Chapter 2

While all this sounds idyllic, unfortunately, it wasn't, and the reasons all revolved around Ed. Fidelity wasn't in Ed's vocabulary. From the first, although he was careful not to rub her nose in it, Marion was not his only girlfriend - she was his fall-back position. Ed was big on variety, and, frankly, many times his silver tongue got him things his less than impressive equipment wouldn't support his hanging onto. When Marion moved in, all it meant to Ed was that he no longer had to worry about supply - it DIDN'T mean that the supply was limited to Marion! Similarly, marriage was an exercise in economics; they married in November so Ed could get the tax break without supporting Marion for a full year. Of course, he never SAID that, not in so many words - Ed wasn't stupid when it came to social interaction.

Pregnancy and motherhood slowed Marion down. For her, the joys of motherhood displaced some of her sexual heat, and even treated some of it - Twyla giving suck was every bit as satisfying as Ed doing it (maybe more so) and Marion sized up to midway between an A and a B cup while Twyla was nursing, although she lost most of it after. Sex was good, but no longer exciting, and sandwiched between bouts of parental responsibility - and Ed wasn't always there...

Parental responsibility didn't sit well with Ed - in fact, it scared him to death! Soon after Twyla was born, he took to drifting out the door, evenings, and coming home drunk and smelling of someone else's perfume. A year in, he lost his job over his alcoholism, and soon after he found a new one, he announced that he was moving out to be with some blonde he'd met at work.

Why Marion put up with this, God only knew - but she did, merely turning her attention to Twyla. When Ed's paramour dumped him after a week, Marion took him back, and Ed settled down for a bit. But he never quit going out, and the evidence of his infidelity continued to mount. Over the next two years, Marion learned not to count on Ed for anything, including income; he was in and out of jobs and in and out of other women's beds on a regular basis. Finally, when Twyla was three, Ed announced for the second time in ninety days that he'd found a new love and he was leaving, and Marion told him not to come back - and meant it, this time. During the divorce proceedings, Big Felicia came to see Marion and give her emotional support, and ended up relating a number of things Marion hadn't been aware of about that first night and subsequent visitations, for instance:

Ed had staggered up that first night at about four-thirty, while Marion was sound asleep, and gone to the bathroom. Whether by accident or design (Felicia figured he'd keyed in on the sound) he entered Felicia's room through her connecting door, catching her consoling herself with her favorite vibrator. Felicia had been in no condition to resist him; the big reason that Ed was so drained later was that he'd left a load in Felicia at that point. That also explained Felicia's reactions in the bathroom; after finding him there, she'd decided during the wait to get seconds, only to discover Marion there.

Blackmail had been good for Ed; he started showing up at the dorm when he knew Marion wasn't there, and knocking a piece off Felicia before she showed up - then they would go to the common room and pretend mere acquaintance until she did. When Marion moved in with him, it just made boffing Felicia a little less detectable...

A judge's description of the things the law could do to deadbeat dads did more for Ed than anything Marion ever said - although, frankly, the divorce was the closest Marion ever came to coming into conflict with him; she'd been a doormat from Day One, which had suited Ed's self-centered preferences just fine. Child support rolled in regularly, but the amounts were wildly variant, depending on Ed's current states of employment and romantic involvement.

So Marion continued to work. Her unfinished college education pinned some doors closed, but Marion was more suited to manual labor, anyway, emotionally. She was intelligent, but would never have been an intellectual; practical matters were her forte. She tried waitressing, but the hours were always ugly and she wanted to be there for Twyla whenever possible. Eventually, she stumbled upon a janitorial service, and it seemed well suited to her needs. It was scut work, but for that reason, the salary was a bit more than the minimum wage, rather than being pegged there. The hours allowed the kind of split shift that had Marion going to work after putting Twyla on the bus to school, home for a few hours starting a bit before Twyla got home from school, out for four more hours in the evening, and home for bedtime.

The service usually ran annual contracts and operated as teams that concentrated upon one or two buildings. Marion was a team player - if it needed doing, she would do it. Other team members came and went (there was always a new kid to train), but Marion became a fixture; when the management occasionally purged the staff to keep salaries and benefit costs down, somehow, Marion always made the cut - she was just too good at what she did. Yet she avoided management responsibility, refusing the raises involved, stating that she just wasn't comfortable in positions of leadership over more than three or four people. The reality was, however, that she had kept two or three of her supervisors in the saddle by doing everything but taking the credit; when the owner had put his son into the rotation to get his feet wet before taking on more administrative responsibilities, he'd insisted that Marion baby-sit him. The son survived - learning planning and supervision from a mistress of the art - grew, and moved on, forever grateful to his diminutive straw boss.

Marion went on-shift at nine a.m. and broke for 'lunch' - a four hour break - at one. She returned at five and worked until nine, five days a week. When she needed extra money, there was always a weekend job with the 'special' team - but she tried to avoid that, it interfered with her quality time with Twyla. Over the years, the long days had removed the temptation to go hunting for a replacement for Ed - the search was just too tiring. Besides, as she got older, the rogues' gallery of losers grew and the available quality specimens dwindled to nothing - it just wasn't worth it to expose herself to the agony. Ed had given her a good eye for losers, and she recognized that the majority of ANY bar's population after you reached twenty five or so was just that. Over time, she admitted that the effort was wasted, and gave up, hoping instead for some kind of lightning strike. Sex became something she did for herself, in the quiet of her room at night, using her hands or a toy while reading an erotic novel or watching a porn flick collected during one of her embarrassed trips to the local Sex Shoppe. And time marched on...

Twyla reached sixteen, and Marion, saddened, watched her going through the same misery that had afflicted her at that age. But Twyla had a couple of things going for her, one of which was the fact that Ed's side of the family had graced her with a bit more to work with than Marion had ever had, including a fine set of 34C breasts. When puberty had begun reshaping her body, however, Twyla had taken to wearing clothing that obscured her body in fear that she would lose her few male friends, who invariably thought of her as 'one of the guys'; she was her own worst enemy.

When Marion insisted that for her Senior Prom, she really, really needed to turn out in a dress, a sea change occurred. Twyla's date, a childhood friend who had accepted her last minute offer out of desperation after any number of other attempts had failed, got the shock of his life when he discovered his 'good buddy' Twyla really WAS a girl, and was packing tits to prove it! And that was only the first such shock for him - events at the Prom led Twyla to take action to ensure that he understood that the new Twyla was VERY interested in HIM, and HIM ALONE!

In fact, Twyla ensured that she had Mickey LaRue's full attention by making him a present of those heretofore undiscovered breasts, and once they had reached a meeting of the minds, she gifted the boy with her virginity, to his complete delight! And THAT was when Marion's torture began! No, it had nothing to do with Mickey, per se - he was a wonderful boy, and at their current rate, he would make a fine son-in-law. But on another level, it was very much about Mickey, for he was male - very, very male! - and he was having regular sex with Marion's daughter!

Did Marion disapprove? Absolutely not! In fact, she had helped to engineer their initial assignation, that Prom night, when she'd discovered her daughter, naked, basically molesting him on the couch! (See Second Best, Chapter 110). But she'd gotten an eyeful, then and later, when they had actually consummated the union, and it had set loose demons that Marion had thought were successfully penned. A quick excursion to check on the pair had left her witness to Twyla's defloration, an exercise in voyeurism that still embarrassed her. Once she'd been drawn in, she just couldn't leave, and had masturbated to two orgasms while watching the pair explore each other for the first time, scared to death she would be discovered.

Since that time, however, sex was never far from Marion's thoughts - especially when Mickey was around. And for the last month, he'd been around constantly, whenever humanly possible. He and Twyla were virtually joined at the hip! If it had been ONLY sexual, she'd have gone on the warpath - but the pair managed this uncanny mix of the mundane and the erotic. One minute, they would be playing chess, or be absorbed in working a calculus problem - the next, Twyla would be gasping in pleasure while Mickey nibbled her neck and fondled her breasts! Given the fact that she'd given verbal approval for their first bout, Marion couldn't very well forbid the pair to have sex. She'd gotten Twyla out to the doctor for decent birth control, and if anything, dispensing with rubbers made the pair more active. And THAT left Marion constantly in turmoil, imagining what they were up to - when she couldn't actually hear it!

Twyla didn't help. She left the door to her room open, a constant temptation that Marion was prone to succumb to. What Marion didn't know was that it was deliberate; Twyla had detected her that first night, and had surmised what she was doing in reaction. She'd decided that it was probably good for her; while she hadn't mentioned it to Mickey, about a week in he had delivered a significant glance while NOT closing the door at the start of one of their assignations. Marion went to some effort NOT to wander past, ESPECIALLY when there was a high probability of sexual activity - but it had happened twice - and once presented with a scene, Marion had discovered that she was unable to leave - and unable to keep from touching herself.

Marion's libido had roared to life, and dealing with it had become obsession. With the example of the youngsters' joy before her, she became absolutely miserable. Sex was top of the heap - she'd worn out a vibrator, and was making weekly embarrassed forays to the sex shop for movies and toys - but there was a lot more to it: intimacy, touch, sharing - private communication - Marion's physical, mental and emotional needs had surged to the fore. Twyla had once been a help; parental concerns had kept Marion distracted. Now she was a symbol of what Marion was missing, and it was killing her. Obsessive distraction was with her constantly, even at work...

Marion's current team leader was named Dominic Somethingorother - it was a Hawaiian name that nobody could seem to get their tongue around. The team was all female, and management referred to them as Dom's Harem, even on more or less official documents. Dom thought it was funny, and in whispered conversations among the harem it was apparent that if he wanted, he could have any of them, but Dom had a big, comfortable, mumu-clad wife at home, and no apparent interest in any of the women, with the possible exception of Fat Maria, who he spent an ungodly amount of time with - largely because she spoke some fractured variant of South American Spanish that even the Puerto Rican girls couldn't decipher, and he had to teach her English one word at a time. As a result, Maria followed Dom like a shadow, following hand signals more often than not, an extensible right arm. Scuttlebutt was that she offered herself to him daily; once, when someone mentioned it to her, she responded with something that appeared to be pained agreement - but of course the language barrier kept anyone from being sure just what had been said and understood by either party.

Marion would have liked to have captured Dom's interest, but it had been clear from the start that she wasn't even close to being his type. Still, he valued her work and was pleasant to her, so he was featured in an occasional fantasy. But there was any number of other males in the building, employees of the company occupying the building - and she didn't actually work with them... Most of these were admittedly 'suits' - executives, intent on their own pursuits, many of whom were at least Marion's age and fat and apparently happily ensconced in a relationship; the few roving eyes in this group unfortunately were attached to the least palatable of the candidates. Uniformly, they treated the janitorial staff as furniture. But there WERE a few exceptions, oddly clustered around the IT department: a couple of young, eager (and buff!) tech support types at the Help Desk, the Mad Dog Biker type with the red ponytail and five-o'clock shadow who was the network administrator, and that sad, older fellow, Mr. Morgenthaler...