Chapter 7

We called Val as soon as we got home. She was still at work. It was nine at night, and she was still at work.

“Hi!” she said, brightly, on speakerphone. “I’m busy, so make it quick.”

“Bob is here with me,” said Eve.

“Hi, Baby,” said Val in a completely different voice. “I miss you so much!”

“I miss you too,” I said.

There were the “How are you?” questions and both Eve and I explained the medical situation. Eve bragged on me for walking so well when we went to dinner.

“Oooo, you guys went out to dinner? Should I be jealous?”

“Actually,” said Eve, “that’s why we called. We’re having difficulties with deciphering your wishes about ... things.”

“You have to be more specific than that, Mom,” said Val.

“You may remember that you asked me to make sure Bob’s ... uh ... plumbing was working.”

“Yes?” said Valerie, with no trace of embarrassment. “You told me it is.”

“Yes. And you said you wanted me to keep an eye on him ... to make sure he didn’t get depressed.”

“I did.”

“You also told Bob not to feel guilty about me ... um ... testing him.”

“Are you still there, Honey?” she asked. “You’re not talking.”

“Your mom seems to be articulating things pretty well,” I said.

“No she’s not. I don’t understand what she’s getting at at all,” said Val.

“How much experimentation do you want us to do?” asked Eve, straight out.

“You mean sex?”

“Good grief,” groaned Eve.

“Yes, sex,” I said. “It turns out there’s some chemistry between us, Val. It’s making us nervous.”

“Do you love me, Bob?” asked my wife.

“You know I do.”

“Are you going to keep loving me?”

“You know I will. Forever and ever.”

“Then be nice to my mother. She’s lost a lot of time and needs to learn how to get back up on that horse.”

“Now I don’t understand what you mean?” I said.

“I don’t care what you do,” said my wife. “I love you both, and both of you love me. If you love each other a little bit, so much the better. Now. I have to go. I have to get this brief done and checked by seven in the morning. Thanks for calling. Save some for me. I love you both!”

The line went dead.

I looked at Eve. She was pale.

“I don’t feel so good,” she moaned.

“Was it something you ate?” I asked, concerned that dinner might have made her sick.

“Oh, it’s something I ate, all right,” she sighed. “Something I want to eat again.”

She stood up and offered her hand.

“And my daughter just gave me permission to eat it.”

“C’mon,” I said. “We’re both adults, here.”

Eve looked at me with flashing eyes.

“Don’t make light of this, Bob.”

“I’m not!” I objected. “I’m just saying we’re not kids, who are full of hormones.”

She just stared at me.

“This is helping,” she said. “Go on.”

“Go on with what?” I asked, confused.

“Keep saying stupid things. It makes you much less attractive.”

“What stupid things? I’m just trying to say that we are in control of this, and not the other way around.”

Now she evaluated me. It was clear. Somehow we weren’t just having a conversation. Decisions were being made in Aoibheann’s head. Decisions about me.

“Okay, let’s go back to the beginning. What did you mean when you said we were both adults?”

I blinked. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Um ... I mean we can exert some self control, the kind that younger people don’t?”

“So when you said we weren’t full of hormones, you actually meant that.” Her eyes were calmer, now.

“Well, sure,” I said. “What did you think I meant?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” she said. Her shoulders lost their rigid posture.

Now I was the one who was getting upset.

“Well, you need to, Nurse O’Malley, because this conversation is not yielding anything positive that I can detect, and what we need right now is obviously some clear communication so we can make decisions on what the fuck to do!”

Her shoulders got rigid again.

“All right,” she said, her voice full of controlled anger. “I thought you meant that adults get to do whatever the hell they want to, even if it’s not wise to do it. I thought, when you said we weren’t full of hormones, that you meant the exact opposite, and that hormones are a good excuse to blame our actions on. There. Are you happy, now?”

“I think it’s pretty clear neither of us is very happy right now,” I said. “That’s not what I meant, by the way, but thank you for telling me. Now I understand why you got upset.”

“So what you really meant was that this is like deciding to stop buying sugary drinks,” she said. “We’re big boys and girls, and we are in control of our own destinies.”

“Exactly,” I said. I felt better.

“If only it were that easy,” she sighed.

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, I know a lot of men - and women - who smoke. They know it’s not good for them. They do it anyway. I know a lot of people who drink too much. They know they shouldn’t, but they do it anyway. Adults speed, and park illegally. They cut into line in front of other people because they’re impatient. Adults make bad and selfish decisions all the time, Bob.”

“This isn’t like that,” I insisted. “This isn’t an addiction. And it’s not selfish. You did what you did because you wanted your daughter to be happy and worry less. You did what you did out of love, not some selfish motive.”

“Bob, I know you’re fine. You’re perfectly capable of being the man she needs you to be, sexually and emotionally. I don’t need to do any more to prove that. But I still want to. I actually do need to, on some level, because what I feel for you is something I haven’t felt for decades. If you weren’t married I wouldn’t have any problem with all this, except for the fact that I’m old enough to be your mother. But you are married, and not only that, you’re married to my daughter!“

She was pacing. I waved at her and patted the couch beside me.

“I’d come get you and make you sit, but if you resisted, I’d probably lose my balance and fall and then you’d feel terrible,” I said.

She sat.

“Okay,” I said. “I understand your problem. I think it might help if you go back and review what she said on the phone a few minutes ago.” I didn’t let her speak, because I was pretty sure whatever came out of her mouth would be argumentative. “When you asked her how far things could go, and I told her there was some chemistry between us, she didn’t talk about me. She talked about you.”

Eve sat there. At least she wasn’t arguing.

“Now most guys would think it was very odd for a wife to say, basically, go play to your heart’s content. But you have to remember who said it. Valerie isn’t like any woman I ever met before. The way you raised her...” I stopped and reworded things in my mind. “The environment in which she was raised had a woman in it who seemed to hate men. She certainly didn’t trust any of them. Valerie didn’t even go on dates, because she was afraid it would stress you out that she was out there with some guy who might be hurting her the same way you were hurt.”

I had to physically stop Eve from responding. I could see she was upset.

“She wasn’t upset by this,” I said. “She didn’t feel like she was denied anything. She just learned not to trust men very much, too. It took me literally more than a year to convince her I was a good guy, who really cared about her and wanted her to be happy. And I think that once she figured out that there were good guys in the world, it made her heart break that you had denied yourself access to them, just like she had. So I think she sees this thing between you and me as something positive, something that will help to bring you out of your shell and back to a world where maybe you can find a guy, like she found a guy.”

I thought it sounded wise, erudite, even.

“Can I talk now?” she asked, softly.

I nodded.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” she snorted. “No woman will voluntarily give the man she loves to another woman. It’s just not done.”

“Wives in plural marriages do it,” I argued. I have no idea where that came from.

“My daughter and I are not sister wives,” she growled. “And I might point out that sister wives are usually subject to the whims of the husband in the house. They have little choice in the matter. That might be why they made laws against that kind of thing!”

“Okay,” I said, surrendering. “I’m sorry. But think about it. She was worried about me, and wanted you to test the waters. She clearly indicated she’s worried about you, too. She loves us both. You can’t deny that. When you did what you did, it made her feel better, even though it was another woman who did it. She wasn’t threatened by it at all. You know that’s true. So why is it such a stretch to believe that she also isn’t threatened by the concept that more between us might be able to help you? Remember, she made that reference to getting back up on the horse? She’s satisfied that I’m okay. Now she wants you to be okay, too.”

Eve stared at me. Her eyes seemed to bore deep inside me.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me,” she said.

“Of course I’m not trying to seduce you,” I said.

“You didn’t try to seduce my daughter, either,” she commented.

“Well, no, but that was different,” I said, as the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

“Was it?” she asked. “Weren’t you trying to get closer to her?”

“Of course, but it’s still not the same.”

“Don’t you want to be closer to me, too?” she asked.

I felt like I was in a swamp, and had just fallen out of the boat. There were alligators around, but I couldn’t see them. Was there one right there, hidden under the water, about to take a bite out of me?

“This is the part where I reminded you we’re both adults,” I croaked.

“Which wasn’t helpful at all, as I recall,” she said. Her voice had a different timbre to it, though, which made the hairs on the back of my neck relax. “Thankfully, the army has made all this much easier,” she said. Now her voice was brisk.

“How so?” I asked.

“We don’t have time to make a mistake. You’re due back on campus in half an hour.”

“I am an adult!” I objected. “It’s not right to give me a curfew.”

“So you’d rather be listed as AWOL?”

“Fuck!”

“Why, Lieutenant, are you unhappy that you couldn’t get into the nurse’s panties?”

Another man might have thought she was gloating, or relieved that she’d dodged a bullet. I didn’t know this woman all that well, but I knew her well enough to know she still wasn’t happy.

“To be continued,” I said, firmly. “We’re not finished discussing this.”

“You’re so assertive,” she sighed, dramatically. “Be still my fluttering heart.”

“I believe the phrase you’re looking for is for your beating heart to be still, not flutter,” I said. I frowned. That hadn’t come out quite right.

“Get up,” she said, standing. She didn’t offer me her hand. “I need to get you back.”