Chapter 11

“I should call her,” I said. I was sitting up with my stumps dangling over the edge of the bed. Eve was lying, relaxed, her legs drawn up to give me room to sit. She was either tired, or wanted me to see what I had done, because her knees had fallen to the sides, opening her sex to me obscenely. Her muscular looking pussy mouth was drooling my spend.

“You can’t. If you do, she’ll know I told you. She’ll never speak to me again if she finds out I squealed.”

“What is this, a 1950s cops and robber movie? Squealed?”

“Whatever. I wasn’t supposed to tell you and she’ll be furious with me if she finds out I did.

“This is crazy. I have sex with her and she gets pregnant. Then she wants me to move in with you, knowing what we’ll do. It’s like she wants you to get pregnant, too.”

“No, she thinks I’m on the pill.”

“Are you?”

“Of course not. I wasn’t planning on having sex with anybody.”

“Valerie knows that,” I said.

“I told her my doctor put me on the pill to help with hormonal issues.”

“Maybe you should get in the pill. You definitely have hormonal issues,” I said.

That was something I could never have gotten away with a month earlier, but my relationship with the woman I said it to had changed.

“I’m not hormonal. I’m merely horny,” she said. She didn’t close her legs.

“If you don’t get on the pill, you’ll end up like your daughter,” I said. “Obviously I’m virile, and Valerie proves you’re fertile.”

“I had Valerie one week before I turned fifteen,” said Eve.

I had heard this from Val but it had never been mentioned in conversation with Eve. I didn’t say anything. I just listened.

“My parents were horrified, of course. I insisted that I was in love, and that the boy would marry me. He didn’t.”

She stopped. I knew a little more, but I wasn’t sure I was supposed to know more, so I stayed silent. She was getting to some point, so I let her.

“After I had Valerie, my folks tried to keep me in the mainstream. I was a child, and they tried to let me have my childhood. But they also knew I was awake ... sexually. My mother got me a prescription for the pill. I reacted badly to it. I don’t remember what brand or combination of drugs was in it, but my body wouldn’t tolerate it. I hated men anyway. I’m sure a lot has changed in the pharmaceuticals available these days. I should probably look into it. But if things go well, you should be able to leave ... go live with Valerie ... in another month. Valerie has already talked to the people in the clinic where your new prosthetist will be at the VA. They’ll do all the adjustments on your legs. It would take a month for the pill to become effective.”

“You still don’t want to get pregnant,” I said.

“Condoms, then,” she said. “I’d look into an IUD, but after you leave I doubt I’ll go find me another man.”

“Why not? Obviously you’re happy with this kind of relationship, now.”

“With you, yes. It was hard enough to trust you, Bob, and I wanted to. Finding another man to trust? I don’t think so.”

“That’s what all this was for,” I objected, reaching to caress one of her thighs.

“Maybe. That’s what Valerie wanted it to be for,” said Eve. “I don’t really know how I feel. I’m not even sure I want to think about how I feel.”

“If it’s not to help you take steps toward finding a man, then what’s it for?” I asked. I knew I was pushing her, but I also knew that, if she didn’t continue towards having a relationship with a man, Valerie would have anger issues.

“Well, it’s fun, for one thing,” she said. “And...”

She went silent. Eventually I had to ask.

“And?”

“It’s complicated.”

“We have time and I went to college. I can understand big words.”

She shot me a glare, but it was a soft one.

“The boy ... Valerie’s father ... he used to tell me he was going to get me pregnant. He gloated about it. He was abusing me, and I didn’t realize it. What he did to me was the definition of molestation, but I was too ignorant to understand.”

She went silent again and just looked at me. Her legs were still spread, the evidence of our lust still on display.

“And then I told you I was going to get you pregnant,” I said, softly. “I’m so sorry, Eve.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “When you said that, it was like you had an eraser that wiped his name off the board. I know you’re not molesting me, that you feel genuine emotion for me. I know you feel guilty about it, and that means you love my daughter. I know you won’t abandon her, and that means you won’t abandon me. I shouldn’t feel this way, but if you got me pregnant, then the last man who did that would be gone forever. I don’t want to be pregnant, of course, but if I was ... if you got me that way ... then I’d actually feel free of the past. I know it’s silly, but that’s how I feel.”

“So I didn’t hurt you by bragging?”

“No. You didn’t hurt me. If anything, it was the perfect thing to say.”

“This is so strange,” I sighed. “Not normal at all.”

“Normal is overrated,” she said. “Now, you can’t call her, so come up here and make me feel like that again.”

We started round two, which turned into round three.

We napped, and then had round four. Round five was in progress when we heard people moving around in the hall, starting their day.

We slept until ten A.M., when she had to get up and go home, to get ready for her shift.

In all, I told her four times I was trying to get her pregnant.

And she said, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. I’m not mad at you, Bob,” so many times I couldn’t count them all.

I had to wait to “learn” that my wife was pregnant. It about killed me, but I had the distraction of packing up my stuff and moving it to Eve’s duplex.

Our ‘night of unbridled passion’, as a romance author would have put it, changed things pretty significantly between my mother-in-law and me. Basically, there was no longer any presumption that we weren’t lovers, or that our ‘other’ relationship denied us the desire to basically fuck our brains out. Eve had a lot of time to make up for and ... well ... I was a man.

I don’t want you to get the idea that I stopped missing Valerie, or that my desire to go be with her abated in any way. None of that happened. I don’t even know how to describe what Eve and I had. It wasn’t love, not in the classical, romantic sense. But we loved each other. It wasn’t like marriage, where two people become one and plan their future together. But we acted married, in terms of living together, and having chores to do on a daily basis. And the sex, of course. That was like married sex. She had a spare room, but all we did was put some of my stuff in it. I never slept in that bed unless Valerie was visiting. Eve wasn’t my girlfriend and I wasn’t her boy toy, but we sort of acted like that in many situations. Like when we went to the movies, we held hands in the dark. We had a dozen types of kisses we engaged in, but they were different kinds of kisses than I shared with Val.

It’s just hard to explain. Maybe that’s why this kind of relationship is prohibited by custom and tradition. The elders of the tribe can’t discuss it clearly with the young ones, and tell them how it’s supposed to go. That’s what we do with marriage. We tell young ones how it’s supposed to go, rather than letting them have an undefined, entirely free and voluntary relationship. The woman becomes my wife, and the man becomes my husband, and that proprietary condition restricts free will in the relationship. That’s why terms like “The old ball and chain” come into being.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t go without sex. I had done that for literally months at a time and survived it very well. Masturbation is the salve to that wound. It also wasn’t that I was trying to spread my seed far and wide, to ensure that my genetics got passed down the line of human evolution. I really wasn’t trying to get Aoibheann O’Malley pregnant.

I can say lots of things it wasn’t. So what was it?

Well, as strange as it may sound, when I think of Eve and me - the “us” that was this particular mating of humans - I think of some of the people I served with, people I went into harm’s way with, people I depended on, and who depended on me. People I would have died to protect. They were people I lived with and took care of in my role as their leader, and they were also leaders who understood what I was doing and why I was doing it. We learned to sense each other’s thoughts, and anticipate each other’s needs. It is love, of a sort, but a kind of love that only a minority of the population really understands, or has ever experienced.

Spouses sometimes get intensely jealous of this kind of relationship. Many times, the phrase, “You love [place working situation here] more than you love me!” has been shouted in anger. Divorces have happened because of this kind of relationship. Lots of divorces.

And yet, my spouse, my chosen mate, the love of my life, who I would also die to protect, encouraged that kind of relationship with my mother-in-law. She went beyond that and encouraged me to be unfaithful with this other woman. Except “unfaithful” is the wrong word, by definition. One definition reads: Engaging in sexual relations with a person other than one’s regular partner in contravention of a previous promise or understanding. Most other definitions would be similar. The key word there is “contravention.” What Eve and I did in bed most nights didn’t contravene Valerie’s and my vows, made to each other at the altar. To put it in political terms, the constitution Valerie and I had created when we got married had been amended by Valerie’s stated ... permssions.

As an example, the first night I spent in Eve’s apartment (and bed) was preceded by a Skype call to Valerie, where we gave her the news. She actually jumped up and down in her excitement, and blurted, “I’m pregnant, Bob!” Then she got unhappy, because she hadn’t intended to tell me. She wanted to wait until she was there, in person. Then, her effusiveness bounced back and she took her shirt off, proudly displaying her belly, which was still flat as a board. She tried to sag her stomach out to make a bump, but all it did was bend her back. And all this time Eve and I were in camera’s view together. In an alternate reality, the topless woman on the screen would not have known that, as soon as we hung up, I was going to go to bed with her mother and recreate the conditions under which she had gotten pregnant. But Eve and Valerie had this special connection, and there were no secrets between them. That’s why Eve knew Valerie was pregnant before I did.

And that’s why Valerie knew that, as soon as we hung up, I was going to sleep with her mother.

And Valerie visited us once during the time I bunked with Eve. We were delighted to see each other and I spent half an hour talking to the peanut-sized offspring in her womb before we made love. There was no loss of the closeness we had forged. Valerie was a tough woman. It takes a tough woman to be married to a soldier, and endure the separations and sacrifice that all military spouses have to suffer. When we were together, we felt married, and felt like life mates.

And yet, the little habits Eve and I had gotten into didn’t just evaporate. Such as the way I slid my hand over her ass while she was cooking, or washing dishes. And her good night kisses, as I headed to the guest room with Valerie, were like the handoffs of the baton between runners. Valerie saw all that, but it didn’t threaten her in any way I could perceive.