Stevie let the door close to, stealthily returning to the spare room, to hide and to recover rather than to return to her chores. Her breath suddenly ragged, one hand came up to cover her quivering lips. All alert systems were go. She had caught herself being oh so terrible, exploiting her own flesh and blood in her mind; the fruit of her loins deliciously debased in mind.
Fighting to control her breath, Stevie recalled the techniques her therapist taught her, and closed her eyes to fight off the intense thoughts and feelings swirling within and without. So stiff and sensitive had she become in response to her sleeping son’s state that if she were to take one more step, she’d have orgasmed there and then.
She fought the feeling and she fought the forbidden pictures still playing over and over in her head, for what felt like forever. A faint cough followed by a deep gasp, coming from that bedroom, it almost proved too much to take.
Ten minutes passed and he hadn’t moved another inch…
‘Hey baby,’ she greeted hastily, eyes forward, heading for the chest of drawers opposite Lee’s bed. Stevie didn’t acknowledge that she had very likely barged in on him masturbating that big stiff thing; something made all too obvious by his comical struggle to grab a handful of bed sheet the moment her voice registered.
‘Just some fresh laundry,’ she said, her voice carrying back from the faded roller-painted blue wall she now faced. ‘Doing anything nice today?’
‘I was doing it?’ came the sleepy reply.
She smirked, almost snorted, but inside she felt guilty for it. And that reminded her of the problem at hand. ‘Can we have that talk later today?’ Stevie asked a little distantly.
6
Mortified was the word. She almost scolded herself for asking, but it had to happen, and sooner rather than later. Still, how would she begin? How would she even say it in the end? The feeling of sobriety cut like the blade of a rusted saw, rough and dirty in contrast against the brilliant blue of the afternoon sky.
They were indoors. She wouldn’t have dreamed of going somewhere public to say what she had to. There wasn’t a room in the house that seemed suitable for this talk though. It would somehow taint even the sunlight in the air, so she imagined.
Soon enough she was trembling and wringing her fingers, and asking her good son to bring her the brandy bottle and a glass to help calm the nerves.
‘Have one yourself. You might need it,’ was her advice, as if, ‘you’ll need to sit down,’ wasn’t ominous enough.
‘You’re not dying are you?’ he asked incredulously. She supposed that she might, but no, for the foreseeable future she was destined to live with herself. Still she entertained a humourless laugh. ‘Did you get knocked up?’
Stevie fixed him with a hard stare. It impacted, like a psychic trick. But this was hard enough as it was. In any other situation she might have appreciated the humour – not now!
She drank back a double of the fine French stuff, feeling the sweet fiery liquid trickle down her throat, warming her all the way. And then she braced herself and looked him in the eyes. But it did not last, that honest bond. She didn’t have the guts just yet, but soon the words came flowing.
‘There’s some things I just can’t tell a therapist, so I’ve come to understand. But if anything I’ve learned that these things need investigating at the root of the issue. That’s why I need to tell you, but I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me,’ Stevie pushed. ‘I can’t make you promise me anything, but will you just try to hear to the end?’
‘Yeah,’ Lee said, and it was as though the voice of his younger self had come through. Innocently he waited.
‘I used to love a smoke. Not cigarettes.’
‘Is that it? You used to smoke weed?’
‘Oh no,’ she uttered a chuckle; ‘That is not it at all. I’m just saying it might have helped…’
He hesitated. ‘I could roll one.’
Stevie shook her head slowly, smiling tiredly. She had smoked plenty of the stuff in her wilder days, but right now it would only confuse her and jumble her words.
‘When I met your dad, it wasn’t love at first sight. It was a crazy, anarchy-fuelled “us against the world” kind of thing. We were a couple of young rebels. We liked a drink and a smoke, and we loved our music hard, as you know,’ she began steadily.
‘We liked a lot of things hardcore…
Lee tried not to smirk.
‘But your dad, your real dad – Gary – long before you came along, he and I had our kinks that were particularly hardcore. I shared everything with him pretty unconditionally and I loved virtually every moment. We were pretty fucking twisted as it happens. We weren’t living to get old…’
‘What happened?’ Lee asked. He thought already that he was on the scent, his mother’s faithful pup. Maybe, she supposed, she was skirting the context.
‘We had to grow up. We became responsible and retired to boring, depressing old reality. And reality was what killed your dad in the end. I’ve told you he died of an overdose. It was an accident. He never meant to leave us. But towards the end Gary couldn’t live without seeking his thrills, which he did chemically. But that’s not what I’m trying to say.’
‘Your dad and I had a fetish, you might say,’ Stevie began to say, and stopped to pour another brandy. Down it went and she poured another. Lee’s silence was now palpable, as was the stillness about his rigid body.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ Lee already tried to reason, and because maybe he felt she shouldn’t have had to explain after all.
‘No, there is. A lot has changed since – things people no longer frown upon – but “THAT” hasn’t changed,’ she argued. ‘It didn’t matter that it was wrong, though. That was the thrill. Do you understand?’ she searched.
Lee made the connection easily. Still, he never would have thought, not in a million years, that he and his mother would be having this talk. ‘Are you talking about the kind of stuff that you and Ray were into?’
Stevie tried to nod through the sudden cringe. How dare she forget just how much they had subjected her son to over the years? She was not grateful for the reminder. In the resulting silence, she baited her breath and braced herself to say that one word, fearing what would become the moment it was out there.
Stevie inhaled deeply and then carefully said that one word.
‘Incest!’
She burned with shame. Lee, on the other hand, was just too dumbstruck hearing his mother say that word to telegraph a response. ‘I knew that you and Ray role-played that stuff a lot,’ he finally initiated. Stevie sat there stunned by his display of open-mindedness. ‘People do that. A lot of people seem to,’ he emphasised.
‘When your dad died, you were only three. Long before then I’d backed out to a safe distance,’ Stevie proceeded wearily. ‘You might say that you were my religion, and my obsession was my sin. It terrified me at times. I felt like I was trying to protect you from something perverse. My own mother’s catholic guilt used to be no different. But when Gary died I pushed it all down in my depression.’