The door was partly open so Tim poked his head inside and called, "Cara?"
"Is that you, Tim?" Cara's mother's voice came from the basement.
"Yes, Mrs. Johnson, is Cara home?"
"Can't hear you, come on down."
Tim walked through the kitchen and took the stairs he knew led to the family room. Susan Johnson was in the laundry room near the foot of the stairs. "Hi, Mrs. Johnson, is Cara home?"
Susan Johnson stood by the washer with a large bundle of laundry in her hands. "Oh, sorry, is that all you wanted, no, she's not, she just left for soccer practice."
"Oh, right." Tim knew that but had forgotten.
"But while you're here could you do me a favour? Would you get me a box of soap from that cupboard?" She indicated the cupboard with a nod.
Tim did as he was asked but couldn't find one.
"I'm sure I put it in there, here, hold this for a sec and I'll look." She handed Tim the clothes and, seeing Tim was right, found the soap in a shopping bag on the floor. When she returned to the washer she couldn't help but laugh. On top of the large pile of laundry, just inches from Tim's nose, was a pair of Cara's skimpy panties which, judging by his nylon track shorts, had inspired in the 19 year old a rather nifty erection. Still chuckling, she put the soap down and took the laundry from him, "That wasn't very nice of me, was it?"
Tim blushed and said nothing
"But then with three sisters they're hardly foreign to you."
"What?"
Mrs. Johnson smiled and flicked the panties from the washer and let them fall back in, "These. With three sisters seeing these is nothing new to you."
Timmy shook his head.
She could easily see Tim's discomfort and couldn't resist a little playful jibe, "I guess all men find them erotic, they're so flimsy and delicate. Is that it?" she said, with a mischievous smile?
"No."
Mrs. Johnson had been pouring the soap powder into the supplied cup but his response was so strangely adamant it caused her to quickly look at him, "No?"
"I wasn't looking at them."
She smiled and said, in an understanding voice with just a hint of mockery, "No, of course not, it was silly of me to suggest it."
There was a long silence before Timmy spoke again, "It was the other ones."
It took a few moments for his words to register, "The other ones?" She absently looked down at the clothes in the machine but the only other pair of panties she could see where a pair of her own, white, almost grey-white with age. She quickly stole a glance at the boy and when she looked away she surreptitiously cast her eyes down to see that his erection had become conspicuously more pronounced.
"I like the white ones." His words were barely audible and had a slight quiver.
The words shocked Sue Johnson, first because the panties they were talking about were her own and second, because they were talking about underwear at all. "But why?" The moment she blurted out the question she regretted it.
"They're yours."
"Yes," she agreed looking at him, but not understanding him.
"That's why."
"Because they're mine?" Susan Johnson was clearly confused and her voice was weak, as if she was uncertain of what he was talking about.
"You're very pretty, Mrs. Johnson."
The boy she was looking at, the boy she had known for many years, suddenly came into a new and entirely different focus. Pretty? Did he just call me pretty? And where we really talking about my underwear?
The boy must have realized what he said for he suddenly looked awkward and out of place, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," and he turned to leave but just before he got to the door he stopped and looked back at Susan Johnson, who hadn't moved since she last spoke, "But you are very pretty, Mrs. Johnson. I have always thought you are pretty." And then he was gone.
Susan Johnson remained still, as if uncertain what to do next. Had this 19 year old boy just called me pretty? Had this boy, the same age as her daughter, just had an erection from looking at my underwear? Is this possible? Her impulse was to laugh, but she didn't, instead she sat down on a nearby stool, slowly, as if dizzy. It was unsettling, disturbing.
Susan Johnson didn't think of herself as pretty, in fact, she didn't think of herself at all. Ever since her husband died she had considered herself only a mother and a widow, and the widow Johnson seemed a role she was born to play, or that's what her two sisters and brother thought. Nothing was expected of a widow. A widow only had a past and she knew, just as her brother and sisters knew, that if she didn't have Cara, Susan Johnson's life would be entirely without purpose, entirely without meaning.
As a widow she learned to see herself as she suspected all others saw her: lonely, bored and sexless. Pretty, that was the last thing she felt. How could anyone find me pretty? I'm not. My face is lined and old, not ancient, but old, certainly every day of my 39 years. And my body? Well, I don't look at it. I haven't looked at it for years. It just is. It's serviceable enough and, she knocked on the wooden leg of the stool, healthy but it's falling a bit and stretching and ..., she snorted contemptuously picturing the daily ritual of capturing her large, slightly sagging breast in her thin, worn bras and hiding herself in old and shapeless dresses. Pretty! She hadn't thought of herself as pretty for years. But she had been. She had been when Sam Johnson married her 20 years ago and she had been when she held her daughter Cara in her arms for the first time. And she had the pictures upstairs to prove it!
Cara Johnson bounded into the house with all the energy of youth. "That was really cool, mum." She gave her mother, who was standing at the stove, a quick peck on her cheek then grabbed an apple and sat at the kitchen table.
Susan Johnson looked over her shoulder, "What was really cool?"
"Tim told me."
Cara had her attention now. She turned around and leaned against the stove. "Tim told you what?" What would he have said?
"He told me that he thought you are pretty ... and he told me about his erection."
