Chapter 8

I didn’t see Eve for a week. I went to physical therapy. I walked around the campus to put numbers on the pedometer they issued me. I played pool, and watched TV and played cards. I read books that the library lady brought around on a rolling cart. I lifted weights and practiced moving around without legs.

She showed up Friday afternoon just like she had the previous week. She didn’t ask if I wanted to feel guilty again. Instead, she asked if I wanted to go for a burger.

I did.

I have to be honest, here. After my dream, in which my wife supervised while I fucked her mother ... or while her mother fucked me ... I had not dwelled on Eve O’Malley and our relationship, whatever that was shaping up to be. Your relationship with relatives gets worked out, one way or another. It wasn’t like she was going to live with me and Valerie. I wanted to go for a burger, but the primary impetus there was to get off campus, to be out in the real world, away from the Army. It wasn’t to do anything with Eve, other than be in her company and eat something good.

She was still in scrubs, of course, so she took me to her house so she could shower and change. This time she didn’t parade around in a towel, half naked. I had already changed into one of the outfits she bought me, so I didn’t have to get half naked, either. I watched TV until she appeared.

As soon as I looked at her, I got a boner.

“Crap,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“It seems history is repeating itself,” I said. I pointed to my lap.

“I see,” she said. “We could go to Sonic. We wouldn’t have to get out of the car and nobody could see your affliction.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said.

“You’re not going to beg for another blow job?” She arched one eyebrow.

“I am not,” I said. “I appreciate what you did for me, but do not expect it in the future.”

“All right. Shall we go?”

She was being almost formal. It was clearly strained, but not all that much. I had hopes that all this would be one of those things you laugh about in the future, over a couple of beers.

We did go to Sonic, and I told her to order me a bacon double cheeseburger, with large fries and a Route 66 cherry limeade.

“You’re really slamming the calories, there,” she observed.

“I am,” I admitted. “You know the stuff they offer in the chow hall, though.”

What I was referring to was the fact that Uncle Sam had jumped on the “Eat Healthy” bandwagon in a big way. The days of getting into the grill line and ordering a couple of cheeseburgers and fries were gone. Only healthy choices were available these days. And only healthy portions, at least in CONUS (the continental United States). If you wanted calories, you had to eat an MRE, which were available in combat theaters, where you burned the shit out of calories by wearing sixty pounds of gear on long missions.

She didn’t say anything and ordered what I had asked for. As we ate, she talked about some of her patients, and I recounted my boring existence. She actually asked a lot of questions about my normal day. I think it was because, once a soldier left her ward, she had never really paid attention to what life was like for him.

Eventually we finished up and she drove around, showing me San Antonio. She suggested a few places that she said ‘we’ should visit, so I could get some experience navigating in public. At seven-thirty, she parked in front of her house.

“You’re not taking me home?” I asked.

“Not just yet,” she said. “I believe you said we weren’t finished with our previous conversation.”

“We don’t have to go into that now,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” she said. “Come inside and we’ll get it out of the way.

I followed her in and that’s when she dropped the bomb.

“I had a long talk with Valerie,” she said.

“Oh?” There was a clear note of suspense in the air.

“She told me about your dream.”

“Oh,” I said again, in a totally different tone of voice. “Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? We don’t control our dreams.”

“We are now back to the place where I say I want you to like me, but am not sure how to bring that about,” I said.

“I already like you,” she said. “I’m grateful that my daughter met you and that you’re the kind of man you are.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad you’re glad.”

“There is, however, the issue of my daughter feeling like she has the right to stick her nose into my business, and boss me around.”

“Oh?” The suspense was back.

“She tells me you are now my therapist.”

“Oh,” I groaned. “I was being sarcastic.”

“She did not take it in that vein,” said Eve.

“Okay,” I said, firmly. “So what do we do?”

“That depends,” said my mother-in-law. “What do you want to do?”

There was something in her voice that took me back to that swamp, with those invisible alligators all around.

“I want to do whatever you want to do,” I said, thinking that was safe.

She laughed. It eased the tension, but I was confused.

“I need to check your stumps,” she said, when she stopped laughing.

“What?”

“Take your pants off, Lieutenant,” she said, calmly.

“Really?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” she asked.

I stood up and undid my belt. I felt my cock starting to stiffen, but the situation was so weird I decided not to mention that. I was still going commando. I’d pretty much given up wearing underwear. I was used to it now. So my half-boner only waved drunkenly around when I dropped my pants. I sat down to get the pants off my legs. When that was accomplished, she said, “The shirt, too.”

“Why?” I asked, impulsively.

“You said you wanted whatever I wanted. I want your shirt off.”

She wanted me naked.

By the time I got my shirt off, it wasn’t a half-boner any longer. I was rock hard.

She removed both my prostheses and did, in fact, examine my stumps. Then she stood up and started taking her own clothes off.

I watched as she removed her blouse and then her slacks. She had on a matching bra and panty set that looked lacy and was sea green. Neither of us said anything and I held my breath as she reached behind her and undid her bra. It went slack, and my lungs relaxed with the material. She stopped.

“I’m not sure about this,” she said, looking at me.

“Okay,” I said. Don’t ask me why, but only then did I reach for my dick and squeeze it.

“You won’t have to do that,” she said.

She dropped the bra and I made a sound. She looked nervous and somehow I knew she needed reassurance.

“Not bad for an old broad,” I said.

“Asshole,” she breathed.

Then she pushed her panties down and stepped out of them. When she stood, she had that rigid pride about her, when someone is trying to convince themselves that everything is fine, but they don’t quite believe it down deep.

“Valerie told me to do this,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“I love my wife,” I sighed.

She stiffened and I sensed she was going to get dressed again. I’m not proud that I didn’t want her to, but I didn’t. “I don’t mean you should stop,” I said. “I meant I love her for being so understanding.”

“This goes way beyond being understanding,” said Eve. “I feel stupid, standing here, naked, in front of you.”

I held up a finger. “One moment,” I said.

I put on only one of my legs and then managed to stand up and balance. That was the first time I’d ever done that. I do it all the time, now, or can, if I want to, but back then, it was a unique experience. My other stump waved in the air as I balanced, but I didn’t fall over.

“We’re supposed to touch each other ... right?”

She didn’t quite step back from me, but nodded.

“Okay, then,” I said. I reached for her and I’m sure the reason she reached out to me was because I was standing on one leg.

I pulled her to me like she was a spooked horse. I didn’t talk to her and tell her it was fine. I just moved her slowly. When she got close enough, for some inane reason, I brought her hand up and kissed the back of it. I eased us into a loose hug that reminded me of getting into a tub of really hot water, were you slowly let yourself down, so it doesn’t feel like you’re burning yourself.

The tips of her breasts touched my chest and she gasped. I realized she’d been holding her breath.

I got my arms around her and just held her. I was holding my hips away, awkwardly, trying not to touch her with my erection. It had me in a half bow of sorts.

“Just touch,” I whispered. “We don’t have to do anything else.”

Her hands gripped my forearms and she pushed me back.

“You’re an idiot,” she said, tersely. “We’re going to do a lot more than just touch.”

“We are?”

“I have been told to get back up on the damned horse,” she said.

“Ahhhh,” I said.

She giggled. I was astonished. I didn’t know a grown woman could giggle like that.

“I’m a grown woman and my daughter told me to go play horsy with you.”

As I look back on it, I think it was a combination of things that moved us along. For one thing, Valerie was very clear that she wanted her mother to do a full run to verify in every way possible that I was not in danger of becoming impotent. I’m pretty sure Eve saw through that, because it was followed with the ‘get back on the horse’ speech. But Val made it crystal clear that her mother was doing her daughter no harm by poaching in her personal forest. There was apparently plenty of game to go around, in Val’s opinion. Or maybe she merely hoped that all this would, in fact, motivate me to not lose my desire for sex.

Another facet of it was that, when we were naked together at first, I didn’t go all animal on her. In this case, the animal in Val’s forest that her mother was supposed to poach was a teddy bear, instead of a gorilla. Or whatever. The analogy breaks down, eventually.

Another thing was that I didn’t act like the kind of man Eve distrusted. It’s sad to say it, but I think she knew me on a more personal level than pretty much any other man she was acquainted with. Perhaps I should say she let me into her life on a more personal level than she did with other men she knew.

Then there was the reawakened libido of Aoibheann O’Malley. She had been hot-blooded as a teenager, which was what got her in trouble with the guy who took advantage of that and screwed her over (both figuratively and literally). She had loved sex with him, and now she remembered loving sex. Like an alcoholic who takes one drink and falls off the wagon, Eve had felt passion and wanted another taste of it. That she was given permission to enjoy that passion with a man she already liked was something she finally couldn’t resist.

It’s also possible that the fact I was balancing on one leg made Eve feel that I wasn’t dangerous, and that she could be in charge if she needed to be.

It may seem incomprehensible to the average person how Valerie could accept and even encourage such a liaison, but it served her purposes on two levels. One was that she was, in fact, reassured that her husband hadn’t been ruined, either then or as time went on, by that bullet or the potential for PTSD and depression. The second was that she might be able to get her mother to be more normal, in terms of interpersonal relationships. Valerie was in a uniquely personal position to understand how much her mother had missed by being so distrustful of men. After all, Valerie had mimicked her mother in that sense and only by accident had met me and succumbed to my ‘charm.’

The point is, Valerie was convinced it would be good for both of us to have this experience, and did not believe it would hurt our marriage, or how I felt about her. If you put it on a much more mundane level, your spouse isn’t threatened at all when, at a family gathering, you give effusive hugs to her relatives. Your spouse actually wants you to be intimate, on that level, because it’s good for the family in general. It’s part of what makes a family close. Kisses are even approved, sometimes.

Of course the average family doesn’t sex it up with each other, willy nilly. But we weren’t the average family.

The next hug was a full body embrace in which Eve’s hands ended up in the small of my back after feeling all over my shoulders. We were cheek to cheek, and I could hear her breathing.