Secret No Longer Ch. 07

[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene in photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]

*

Sunset had come, and with it the imminence of a night of sleeplessness and torment. I thought back on another night, that other night which you may recall, that night of inner torture that seemed now merely the precursor to this one.

The irony was crushing. How I had silently railed against my dear Fred for having allowed our son to watch his mother in illicit sex with Janine through a system of lenses and mirrors and photograph us! How I had expressly denounced him for accepting the incestuous element of Jason's voyeurism! The names I had called him, the labels I had thrown at him in the debating-hall of my mind, all returned. They were bitter, accusatory, unyielding, unforgiving. I had only grudgingly conceded the one point against me, the impropriety of our sex, and even then had intermittently indulged the belief that my wrong was negligible in comparison to his.

And now I found within myself, not mere tolerance of a passively incestuous interest, but rather a desire so nearly compelling in its strength that I doubted my ability to resist it should the temptation confront me. This was active and driving desire, the desire to press beyond incest of sight and mind, beyond that to the incest of flesh. It was the desire to attract my son, to seduce him, using all the power of my body to excite him beyond his power to resist, to thus compel him to press his young, strong body against mine—and into mine. It was the desire to feel the touch of his hand upon the white-hot point of my aching clitoris, that then yielding to tongue, that, in turn, yielding in time to the ultimate prize, the eminence of his manhood, given to him by Nature to pleasure woman, now pleasuring this woman, immersing its totality into the very realm in which the physical beginning of it and the man who owns it had begun.

How shallow and insignificant Fred's transgressions now seemed in comparison, and how unjust had been my vitriolic attacks. I had then wished for the right time to lash out at him and was now was so grateful that no such time had ever come to pass.

Fred. The man whose love I counted on, the man for whose happiness I would sacrifice anything and everything, the man whom I loved no less at that moment than I ever had, was now being scorned by my unwilling passion. Oh God, how I wished for some cosmic shift able to reconcile these two conflicting loves! How I was forced to watch, helpless, as my own mind engaged in a futile search through every account of human history it could to find some excuse to justify a love of both husband and son in the flesh. Even the Biblical account of Lot's daughters was consulted, but it would take the mightiest of self-deceptions to corrupt that into the rationalization I was looking for.

That damned clock again. Two-thirty, it read. No, two-thirty-one. Time, the measurement of which was the reason for its existence, I had then depended upon to heal my torment, and it had not failed me. Would it heal again? I had not questioned its efficacy the last time; I had only chafed at the slowness of the healing. This time I feared to trust it to heal at all, ever.

This is hell, I thought. Torment without the possibility of parole. Agony without end, timeless time, minutes devoid of purpose marching lemminglike to death.

Two-thirty-eight. Whoopie.

Twelve eternities later my half-full coffee cup steamed on the back-patio table while the caffeine I had already ingested fought a losing battle against a brown haze of strain and sleeplessness. Janine studied my face quizzically. This time she had no reason to expect this state of mind and it puzzled her.

"Linda, don't you think one trip through hell is enough for one lifetime? Or, at least, one month?" Her question was light and cheerful and it helped a little.

"Jannie, this is worse. It is far, far worse than last time," I said in a hoarse mumble. Jannie had probably read the news already, as she so often does, but if she did at all, this time she realized that she must wait for me to find my own time. Meanwhile, she sat and sipped her coffee in silence, speaking to me only with the compassion written in her features. More patiently than any friend has any right to expect of a friend she waited until I was ready to speak.

"Jannie, I am so torn. I cannot believe what I am thinking and feeling. It feels like every ounce of virtue I have ever dared to claim as my own has been stripped from me. I have been betrayed. I have become the victim of the worst of infidelities, an adultery too painful to admit because the victim and the adulterer are one and the same."

Jannie needed a little time to decipher all that, but she did not begrudge it. Within the time she processed the message the wellsprings of my eyes suddenly erupted, gushing forth with hurricane force.

"It's the incest thing, isn't it?" she asked, softly. "Oh, Linda, I never thought that our story about it could hurt you like this! I had no idea, I promise."

"I know, Jannie, I know," I sobbed. "I wouldn't have thought it either. The truth is, what you said didn't cause this pain; it only uncovered what was already there. Perhaps I should be grateful; now I can at least see the enemy."

Jannie looked into my eyes, engaged them with her own, looked away toward Jason's apartment, nodded and then turned her eyes back to mine.

"Yes, Jannie. Exactly," I whispered.

"Linda, at this moment there is nothing I want to do more than stand by you as you tackle this demon. Right now, though, I think it's too early for that. You are too stunned by this and weakened by fear and lack of sleep. Am I on target here?"

"Bulls-eye," I replied.

"Only you can tell when you're ready. Just know that the moment that comes, I'm on call, 24/7."

"Bless you, Jannie Bless you," I said with the most fervor I had summoned in a long time.

Jason breezed into the house at one-thirty. I heard him close the door and call out his familiar greeting.

"Hiya, Mom! I'm home. How are..." He stopped short at the sight of my tear-streaked face. He set down his back-pack and eyed me intently.

"Are you all right Mom? What's wrong?" he asked softly.

Desperately I rushed to his side and threw my arms around him, sobbing anew into his shoulder. Minutes passed as Jason patiently and tenderly allowed my sobbing to run its course. The sobbing subsided and in its wake I felt a sudden, refreshing strength flowing from within him into my own soul, suddenly blissfully relieved to know that I felt nothing sexual in this embrace, only warmth, the warmth of the deep yet chaste love of a mother and her son.

He was quite taken aback by my vehemence.

"What's wrong? Can you tell me?"

I could not speak, only cling to him in silence. When I relaxed, he turned his gaze to me.

"Mom, if there's anything I can do to help, just call. If you don't want to tell me what the problem is, that's OK. This shoulder is yours whenever you want it." He stopped to point his finger upward. "This one too. Your choice. Two shoulders, no waiting."

His carefree tone underlain with genuine concern was elixir to me. Just to hear his voice this way and to be able to concentrate exclusively on his heart to the exclusion of my unwilling interest in his body lifted the weights of millstones from my own heart. I was far from healed, but this medicine had done wonders. That night passed with some restlessness but far, far less than the one preceding it.

Now I was ready.

"You figured it out, of course, like always," I told Jannie.

"What else did you expect, Lin?"

"I expected you to know. I prayed that you'd understand. I was happily right on both counts."

"Good, good," she said warmly. "Now, what are you ready to tell me?"

"The horrible thing about all this is that there are two opposing passions burning inside me now. No way do I love Fred any less, and no way would I ever willingly indulge myself against him. I swear that to you and myself right now. So then, what is the other? I suppose I could say it a couple of ways, but perhaps the best one for our purposes right now is to say that the second passion is this frantic need to find some way to be able to...hell, I'll say it dirty; maybe that will help...I want to find some way to fuck Jason without hurting Fred. There. I've said it."

"I'm with you Lin," she said consolingly.

"The only conceivable, theoretical, hypothetical...Wait, doesn't that sound vaguely like something from The Wizard of Oz?"

"The Coroner. I hope that's not an omen."

"OK, the only theoretical possibility is to get Fred to think the way Mark in your story does. Or, maybe, do you think it could be, the way you and Sammy do?"

"It would, Linda. I won't mush around it any more. It would. If Fred thought about incest the way Sammy and I do right now, you would be free to have your wish without losing what's more important and with no fear or shame whatsoever, but I just don't see Fred coming around to that. What is your take?"

"The same as yours," I replied. "I cannot imagine Fred accepting incest under any circumstances. It's simply not an option, and I certainly do not fault him one iota for that."

"Yes," Jannie replied. "And like Mark said, wherever there's doubt, it's best to choose against it." She then gave me that very earnest, serious look. "So now, Linda, face the question: Are you prepared to stand firm? When you're face-to-face with temptation and opportunity, will you have the strength to choose against it?"

"I hope so, Jannie, I hope so," I droned.

Jannie replied, and her reply stunned and shocked me.

"Linda, hear me! That is not good enough!" she fairly shouted. "If you are not absolutely sure you are in control, you'd be better off taking a vacation in a convent until it blows over than face the enemy unarmed!"

"I don't want to hear it, Jannie!" I wailed, then subsided. "I don't want to. But I need to. Don't stop telling me. Don't abandon me."

I felt her arm across my stooped shoulders. I heard her voice, now delicate and soft, warm and reassuring.

"That, Linda, is a guarantee."

Passion and desire are the chameleons of emotion. They turn from the bright yellows and crimsons of love to the blood-stained purples and blacks of compulsion. Harnessed for good, they build. Harnessed for evil, they destroy. And always, they are equally prepared to be used for either purpose.

For days, I had experienced Jason's presence in only the most proper of ways. Bless his heart, he offered me that shoulder and the warm but chaste embrace I needed, whenever I needed it. No mother has ever been granted the gift of a son who could surpass him. I grew more and more confident that the power to choose for the best was now mine and that I would not falter when the challenge came.

I won't say that this confidence had bred complacency. But something had.

Something on television had caught my eye. It had nothing to do with incest per se, but it did touch on some story of a May/December romance, a young man and an older, married woman. That sight was all the suggestion I needed to suddenly relive the revel on the lawn. I suddenly felt those strong, manly hands on my breasts, the kiss of his lips on my breasts and nipples, given in response to my explicit request, and I now also felt something else, something which did not come from memory, the touch upon the sexual center of my body, the one which Jason could have touched had he reached into my loosened jeans that day, but which, in fact, he respectfully had not.

The tug-of-war within me resurfaced, and with it, the threat of another night of agony. Unwilling to endure it I collapsed under the threat. Given the power to choose my response, I declared the victory for the army on one side of the tug-of-war and forcibly silenced the other, choosing the easier rather than the wiser of the two possibilities. The warfare had ended, but the victory was Pyrrhic.

Jason was back from class again. I heard that familiar greeting, felt that gentle embrace and saw him disappear out the door to return to his apartment. I watched his figure disappear and the winning side of the tug-of-war issued its decree.

I went to the bedroom, closed the door and selected two items of clothing: a sheer, black blouse and the tight black pants that Fred, and now I knew, Jason, found so provocative on me. I laid them out on the bed, humming. I shed the t-shirt and jeans I had been wearing, then removed the bra and the panties. Nude before my mirror, I momentarily imagined Jason standing right there. The image drove a wave of arousal through me and my body moistened and glistened in response. Gleefully I turned and strutted before the mirror until the inadequacy of the imaginary figure drove me to those steps, those simple steps, designed to capture the real thing.

The blouse draped softly, caressingly, seductively over my breasts. The touch of the gossamer fabric against my skin, which would normally be of no particular notice if I were merely dressing, became the fingers of angels. Growing giddy and animated, I pulled those tight pants on. I stood before the mirror with them unzipped, then pulled the zipper home. I stopped and stared directly into the mirror again, at the zipper. I made my eyes become Jason's, and when I had, I pulled the zipper again, driving into my imagination the very impulses I wanted to excite in him. I felt them, and with them, I felt the power of womanhood. I was Aphrodite and my Adonis waited for me no more than a few dozen yards away in space, and no distance at all in heart.

Dancing like a teenager on her way to her first date, I danced my way to my bedroom door. I felt the touch of my fingers upon the doorknob.

At that moment I froze, as if the doorknob itself had frozen and glued my skin to its surface. The inner voice of Conscience called to me, compelled me, spoke to me with such force and clarity that it seemed almost audible. This is the moment of decision, it said. This is the crossroads. You must now choose. There is good and bad to be found in each branch, each choice. Now is the moment you must choose which one offers the greatest good and the least bad. Remove your hand from the doorknob, put those clothes back in the drawer and stop, and you choose one branch. Turn the doorknob and you choose the other.

I don't know how much time passed while I remained rooted at that spot. The moment of choice had arrived and no longer could I avoid it.

My eyes opened. My heart raced. Time stood still.

The knob turned.

(to be continued)