Chapter 11

Betty had shown Theresa out after her unbelievable visit, and took Terry's hand as soon as the front door closed. She led him back to the family room, sat on the sofa, and pulled him down next to her. Still holding his hand, she said "That was awfully hard, wasn't it? It was the right thing to do, Terry."

He could not look her in the eye, and she could sense the strength of the emotions he was struggling to subdue. On instinct, she pulled him to herself, cradling his head between her breasts. She was not at all surprised when the sobs started.

For many minutes, they sat like that, with him unable to regain control. Betty saw Ellie watching from the doorway, her own tears mirroring those of the guy she loved so deeply. Betty smiled at her daughter, and did not try to motion her to leave.

When he finally got some composure back, he said "Betty, I... ," but that's all he got out as she put her hand firmly over his mouth.

"You don't need to say anything, Terry. I am proud that you felt you could let go with me. I think you needed it very badly. I need to tell you something," and she flicked her eyes ever so briefly toward Ellie, who was still watching, unseen by Terry, "it should have been Ellie here instead of me. She wants that so badly she can hardly stand it."

They had discussed this subject a few times, so he did not try to rehash his reasons for keeping Ellie just a friend. He knew she thought they were nonsense, anyway. He just squeezed her hand, and they both got up to resume normal evening activities.

Theresa could have run all the way home after her incredible evening, maybe even flown. The minimal agreement for contact from Terry was that important to her. For once, she was glad that Vince was out of town. She had not really explained to him about her contact with the children, and was not sure how to approach it. Tonight, it was better to just enjoy her reprieve from total failure as a mother.

Coming out of the shower later, she stood and stared at her bare pubis, still not quite believing what she had done. How could she, passionate but modest, have bared herself like that before relative strangers? Even now, after it was all over, though, she could not feel any shock or shame, only relief. Her body, which she had always been proud of, but had kept as a hidden treasure for all but Vince, no longer seemed sacred to her.

Somehow, her body was now a tool to try to win back a little of all that she had lost. Her deep-seated need for some thread of connection with her children would drive her to use anything she had. Why her being naked in front of them made any difference, she could not quite understand, but it had gotten her what she had to have to survive.

Still staring at her crotch, she had to admit that her nakedness communicated something she could hardly put in words. She knew that she was a different Theresa from the one who stood idly by as Vince condemned their son to that awful place. She was not the same vengeful mother who ignored her daughter's desperate pleas to attend college with her lover, just to punish the girl. People had to believe she was different, and when she was naked, they seemed to.

Alan Voss had every reason to hate her. He lived with the wounds she had inflicted on her children. Yet, he had talked to her with sympathy and understanding. Would he have done that if she wore her usual designer-label clothes? Was her nudity necessary to get him to believe her?

Betty was ascending to the level of a deity in Theresa's mind. She no longer carried a shred of jealousy or anger because Betty now had her children. She was in awe of the love and the communication that flowed so naturally between all of them in that house. And when Betty stood at the dinner table and stripped in her support! Theresa knew without a doubt that she would still not be sure of contact with her son if Betty had not done that.

By everything she had been taught and had believed, nakedness was wrong except in a marital situation. But it had won her what little she had left as a mother. She would display her body without hesitation if that was what it took. Her modesty and her dignity mattered nothing. What mattered was her embattled motherhood.

She had been through such a gauntlet of emotions throughout the day that she should have been exhausted. Instead, she felt wired, sleep being the farthest thing from her mind.

At the same time, she felt lonely. There was no one that she could just open up to and tell all of the things that were troubling her. Her siblings and parents knew nothing of the disaster that had befallen her family. They would have to let both sides know about Julie's marriage soon, but both she and Vince had been putting off the day for as long as possible. With her circle of friends, she would be afraid to shatter the image of herself and her family that she had built up over the years. Of course, they had found out about Terry and the drugs, and that had been hard to overcome. After news of Julie, she might have to look for new friends.

Her eyes fell on the dispenser of birth control pills that always sat in plain sight by her sink. There were just two left for the month. That was one reason she was in such a hurry to serve the naked dinner. Of course, the dominant reason was her need to establish something permanent with her son.

The pills were a daily reminder of Julie's situation, as Theresa was as certain as she could be that Julie had gotten pregnant on purpose. Any thought of Julie always brought a wave of guilt, shame, and despair over her. Her once-perfect daughter was now an indictment to her own arrogance and compulsion to control, a monument to her abject failure as a mother.

Theresa looked at the pills, thought of Julie throwing hers away, and had an epiphany.

She could try again and get it right this time! She could still have children! She could have all the wonderful mother-child times she had thrown away with Julie and Terry. She could have the kind of family the Vosses had!

The insight was so stunning she had to grab ahold of the counter to keep from collapsing. Why had she never thought of it before? Like a drowning person latching onto a lifesaver, Theresa grabbed the idea of another round of motherhood. In the space of a few fractions of a second, she was determined that she would do it.

Even more than before, she was too emotional to think of sleep. Two glasses of wine made very little difference, nor did the two shots of whiskey that followed. They may have made her steps a little unsteady, but her mind was still going like crazy.

The rest of that sleepless night, she spent debating with herself on all of the reasons she should reject the crazy idea. The first thing that came to mind was Vince. He would never go for it. It took quite a while before she could acknowledge the thought lurking at the edge of her mind that she did not care what Vince thought. Then, she shuddered at the realization that she could not do it right this time with Vince the way he was. And Vince had shown absolutely no inclination to change.

From there, it was a short step to admitting that she might have to divorce Vince. If there was a divorce, there would be some kind of settlement. With that and her trust, she and her new family would be fine, financially.

That threw her into a whole round of thoughts about Vince and how she felt about him. He had been her life for all those years. She had been absolutely faithful, as she assumed he had been. She had always thought that she loved him deeply, but as she had changed over recent months, so had her view of her husband.

The problem with her relationship with Vince was that they no longer shared the same motivations. In her mind, controlling another person had become frightening and sinful, rather than her natural right. Vince still held the old view. She was overwhelmed by guilt and remorse, painfully aware of everything she had done wrong to drive her children away. Vince saw the children as the offenders and himself as the blameless victim.

Vince wanted to do battle in the old way, but she saw the fighting as a big reason the kids were gone. She just could not do it any more. Vince wanted sex after the boisterous foreplay of verbal battle. He wanted it to be a contest. Since the naked meeting with Julie and Glen, that kind of sex seemed like abuse, not loving.

Could she give up what she had with Vince: the income and the possessions, the social standing? It took not an instant for her to declare to herself that those things were all worthless since the departure of her children. Yes, she could give them up. The Vosses were so happy with a fraction of the wealth she had always enjoyed.

Striving to keep her emotions in check and think rationally, she was able to declare to herself that it boiled down to a choice of being a wife vs. being a mother. She still had the self-confidence to believe that she could do what was necessary to repair their marriage. She could give him some of the kind of sex he wanted while she 'trained' him to like the more romantic, loving kind she now preferred.

But if she got her marriage back in shape, her children would still be nearly strangers. She would not have accomplished the most important thing. Failure as a mother negated success as a wife.

The only way to erase her failure as a mother was to do it again, and do it right. That could not happen with Vince as he was now. Therefore, there really was no choice. Motherhood trumped everything else: modesty, wealth, marriage - everything.

Then, she ran into a stopper. To have children, she needed a man to impregnate her. She could wait for a divorce until she was sure she was pregnant. That would only ensure her of one child, but she wanted more. That was the point where she was literally knocked off of her feet by the realization that she was thinking of divorce as not just a possibility, but as a near certainty.

Many more questions rampaged through her slightly alcohol-impaired mind. Was she too old to bear a normal, healthy child? How would she feel being as old as the grandmothers of most of her child's schoolmates? Then, it hit her that she would have a child younger than Julie's child, her own grandchild. Could she raise a child or children alone at her age if she had to? Could she give up the 'golden years' of relaxation and enjoyment to raise teenagers again?

For many hours that night, Theresa went through the questions, over and over. From the first idea, though, there was no question she would do it. What she had learned about herself was that she was a mother above all else. She had come too late to that realization, and had spent no time making sure she was a good mother. She had failed, and she could not see her life ending that way. Here was a chance to prove that she really could handle her only meaningful mission properly. It was a chance for at least partial redemption, and she would take it.

All of the negative arguments lost. She was as healthy as anyone else she knew in their early forties. She would make sure she did everything right during pregnancy, and she would get the best of care.

She knew she had aged well, and she would do everything she could not to look old for her kids. Beyond that, she didn't care what anyone else thought.

A child should have a father, but not one like Vince had been. Certainly, she could raise more kids alone. The important thing was to get pregnant. She would worry about the father later.

What good were the golden years if they were filled with remorse over her mistakes and what she had lost. It would be far better to exhaust herself proving that she could do it right. And it would not even be exhausting for her. Because of her own mistakes and the example of Betty, who Theresa considered the perfect mother, she would welcome every task and every crisis joyfully.

At that point, she had decided. Now, it was just a matter of implementation. Vince must not know what she intended. She would keep the pill dispenser and keep buying the prescription. She wondered if Julie had done it by throwing away one pill at a time.

The one big challenge was her current relationship with Vince. Sex had about dried up, and she was responsible. She had to get it started again, and that would take some finesse. Maybe Julia could help her with a plan. Successfully raising a child with the same genetics as Julie and Terry would really prove that she could do it, so at least the first one had to be Vince's.

As Theresa was making her decision to raise more children and thinking about how to get Vince to impregnate her, he was in the process of making her job much more difficult.

Vince's home life had changed so drastically that it no longer felt like home. As he and Theresa approached their twentieth anniversary, coming up in early August, he looked at it as more of a funeral for the life they had enjoyed until recently. By Independence Day, it had sunk in that that life was gone forever.

Vince was no immigrant: his family had been in the US for four or five generations. Still, he was the first to break away from the tight ethnic enclave where his immigrant ancestors had settled after getting off of the boat. Machismo was a prominent characteristic of the culture he was raised in, and he certainly did not leave it behind when he left the neighborhood for college, never to return.

Not everything about machismo was bad, either. An important part of the cultural ethic was family: loyalty to and from the family, protection of the family, support from the family; 'the family, right or wrong'.

His parents' generation openly recognized the need for education and the desirability of seeking professional employment, rather than just the laboring or civil service jobs that had been the community's mainstay. That stepping up in the world meant moving away from their little piece of the old world was a painful reality that had taken generations to acknowledge.

Though he was leaving the community, Vince was expected to carry the values with him, and by and large, he did. Going to a Catholic college and marrying a girl with the same ancestry scored him major points and kept him tightly linked to 'back home', even earning him celebrity status as one who left to make it big but did not forget his roots. To his credit, Vince had always been careful to be cordial and respectful to his siblings and various levels of cousins, most of whom had lunchpail jobs.

The old world pattern for a marriage was that strangely effective mix of official strict patriarchy with a working matriarchy behind the scenes. In some respects, the Menconis' marriage followed the pattern. Though college educated, Theresa never sought outside employment, but started quickly on their family. But she was by no means the typical wife from the old community.

Perhaps the existence of her trust fund emboldened her, or perhaps it was just the raw strength of her personality, but from their very first date, Theresa never acquiesced meekly to Vince on anything. Thus, outwardly, they were a traditional match that both families could be happy with. Privately, she was a whole new kind of woman that he had never before encountered, a kind that aroused some deep-seated sexual kink in him. They had bonded instantly and strongly.

The Menconis' ancestral culture had over centuries learned to deal with the Church and its sexual teachings. Those teachings were, of course, so unrealistic that it is doubtful even the hierarchy could believe them. Nevertheless, sex as an unfortunate duty for women, rewarded by the gift of motherhood, was taught as truth. Never was there a hint of concession that sex should be a pleasurable experience to be sought by women. For the man, sex was a base drive, unavoidable, but to be bridled for his eternal good.

Sex for purposes other than procreation, specifically for recreation, was loudly decried. Thus, an aura of guilt always surrounded a person who happened to be enjoying sexual activity. As is usually the case when reality does not match the facade, some interesting accommodations were made.

Greater devotion to the Church's teachings seeming to be a common by-product of maturity for the women, sex tended to be less available and less pleasurable for the husbands as they aged. This was a sure-fire formula for dalliance, and taking a mistress became quite commonplace, particularly for a man of means. Adultery was, of course, both against the Church's teachings, and contrary to the men's own universally-espoused devotion to family. The solution was neither condemnation nor acceptance, but rather purposeful blindness. Everyone knew it was happening, but nobody acknowledged it.

If the community's traditional views of sex were eroding naturally, throwing two young people into a college environment had a good chance to sweep them away. Given all of that, Vince and Theresa chose the old-world fidelity model, and had never regretted it. Of course, their sexual life was light years from the church's teachings, but outwardly, they were a faithful couple.

Nor was that a disguise. Vince had heard all the whispers as he grew up and he knew just who among his extended family was keeping a mistress. Personally, he saw no appeal to an outside sexual interest. He had all he could handle at home, after all, so it was easy to toe the line.

Of late, it was not so easy. He just could not believe what had happened to his wife - his soulmate, as he always thought of her. It started after the fateful incident in the kitchen. First, she no longer wanted sex after a fight. Then, after the disastrous naked meeting, she would no longer even fight. Intense, energetic, acrobatic, even competitive sex was a key building block of their marriage, and it was gone.

The too infrequent sex of late had come about as a result of sheer accumulated need, or through romantic buildup. He and Theresa now had some serious, deep-seated disagreements over the children. In that environment it was hard for him to be romantic, knowing what she thought of his stance.

Thus, over the summer, sex between them had happened only when they could no longer stand the lack of it. Since Theresa's preoccupation with the children absorbed her so totally, she could go a long time without.

Vince's pride would not let him think of seeking a mistress, but there was no question he was vulnerable to a predatory woman.

Lee Waters saw herself as the one who would destroy the glass ceiling forever, and she had the tools to do it. A razor sharp mind, a solid grounding of common sense, unbounded self-confidence, an Ivy League B-school MBA, and the looks of a runway model; it was a combination destined to take her far, and it had already. At thirty-eight, she was VP of Product Management at the same company where Vince was a Divisional Director of Sales, one step below VP level.

Lee was thankful that her given name was LeeAnne, and not Mary, Jane, or Susan. The ability to use the androgynous nickname Lee was important to her. That by no means implied that her sexual leanings were anything but strongly hetero. She had indulged in occasional sapphic pleasures in times of severe need, but to her, it was only temporary relief until she could get the real thing.

Along with her other qualities, Lee had a voracious sexual appetite. Within the past year and a half, she had been divorced by her husband of ten years. He just did not measure up in some areas. He was successful in his own right, but he was just too nice for her. He also had a healthy sexual appetite, but in comparison to her, he almost seemed celibate. That imbalance between them led her to seek outside fulfillment, something he could not live with.

He had the goods on her, but chose to separate without seeking any of her assets, which exceeded his, in compensation for her proven infidelity. Also in his late thirties, he was scrambling to keep his life together, having had his heart ripped out. He still loved her, and lamented his lost chance to father a family. Children were an unacceptable impediment to Lee's career aspirations.

The divorce was not something Lee had wanted at all. All the sex he could give her was at least a good start toward satisfying her needs. And even an aggressive businesswoman was not averse to the sincere adulation and pampering of a true gentleman, which Roland, her ex, definitely was. In a move she considered unnecessarily spiteful, he refused to engage in sex with her after the divorce.

Thus, Lee was left with a serious problem - getting enough. She knew that indiscretion could sabotage the career she had so painstakingly built, so bar-hopping was out of the question. On top of all the other roadblocks, tender love-making did not do it for her. In truth, a moderate level of bondage is what she sought, but at a minimum she needed it very energetic.

Because of their complementary positions, Vince and Lee were often on teams that visited important customers or prospects. Their personalities made them frequent sparring partners, each fighting vigorously for the upper hand. Despite the skirmishes, each respected and liked the other, probably for the way they saw much of themselves reflected.