking me to go to one of the dances in the gymnasium."

She looked at me. "But of course none of them ever called. So I was left to fantasize about some handsome young guy asking me out. Dating. The places we'd go. I memorized all the details."

"So why didn't you date?" I asked.

"Boys at school didn't find me attractive."

"I don't believe that."

"Pimples and not enough curves," she said. "Besides, my mother wouldn't let me. Thought I'd be corrupted. Get drunk. Get pregnant. It was a sin. That's what she told me. Time and again. It was a sin."

More silence, she for the moment in her own thoughts. Me savoring the hum of the overhead fan, the faint scent of her perspiration, a trace of that perfume and the sweet aroma from the fields, wafting in through the window. At that moment there was no place I'd rather have been than on that bed listening to her. She began again.

"About that night in the bathroom . . ."

I tried to interrupt, tell her it was unimportant.

"Let me talk," she said. "This may sound stupid, Michael." She paused to catch her breath, then looked straight ahead, not at me. She spoke slowly, trying to find the right words.

"It's humiliating to have to admit that I had never seen a man pee before. I'm 52 years old and never seen that. I'm ashamed to say that I just wanted to watch." She sighed. "So I watched my own son."

"You've never seen it?"

"Never."

"But you and Dad, how many years have you been married. Thirty?"

"Thirty-two. I'm afraid your father is a pretty conservative guy. With us, everything has been by the book. Lights out, in the dark. Your father. He doesn't . . ."

I finished her sentence for her. "He doesn't show you things like that, does he."

"He's not like that," she said. "He's never been playful."

"There's so much I haven't done," she said. "Things that everyone else has experienced. Things I've missed my chance at." It was all described so matter-of-factly.

"He just fucks you."

She ignored my vulgarity. Moved her eyes to the window, catching the moonlight.

"That's about right." Her voice a little dispirited. "I'm so sorry I watched you."

"I'm not," I said.

I could feel it inside me. Her honesty was emboldening me. All of it enough to begin giving me an erection. Glimpses of her panties may have helped, plus the smell of her hair so close to my face. We were side by side, our arms touching. The thick nipples under her pajama top were in my peripheral vision. I kept sneaking glances at them. Just inches away. My hard-on was pushing out my boxers a little. I wasn't sure whether I wanted her to notice.

"So, you've always wanted to see a guy take a leak." It was more of a statement from me than a question.

"It's not just that, Michael. It's everything. In my mind, everyone else all these years has been having great sex. Everyone but us."

"Maybe he doesn't know what to do?"

"Oh, he knows. But his idea is just to get it over with. Be done with it. I honestly believe he feels there's a certain uncleanliness about the whole business."

"All those bodily fluids and sweat," I said.

"Yes. Yes. You're right," she said, surprised that I understood.

"But what about before him? Other guys."

"There weren't any. He was my first. My only. That's how inexperienced I am. It's one of my biggest regrets."

We scooted down in the bed, heads on our pillows. She moved her face close to mine to lower our whispers. Then the story of her upbringing.

"You see," she said, "Back then, in the '50s, dates were more social events. Parties overseen by parents, or church dances. Even if you went to a drive-in movie, you had to be home by eleven. There were two kinds of girls, those that sneaked out late at night or lied, saying they were spending the night at an all-girl slumber party. Then there were the rest of us. The ones who did what their parents wanted. We did what we were told. The good girls."

"And that was you."

She nodded.

"You should have an affair, you know."

"No one wants women my age. Besides, for the life of me, I wouldn't even know how to go about it."

The wine was taking its toll, our restraints receding.

"It's embarrassing for me to tell you the truth," she said. "Your father was always the same, from the beginning. I was told to lie on my back, keep my legs spread, close my eyes, don't talk. Don't say a word. Within 10 minutes, it was over."

"He just wanted you to lie there like some corpse?"

"He's a conventional man," she said.

"That's not conventional, Mom. Dad's some kind of necrophiliac."

We looked at each other. There in the darkness.

"No. Don't laugh. We can't," she whispered, quickly covering her mouth with her hand. Neither of us could stop. We turned, threw ourselves face down on the bed, burying our mouths in the pillows to muffle the laughter. Tears in her eyes. Our ribs beginning to hurt. It went on for a full minute.

"You can never say a thing about this," she whispered, doing her best to regain composure. "No. Really. You can't."

"So have you never even seen his erection? Surely you have."

"Well, of course. And in the early days, I wanted to examine him closely, but he pushed me away, said he wanted none of that. Before him, in college I sneaked around to look at medical books in the library. Believe me, we all did. And there were a few dirty magazines that a college girlfriend of mine had."

Even today, all these years later, I have trouble imagining my mother, the librarian, turning the pages of pornographic magazines from the 1950s. But she had little choice. Playboy Magazine had barely started. Penthouse, "Sex and the Single Girl" and nudity in movies -- those were years away.

The confessions tumbled out. I listened. Long pauses in between as she thought about what to say. I liked watching her mouth, liked listening to her breathe, even if her eyes for the moment seemed full of sadness. I realized that I might never have truly known any of that had it not been for that night in the bathroom.

Hers was a generation of women, millions who came of age in the '50s, facing rigidly defined morals. Forced to be good girls, lectured in church, terrified of getting pregnant. Girls who knew little about sex and, out of fear, saved themselves for husbands, most of whom were equally ignorant.

She was a few years too early, in a marriage with me as a young child, and left a bystander as the sexual revolution exploded around her in the '60s. By then, young single women were braless, bed-hopping, confident the pill would protect them. My mother's generation was relegated to the sidelines. A life of envy, frustration, silent rage.

"Did you think I looked disgusting in the bathroom that night?" I asked.

"No. No. You looked . . . fine." She started to say more, then cut herself off.

"Better than the photos in medical books?" I teased.

"Oh, much better," she teased back. "Handsome."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes. Really."

A long, awkward moment. All silent. It seemed to last an eternity. The heat in the air was beginning to subside, our sweat drying up. The air more palatable. And then, she surprised me.

"Would you consider letting me see it again. Just for a moment?"

"I'm sorry," she said before I could answer. "I know that's disgusting. I'm your mother. Forget that I asked." She turned away. I realized she was every bit as repulsed with herself as I was with me.

My boldness evaporated. All confidence gone. Fantasies of exposing myself to her had been reckless. I could not actually see myself pulling my boxers down in front of my mother. Reality had set in. I felt myself a coward.

Nonetheless, I stood up beside the bed. Something compelled me. A gravitational pull toward her. Despite that sickening feeling again. My fingers trembled as I slid them under the waistband of my boxers. Absolute anxiety as I lowered them. My penis was embarrassingly shriveled and limp. What woman would be impressed by that? Both of us were looking at it.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Sometimes it's this way."

"No, no. That's fine. You look nice," she said, probably lying.

I lay down, leaned my back against the headboard, raised my left knee, but kept my right leg out flat on the bed so she could see, lying beside me. She sat up, her back also to the headboard, saying nothing. I swigged more wine, gulped it down out of embarrassment. Passed the bottle to her. We talked a little. Then to my relief, I sensed a slight stirring and my diminutive penis began to thicken, turning into a true cock.

"Turn the lamp on," I told her. I wanted her to see it better.

Her shoulder and arm were lightly against mine as we sat in silence. I looked down at my cock. So did she. Her watching it made it enlarge more, get harder, without me touching it. I could feel the stretching, almost beyond its limit. My prick lay along my stomach, the underside turned up and in her view. The skin tight, veins visible. Drops seeping out the opening, trickling slowly down the head of my dick. One or two dripping on my stomach. My balls filling up. I was at full erection.

Even with that sick anxiety, this was the me I wanted her to see. Though I wasn't sure why. Maybe it's because of the feeling I sense throughout every vein and artery when I'm hard. Maybe I wanted to share that with her, show her that magical feeling. Manliness, strength, power. And that sense of the inevitable: an intoxicating explosion just ahead. Still not touching it, my dick began weaving about on my abdomen, twitching on its own. I could hear her intake of breath. And then her first words.

"That night in the bathroom. You were going to masturbate, weren't you?"

As soon as she said it, I realized it wasn't just showing her my naked prick and balls that I wanted. Ejaculating in front of her, shooting out my sperm halfway across the room. That's what I really wanted. And to see the look on her face as I did it.

"You turned around and left before I could," I said. "Is that what you want to see now?"

"I don't know what comes over me," she said. "I'm a terrible mother. Mothers don't do things like this. Not with their sons. It's not normal." But her eyes stayed fixed on my erection.

"Maybe you and I just aren't normal people," I said. She gave me a look, as if for the first time realizing it might be so.

"Well, do you want me to do it?"

"This is so sick," she said.

"Maybe its because we're both drunk again," I said. "No one's going to know."

Her voice dropped. Almost inaudible. "All right then."

I held my prick straight up, which to this day I still do when jerking off. Encircling it at its base with my thumb and middle finger. My other hand stroked. Fingers up and over the head to slicken it, using the liquid oozing out. Then fingers back down on the other side. Slow, up-and-down motions, followed by gliding my fingers lightly all around the erection. Running my palm over the swollen head. Her brown eyes watching my fingers' every move. Again it started to twitch and bob. I turned my face to her. We said nothing. She looked back down at my hard-on. Eyes wide. Curiosity in her face. I kept going.

More wetness flowed from the top. I was leaking like a sieve. I gripped the thing with my whole hand, gave it longer strokes but kept it slow. Slow and even. I was unhurried, letting the glorious arousal wind through my blood vessels, that familiar feeling of building closer and closer toward one final moment. More importantly, that thrill of her being right there, shoulder to shoulder, watching it with me.

I stopped, let go, leaned my head back against the headboard and closed my eyes, savoring the moment, trying not to come, thinking less about my arousal and more about her watching.

"Whats wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing. I just don't want to come this soon."

"Its okay if you need to."

And then it seemed as if that hard dick was no longer mine, nor anyone's. It was its own entity, as I again held it straight up, like some beast from another planet that both of us were staring at fixedly, close together, in awe of its strength, its forcefulness, its life-like movements. Standing straight up. An invincible tower. Each of us equally inquisitive. She leaned down, her head a little closer.

"Do you do this a lot?" she asked.

"A couple of times a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes a lot more, I guess." I was telling her something I'd not divulged before to anyone. What man does?

"Really?" she said. She went silent again.

"You can touch it, if you like," I said. She was hesitant, a little disbelieving. After regarding it for a moment, head bent down a little more toward it, she reached her right arm over and carefully touched the side of my prick. Her fingers shaky, unsteady. My cock jumped. She pulled back in surprise.

She returned her hand, let two fingers glide along the slickness, from the top of the shaft to the bottom. I was coated with it entirely. She, having watched me, used her thumb and middle finger to form a ring. She slipped it over the top of the head, gliding down and up. I should have known her light touch -- my own mother's fingers -- would trigger the inevitable. She sensed my urgency and moved her hand away as I succumbed, tensed up. I grabbed, pumped two, maybe three times and together we watched as the white bursts shot out, a foot straight up from our bodies. Three impressive spurts, falling back down on my stomach, and a little on her arm.

I kept pumping, slower now, smaller spurts, six inches or so high, until the last of my sperm oozed out, dribbling down the sides slowly into my pubic hair. I fell back, exhausted. Her breath, close to my face, was faster. I sensed intuitively that her heart was racing. Silence between us for long minutes. The clean bleach smell of my sperm filling the room.

Then both of us embarrassed, maybe a little ashamed. It was tangible. She turned away, horrified, no doubt, at what we had just shared. I heard, after awhile, the slow, steady breathing of her sleep. For me, I lay awake and nervous, in fear of what we had just done. Wondering what outcome we faced from this.

* * *

After breakfast, we left for home. Mother less quiet. Talking of traveling as I drove. Maybe to faraway locales overseas, she said. Exotic city streets she would like to walk. Maybe the two of us going together. No mention of my dad. And no mention of the night before. At least she was talking. She knew I understood the ground rules. We were not to discuss what went on in the attic. Nonetheless, she was more upbeat. I took that as a small victory as we pulled into the driveway at home.

But as I stopped the car, with hands in her lap, she looked down, as if praying. "I'm a terrible mother," she said quietly. Nothing more. She would not look at me and left me sitting there as she went into the house.

I had to admit there was a creepiness about this whole business of me and her. More than ever I should have been disgusted with my behavior. But that revulsion wasn't enough to stop this pull toward her. There was a growing hunger in me.

* * *

Another Saturday evening, early September. Dark beginning to descend. Heat giving way for the day after baking farm fields all around. The air was still. We were back in the attic, three weeks since the last trip. Both of us fresh from baths, both on the bed in underwear, she with her pajama top and panties, sitting cross-legged. But then she raised her right knee up to her chin, hunching over it to smooth baby oil up and down her leg.