Chapter 3

SARAH

When Dad told us that we were going to move to Arizona, I was really bummed about it. I did not want to leave my friends and go through the process of making all new ones. It was gong to be my first year in high school, and I am already nervous enough about it without losing my support system. But he made it very clear that we were going to move, without question, so I resigned my self to that. By the time school was out, Dad was already working and staying full time in Arizona, and Mom, my brother Travis and I were left in Cleveland to finish up packing the stuff and actually moving. Really, we had movers and packers for the stuff in the house, but we still had to decide a bunch of things. Then Mom came up with the suggestion that we make it a leisurely drive from Cleveland to Phoenix with whatever side trips we wanted to take. That sounded better than a straight drive, so Travis and I started scouting out things to see and places to go between here and there. Naturally, there are a bunch of places that guys like right off the bat and so we went to some air and space museum and another museum in Chicago that was all about machines and stuff. Boring!!!

I should say that there are really a zillion things to do in Chicago, and I could have spent my entire summer there, but Mom said we could only stay in one place for five days. One day we had to go to a ball game, to keep Travis happy, and to his museum another, but the remaining days we went to the Art Institute, an enormous Arboretum, and an unreal zoo. By that time, Mom was anxious to get going again so we headed off, down to Saint Louis on the way to Kansas City. But we took a little side trip to see the Mark Twain National Forest, and that's where everything started to go wrong. First we got lost on a detour, and then Mom crashed the van trying to avoid a big bear that was standing in the road. We ended up getting stranded and having to walk to a main road, in a pouring rain, and were picked up by two guys. That was the first day of the second part of my life--the second part of all of our lives, actually. If I had asked you to guess how my life has changed since that night, you would not come close to being correct.

We stood there, on that road, the three of us, standing in pouring rain. No one had a rain coat, or an umbrella. We just stood there waiting for somebody to come along and rescue us, I guess. Except, nobody came. We stood in that rain for what seems like hours until we finally saw the dim glow of headlights approaching. There were three people praying very hard that the car didn't turn away before it came to where we were, and our prayers were answered. The men in the car were just a surprised to see us as we were to be there. They offered us shelter for the night and a place to dry off, warm up, and get some supper. Both of the men were very hospitable, really cordial, friendly guys. The house was clean and neat, (and warm) and supper was delicious. I managed to claim first dibs on the shower, once they offered it to us, and Travis was quick to follow after me. I was asleep within minutes after my shower, and slept soundly until morning. I think I was up first, but Travis was right behind me. We sat quietly downstairs waiting for the others to get up, and managed to snoop around the house a little while we were waiting. The thing that struck me as odd was the absence of photographs. Most people have pictures of family and friends sitting on shelves or hanging on a wall somewhere, but there were none that I saw, in any room of the house I looked into.

What was more puzzling was that when Travis and I were snooping around the house, we couldn't figure out where the remaining bedroom(s) were. We had located one, down a long hallway in the opposite end of the second floor from where we had been, but that was it. I was about to mention that to Travis when Mom appeared in the stairway, in a white terrycloth bathrobe. She was chatting and laughing with our host, Mike, who happened to be dressed in an identical white terrycloth bathrobe. I was more than shocked. For as long as I can remember, I have never seen my mother in anything other than street clothes. NEVER in a housecoat or a bathrobe, never with her hair uncombed, never looking like she had just climbed out of bed.

Travis and I both screamed in shock. Honestly, I don't think I will ever get over that morning, really. In a matter of seconds, one discovers that her mother, who has always been the MOST conservative, person on the planet admits that she has spent the entire need in bed with a perfect stranger, and that not only did they have sex once, but many times throughout the night and morning. Travis and I could not believe what we were hearing. We were dumbfounded, really. And in the next few minutes, our mother told us how she had been transformed, changed from a person that had denied the pleasures of sex to herself for her entire life, to a woman who had just discovered ecstasy. We were speechless. Following breakfast, she went on to tell us how miserable her sex life had been with Dad, how selfish he was, how inconsiderate of her needs, etc. on and on about how, between her overly conservative mother and her uncaring husband she had become convinced that sexual pleasure for a woman was a myth.