Chapter 6

I remained with mother for another week, helping to put her affairs in place before living with us.

Lila Aggis visited. We talked in the living room.

Mother was not entirely forgiving. “Lila, it’s been too long. I tried to see you, a few times, but your son told me you weren’t receiving guests.”

I asserted. “Eric is having a difficult time, Mother. I’m not sure he would have told her of your visits.”

“No.” Lila agreed. “I’ve had trouble escaping the house. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this last week.”

“Oh.” Mother stepped back from one confrontation to spark another. “Send Eric to live with me for a month, and I’ll set him to rights.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

“Maybe when you come home again, in a month or two.” I told Mom.

“He called me a hag, once.” Mother fumed.

“I’m so sorry!” Lila lept up, but there was nothing she could do. “I didn’t know!”

Mother got up too. “Excuse me.” She turned and headed out of the room. “Those damn pills constipate a body. I may be a while.” She sequestered herself in the bathroom.

Lila sank into her chair. I sighed, and slumped on the couch. “What are we going to do?” I spoke softly.

“You’re lucky to be free, for a few days. I’ve been under Eric’s control, every day, for years.” Her eyes looked decades older than her forty something years.

My throat constricted. I choked out a long repressed sob and confessed! “What am I becomming? I encouraged him the other night.”

“I can’t answer, Ingrid, not reliably. Every woman’s story is so different.”

“How would you know?”

“The group. I told you about it.”

“How does someone attend? How did you discover them? Are they really helpful?”

“I tell Eric, I’m getting my hair done, and I do. He has no idea how long it takes for a beauty treatment. The group may be the only thing keeping me sane, but again, every member’s experience is different. You may find it a waste of time. You seem more in control of your situation.”

“It’s a sham.” I dropped my head into my hands. “He’s gaining control over me. I-I see how I’m being trained. I don’t think I can stop it.”

“Come with me, in two days. I’ll square it with our coordinator.”

“Maybe.” I wanted to go, but in my heart I feared redemption. “Mother may have plans for me.” I weaseled. My lower thoughts rebelled out their inner darkness. “You need to go to your son, and give yourself to him completely.” Guilt and shame overwhelmed me. I resumed crying.

“What’s the matter child?” Mother returned from her ablutions.

“Lila told a very sad story.” I prevaricated.

“I should go.” Lila stood in Mother’s presence.

“I’ll let you out.” My mom opened the door for her guest. “Please, do come again.” She meant it.

I heard her close the door, but I continued weeping into my hands.

Mother sat next to me and took me into her arms. “I should have hugged you more, Ingrid, when you were growing up. I-I’m not good at comforting. My father-”

“Oh, Mother, you’re wonderful!” I hugged her, suddenly happy to let my tears flow.

Two days later, I rang Lila’s doorbell. Eric answered, but I refused to enter the house. I told him, “She wants to introduce me to her beauty clinician.”

He eyed me and licked his lips. “She’s coming.” He grinned. Behind him, there were sounds, a woman’s voice, low and evocative.

“I can wait.” I backed off from the token porch. Two minutes later, Lila, deeply red-faced, shuffled out. Her lips signaled trouble. I kept quiet until we climbed aboard her SUV.

“What’s the matter?”

“I-I” Her speech failed. She started the engine and backed out of the drive way. Lila steered somewhat erratically. Turning right at the first intersection, she drove half a block and pulled over. Then she doubled over in her seat. “Oooohhh!” She gasped and clutched her groin. I saw something moving under her skirt.

“He’s such an idiot!” The housemom declared. She reached under the folds of her skirt and plucked out a small, egg vibrator. “After the first cum or two, these things dry you out and hurt!”

I gaped.

After recovering some comfort, Lila drove us to a beauty parlor. She didn’t care which one. She had quick work done while I waited. Exiting, we rode to the edge of town. It was a nice area. She pulled into the parking lot of a gentleman’s club.

“Lila, I don’t think we have the same idea about sharing experiences.”

Uncharacteristic humor lit her face. “Silly. This establishment doesn’t open until nightfall.” We climbed down from the SUV. She led me to a side door and knocked. I was disappointed when she didn’t speak a passcode. The door opened, and the lady inside ushered us to the meeting room. It smelled like stale sex. More members arrived, and they lit a candle.

I’m not going to reveal that group’s stories or describe them. In the most important ways, none of them were special. Yet all of them suffered exceptional emotional labor at the whims of their son or sons.

I shared my story with them. In comparison to theirs, mine was as traumatic as a scraped knee. None of them judged me. They encouraged me to fight. Some of them had resisted more successfully than others. All agreed, the lower you fell, the greater you suffered. Poor Lila had fallen very low, but she wasn’t the one worst off. Her comment about the differences of their experiences sank into my soul. Their session ended when the candle burned out. I left by myself. Each member must, to avoid revealing secrets outside of the group. When I reached Lila’s car - she waited there for me - I fully understood the power of sisterhood. We embraced and had a good cry.

On the return trip, I grilled her for everything she knew about the organization. It mostly wasn’t. Hers was one of many groups around the world comprising an organization in the loosest sense. Most are in America where it started some time after the civil war. No one knows who started it or where it began, but it languished until a woman during the fifties managed to bring discipline to arranging the forums. The women who could, took proactive efforts to introduce others. Before then a few lucky hundreds of women were helped. Now it’s guessed that tens of thousands of son ravished mothers meet in secret. It still isn’t officially an organization. There aren’t leaders. Most circles hardly know one other. Unlike AA, if you’re lucky enough to be invited into a group, that’s the only group you’ll likely ever have.

Instead of history, there is legend. In the aftermath of the civil war, particularly in the south, so many husbands and older sons died in the war, a majority of wives and mothers took control of their farms and businesses. A tiny fraction of those women could not escape their conditioning to oblige male supremacy. They fell to the whims of their younger sons. These barely adolescent boys, struggling with the loss of fathers and brothers, and urged by the onset of adult hormones, took sexual control of mothers with submissive personalities. One amazing woman established the first group, against horribly oppressive social norms. The story Lila told mesmerized me. It would lay within, like a seed, dormant for months.

She dropped me off at Mother’s. Thanking her one last time, I lost my voice when I recognized how she shifted in her seat. I looked for the vibrating egg. It had vanished from where Lila, I thought, had rid herself of it.

She blushed, knowing what I suspected. “Please, do not judge me.”

I shut the door, speechless. Instead, I shook my head. “No. I never would.” I tried to communicate. She smiled, eyes glistening, and drove back to her son’s domain.

“You don’t look all beautied up.” Mom observed upon my entrance.

“I’m more beautiful on the inside, now.” I told her.

Days flowed into another week. I had packed the car. Mother make a few final calls to her employees and to her doctor. She was well on her way to recovering, he told her.

“The next two months will be easy as pie.” Mom smiled. We climbed in her car and rode off into the sunrise. Mother drove.

“For a ten year old, minor car line, this Ford Focus has an engine that rivals electrics. I made a few, special modifications.” Mother sped down the freeway. At one hundred miles per hour, it glided down the road as if it flew above it. Twice the highway patrol pulled her over. Each time, Mother spoke with them matter of factly, confessing her guilt, blaming her age, and flattering them like a Georgia flower. “They don’t even log the infraction on their computer, when I’m done with The Man.”

A five hour trip was made a four hour trip. The difference wasn’t as great as I expected. Cop stops took a big bite into our travel time. We arrived before noon. We’d had breakfast before departing. I made lunch in my own kitchen after nearly a month away. The men unloaded my mother’s things and installed them in Garrick’s office. He would have to work at his company for the next month or two.

Later that day, I signed Mother up at the local, consulting doctor’s office. That night I resumed conjugal visits with my husband in our bed. It was as fulfilling as ever. We fucked like lab animals subjected to pheromones and separated by a partition, after the partition had been pulled out. The second night, we made love.

It took another week for life to settle into a new routine. It pleased me greatly that, all the while, Andrew couldn’t find one minute to collar and use me. His balls must have been dark blue from weeks of backed up cum, or he broke his promise to stop masturbating. Half of his summer remained.

I settled into my old routine at work. Claire filled me in about fires, those she had put out and those ongoing. She had handled the job better than I expected, and I knew her to be incredibly capable. I invited her to meet my mother. Our schedules didn’t sync up for over a week.

The designated night saw the best meal ever prepared in my home. Everyone pitched in. Garrick grilled the salmon. Andrew made garlic potato smash, his own invention. I sautéed young asparagus in lightly peppered butter, until their rigidity barely softened. Mother roasted eggplant over a burner and seasoned it with truffles and delicately simmered leeks. Claire brought a black forest cake she had made from scratch. It was a crowning taste to the wonderful dinner we shared.

Afterwards, Mother extracted story after story from our guest, until I had to separate them. “Mom, I swear you’re bleeding her pale to expiration.” In my home, I was freer to be assertive with Mother. “Oh, you.” She waved me off. My distraction allowed Claire to escape to a swiftly struck up conversation with Andrew.

Garrick informed that he had finished cleaning the grill. “Now you can start on the dishes.” Mother announced. My husband didn’t dare argue, but he flashed me a WTF. “I’ll help.” We tacked the pile with aplomb. Fortunately, we owned a dishwasher. I had capitulated almost a year ago.

“Andrew has been acting odd, since he returned from your Mother’s.” Garrick started.

“How?”

“He created an encrypted folder on the computer, and he’s been taking his car out for hours.”

“He said he went to the race track, yesterday.” I reminded.

“It’s either that or the university.” My husband worried. I didn’t. Our city was lucky to have one the best in the state. He deciphered the skepticism on my face. “You had to be here.”

“What about his part time work?”

“I asked him that. He said he’s been earning enough for his car and occasional pizza/movie nights, under the table.” Garrick related. “When I pressed him, he told me to trust him.”

“Do you?”

“Since when was this about me?” He got defensive.

“Honey, you just raised enough red flags to turn America communist.”

“And he’s been spending a lot of time with your mother in her room and in the garage.” My husband’s evasion succeeded brilliantly.

I stopped talking. My brain spun ouy possibilities like a million monkeys typing. We finished the hand wash items and loading the dishwasher, long before my brain stopped typing out dire possibilities. Garrick left me standing in the kitchen, like a wall unit. Wait, how would my husband know what Andrew’s been doing, while he and I are both at work. A worse thought batted that one out of the park. What was my sex deprived son doing with my mother?

“I’m teaching him to be a mechanic.” Mother told me the next day. “He’s already getting odd jobs on Angie’s List. His rating is top notch, but it could be improved.” Mother never settled for less than perfection. But why would Andrew keep this effort to himself?

“I wasn’t sure I could live up to Grandma’s standards.” He told me that night.

“Andy,” I assured, “Nobody could!”

“Well, she’s not the same since she moved in with us.”

“Yes, here she doesn’t have absolute control. And she’s been through a challenge we can’t possibly measure. Mother made a terrible mistake taking those drugs. It nearly killed her. Now she has to forgive herself. From what she’s mentioned about her father, he wasn’t at all forgiving.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Actually you’re helping, distracting her from the troubles with what she loves most, but you’re also slowing her progress.”

“Now you’re sounding like the tough-love goddess of the family, instead of her.” He chuckled.

“Why are you spending so much time at the university? You have another year of high school.”

“Summer won’t last forever.” Was all he’d tell me. Truth was, I trusted my son. I knew the dark secret of his heart. Other than that, he was strong and capable and moral. Garrick trusted the boy because he’d given up trying to inspire him. The son’s personality was already outshining the father’s. Too, Garrick deeply loved his progeny, and he also believed Andrew was a good man. What wasn’t there to trust? If only my husband knew. I prayed he never would, and I am an atheist.

Two days after the party, the dice rolled in Andrew’s favor. Actually, he had been working for this opportunity for two weeks. Mother was getting her check up and maintenance prescription. Garrick was still at work, and I ended a short day. My son met me at the door with my collar.

“Not now, Andrew.” I resisted. “Mother will be home at any moment.

“You’re wrong, Mom. I texted her about the wait. You know how crowded those public rehab clinics get. That gives us more than an hour. Now take your collar like a good bitch.”

“Don’t expect much.” The noose tightened once more upon my neck. “I warned you, things would be different now that we’re back home.”

“Say what you want, Mom. Now go into my room and take off your clothes, everything.”

“AUGHH!” I exclaimed my frustration, as my body moved to obey.

I waited nearly five minutes for him to check on my compliance. He entered carrying a small plastic lunchbox that looked like a tool box, or maybe it was a toy toolbox. He nodded and drove his eyes up and down his mother’s naked body. “Good. Now bend over, putting your hands on my bed and pushing out your butt. Today, we’re going to learn about ownership.”

“Andrew! I will not accept being violated by you, I’ll fight with conviction. You may be stronger, but it won’t be any fun. I know you would never rape me.”

“Don’t be sure about anything, anymore, Mother.” My son growled. “I may not ‘rape’ you in the classic way, but your consent isn’t worth a piss when you’re wearing that collar. Put your hands on my bed and stick out your butt.”