Chapter 13
Afterwards they lay snuggled together in bed. Jean stroked tenderly over her son's perspiring body. He sighed and propped himself up on his elbow and turned to look at her.
"I guess I was a little rough on you at first. I'm sorry, Mom."
She smiled nobly. "I deserve it. After yesterday ... Oh, promise you'll never mention that again. Promise you'll forgive me."
"If it happens again I'll leave you."
"It won't. Oh Steve, I promise it won't." He looked at his mother pensively. "But in a way it was my fault."
"Your fault?"
"They did it partly to get back at me."
The thought of those boys using her to get back at her son put the cruel gang-rape in an entirely new light, and Jean felt a renewed flood of indignation rise in her breast. "But why would they want to get back at you?"
Steve looked over at his father's picture. "I heard you talking to Adele once. He had a lot of women, besides you. Didn't he?"
"Yes. But he always came back to me. And I liked it in a way, knowing he had his pick and that I was always the one who was chosen in the finals."
"During the last week everybody's attitude to me has changed," Stephan said maturely. "It's like girls can ... can smell it on me. I got Bill's girl. Or she got me. That's why they were jealous and I guess that's how they knew. And that's where I was yesterday when they came here." He stopped, noticing that his mother's eyes had filled with tears.
"So ... so you've got a girl friend now. I knew it would happen. I didn't know it would happen so soon."
Stephan lay his hand lightly and affectionately on her face, then leaned over and kissed her naked breast. "I've got a date with her tonight. We're going to dinner and ... I'll need some money."
"Take what you want from my purse," Jean croaked, trying to hide her sorrow. "And Stephen," she added, "I'm glad for you. I can't keep you all to myself. Though I guess I'd like to."
"Don't worry," he said with a shrug. "It won't last. I just want to seduce her. Then I'll be back to you. That's all I think I'll ever want from any woman. As long as you're young and beautiful like you are."
He smiled and shrugged, like the kid he really was, and turned and walked out of the room. Jean lay on the pillow and turned her face to the side and looked at her husband's picture. Stephan's last statement echoed in her mind.
It was a promise of love, and a condemnation that someday it would end. Though maybe Stephan hadn't even understood the significance of what he said. It was like a pact, like the pact of life that will always someday finally have to end.