Chapter 13

“I’ve come to take my son for a ride.”

It was Saturday morning when Marvella Moore showed up on Sarafina Cortez’s doorstep. Charles was still in bed. After Sara had awakened him, she and Marvella talked over coffee. “You’ve talked with Claire I suppose” Marvella said.

Sarafina’s eyes expressed sad awe as she looked at Marvella and said, “I’ve known about Claire’s past for quite some time. We...”

Reaching out and touching Sara’s hand to interrupt her, Marvella said, “I know all about loving women Sara. When one grows up being sexually molested by a man who isn’t tuned in to a female’s tender needs, it’s natural to find a woman, or women, with whom to express one’s affection. I’ve done it myself.” She sighed then with a wispy smile went on, “There were so many times when I have lusted for Claire’s attention myself, by the way.”

Without embarrassment, Sara replied, “She told me she always sensed that you two could have been lovers.”

Marvella shook her head and sighed, “Ah yes. There were so many times I wanted to act it out with her, but...” It was Sara who patted Marvella’s hand.

Marvella heard the shuffle of feet then her son’s voice, “What’s up Mom?”

She smiled and said in a sing-song voice, “Just came to take my son for a ride.”

After Charles had a piece of toast and a cup of coffee they were in Marvella’s car. “So where are you taking me, Mom?”

“It’s a surprise Son; a surprise that I hope will be helpful to you.”

As they drove he recognized the streets but didn’t suspect where they were headed, it was a place he would never have gone with his mother. Although as a child he remembered going there often with her when she was in one of her distant moods. As they neared the top of the hill, he remembered the many times he had been there with Claire. It was the place where they made love, the place where Claire gave him blow jobs, and the place where, for the first time, they went all the way. It was the place where she had announced she was pregnant. With veiled panic he said, “Maybe some other place might be better Mom.”

“I don’t think so, Son. I have so much to tell you ... and some of it has to do with what went on with you and Claire in this place.” Glancing sideways at him she said, “By the way, I know what you’re thinking.” Taking a couple of breaths she continued, “It also has to do with what went on between your father and me ... and others.”

He tried not to let his face tell of his surprise with the comment, “with others.” He had always considered his mother sexually pure and didn’t want to deal with knowledge of the opposite.

She pulled into the gravel-covered parking place known as Lover’s Overlook and stopped. “We have some uncomfortable things to talk about Charles. That’s why I have kidnapped you like this.” Seeing the confusion on his face Marvella said, “After I tell you the things, I should have told you years ago perhaps it will all start making sense to you.”

She laid her head back on the seat, closed her eyes, and began: “Your father and I used to come up here when he was home on vacation from The Naval Academy.” Tears welled in her eyes as she felt a sense of self-loathing that she hadn’t experienced in years. Thinking back to the young man she thought she loved at the time she remembered wondering if he could indeed bring any kind of healing to her sick life. She chuckled and said, “Your father was such an ardent young man ... ardent and idealistic.” Her son appeared distracted and was looking out the window. “Charles,” she said. “Look at me. You need to understand.” As if startled he turned his head toward her, his eyes drilling into hers.

“My father, your grandfather Patrick O’Connor, sexually molested me from the time I can remember.” Her son’s eyes widened. “Did you hear what I said, Charles?” Slowly, as if trying to swallow a large piece of meat, he nodded.

She felt uncomfortable with the images that might be doing a slideshow in her son’s mind. “Are you with me, Honey?” Without conviction, he shrugged his shoulders and nodded again. “A parent must guide a child into the realm of adulthood Charles ... to nurture that child and protect her from things that are not meant to be discovered ‘til a later time in life.” Reaching out she caressed his cheek with her fingertips. “You have to pay attention to me, Charles. Please?” Wondering where this was going, he steeled himself and gazed deeply into his mother’s eyes.

She said, “When the forces within the person are ready to be a good parent, to process the understanding of parenthood it becomes easier to set guidelines, to develop within the child a sense of responsibility that will enable that child to learn the role of normal adulthood.”

With a wrinkled brow, Charles responded, “Why are you telling me this Mom? You and Dad have always done that with me.”

“Yes Charles, it was your dad that brought me into that role in a responsible manner. My father just turned me into an undisciplined human being. And my mother was weak. She hid from what my father was doing to me. With a father who molested me and a mother who gave tacit approval, I was an incredibly damaged person when I married your father.”

He felt the need to say something. But as he began to wrap his mind around what his mother was trying to tell him it was too shocking for his troubled brain to frame a response. Merely nodding his head, he waited for her to go on.

“Are you sure, Charles, that you are alright with me telling you about my past?” Trying to swallow his Adam’s apple, he shrugged his shoulders and nodded again.

She gently patted his hand. “Though it has been such a major part of my life I’ve only told my psychiatrist, your father, and one other person.” I’ve never told another soul.” She swallowed hard. “It’s extremely difficult for me to tell you, Son.” A tear trickled down her cheek, something he had rarely seen. “I should have done it years ago—when you met Claire.”

At the mention of Claire, his eyes widened. He was thinking what could you have told me about Claire that would have made a difference? But the pain in his mother’s voice caused tears to gather in his eyes as well. He put his hand over hers and said. “I love you, Mom.” He wished he could hide from her but said, “If you think it’ll help, tell me.” How can it possibly help?

“I can remember him doing things to me when I was five,” she said, “touching me between my legs,” she shrugged and then grimaced, “I liked what he was doing, so he must have been doing it for a while. Anyway, Charles, it went on ... almost daily.”

She told how for the longest time she wasn’t allowed to play with other children. And when she went to junior high school, she was socially backward to most of the other girls in her class. As she began interfacing with them though, she caught up rapidly. Most of the girls talked about their families. She was ashamed to talk about hers. When some of them talked about having a crush on their dad she assumed that they were having sex with them as well. When she got into senior high school, she was shy around boys, always wondering things like what their penises looked like when they got hard, and if they were doing things with their mothers like she was doing with her father. By the time she was allowed to go out on dates (her junior year), she had known numerous older men sexually. Until she was fourteen it had been only her father. At that age, her father became a member of a poker group—all members of the same church. He started the group and hosted the first game, “Mom had gone to the movies.” At about nine o’clock one of the men lost all of his money and couldn’t go on playing. My dad said, ‘That’s alright Mike, Marvella will entertain you ‘til we’re done playing.’ They all laughed like they knew the kind about which he was talking. Marvella’s dad said to her, “Take him into your room baby, and show him what I’ve taught you.” Smiling at the man he said, “You know what to do first, don’t you baby?”

Marvella knew. As soon as they got into the room she dropped in front of the man to her knees, unzipped his fly, and pulled out his already hardening cock. It didn’t take long for him to come into her mouth. He tasted different from her dad, kind of garlicky. By the time her father knocked on the door, Mike had already “done” her in the missionary position and was in the process of fucking her doggy style.

When her dad opened the door her father laughed and said, “Something to be said for losing at poker, huh Mike?”

The game was originally planned to be held once each month. But because of Marvella’s popularity, it became twice a month, once rotating and once at Marvella’s dad’s house. Losing early became a regular occurrence. But that seemed to be planned in logical rotation. So, before the age of fourteen, she had carnal knowledge of six men besides her father. They weren’t all gentle either.

In school most girls her age were wild about boys. She wasn’t. She knew what males could do and didn’t want to make her life more complex. Besides, her father had her fitted with a diaphragm, something that was best inserted at home. A year earlier they had been made painfully aware of what unprotected sex could mean; Marvella had been aborted by the doctor who was a member of the group. Nobody knew who the father of the fetus was. It could have been her father or one of four men who had seeded her during that critical period. The poker players didn’t always use condoms when they did her. Blowjobs, of course, were always done bareback.

“One night when I was eighteen,” Marvella said, “one of the men, Stanley Barr, brought his son. I knew him from high school. His name was Stu.”

Chuck’s face was a mask of dread, “CLAIRE’S dad?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t her dad yet. He was just getting ready to go to college.” Again, she reached out and patted Chuck’s hand. “This is hard for me Son even after all these years. I know it’s a shock to you.” Caressing his hand, she continued. “I wish I had told you about this long ago. Perhaps so much damage wouldn’t have been done in your life and your marriage if I had.”

“Do you mean you would have tried to talk me out of marrying Claire?”

“No sweetie. Heavens NO. I’ve always loved Claire; we had a common bond, although we never talked about it until after you two were married. She lived through what I did ... even worse. But she maintained her wits. That’s more than I can say for myself. Claire’s a stronger person than I ever was Charles.”

He tried to understand what she was talking about, but his mind was still too fogged by the events of the past couple of weeks. So, he just nodded to give the impression that he understood. “OK, go on.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “Stu was the designated loser that night. Everybody was in on the fact that Stanley had given him the money to lose. I was a going away gift to his son.” Shaking her head she said, “I was SO embarrassed. I knew him and was afraid he would tell his friends at school, which he did. He was such a pig. I wanted to kill him. The problem is that he kept coming to the poker games through the years, even after Claire was born.” Her breathing became labored as tears welled. With a quaking voice, she asked, “Are you hearing me, Son?”

“I-I think so, Mom. It’s hard for me to process this, but I think so.”

“I’m so sad to be saying it sweetie but before I am finished telling you the story you will understand.” She opened the door of the car and said, “I’ve got to get out and walk around Charles. I feel like I’m trapped in a closet. Will you walk with me?”

Seeing the pain on her face made Chuck’s stomach fall. Hearing the horror story his mother was telling him gave him a sense of her agony. He wanted to do anything he could to mollify her. “Sure Mom,” came his immediate reply. At the same time, he was trying to make sense of it all. Getting out of the car he met her and took her hand in his and began to walk with her. As they came to the edge of the overlook, he embraced his mother and held her close. To an observer, they would have made an unusual sight, a middle-aged man hugging an elderly woman on lovers’ lane. Apart from the story though there was no sex in their togetherness. But the closeness of her body reminded him of the times in his youth when he fantasized sexually about his mother.

As if reading his mind Marvella said, “It would have broken my heart sweetie if you had tried anything back then.”

“What Mom? What would have broken your heart?”

“If you had tried anything with me.”

He was shocked that she had read him so well. “But Mom, you never would have let me anyhow.”

“Have you been listening to my story Son? Have you not heard what I have been telling you? To a girl, a youth, a young woman, a woman whose only regard for herself was how she could please any male sexually, I don’t believe I would have resisted.”

Loosening his embrace, he started pushing himself away. Not letting him go she said, “But you didn’t do anything that, unknown to you, could have pushed me over the edge.” Almost unable to form the words she said, “You’re a fine man, Charles. You’ve always had the sensibilities of your father.”

The mention of his father filled him with rage. In his eyes, he could never please his dad and now he was gone. He had been disappointed that his son didn’t go into the Marines, disappointed in his choice of career; even had to be dragged into the spy business. My father taught me fine principles only to have an affair with a foreign woman—the woman I fell in love with, making her pregnant to boot. It had always been a love/hate relationship with his father, a man he was convinced had no respect for him.

Marvella took her son’s hands, pushed their bodies apart, and looked lovingly into his eyes. “Charles, Charles, Charles. Your dad loved you so much. He was so proud of you. He, just as I did, felt guilty for not preparing you better for your life with Claire. He thought you might understand her the way he understood when he married me. But everything doesn’t happen the way you expect and not everybody is wired in the same way.”

He jerked his hands away, his chest exploding in a gasp, “She TRAPPED me, Mom. She trapped me ... said she was PREGNANT ... told me that it was my child. I did the honorable thing. But she TRAPPED me!”

As his mother grasped his hands his mind tried to process the complicated mess. Jesus Christ, what does everybody expect of me? Jerking his hand from his mother’s he stomped away. Like she did when he was a child, she hooked her finger for him to come. It reminded him of when she had something special, she wanted to show him. And like a child he turned and said, Yes Mother, walking slowly toward her, hating that he was still doing it.

“Do you know why I brought you up here to have this conversation with you?” It was a rhetorical question that caused her son’s brow to wrinkle. “This would have been so hard to say at home; it’s just too hard to talk about there. It’s hard to say here, but...” She hesitated, taking several deep breaths. “This is where you were conceived.”

Feeling like he was a gaming machine spinning numbers and fruit that stopped with three of a kind he imagined the young man and woman that would become his parents, humping passionately in a 1951 Ford. It was like split photography, scenes of his mother giving his father a blowjob, the side frame showing Claire doing the same thing to him ... his mother spread-eagled on the seat, his father’s cock sliding in and out of her pussy; his own doing the same inside the spread-eagled Claire.

“Did you,” he started to say then took a couple gulps of air, “Did you...?”

“Trap your father? Yes, Charles, I trapped your father. Given the circumstances, I would have done it again.” As her dumbstruck son gazed into her eyes a deep fog of silence enveloped them. Her gaze never wavered. With a nod, she said, “I told Claire my story son ... told her that I agreed with what she had done.”

Aghast Charles asked, “You told Claire to trap me?”

Holding his face between her palms she smiled and said, “No sweetie, I told her sometime after you were married ... when you began rejecting Stacy, then Claire.” With a somber face, she said, “I wish to God Baby that I would have told you then. Can you ever forgive me?”

Her eyes continued boring into his. At first, she was resolute then wavered, finally imploring, “You’ll never know how close Claire and I are Charles. When people share experiences like we have they genuinely appreciate one another. When I was so desperately trying to find a way to end my father’s abuse, I looked for the kind of man I hoped I could trust. I found him in your father. I found it two years ago. But he was just too young. Because of the way I was forced to live, even at the same age as your father, I was years older. But when he was old enough to express a more mature interest in me, I brought him up here and ... well you know.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from his mother. “Yes,” he concurred with a ragged voice, “I do know.”

“My father thought he had solved the problem,” Marvella said. “His doctor friend was supposed to tie my tubes, but I begged him not to. The good doctor loved nothing more than getting steady blowjobs from a young girl (I guess it doesn’t take age and wisdom to figure out blackmail). So instead of tying my tubes, he showed me how to effectively apply spermicide that acted for at least forty-eight hours by inserting it into my cervix. He gave me a special applicator. Every time I did it, it hurt. But I saw a chance of hope to get away. So, when your father was just as naïve as you were when you were in high school son, he fell in love with me. Even with such an idealistic young man as he was, it was easy to get him to do what was necessary to make me pregnant.”

The story Marvella told was so much like the way Claire trapped him that Charles felt a wave of revulsion. It quickly turned to resentment which his mother tried to assuage. “Have I not been a good mother, Son?”

The question made him angry. “JESUS CHRIST, MOTHER, how can you even ask such a question?”

She asked again, “Have I not been a good mother to you, Son?”

“MOM,” he implored, “You KNOW you have.”

“Yes, I do know son. The important question is, do you know?”

He put his face in his hands and moaned then circled the car in consternation. She let him wander for a bit then followed, closing the short distance. Reaching for her helpless son’s hand she tenderly coaxed, “Let’s get back in the car son. I’m getting a chill.” His eyes were still wet, but he didn’t argue, just led her to her side of the car and, holding the door open for her, let her get in.

After sitting quietly for a bit, she said, “When a woman is desperate, Charles, she can take desperate means to escape from a prison that was not her choice to begin with. I was in that prison darling. Your grandfather might well have kept me in a cage.” Her eyes were beseeching pools.

“I don’t know if you will ever understand what I am trying to say. But my father introduced me to sex not long after I was Emmi’s age.” The revulsion in her son’s eyes gradually morphed into compassion. “Through his attentions, his abuse of me, sex became such an important part of my life that I didn’t think I could exist without it.”

“It was well into my teenage years when he began sharing me with his poker friends. Of all things they were people he knew at church. I began to realize that he was using my need to keep me in his perverted prison. Yet I was powerless to do anything, my need was too great.”

“Like a heroin addict, I wanted to quit. But my enabler was also the dealer of the poison that fed my addiction. I don’t know whether I loved life that much or was simply too much of a coward but when I considered suicide, I just couldn’t do it. It was only after your father told me how much he loved me, Charles, that I was able to see a way out.” She gave a wry smile. “After all, I was a sexual expert. He was just a virgin.”