"Mom, can I crawl in beside you? Aunt Lynn's camping bed collapsed."
It was Michael, of course. I grunted assent and scooted over to the right-hand side of the queen-sized bed, parting with one of my pillows. He crawled in next to me and lay on his back, careful to keep to his side of the bed. My last thought before I dropped off again was, 'Norma Jean, this is nice. It's almost as if Tom was back again.'
***********
Norma Jean isn't my real name. It's what Tom used to call me when he was in the mood for something a little naughty, before his illness even started. He loved those old Marilyn Monroe films and he always said that she was the sexiest woman he'd ever seen until I came along. It's true that I have a body type that is like hers -- a jiggly bottom and generous breasts. This is not the fashion now; you're supposed to be so skinny that your abdomen is like a washboard and your upper arms are like matchsticks. Well, Tom was old-fashioned (and honest) and he liked my figure. He let me know it too, watching me dressing and undressing, caressing my breasts through my slip to raise my nipples and stroking my butt until I was moist and ready down there.
My real name is Molly and my son, all I have left now, is Michael. He is 22 and a junior at the U of B. He was a week into summer break when Tom took a turn for the worse.
We had buried Tom that day. It was almost a relief. His last few days had been filled with abominable suffering, despite the increasing doses of morphine. The marijuana no longer helped. Finally, the hospice nurse took pity on us and left a vial of painkiller and a syringe, cautioning me that it might be fatal to give Tom more than triple his usual dose.
Even though Tom was barely conscious, I think he heard her. He looked at me with supplicating eyes, and when he saw me draw the liquid into the hypodermic, he gave my hand a final squeeze as a thank you.. Then he murmured, "Later, my love..."
Even though Tom had had hospice care for the last seven weeks, the bulk of his care had fallen on me, and I was still numb with fatigue at the funeral. Michael had come home from college and gave the eulogy. Two of Tom's singing pupils had performed "Amazing Grace" in their high, sweet soprano voices, and I had heard the dreaded words in their utter finality, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" Throughout, I had remained tearless, as if I had run dry. Somehow, Michael and Lynn, my sister, got me back to her place, which she had generously offered as shelter for a few days, until I had the strength to go back to our own home. I barely had the energy to change into a nightgown before I collapsed on the guestroom bed. Michael went to sleep in the living room on an old, rickety camp bed -- which, sure enough, had now collapsed under his 210 pounds of muscle and bone.
***********
I emerged slowly from a strange erotic dream. It was still dark, but I kept my eyes closed anyway, savoring the memory of Tom's cock penetrating my pulsating vagina, while I rubbed the pussy he had grown in the place of his appendicitis scar, After a few seconds, I noticed a rustling sound and a slow movement up and down of the mattress. I was already hot from my dream; this turned me on even more. It was a game Tom and I used to play, where one of us would wake up in the middle of the night and start slowly masturbating, trying to last until the other woke up and could join in. Then we would each lie there, rubbing ourselves, getting hotter and hotter, all the while pretending that each thought the other asleep. Sometimes we would both carry it to a climax, and then the object of the game would be to come at the same time; sometimes, I would try to come first, so that Tom remained hard and we could fuck for real. Sometimes, we were so tired and satiated from the previous evening's sex that we would just drift back to sleep. These were some of our most treasured intimate moments.
It took me a few seconds to realize that this wasn't Tom in bed with me, that Tom was gone -- dead and buried -- and that it was Michael, my son, our son, who was pleasuring himself next to me, slowly, quietly, trying not to disturb my sleep. I lay perfectly still, willing myself to breathe evenly. If Michael realized I was awake, he would be die of embarrassment.
Or would he? Would it maybe turn him on? Was this just his hormones, or did it have something to do with his mother lying next to him? Was he fantasizing... about me? When I awakened, I had thought the idea of Michael next to me, jacking off -- no other word, really -- would turn me off instantly. It didn't. If anything, my arousal increased. This was wrong. I shouldn't be imagining that my son was thinking about his mother while masturbating. Mothers didn't have thoughts like that.
