Chapter 3

Things might have stopped there if events hadn’t changed the whole dynamic. I don’t know, because I can’t undo the events that brought big changes to my life.

The first thing was that, a week or so later, about the time we were trying to introduce solid foods into Jordie’s diet, one morning Melody said she was going to have to start going on trips. They would be overnight trips, and might extend to two or three nights. She said it had to do with a big lawsuit that encompassed records depositories in several cities, some of them in neighboring states. Her job was to pore through those records to find the documents needed for the suit.

Like an idiot, I bought it. I didn’t think about the fact that she’d had this information the night before, but had chosen not to talk about it until she was about ready to leave for work.

Erica was already holding Jordie, balancing him on one hip. She spoke.

“It’s summer. The dorm they left open for those of us who stay in the summer is almost empty. I’d be happy to stay overnight on those nights you’re gone.”

“We’d pay you overtime,” said my wife, who didn’t even blink an eye.

They haggled for less than a minute.

There was a bed in the nursery. It had been a spare bedroom, after all. The closet had space for some of her clothes and a couple of drawers in the dresser could be emptied for her use. I got her off to one side before it was all agreed to.

“Is this a bad idea?” I whispered.

“It’s only a dream, Bob,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”

That casual “We’ll” slid right past me. She was thinking of us as a unit ... a couple ... partners in this enterprise.

Suddenly, we had a live-in babysitter.

We were partners, when it came to taking care of Jordie. The first of Melody’s ‘away nights’ I did the same things I did when my wife was home. I put him in his high chair and tried to get him to eat pasty, nasty-looking stuff out of little jars. The applesauce was the only thing that looked like what it said it was. Erica had better luck spoon feeding him a few things. I gave him a bath and got him ready for bed. I read him stories from books he didn’t understand, yet, but would someday have memorized. I let Erica have time to herself for whatever she wanted to use it for.

We went to bed in our separate beds and I didn’t have to get up all night.

During the day, the next day, she called me to watch her feed him twice. Oddly, both times it was less stressful, somehow. She sat there, topless, letting him suck on a nipple for a while and we talked. I can’t remember what we talked about, which means it was trivial chit chat. I stared at her nipples and (probably) licked my lips. She acted like being topless like that, in front of me, was the most normal thing in the world.

That night she changed into a T shirt and panties before we went to bed. She held Jordie on her lap, talking to him and I got a clear shot of her lacy panties. I don’t think she exposed herself on purpose. It was more like she didn’t think about it. She was comfortable enough, in this dream of hers, that letting me see more of her felt normal.

I got an erection.

And I didn’t try to hide it as we got up to go to our separate bedrooms.

“You gonna read to him tonight?” she asked. I saw her glance at the obscenity that was the front of my married shorts.

“I could,” I said.

“He likes it when you do that,” she said. “I can tell.”

I laid him in his bed and picked up The Adventures of Mr. Toad. I flipped it open and, in my peripheral vision, noticed Erica getting on her bed. I assumed she was just going to bed and read the book. I tried to make my voice different for each of the characters in the book. I watched Jordie’s eyes get heavier and heavier until he started breathing slowly. I closed the book and turned my head.

Erica was on her bed, without the T shirt. Her hand was in her panties and her hips were arching up off the bed. She was making little gasps, but obviously trying to be quiet.

“You’re doing that now?” I asked, curiously. This was too bizarre for my mind to spend time being shocked.

“You’re supposed to be reading, not watching me,” she gasped.

“He’s asleep. You’re doing that now?” I repeated.

“You’re such a good daddy,” she moaned.

“And that makes you want to do that?” Her hand was still very busy in her panties. Her other hand was pulling at her nipples, hard enough that I winced.

“I don’t know why,” she gasped. “You were reading to him and I could hear the love in your voice. I guess it got to me. Suddenly I was super horny. I wanted to be his mother, and that meant I wanted to be ... your wife.”

“You can’t be my wife,” I said. I resisted the strong urge to reach in my own shorts and grip my bone.

“I’m sorry,” she whined. “I know. I know it’s all going wrong, but I can’t help it. I can’t help wanting something ... wanting ... you.”

“You can’t have me, Erica,” I groaned.

“I know I can’t have you!” she yipped, as her legs spread. “But would it be the end of the world if I maybe just borrowed you a little?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Kiss me,” she hissed. “That’s all. Just kiss me,” she gasped.

I got right over her face before I remembered my lips.

“I can’t kiss you. My lips hurt,” I said.

“Stick your tongue out,” she panted. “All the way out.”

I did and she was on it like a frog on a fly. Her own lips captured it like Jordie’s lips grabbed one of her nipples and she sucked. I pulled back a little as my mind screamed at how wrong this was, but the suction of her lips was strong enough that I didn’t break free. Her hips went up a good eight inches off the bed and she froze, her whole body rigid. Then she fell back against the bed, letting go of my tongue. She curled into fetal ball, her hand still clamped between her thighs and she whispered, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” softly.

It was the first time I heard an off-color word come out of her mouth.

“I’m gonna go,” I panted.

“Thank you!” she gasped.

I went to my room. I didn’t want something fast and furious this time, so I got a wash cloth and laid it on the bed beside my hips. I lay there, naked, languidly stroking my bone. I felt guilty because I was thinking about Erica instead of Melody, but it didn’t stop me. I slowly sped up, imagining that it was what I had in my hand that was where her finger had been. I was almost there when I heard it, the soft susurration of her breathing at my open doorway. My head rolled to see her standing there, still in just her panties, her fingers gripping the door jamb. Her face was a barely discernible white oval in the dark of the hallway. I knew that the windows of my bedroom let in ambient light, and that she could see me.

I rolled toward her. And then I spurted as hard as I could onto the washcloth.

When I had dribbled my last, I looked at her again.

My door was closed.

Melody came back the next morning. She said they had waited to check out until early that day because they were too tired to travel the night before.

She said she had that day off, as compensation for having to stay away, so Erica said she’d go find something to do that day.

My suspicions were aroused when Melody didn’t want sex all day long.

She just didn’t act like herself.

I finally asked her about it.

“I just have a lot on my mind,” she said. “Go on and get some work done. I’ll take care of Jordie.”

That was the next thing that made me curious. Her glib offer to “take care of Jordie” didn’t include the usual separation of duties, where she laid out what I’d be responsible for and what she’d do.

When I checked, later, Jordie was in his crib, trying to catch the figures on the mobile above him, and Melody was taking a nap.

I checked him and he was wet. I changed him, moved his windup swing to my office, put him in it, and went back to work.

Melody was distant that evening, but I didn’t think about that, then. I was still busy with work.

In a way, what happened next was a good thing. That’s because what happened the next morning was that Melody stared at me from across the breakfast table and blurted, “I can’t do this anymore, Bob.”

“Do what anymore?” I asked.

It was silent, except for the click, click, click of Jordie’s swing mechanism.

“There are no research trips,” she sort of gasped. “I’ve been having an affair at work.”

“What?”

“When I’m here, like this, with you and Jordie, I feel smothered. I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t stand it anymore. I want a divorce!”

It was so sudden and so unexpected that I was numb with shock.

So why do I say that was good?

Because it happened before she took another of those “trips”, during which I might have (okay, would have) been unfaithful to my wife.

If anyone reading this is a church-going type, then you probably concluded a while back that I already was unfaithful to my wife. I was raised Protestant, but had to convert to Catholicism when I married Melody. During the process I learned about how, as far as the church is concerned, if you even think about cheating, you have cheated. That’s what confession is for. Priests who (allegedly) never get to have sex get to sit and listen to you describe how you wanted to have it with someone you weren’t married to. Then they say it’s okay, as long as you’re really, really sorry, and then do whatever penance they prescribe.

Melody had done much more than just think about having sex with someone. She’d gone and done it. As far as the priest was concerned, there was no difference. I didn’t feel the same way.

I felt like since she had violated our vows, I was released from mine. Of course the church would have disagreed with that, too. Wedding vows mean more to them than they do to the people getting married.

But I didn’t think about all that, then. I was too busy being pissed off. I raged at her and she just sat there and took it. She knew she’d fucked things up. She had thought about how the church would not recognize a divorce. Her parents would be shocked and humiliated by such a thing. And yet, she wanted it anyway. Granted, neither of us went to mass (or confession, for that matter) but that didn’t matter to the priest.

My “Why?” was met with something so unfeeling that it left me cold.

“I didn’t want children,” she said. “He doesn’t either, and he’s had a vasectomy. I’m sorry, Bob, but I’m just not cut out to be a mother. Hell, Erica’s a better mom than I am.”

“Erica isn’t his mother!” I snapped.

“She may as well be,” said Melody. “And you may as well keep her. She’s besotted with you.”

“What?” I stared at her.

“I see the way she looks at you. At a minimum she has a major crush on you, and it’s obvious she loves Jordie.”

“So you just want me to trade you for another mother?” I stared at her.

“I’m leaving,” she said, with more steel in her voice. “I can’t take it anymore. I don’t care what you do.”

“And you don’t care about Jordie?” I held my breath.

“I don’t have it in me,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really am. I guess we just never really bonded, like you hear about.”

“Then get the fuck out,” I snarled.

“I’ll send someone to pick up my things,” she said.

She walked out that very day. Apparently he was ready for her because when I got the credit card bill later, there was no hotel charge on it. And when the divorce papers arrived, later, the address listed for her was in the nicer part of town.

But that was later. On that particular day, my wife simply abandoned her six month old son and me. I was stunned. I started to sit down and heard Jordie crying. I had left him in the swing, which had wound down and stopped. His diaper was dirty. And he was hungry.

I tackled the diaper first, but he wasn’t mollified. I had abandoned him, in his mind, left him in that cold, sterile place where there were no windows and the swing had stopped. It struck me that he might have been crying while Melody and I yelled at each other and I had been too preoccupied to hear it. I felt guilty. I felt remorse. He kept crying. He was really worked up.

I held him, trying to communicate my apology to him non-verbally, but he just kept bawling. I wondered if he somehow knew that his birth mother had abandoned him for real.

I sat in the rocker and almost rocked it too far backwards, reaching a point where it teetered for a couple of seconds, before finally falling back forward. He wanted nothing to do with the bottle and I was in no mood to try to coax him into eating pureed carrots.

All he wanted to do was cry.

Then, like magic, Erica was there.

“Give him to me,” she said, her hands extended. I handed him to her and she cradled him against the breasts he loved to suckle so much. She paced, moving all over the room, speaking in low tones, right into his ear. I saw her kiss his cheek numerous times.

He stopped crying, but had intermittent sobs, or gasps or something.

“Get up,” she said. I was still sitting in the chair, like a bump on a log. She sat down. “Get me a bottle of milk. Don’t make it too hot,” she ordered.

I practically ran to the fridge and got out a bottle. I nuked it for thirty seconds, tested it on my wrist, and then gave it another ten seconds.

When I took it to her she was topless again and he was sucking her left nipple. She reached for the bottle and snuck it into his mouth.

“Phew,” she said, leaning her head back. “I thought he was going to take it off of me.”

“Your nipple?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Where did you come from?” I asked. “I didn’t expect you today.”

“Melody called me,” she said. “She told me I needed to get over here. She also said she was divorcing you. Is that true? If it is, is it my fault?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. You had absolutely nothing to do with her decision to do that.”

“Is she going to take Jordie away from you?”

“Not in a million years,” I said.

“You’ll fight her?”

“I won’t have to,” I said.

So I sat down and told her everything Melody had said. I even told her the part about how Melody thought Erica was besotted with me. After I was finished I sat, staring at the wall. Jordie had emptied only two thirds of the bottle before falling asleep. He’d worked hard during his frenzy and was exhausted, I guess. She pulled him up to her shoulder and burped him anyway. He gave out a healthy belch and she laid him down. When she turned to me, she stood there topless, unashamed.

“It’s true,” she said.

“What’s true?” I asked.

“I am besotted with you.”

“Oh.”

“But you’re not besotted with me, are you,” she sighed. It wasn’t really a question. She sounded sad.

“Put your shirt back on and let’s talk,” I said.

“Okay.” She sounded even sadder.

I went to the china hutch in the dining room and got out two dusty whisky glasses. I also got out the unopened bottle of Jack Black my wife had received as a Christmas present last year. Neither Melody nor I were big drinkers, but I needed a stiff one, just then. I poured two fingers in one glass and one finger in the other. I added a splash of Coke to mine and filled hers up the rest of the way, leaving room for a few ice cubes. There was no way she’d gotten through high school and two years of college without having drunk alcohol and I didn’t want to drink alone.

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The Babysitter Seduced me!

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