Chapter 4

Not quite the whole story.

That was less than a mouthful, that’s for sure.

It was little more than a week after we had pawed through the pictures that the bomb arrived in the mail in the form of a bill, forwarded from my mother’s last address, for the next year’s storage fee. The bill didn’t state what was being stored, just the square footage and a rate per square foot for heated indoor storage space, and a total payable within 30 days or the contents would be seized and disposed for services rendered.

I called, but the attendant didn’t know what was in the storage room. The room was was secured by the owner’s lock which he couldn’t open unless I had proof that the owner was indeed deceased and that I was the rightful owner according to the will. If I presented a notarized document to that effect, he would open the locker and allow me to remove the contents after paying a fee or continue to store it in a new contract in my name.

The next week, I drove up to the storage facility armed with the appropriate legal documents and a lot of curiosity. I wondered what could Mom have been storing so long - the attendant said the storage contract was the oldest one they had on file, almost 20 years he said. Why did she need to store things outside her home, in the next town no less?

With a profound sense of mystery, I eagerly peered under the rising metal door as the attendant lifted it with two hands and pushed it toward the roof where it rolled along the ceiling and bounced back and forth, handrope dangling wildly as the door bounced off the stop springs.

“A car!” the attendant exclaimed.

It was indeed a car ... under a fitted canvas cover.

The attendant stood back to let me by. I walked in, squeezing alongside the car to the far corner. There was nothing else in the room. I bent to lift the cover and the attendant rushed to help, thinking I wanted to remove the cover though I only meant to take a peek.

“I wonder how old it is?” the attendant said, lifting the canvas at the other end.

Together, we exposed the side and I followed as the attendant dragged the canvas over the roof toward the other side of the car. A lump had developed in my throat as soon as the red and black two-tone paint was revealed in the dim light.

“Wow, what kind of car is that?” the kid said. “Some kind of early Lincoln?”

“No,” I replied, having difficulty speaking. “It’s a 1959 Rambler American Contintental,” I informed him, an old yet still familiar defensive tone creeping into my voice.

“A what?” the kid said.

“A Rambler,” I muttered, dropping the canvas to the floor and walking over it to the driver’s door.

I opened the car. It smelled very musty. I squeezed inside and sat behind the wheel, ignoring the attendant who was saying something. Dust rose up as my weight hit the seat and I looked around the car, then opened the glove box which was empty except for a sheaf of old and dry papers. Insurance papers for the last year the car was driven, 1975, some twenty-four years ago, about a year after Laura and I met and five years before we married.

I closed the glove box but kept the registration papers. Continuing my inspection, I noticed the car keys dangling from the ignition and removed them. Craning my neck over the seat, I confirmed the backseat was empty before extricating myself and walking out of the garage.

“You going to want to keep it here?” the attendant asked as I opened the trunk.

“I don’t know yet. For a while anyway,” I said.

“OK,” he said, walking away. “Stop and let me know before you leave,” he called over his shoulder.

“Uh huh,” I acknowledged, moving back to lift the trunk.

Spare tire, a small tool box, an old blanket, a picnic basket and a couple of empty wine bottles. The last three items held oodles of memories for me.

I wondered what happened to Jeez, Dad. What an ugly car.

Now, it seems, Tom thought the car was ‘cool’, a great project for his automotive class at school. He and his friends could blow everyone away if they could recondition this ‘relic’ from the past.

“C’mon, honey. Let him do it,” Laura piped in. “Your mom loved that car. Why would she have kept it all these years, in secret, if she didn’t?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Tom moved in for the kill. “It might even be worth big bucks. I mean, man, it’s got to be rare.”

“It’ll bring back the magic of those days, too, sweetheart,” Laura added, delivering the coup d’etat.

I felt cornered. Why was I resisting. It wouldn’t cost much if Tom’s instructor let him and his pals take it on as a project. I had already dealt with the flood of memories that had assaulted my brain as soon as I had turned up the corner of the canvas covering the Rambler. What was it? Something nagged me to say no but, against my better judgement, I agreed.

“OK. You can ask Mr. Martens, but it has to remain original. Gran wouldn’t have wanted to see it all hopped up.”

“Awesome,” Tom jumped up in a mock cheer, right arm thrust agressively up, ending in a closed fist. Laura looked pleased and I knew it was because she believed this would motivate our son who was not exactly pleasing us with his attitude and performance at school. Maybe that’s why I said yes.

The project was nearing its end. Tom and three of his friends from class, the ‘Rambler’ team were meeting in his room. Their meetings, originally held in our kitchen, had moved to his room about a month ago. Just before that, they adopted a curious habit of lowering their voices, stopping their conversation or changing topics whenever anyone else came near the kitchen.

At first, I thought they were talking about something else than the car, some girls or plans to get hold of some booze for the weekend, but eventually I realized they were keeping something secret about the car itself. I became suspicious that they were contravening my rule about not customizing the car.

Rather than go to the school to find out, which might embarrass Tom, I queried Laura whether she knew if Tom and his pals were up to something with the Rambler and was surprised by her response.

“I don’t know. Why would you think I would know anything about it,” Laura snapped.

I looked at my wife’s back as she whirled away from me and pulled something out of one of the cupboards, though she had looked like she was leaving the kitchen when I came in and asked her what she knew about the Rambler and the boys’ secretive behavior.

“I don’t know,” I answered, confused by the intensity of her response. Looking at her, now crouching in front of the lower cupboards that held pots and pans, I noticed her neck and the bit of her face that I could see from behind was rosy red. “I was just wondering.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about it,” Laura snapped.

Bewildered, I backed out of the kitchen. Now, more than ever, I was determined to find out what was going on. I was convinced that Tom and his pals were hopping up the Rambler and that Laura knew about it and was afraid to say anything to me. I went to the school.

“Nope, it’s completely stock. All original,” Dennis Martens assured me. “Those boys are really into this car. They’re here every spare class and after school until I kick them out. They’ve done a beautiful job, just look at it.” He waved his hand at the Rambler, all shiny red and black in the far bay. I had to agree. It looked great, and original.

So what were those boys up to, and why had it upset Laura so much when I asked? Come to think about it, she had been acting kind of funny for the last while. On edge, like.

That was my excuse for searching my son’s room. I’m not proud of it, or of the fact that I invaded my wife’s privacy, by reading her diary when I came across it.

Tom, it seems, had found a set of diaries hidden in the Rambler, stuffed in the heater blower, easily accessed by a little metal door under the dash. A cold sweat enveloped me.

According to Laura’s diary, Millie had had sexual relations with her son and she thought this might have something to do with why he was so different when he came back from Vietnam. It wasn’t all the war, she had written. Thank god it was Milie’s diary he’d found and not Mom’s.

I read on, working back from the middle and then springing ahead, but I’ll give it to you from the beginning, from Laura’s first relevant entry.

I found a little black book in Tom’s room today. It was a diary belonging to Gran’s friend, Millie. It was sad, really, because it was mostly about Millie’s thoughts about her son Tim. Tim had been Rick’s best friend in school. He left for Vietnam before Rick and I met and though he came back twice, I never met him. Sadly, almost every entry was about Tim. Millie must have missed him so much, I thought, but I was shocked toward the end of the little book to find out how much.

Evidently, Tim had started making advances toward his mother. The improper kind. Millie was quite concerned about it, at first sure she was just imaginging it, but realized it wasn’t her imagination when her son touched her one morning, innapropriately patting her bottom several times in the kitchen while she was making breakfast. Her husband was right there, sitting at the table, yet after the last pat, Tim let his hand rest on top of her buttock for several seconds, as if daring his father to look.

Millie was beside herself for several days. She hadn’t said anything at the first touch because she was so shocked she wasn’t sure it had happened. The second time, she just didn’t know what to do and the next two times, she was afraid to say anything lest her husband hurt her son. She convinced herself she would give Tim a talking to once they were alone but the last time, when he’d let his hand linger, she was sure Tim thought she was OK with it. All that afternoon, she fretted that she had mistakenly encouraged her son. She vascillated between feelings of incrimination and guilt, the latter because the whole episode had been fraught with danger, and yes, Millie was surprised and loathe to admit, excitement.

Millie didn’t get a chance to talk with her son that night and the next day the whole scene was replayed again, but this time, Tim found more opportunities to let his hand rest on his mother’s ass. Again, Millie was afraid to move in case she called her husband’s attention to what was going on. Unfortunately, her submissiveness encouraged Tim. He stood beside her, blocking her husband’s view, put his arm around her and took the full weight of her breast in his hand, squeezing her for many seconds while she did absolutely nothing to stop him. A few minutes later, he did it again, and then sat down at the table as if nothing untoward had happened. Millie confessed in her diary that it was a couple of minutes before she could follow because she could hardly walk, having just leaned against the sink in the throes of a small orgasm.

This nonsense - Millie’s words - carried on for several days. Tim was careful not to be alone with his mom, clearly wanting to avoid a confrontation with her. Friday night after supper, Millie insisted that Tim help her with the dishes instead of joining his dad in the living room.

She told her son she wanted to talk. I know, he had replied. Come to the drive-in with me and we can talk all night. At first, Millie was uncertain but then she realized that at the drive-in, she could have things out with her son without fear of interruption, so she agreed. As soon as she did, Tim’s hands slipped under her arms and each grabbed a breast, and a very firm boner lodged itself between her cheeks, clearly felt even through the thickness of her pleated skirt.

He whispered in her ear, “We’ll get it all settled tomorrow night.”

Millie was so shocked, she just set her hands on the bottom of the sink to brace herself against his thrusts as he ground his stiffness against her backside, massaging her tits until he suddenly shuddered, gasped into the hollow of her neck, and stumbled out of the kitchen.

Millie hung her head in shame as another orgasm shimmered through her groin, its warmth spreading as she twisted her legs tightly together, not to squash it, but to wrest every thrilling tingle from it she could. She was more shocked at herself, she wrote, than her son. His teenaged behavior she understood. Her’s, she didn’t.

I heard Tom coming home so I left, leaving the little book exactly where it was. I would confront him about it later, I thought, but first, I wanted to read more.

---

I couldn’t find the little book the next day, though I searched Tom’s room thoroughly. That night, after we had all gone to bed, I quietly got up and went to my son’s room. He was surprised to see me and even more surprised by what I had to say. He pleaded ignorance but fessed up when I threatened to tell his father about the diary which could only have come from the old car.

He had found them behind a small metal door stuffed in the heater vent under the dash.

“Them?” I asked. Yes. Evidently there was a stack of them in there. “I want to see it.”

Tom got up and retrieved the little book from his school backpack. “The others?” Still in the car at school. He brought it to me where I sat on the edge of his bed. I began to read.

Tom sat next to me on the edge, reading along. I ignored him and quickly became immersed again in Millie’s story. What had happened during their talk?

They had gone to the drive-in but not alone as Millie had expected. Evidently, Tim had manipulated his friend Rick into talking his mother into coming too. How he’d done this, Millie didn’t know. She was angry at first because she couldn’t talk but then she got swept up in the excitement of going to a drive-in, like the old days. She could talk with Tim after the show, she reasoned, when they were back in their own car.

It wasn’t long after the show started, she wrote, that Tim snuggled close, arguing that they would look like dorks if the other kids could see them sitting way apart. She didn’t remember letting her son kiss her, she just remembers his lips on her and that it felt nice, so she let it continue, thinking a little kissing couldn’t do any harm. Anyway, in the darkness, nobody could see and, as in the kitchen that week, she didn’t want to call attentin to what was happening.

That was a big mistake she wrote. She drifted with the feeling of his lips on hers, which got better and better. It was quite a while before she realized why. Tim’s hand was under her skirt, way up, rubbing her panties. She was wet, soaking!

She started to struggle but Tim whispered frantically in her ear, “Shhhhhh. Don’t make a fuss or Rick’s mom will know.”

In her muddled mind, his logic made sense. Afterward, thinking about the confined space of the car, Millie knew that Mary must already have known. Still, she relaxed and let Tim have his way with her. Soon, despite herself, she was pushing up against his hand, rubbing herself on him even harder. Before she knew it, her son had inserted himself between her legs, loosened his jeans and pushed them down, though his shorts were still on. He replaced his hand with his hard boner, a nice one she thought to herself shamelessly, as he pushed and shoved against her soaked panties.

Rather than pushing her son away, Millie opened her legs and threw her arms around him and held him tight, loosing her hold only when he needed room to get his hands under her sweater, pushing her bra roughly off her breasts and taking a tit into each hand. She didn’t even mind how roughly he mauled her tits. In fact, she wrote, she loved it and began bucking against her son as wildly as he was. Twice more that night, in the car, she and her son rubbed themselves to mutual orgasms, each session lasting longer than the last.

Millie wrote in graphic detail, probably because she wanted to record the depth of her feelings at the time so if she questioned herself later she would have a basis to understand what she had done. I know I found it hard to believe that the really nice lady I had known was capable of incest, but I had seen the diary with my own eyes, and I could feel the intensity of her emotions through her words.

I was surprised to find that Tom was leaning in very close to me, his arm stretched behind, and his right hand was resting on my leg above my knee, his fingers just poking into the crease created by the pinch of my thighs where they pressed together. We were both breathing faster than normal. I know I was excited reading this, so I figured a teenager must be too. I was acutely aware that I was wearing just a nightgown with nothing on underneath, something Tom could easily see by simply looking down to where I held the book a few inches in front of my chest. Tom, having already been in bed when I came in, was sitting in his underwear and nothing else. I was well aware of that, too.

I knew I had to leave but I wanted so much to read more. Tom’s hand pressed down on my leg, restraining me, when I started to get up. I looked at him, apprehensively, afraid of what might happen next.

“The book,” he said.

I said I would bring it back but he argued that my room wasn’t a safe place, not with Dad there. I said OK but said I wanted to read more. Tom nodded and agreed to bring the book home so I could read more the next night.

That first entry had been written in April. Laura had known about this for almost two months!

I can’t stop thinking about Millie and her son Tim. They would have been about the same ages as Tom and I. I just can’t imagine it. I have to admit that I caught myself looking at my son differently in the days that followed. I gave my head a good shake but I found my eyes following him again a couple of times, and I was regarding him as a handsome young man. Maybe that’s normal for mothers, I thought, just before their sons are about to leave home to start their own life.

I snuck into Tom’s room today to read more of Millie’s diary but I couldn’t find it.

---

That night, Tom brought the second book home. At midnight, I slipped out of bed and crept quietly down the hall to my son’s room. Tom sat up in bed and made room for me beside him. This book was even more graphic. Millie described in detail several encounters with her son in their own home. Evidently, she had decided not to further her incestous relationship after that bout in the car but was struggling against strong urges for the next few weeks. She couldn’t help letting her son touch and rub against her and, in the end, she let him take her while her husband was sitting in the next room! I just couldn’t believe it. Millie had had intercourse with her son!

At first, I felt very uncomfortable reading this with Tom sitting next to me in his underwear but I had became so engrossed in Millie’s story I actually forgot he was there. I was almost shocked when I realized he was still sitting next to me on the bed, reading about Millie and Tim fucking, and became flustered for a few minutes. He was very excited. I could see his erection poking up in his underwear and his swollen balls below.

Why hadn’t I worn a robe? The longer, almost knee-length, slip-like nightgown I was wearing had pulled halfway up my thighs when I had crossed and uncrossed my legs. I tried to get Tom to let me take the the book to read on my own the next day but he refused, ignoring my argument that we were both getting too little sleep. The book, he said, had to stay in his room. So I leaned back against his pillows to get more comfortable and started reading again.

I had only read four more pages when I realized I was holding the diary with one hand, even flipping pages single handedly. My other hand had strayed down to rest on my belly. Tom was lying on his side, bracing himself on his elbow next to me. My filmy nightgown had parted slightly on my chest, widening the slice of visible skin between my breasts but still leaving them properly covered as did the skirt of my gown, though it had fallen almost to my hips when I raised my knees so I could rest the diary against my bare legs. My breasts, however, couldn’t hide their excitement, poking against the flimsy material of the nightgown, but there wasn’t much I could do about that, and I wasn’t ready to quit reading, not yet. This diary was the hottest thing I’d ever read.

Strange, but I didn’t think of Millie as a bad person. She clearly loved her son, and her husband, too. But the incredible excitement she felt when she was with her son shone through her writing and I can understand how she couldn’t stop herself. She was at a loss how to explain it herself. A church-going woman, she found it very difficult to resolve and then simply gave up.

The descriptions of the sex in their home would make any woman envious. They did it everywhere: in the basement, the kitchen, and even her son’s bed when her husband was home; on the stairs, the living room floor, bent over the dining room table (in those days?) and her own bed when they were alone in the house.

When I finally finished reading, my hand had slipped lower and I was almost cupping myself, my fingers resting not so lazily across the top of my panties. I didn’t need to see my nipples poking through my gown to know I was very ready for sex. Shocked, I got up very abruptly and left, yet I turned to toss the book flilppantly back to my son.

“Get another one for tomorrow night,” I half whispered.

---

Tom didn’t bring the next diary, claiming he forgot. I was distraught but he was calm and suggested I read my favorite parts from the first two books out loud, suggesting it would help him remember to bring the next one. I don’t know what he was up to but I didn’t want to go back to bed without another serving of Millie soup, so I agreed.

Tom handed me the diaries as I settled on his bed, mentioning that he liked the nightgown I was wearing and was glad I hadn’t worn a robe. I snapped that I had left my robe because I didn’t want to wake his dad but that wasn’t quite true and I had no excuse, even to myself, for putting on one of my sexier nightgowns. I had a fleeting feeling of being a little like Millie.

So I found myself whispering to my son as I lay beside him, reading the part where Millie let Tim inside her from behind while washing the dishes, with her husband watching TV in the living room. This saved Tom from having to read himself and I understood the roots of his demand as I felt his eyes roaming over my body. It’s difficult to describe how nervous I was, how fluttery my skin felt. I had a hard time not touching myself and felt strangely glad about the nightdress I had chosen, with its see-through bodice. I knew my son could see my breasts and nipples in all their gory detail. Reading aloud was vastly more exciting and, as much as I didn’t want to sense them, reading to my son sent amplified my feelings so high I felt I could shatter.

It was when I re-read the part where Tim first began patting Millie’s ass that I felt the first brush of Tom’s fingers on the back of my right thigh. I wasn’t sure at first, just as Millie had been uncertain. But when he did it again there was no doubt. Still, I didn’t object. Why not? My husband wasn’t sitting in the room, ready to explode, as in Millie’s case.

There it was again. A stroke this time, not a brush. He won’t bring the rest of the diaries, I rationalized, if I make a big fuss. He’s just tickling my leg, making it feel nice. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The strokes grew longer, traveling further, all the way up to the underside of my knee and then slowly down, sometimes in the center and other times outside but later, more often, down the soft inside, coming close but always swerving aside before colliding with my panties. The sparkle of my son’s touch reached as far as my toes and spread through my groin. I was ready again and it wasn’t just from reading.

I closed the book with a snap. “Time for bed,” I said.

Tom implored me to stay a while longer.

“Why?” I asked.

“Could I kiss you?”

“What?”

“Just to see what it feels like. They seemed to like kissing a lot.”

It was too far. Tom, seeing my confusion, said, “Just a little one. I promise I’ll bring the next book tomorrow.”

I relented, holding still and even pushing my lips up as Tom lowered his face to mine. He gave me a little peck, then another, and another. Relieved, I laughed, releasing my nervousness, but when I did, his lips pressed firmly down on mine. We had a real kiss. A nice one. When it was finished, Tom asked, “Just one more?”

I nodded, and we kissed again. The same way but right at the end, Tom let the very tip of his tongue push between my lips, barely inside my mouth, swiveled it from side to side and quickly pulled away.

You can imagine how I felt at this point, can’t you. My wife and my son. How could she do this to me?