The first time Brett Burgess' mother appeared outside his window he thought it was an embarrassing accident. Brett was twenty. He had returned home during the summer holidays from university. He was studying computer science. His term time was spent between classes, writing his thesis, marathon training and phoning home to Mum. Brett was an avid runner. He did the 5km in under 20 minutes and was expecting to do his first marathon later that year. He had always been athletic but his build had become more toned and defined at college. He had few friends and was too shy to ask girls out. He was aware of their approving glances and occasionally caught flattering stares and the flirtatious battering of eyelashes. Brett phoned home to Mum every night. They mostly spoke about his thesis and his coursework. She had always taken an intense interest in his intellectual development. But these college phonecalls had allowed them to become closer still. She sometimes shared her frustrations at home. Mostly to do with his father. He was distant. Always out of town and unfriendly. Brett shared his frustrations with girls. At first he told her little. But eventually he opened up more. These phonecalls had brought them surprisingly closer together than they had ever been at home. They had become intimate discussions of their hopes and fears. He never openly said it but he guessed his mother must realise he was still a virgin.
When he had arrived home that summer she had commented on how fit he was looking.
'Your shoulders are so broad Brett' she said rubbing them affectionately. He complimented her also. She had lost some weight and he could squeeze her waist between his two large hands. She giggled like a woman half her age. She was forty but she was in very good shape. Her thin waist was accentuated by a large bosom and a backside that hand curved further with age. Her brown hair was cropped short at chin height. She wore librarian glasses that made her look more naughty than stern. She had always been quite strict with Brett. She was known in the neighbourhood to be prim and proper and was the chair at the local church community centre. They had always been conservative at home. Despite his mother's good figure he had never seen her in swimwear or even a slightly revealing blouse. They never swore or even mentioned bodily functions. In his home nobody spoke of sex.
That's why it was with some embarrassment and surprise that Brett saw his mother standing outside his window that day. She was watering the garden and had stopped outside some flowers in front of his room. She was partially obscured by the leaves of an overhanging tree. But there could be little doubt that from where she was standing she would be able to see straight into his bedroom. He had just come from the shower and in keeping with a habit he had picked up in college had not dressed immediately. His towel was still around his waist as he had been doing little odds and ends tasks around his bedroom. Normally when he went to go shower there was a tacit agreement that no one would venture out onto the front lawn. Sometimes in the old days he would draw his curtains for extra measure but his mother had been such a prude that she had never gone out in any case.
It occurred to him that this must be some kind of bizarre accident. He recognised that if she hadn't caught sight of him yet that she would do so at any minute. She would then turn away hurriedly and they would never even mention it had happened. Brett had frozen where he was and after several minutes his mother was still there. The flowers must be drowning he thought. He wondered if he should go across and close the curtains. Somehow this felt like the wrong thing to do. It felt rude. Like shutting his mum out. If she was looking at him deliberately then that strangely pleased Brett. It was bringing them closer together still. Besides he wasn't revealing anything more than she might see at the pool anyway. Mum knows just about everything about my life, he thought, maybe she is just as interested in my physique as she is in my thesis. She had been so unhappy lately. If it made her a bit happy to check me out, he thought, where is the harm in that. Eventually she had stopped watering the flowers and gone back inside.
Later in the evening when they had dinner his mother seemed surprisingly cheery and Brett didn't know if it was imagination or not but she was acting rather elated. As he predicted they didn't mention what had happened that afternoon but Brett did wonder if her good mood had been because of it.
