Page 02
"You better be. I want to see that fort or whatever you call it gone, do you hear?"
"Yeah, I hear."
"Don't 'yeah' me."
"Alright. I'm doing it."
The footsteps retreated.
I hid my magazine stash, the bottles of beer, and a bottle of wine in the furnace room and put some of the pillows back in the rumpus room proper, then settled in to wait for Dad to come home. As soon as he did, I went upstairs and through the kitchen. I slipped up the stairs to my room while Mom was at the door greeting Dad.
She harped at me all through dinner. As usual, Dad didn't interfere. I took it, getting madder and madder. Why couldn't she just leave me alone and shut the fuck up? My friends didn't have to put up with this kind of shit.
"Since you didn't get a job today, you can do some work around the house. You can start by doing the dishes tonight and tomorrow you can paint the back fence ."
I looked at Dad but he was studying his plate, though it was empty save for one bite. Mom gloated.
"Did you hear me, Warren?"
"Yes," I mumbled.
"What?"
"Yes," I said.
She came into the kitchen when I was draining the sink.
"You can dry them, too."
"Can't they dry by themselves?" It was futile but I couldn't help myself.
"Do the job properly or not at all."
Like the last was really an option. "You let them dry on their own," I said.
"Don't talk back to me, Warren. Do you hear?"
"Yeah…yes."
"And put them away properly."
She walked out of the kitchen, all proud of herself. The bitch.
She came back ten minutes later and opened a cupboard.
"Is that where this goes?" she said, pointing at the cheese grater I had put in with the bowls.
"Where what goes?" I asked, now thoroughly pissed.
"This!"
I walked over to the cupboard and looked at the cheese grater, then at Mom, triumphantly standing in her smart-alec pose.
"Is that where it belongs? How many times…"
I didn't hear her finish. Her voice dwindled off to nothing but her mouth kept yapping. I looked down her body—the breasts shaking with anger, the trembling belly—and felt a tingling glow surge within me, spreading from the middle out to my head and toes. I felt dizzy with a strange sensation of power and the next thing I knew my hand was on Mom's mouth, clamping it shut. Her eyes widened and I leaned forward, pressing my arm across the top of her breasts and pushing until her back arched over the counter.
"No," I hissed. "It isn't where it's supposed to be. Is it?" I demanded.
Mom's eyes flickered uncertainly and she looked scared. She glanced toward the living room where my father was watching Josh Randall relieve the West of another bad guy. I shrugged and Mom tried to twist away but I held her firm. Only her face managed to turn away. I pressed my palm more firmly against her chin and pulled her face back toward me.
Mom's expression changed again, no longer fearful but not angry either. It was something else and I recognized it as the look I had remembered so fleetingly from our rumpus room hideaway confrontation. I must be doing something the same as I'd done then but I wasn't looking at her like I had in the kitchen, I was just angry.
I was breathing hard and I had her pressed back with my hand clamped over her mouth. That was all the same but there must be something else. I took a deep breath and my hand started to slip from Mom's face. While getting a better grip my middle finger slipped inside her mouth and her lips had automatically closed around it.
That was it! Both the memory and the current act stunned me. Mom's weird expression hadn't been in response to the way I had looked at her and it wasn't quite the accidental slippage of my finger into her mouth either, it was her reaction to it that mattered. I didn't understand that until now and I still didn't know what to make of it.
Not wanting my confusion to look like weakness, I looked into her eyes, and warned, "Don't push me."
I was buying time to think. I wasn't upset about her yapping anymore and I think she knew that. I also think she knew I knew what I hadn't known then but I sensed she didn't want to acknowledge what was really happening any more than I did.
Mom looked afraid but I didn't believe she was actually scared. Still, to play along, I leaned forward menacingly but her eyes changed again, from feigned fear to something else. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what the new look meant when I felt myself pressing into her soft belly. It was my turn to look confused. I was hard, really, really hard.
I eased back and let my arm drop away from Mom's chest. My finger slipped out of her mouth but paused with the tip on her lower lip, then dragged it down her chin, leaving a glistening trail of saliva in its wake.
I stared at Mom's flushed face and pouty lips and she looked back at me just as intently. Our eyes flicked back and forth and both of us breathed unevenly. My cock still pressed upon the flat triangle below the pout of her belly. Abruptly, I jerked myself away and walked briskly out of the kitchen and half ran up the stairs to my room.
I paused at the top of the stairs but only briefly. Assured by the silence downstairs, I beat a hasty retreat to my room, refusing to touch my inflamed cock, and trying to will it into submission. It wouldn't comply and I soon became nervous worrying it would incriminate me if Mom sent Dad up to my room.
I crept back to the top of the stairs and lurked there, listening to see if Mom was informing on me. When she didn't complain about my behavior within five minutes, I returned to my room where I tried to read a Western novel.
I couldn't concentrate so I changed into pajamas and quietly made my way to the top-of-the-stairs perch. I knew this time I wasn't there to make sure Mom hadn't said anything to Dad. In reality it was the thought of her feet and ankles that drew me.
They weren't wiggling in anger this time. They were still except for the occasional bounce but the sight of them fascinated me and I was soon palming the bulge filling the front of my pajamas.
A magazine dropped on the floor in front of Mom and glanced off the side of her leg. She bent forward to pick it up and I froze as her head suddenly appeared. Fear struck through me when her face turned toward the stairs. I was in plain sight but she seemed to look right through me thanks to the darkness of the hallway. She withdrew from sight with the magazine in her hand.
I breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to retreat but then Mom's left leg stretched straight out, pointing, and the toes of the right foot scratched along the entire underside of the left calf. I watched for a while after Mom eased her left leg back to its former position but the sexy scratch was only repeated once more. I wondered if she had done it on purpose because she knew I had been watching when she'd done it in the kitchen.
I didn't return to my room until Dad got up to turn off the TV. Like the previous night, Mom followed Dad to their room. I listened to the brief, intermittent bits of their muffled conversation but heard nothing alarming and had to question my motive for spying. Was I really trying to see if Mom was going to say anything to Dad or was I listening so I could attach a sexual implication to any sound I heard? Did I want to hear him do it to her?
After they had both visited the bathroom, the light went out and the house fell silent. Right on time, about ten minutes later, Dad began to snore.
I had almost fallen asleep myself when the light flicked on in the hallway. Silently, I got out of bed, made my way to the door, and peeked through the crack. Mom was standing in the hallway in her nightgown. She was just standing there. I blinked in the unaccustomed brightness and peered closer, trying to figure out what she was doing. She seemed to be listening, cocking her ear toward the stairs. When she took a step or two that way, coming nearer the light, her body became starkly outlined underneath the nightgown.
Holy shit! Of course, she was nude under the nightgown. Mom approached the stairs and as she passed under the light her backside lit up sufficiently for me to see the press of her cheeks against the silky material and the dark crack that divided them.
Mom turned sideways and paused to listen at the top of the stairs. My heart leapt into my throat because, in profile, her tits jutted outward and I could see not only the prick of her nipples in the nightgown but also the curved underside of her breasts as they swept up and away from her stomach.
Mom shook her head and started walking back. It was too late for me to move except to draw my head back into the darkness of my room so my eyes weren't filling the crack in the doorway. I was thankful for that when I saw the full frontal press of her tits jostling against the low cut front of the nightgown. How could such a cranky old bitch be so fucking hot?
Mom stopped right under the light and that brought her protruding nipples into focus and added color to the glistening inner swells of her breasts. They shone as if they had recently been treated to a coat of lotion.
The next time you harp at me will provide the excuse to touch those, I promised but then my conscience stepped in. The hell you are. An accidental press of an arm and slip of a finger is one thing but copping a obvious feel is quite another.
As Mom moved forward and the light fell behind the darkness swallowed the details of her lush body and turned it back into an intriguing silhouette. Stopping just before the open doorway of her room, she put her hand on the switch for the hall light and paused, as if changing her mind about turning it out. For a moment, I was sure she could see my eye through the crack in the doorway, but as fear tightened my chest, the hallway suddenly went dark.
Mom had thrown the switch.
I stayed absolutely still, holding my breath, listening for the click of her door so I knew it was safe to close mine. Seconds passed. Surely, she must have gone by now?
Carefully, I exhaled and quietly drew in fresh air. I hadn't heard the door, footsteps, the creak of her bed, or a break in the rhythm of Dad's snoring. I breathed in again and leaned closer to the doorway, trying to penetrate the mystery of the dark hallway. My cock, which had been tenting the front of my pajamas, slipped through the pee hole, and the shock of fresh air on my helmet forced another, less controlled inhalation. Compounding the error, I quickly exhaled, then listened, nerves on edge.
Nothing. The house was dead quiet. Relieved, I started to close my door and that's when I thought I heard it.
A low, throaty laugh.
Or, was it my imagination?
I left the door open.
****
My eyes snapped open. I felt panic but a soothing voice and a hand on my forehead calmed me. It was Nurse Ratched.
"It's alright. You were having a nightmare, that's all. Everything's okay now."
The voice was soothing with what I can only describe as professional compassion. The hand withdrew from my forehead and a thermometer was inserted in my mouth. Nurse Ratched cranked my bed down and returned to the side, then half sat on the edge in a less professional pose.
"You were talking in your sleep," she said.
I raised my eyes but didn't speak. I couldn't do anything but mumble anyway with the thermometer in my mouth.
"By the way, my name is Carver, not Ratched."
I started to laugh but stopped when my teeth clanked on the glass thermometer. Nurse Carver pulled it out of my mouth, gave it a shake, and lifted it toward the light.
"You were talking about your mother," she remarked casually, inspecting the thermometer.
"My mother? Really?"
"Yes," she replied. "Really." She engaged my eyes and I looked away.
"Huh. That's weird."
"If you say so."
"I haven't thought about my mother for years," I said, unhappy with the defensive tone I had adopted.
"Well, you were certainly thinking about her tonight," Nurse Carver laughed.
I wanted to ask her what I had said but was afraid she might tell me. There was a long pause.
"You were very close to your mother?"
She posed it as a question but it was more of an assertion.
"I suppose," I answered.
"That's nice," she said. "I wish my son spoke so nicely about me."
"You have a son?" I asked, wanting to shift the conversation to a safer topic.
"Yes. He's eighteen."
"That's about the age I remember my mother the most." Why the hell had I said that?
"When she was eighteen?"
"No," I laughed. She was in her early forties when I was eighteen. You remind me of her."
"That's flattering."
"I mean, when she was that age, she looked a lot like you. She was quite a beautiful woman, but…"
"Ah, now you're falling for your nurse. What a cliché."
I laughed. "Or maybe I just have a mother complex." Now, why the hell had I said that?
"Oh. Do you?"
I blushed. "No."
Nurse Carver smiled and lifted herself off the bed. "Well, you seem fine now. Try to get some sleep."
"Yes, doctor."
"I'm a nurse," she snapped, then smiled. "The old kind of nurse."
"Thank God for that."
"Sweet dreams," she said, already walking away.
I watched her and thought, oh yeah, she certainly reminds me of Mom.
****
Mom started in on me at breakfast first thing the next morning. Dad was reading the morning paper while he absent-mindedly nibbled at his toast and sipped his coffee. Mom was dressed in a checkered red and white blouse and jeans that ended above her ankles. The blouse had been tied in a knot below her breasts, leaving her midriff bare. Above her hips, the gap between the waistband of the jeans and her skin emphasized how narrow her waist was. Thankfully, neither Mom nor Dad saw me take that in as I walked behind her to the table. As soon as I sat down, she began.
"The back fence sure looks bad in the sun," she said.
"Oh?" Dad said, not looking up.
"I'd sure like to get it painted.
Dad nodded. "Uh huh."
Here we go, I thought.
"Warren hasn't got anything to do. It's not like he's working, or looking for a job."
"Uh huh."
"So maybe he could start painting it today."
"Uh huh."
"Right after breakfast."
"Uh huh."
"I've got an interview this morning," I lied.
"Where?" Mom demanded.
"One of the gas stations I applied at."
"Which one?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember?" She turned to Dad, an exasperated expression on her face. "Father, did you hear that? He's got an interview for a job and he can't even remember where it's at."
"It's the Texaco station," I replied, lying through my teeth again.
"The Texaco station?" From her tone, I knew Mom wasn't buying it."
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Quarter after nine."
"Quarter after nine. Well, that leaves you plenty of time to get back here and start painting before lunch."
"What if they want me to start right away?"
"Then I'll come home by myself and you can start painting another day."
"Come home by yourself?"
"Yes. I'm going to give you a ride to the Texaco station."
I was caught.
"You don't have to. It's not far."
"It's no problem. Now, eat your breakfast or we'll be late."
So Mom drove me to the Texaco station. Of course, they weren't expecting me; I hadn't even applied. Thankfully, Mom stayed in the car, saying it might help if she bought some gas, but she did see them give me an application so it was obvious I wasn't being interviewed. Back in the car, her voice dripped with sarcasm.
"What happened to your interview?"
"They lost my application."
"Uh huh, they lost your application," Mom repeated.
She drove out to the street, threw a cursory glance over her shoulder to see if anything was coming, and raced down the road.
"Don't think you pulled the wool over my eyes, Warren. I wasn't born yesterday."
I stared out the window. I felt like clamping a hand over her mouth for real but she was driving and I had a feeling I wouldn't get away with it this time. Despite my anger I really wanted to look at her bare belly and the wide, deep navel floating upon it but thought it best to avoid eye contact and let her anger subside.
So I guess I'm painting the fucking fence.
Mom stopped at the hardware store to pick up paint and brushes. At home, in the back yard, I stared at the fence. It didn't look like it needed painting at all.
"You know, I can't believe you lied to me like that," Mom said, her voice adopting a conciliatory tone that rang false in my ears. "I think we need to try something a little different and maybe painting the fence is the right way to start."
I couldn't see how me painting the fucking fence was going to change things. It seemed like more of the same to me.
"Start on this side and work your way around," she said. "And don't rush it; do a good job. I'll call you when lunch is ready."
I watched Mom walk away, admiring the sway of her hips, which looked wider than usual because of her bare midriff. They didn't look bitchy like her. I had to admit, when Mom wasn't talking she looked pretty damn good. While looking at her ass, I realized I had been checking out older women the past few days, even some of my teachers, and hadn't paid any attention to the chicks at school. Weird.
Mom didn't call me for lunch at noon but I didn't go in because I knew she'd start harping at me. I was absolutely starving and about to give in when she appeared with a blanket which she spread on the lawn, disappeared back into the house and returned with a pile of sandwiches on a plate. The real surprise was the two bottles of beer.
"Don't tell your Dad," she said, eyes twinkling as she cracked one open and handed it to me."
Amazing. She could be such a bitch and now this? Mom actually talked to me like I was a real human being. I was cautious at first because I suspected a trap but she soon had me yapping as if I was talking to my buddies. She even teased me playfully a couple of times like the girls at school sometimes did. She did say she hoped I would buckle down at school the next year because grade twelve was really important but she said it without her usual nagging voice. She actually said she was going try not to nag me about school anymore and she just hoped I would do the best I could. Mom didn't finish her beer. In fact, she barely started it before handing it to me.
"Can you finish that for me?"
I was already halfway through mine and gladly took it. Mom stretched out on the blanket and covered her eyes from the sun by crooking an elbow over her face. She wriggled around until her feet stretched off the blanket, dug her heels in the grass, and arched her back.
"God, it's beautiful out. It's about time summer arrived."
It may be hard to believe but I didn't notice until then that Mom wasn't wearing a bra, or if she was, it wasn't the heavily padded types that were common back then. Her nipples didn't stick out like they did in the nightgown but they were definitely noticeable. With her eyes safely covered, I took it all in.
Thankfully, Mom seemed content to lie quietly in the sun while I sipped beer and ogled her body. It took a few minutes before I had my fill of the red and white checked boobs and moved down to her bare midriff. Lying on her back like that made Mom's belly basically flat except for the small pout surrounding the wide oval of her very sexy navel.
I watched her tummy pulse with her breathing but it was several minutes before I noticed that the gap between Mom's jeans and her stomach narrowed and widened with each breath. I ducked my head and turned it sideways, trying to peek down the front each time her jeans gapped wider but couldn't see much further. I did manage to see the top of her panties stretching across her stomach with a hollow on either side as the material reached for her hip bones. That her panties were cut low like hipsters made my cock stiffen and I imagined what they would look like if Mom wasn't wearing any jeans at all—they would be like the tiniest bikini. Shit! They would barely cover her ass or that special part in front, her pussy!
