The summer that Bill left us was hard on my son Jake and me. Jake was getting ready to head back to college, and having his dad move out had clearly upset him in ways he found hard to express.
As for me, amidst all the other crap, I had to put the house on the market. There was just no way I could keep up with the mortgage on one salary, and besides, the place was too big, especially now that Jake was grown.
At any rate, as the summer wound down, the two of us spent as much time out back by the pool as possible, knowing that we were going to have to say goodbye to it sooner or later.
And that is how it started.
One afternoon, I had dozed off out there, stretched out on a towel in my bathing suit. I started to come back awake, but I just lay there, sleepily soaking in the sun. Half asleep, I was vaguely aware that Jake was there with me, but he was being strangely quiet. So I just slightly opened an eye to see what he was up to.
If he had known I had seen him, then, the two of us would have been hugely embarrassed. He was sitting across from me, openly staring at my body.
And to make matters more complicated, his hand was down inside the front of his swimsuit, and it was moving, ever so slowly, up and down.
Oh my God, I had caught my son masturbating! More embarrassing yet, he was doing it while looking at me.
The shameful part of it is that, somewhere behind the feeling of awkwardness, there grew something else. I remembered it warmly from a long time ago. It was the feeling of being desired by a man. Looking back on it, that is undoubtedly why I stayed still, then, and let Jake continue.
And why I did the other things that were to follow.
Jake gave out one hard breath with a shudder. Eventually, he took his eyes from me, and his hand from his shorts. I was pretty sure he had just made a sticky mess in the swim suit. In fact, I could just make out moisture on his thumb and his finger, and before he could reach for his towel, I finally stretched and let him know I was awake.
I thought briefly about tormenting him. It would have been so easy.
"Jake, honey, I need to roll over now. Would you be a dear and get some lotion on my back?"
He would probably carry his towel in front of himself as he moved over to me, hiding the front of his shorts from my view. He would sit just on the edge of my lounge chair and tentatively put a few drops of lotion on my shoulders.
"Oh come on," I would say, "you can do better than that. Don't be afraid, Jake, it's just skin, like on everyone else."
I could even reach back and untie the top of the suit, as I had already done many times even with him around. This time I could say, "There, now you can get my whole back without feeling like you're reaching underneath it. OK?"
Instead, to give him a chance to escape and clean up, I just yawned sleepily and went ahead and rolled onto my stomach. And I waited for him to walk past me (and yes, he was holding his towel awkwardly in front of himself) before I untied my top.
That same night, as sleep escaped me, I sat on the couch downstairs watching late-night TV. Eventually, I switched off the set, and the long-forgotten feelings of desire and desirability that had been planted in me that afternoon reappeared with new fire.
Knowing that it would be 10 degrees hotter upstairs, I quietly slipped out of my flimsy cotton pajamas and explored the sensation of myself, pressing the soft fabric of my panties against my own skin. Soon I needed more than that, and I peeled the panties off, too, leaving them atop the small heap of my pajamas.
With my ears straining to hear every creak in the house, I remembered how Jake had stared at my body while he did what I was doing now, earlier in the day. I knew all guys did it, and I even knew it wasn't unusual for some of them to have fantasies about their own mother.
It was an odd feeling, thinking about that, but I tried to accept it.
I wasn't supposed to be happy about that, but touching myself then, I came, and I mean I came hard, imagining him looking down at me.
Making a note in my mind that the two of us needed to talk, I pulled the soft throw-blanket over myself, and I dozed.
I awoke some time later and thought it was probably cool enough by then to crawl into bed. But when I reached down for my things, I knew instantly that my panties were gone.
Oh Christ, I thought as my groggy brain worked its way around that development. A girl can't close her eyes around here without somebody masturbating.
I thought of my son touching himself while holding my underwear. I knew instinctively how mortified he would be to find out that I knew. At least as mortified, I thought, as I was just then. So rather than going upstairs, I pulled the blanket back up and let myself fall back to sleep, hoping that Jake would bring my panties back for me before dawn. Yes, the two of us needed to talk.
I woke again when Sunday morning was just starting to break. In the thin light, I could see that my panties were back, draped innocuously on top of my summer pajamas. At least, thank God, they were dry.
The house was totally silent, and the air was pleasantly cool. I folded up the little blanket and set it on the arm of the sofa. Then, after taking one good nude stretch, I put my things back on.
The thought of crawling, alone, into the bed that Bill and I had shared for so many years made me want to cry. I crept up the stairs and peeked in on Jake. I could see underneath the rumpled sheets that he was sleeping in a t-shirt and boxers. That was good. That encouraged me. Looking back on it now, I think had he been sleeping in the nude that night, none of this would ever have happened.
I stood in his doorway for a minute, breathing in the unmistakable smell of a man, and with tears collecting unbidden I thought, don't be silly, what do you think you're resisting?
So I did it. I slid into bed beside Jake, and smoothing the covers over both of us I curled up against his back. When he startled, I touched his shoulder reassuringly, just as I had done for him hundreds of times. "It's ok, I just couldn't stand being alone."
