Catherine and Tom- Three Kinds of Love.
The home they shared was modest in comparison to the one in which Tom had grown up. Catherine did her best to make it nice for them both but it lacked the obvious comfort and wealth of the large house in which Tom's father still lived. Neither of them cared. Catherine had resumed her career in publishing and she earned enough for them to live a simple but happy life together. Now 21, Tom had completed his education and was starting out his career in journalism. This had been a vocation that his father had frowned upon, insisting that he should join him in his finance business instead, but this was Tom's dream. Catherine was determined that her son should follow the career path that he wanted and that they shared their dreams together.
Catherine's decision to leave her husband had been difficult nonetheless. She had shared such a large and important of her life with him and they were inextricably linked by the children they had made. But the death of their precious daughter had caused a fracture in their lives was too great to repair. She could have survived in her marriage by letting the routine of life carry her along, but her love for Tom had been a far greater force than she could ever resist. She had left because she needed to build a life with him. It was a life that she believed was hers by right. The right that she had to love and be loved by her own son.
The nature of that love made for a complicated and sometimes difficult path. It was marked by twists and turns that reflected the different dimensions of their relationship. It was a relationship made of three contrasting and overlapping elements that ran and blended together in a strange and rich pattern.
The first layer of that love was the obvious connection between them as a mother and son. Now a middle aged woman, Catherine still saw Tom as her child. She had given birth to him and nothing could ever take away her need to protect, cherish and nurture him. Sometimes, when they lay together in bed she worried that she had robbed him of the gift of pure love that he should be able to take from her. It frightened her that he might sometimes need that motherly love and that her greed and lust for him had tainted that purity. She adored the moments when they both could recapture that. After making love she would hold him in her arms and try to make sure that he felt her care wrapped tightly around him. She needed him to know that she still loved him as her beautiful and precious child.
For Tom, this aspect of their life together was sometimes confusing. He knew that he still needed the maternal support of his mother. He was a person who lived out so much of his emotion inside of his own head. He had few if any close friends and, now that his relationship with his father was slanted by the break-up of their family, he had no one else that he was comfortable enough with to confide in. He was acutely aware that the one person who understood him and who cared about his innermost thoughts was his mother. Sometimes he needed to rest upon that. Like any child he knew that she was the only person that he could really trust to love him unconditionally. As he entered adulthood, he found that there were times when he needed to retreat back into the protection of that most natural and loving of relationships.
The most vital feature of their life was the romantic love that they shared as a partners. When they had acknowledged that they both wanted to live this way they had nervously taken this step into the unknown and found it to be a beautiful but, at times, emotionally challenging place.
Tom knew that there was no other woman that he would ever want or need in his heart. It frustrated and hurt him that Catherine might worry that he would somehow fall out of love with her. He needed her to know that the intricate complexity of their situation meant nothing compared to his need to be in her life as her partner. Sometimes, when he was with her, the attraction that she held for him overshadowed everything. Her beauty and intelligence amazed him and he wanted to be closer to her than anyone else could ever be. His love for her was based on a selfish need to have this woman to himself at the expense of everything or anyone else. He was amazed at the feel of her hand in his as they walked together and how the sound of her laughter lit him up. More than anything, he marvelled at the way that she was slowly revealing herself to him as time passed. As their mutual trust in their love grew stronger, she let him in to more of her thoughts and emotions. It was as if she was opening doors to the most secret parts of her heart and mind and he needed to search every single corner of her.
For Catherine, this wonderful feeling of wholeness was coloured by the regret she felt that they could never truly live as a man and wife. When Tom held she knew he was the man that she was born to be with. She had no doubt that somewhere deep in the past this love had been cast as their fate. She couldn't understand why that inevitable fate had been perverted by the fact that Tom had been brought to her as her child. When they made love she wished that the sperm that flooded into her womb could bring them their own child. She ached to give that to Tom as any woman would want that for the man she loved. If she could not give him that that she at least wanted to be able to grow through life with him without the division in age that haunted them. She longed to be given the time she needed to prove to him that her promise of eternal love would never be broken.
Finally, there was their sexual hunger for each other. Although they did not discuss it, they both knew that there was a part of them that was exhilarated by the knowledge that their physical intimacy was something that few people would ever experience. Those who saw them going about their seemingly ordinary lives regarded them as a mother and son living quietly in a small town on the coast. It gave them both a deep excitement to know that they shared a sensuous and dangerous secret. A mother and son locked together as they indulged themselves in a habit which provided a sexual high that only the drug of their incest could provide.
Tom was fascinated by the different ways that they entered this mysterious world. At times she would take the lead. She would dress for him in silk and stockings and take him into her bedroom. It was at these times that she would suck him into her mouth and guide him to lick and taste her in return. He loved the sense that she was controlling him. The notion that his own mother wanted this stimulated a need in him that he knew was wrong but that he needed to satisfy. He loved it when he would wake in the night and feel the urge to have her. As he reached his hand to touch her vagina, he was astonished at the way that she would never deny him. It seemed to him that she was acting out of a sense of duty as she opened herself to him. At these times he would screw her quickly and selfishly, not worrying about her pleasure and simply taking from her the luxury of her body. He adored the sense that his mother responded to him in this way and gave this to him without hesitation.
When Tom was inside of her, Catherine was sometimes shocked at the intensity of her appetite for the feeling of excitement their sex gave her. As she wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him into her she would sometimes look across to see them reflected in the mirror of the bedroom dressing table. This sight, that of her own son fucking her, would ignite a deep urge to taste the delicious mixture of sweetness and dark shadow that their incest brought.
But for Catherine, the pleasure of their sex and the tenderness of their love was stained by the fear that Tom would grow weary of the complexity of their life. Sometimes Tom would spend a few days visiting his father. This was something that Catherine knew he must do and she encouraged it, but it still caused her anguish. She counted the hours until Tom came back to her and she could have him to herself. When he returned she would ask him about his father, trying to find out whether anything that he said to Tom would cause her son to think differently about her relationship with him. She would crave Tom's reassurance.
