Mother, son, and complications, incest stories, My life would have been much simpler if I’d have loved Carol from the beginning. Well I guess most of our lives are littered with sentences that start with ‘If only…’
I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll begin in the middle. Carol wasn’t ‘The girl next door,’ she was the girl inside my own door. Our mother’s shared ownership of an inn that sat in the valley between the White and Green Mountains of Vermont, and with small apartments at opposite ends of the inn, we all lived together.
The Inn-Between was full of assumptions. The main one was that Carol and I would one day marry and take over the inn. We were great friends and I guess I did love her as a friend; unfortunately Carol really fell in love hard with me right from the start. I was the boy that played with her, protected her, and was by her side almost every day.
She told me her secrets and would change anything she thought I disapproved of; I was the one she asked to ‘practice’ making out with. It stills breaks my heart that I wasn’t in love with her. It didn’t stop me from marrying her. It’s just too easy for a stone to roll down a hill.
There are two other Carols in my life, Carol’s mom and my mom. I’m not trying to be confusing; those are their names. Even though we weren’t related, Carol’s mom was Aunt Carol since I was eight, so that’s what it stayed even after I married her daughter.
Ever since I could remember, I loved Aunt Carol because she was always fussing around me, telling me how handsome I was. She never missed an opportunity to tell me how much I looked and sounded like my father. Even though I had no memory of him, or of his dying, I liked hearing that I looked like him, and I liked that I was named for him.
My mom – I started that sentence and it hit me how hard it’s going to be to write about her. There’s a jangled feeling, as if my blood was carbonated, that’s going through me. My mom, Carolyn Lee, called Carol by most, is why I’m no longer married to Carol.
My mom, whom I thought loved me, and then hated me, and then loved me again, was and is at the center of my life. The ‘Hate’ part lasted for a couple of years when I was between sixteen and eighteen. Usually it’s the adolescent, hormonal, rebellious, acting-out that causes all the problems, but in our case I know it was mom. I found out why later, but it didn’t hurt any less when I went to Aunt Carol and asked her why everything I did was wrong and why my mother hated me. Aunt Carol would always defend her and say that it was the stress of the business, or being alone, and that it had nothing to do with me.
Before the ‘Black Period’ as I came to think of it, mom was always sweet and loving and flirty with me. And after that bad time we teased again and she often played the coquette with me. The erotic tension that was between us was about as out in the open as it could be, without being out in the open. When I asked her why she didn’t go out more she’d say because there aren’t men like me out there, and I’d tell her she had a better body than any girl I’d slept with. We ‘Joked’ that it was too bad we were related.
The joking ended one evening, six months before I married Carol, when mom came into the kitchen as I sat with coffee and the paper. Mom said, “I saw the movies on your dresser when I brought your shirts in; did you leave them there because you wanted me to see them?”
I hesitated, “Maybe mom, I don’t know, I didn’t think of it that way, but probably I wanted you to know.”
“They’re all about the same thing, aren’t they Mickey? All about mothers and sons having sex.”
Not all of them mom,” I said, “Some are about mother’s and sons making love.”
She said, “Oh…” She waited and then said, “The one that was called ‘A Husband for Mom,’ does the son…marry the mother?”
“Well sort of,” I said, “They’re just fantasies mom, don’t you have them?”
“Sure baby, we all do. I just didn’t think that you were so serious about…thinking about us…like that.”
“I guess now you know mom. And what about you, we’ve been playing this game for a while between us. Just because we didn’t say anything doesn’t mean we both didn’t know. I always felt that you were thinking about something more between us, just like me.”
“I did…I do…think about, and this is all so crazy…talking to you about it, but I guess we can’t put the genie back in the bottle…”
“So then tell me mom, how do you think about us?”
She smiled, “My fantasy isn’t that ‘Fantastic.’ I’m a bit younger…and better looking,” she laughed. “And we live together, and love together. We take care of each other…and that’s all…we just love each other.” I could see the tears forming in her eyes.
“That’s a beautiful fantasy mom,” I said. “I love it.” I kissed her cheek and she trembled a little in my arms. “And by the way, mom, you couldn’t be better looking.” She let out a small explosive laugh that took with it the sadness. “Seriously mom, I remember how all my friends would look at you.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Mom, did you ever hear the story of the rich guy who has three girlfriends, a blonde, a brunette and a redhead?”
She was hesitant. “Uh, no…”
“Okay, so this guy decides he wants to get married and tests the three women to see which would be the best choice.” He says to all of them, ‘If I gave you ten thousand dollars, what would you do with it?’ The blonde says, ‘I would spend it on things to make me more beautiful for you.’ The brunette says, ‘I’d spend half on presents for me and half on presents for you.’ The redhead says, ‘I’d spend it all on you.’ So which one does he marry?”
Mom said, “I don’t know, which one?”
I said, “The one with the big boobs.” She laughed until all her tension was gone.
“Mom,” I said, “I told you that story because you still have boobs good enough for someone to marry you for.”
She slapped my arm and laughed again, and then after a moment said, “Oh God…” She held me in a way that seemed to be searching for answers and I responded with tender strokes on her back to tell her how I felt.
She said, “Mickey I’m so afraid, I’m dragging you into something I don’t know if I can do, all this talk is going to get us both crazy. Oh sweetheart, I just don’t know…anything.”
I thought for a minute and said, “Let’s just say you didn’t have a choice. Maybe one day I’d get a little crazy and tie you to a chair.” I urged her to sit and she looked at me wide-eyed without saying anything. I went to the utility drawer and brought out a handful of packaging twine. I took her wrists behind the chair and tied them just firm enough to hold. You could hear both of our breaths. I tied each ankle to a chair leg as my mother watched. I don’t think either of us knew where this would lead.
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