Chapter 3
Jean hardly dared face Stephan the next morning. She awoke after a fitful sleep to gradual remembrance of what had happened the night before. She had actually been masturbating right here in the same house as her fourteen-year-old son, and her self-loathing at the memory of having been caught in that shameful practice brought tears to her eyes. Her only faint consolation was the fact that Stephan at least had been unaware of exactly what she'd been doing behind the bathroom's locked door. He didn't really know she had been masturbating. Or did he?
The question popped unbidden into Jean's mind, and it was followed by a flood of disturbing doubts. She remembered him saying he'd heard her crying, but now she wondered if he was just being tactful. She reminded herself that Steve himself was right at the age where boys were prone to experiment with masturbation, and she was hardly encouraged by the thought. If Stephan was in the habit of masturbating, he would probably be even more prone to conclude from the sounds he'd doubtless heard that his mother was doing the same thing. Then momentarily she forgot the whole aspect of the question as her mind zeroed in on this latest conclusion, and she found herself picturing Stephan masturbating.
Something about the image seemed almost impossible to even believe. The vision was impossible to conjure in her mind. Not her lovely little Stevie! He couldn't do an obscene thing like that!
But he could, she told herself firmly. He could. Doubtlessly he did, periodically at least. He was just completing puberty. Physically he was a man, equipped for all the things a man could do. Physically he was even capable of fatherhood, and it was inevitable he would seek an outlet for his sexual impulses. And the impulses were there. She'd seen, and felt against the softness of her thighs, the evidence of that.
"Oooh," Jean moaned softly, her eyes almost closing as she lay back on her pillow, letting herself remember the exquisitely tantalizing sight of the outthrust contours of her own young son's rigidly erected cock prodding out against the front of his pajamas just after she'd let him slip from her embrace. Steve's illicit excitement must have been almost as great as her own.
For a few moments Jean let herself bask in the pleasure of a deliriously forbidden fantasy. She let herself imagine that what had happened was not wrong. She had held Steve in her arms. He had snuggled his face between her breasts. She had derived enjoyment from the act. He had too. They could do it again. Then gradually she drifted back to reality, back to the present, back to the awful point of horrified shame and regret into which she'd awakened from her slumber.
There was still no escaping the fact that Stephan had listened outside the bathroom door while she was masturbating in the tub. And even if his initial reason for knocking was only concern for her, he must later have put two and two together. At least, he must suspect what she was really doing.
It was with a sense of resignation that Jean finally got out of bed and dressed. She put on a sleeveless pink sweater and some tight-fitting pants, stepped into her sandals and walked out of her room. Passing the door of Steve's room, she was surprised to see him still in his pajamas in bed, propped up against the wall, staring out at her.
"You're not up yet?" she said, pausing in the door, feeling somewhat foolish as she realized the obviousness of her question.
Steve looked back at her with a kind of sheepishness, the source of which she couldn't immediately fathom. But though she was sure his eyes focused once on the voluptuous swells of her breasts pushing out against the tightly stretched front of her sweater, he seemed reluctant to look directly into her eyes. At last he muttered a feeble: "No." He looked away, down at the floor.
There was a tense silence. Jean remembered she'd decided to get in contact with Ed Barton today and see if there was any chance they might start seeing each other again. It seemed the least interesting thing she could think of now. She could never feel for Ed that magic something she'd felt for Tom. She could never be as excited by Ed as she'd been excited last night in that brief improper moment of physical contact with her own teenaged son. But she had to do something, had to make some kind of change in her life.
"I'll fix you a big breakfast if you like," Jean said to break the silence. "Some pancakes and country sausage."
"Yeah, sure," Steve replied, remaining where he sat on the bed.
Jean managed a feeble smile and turned away. She was stopped by his hesitant voice calling. "Mother?"
When she looked back she saw that his handsome young face was deeply troubled. She felt such a rush of compassion, compounded by her own feelings of guilt for having caused him to be troubled, that it required every bit of her self-control to keep her from rushing to him and taking him again into her loving arms in exactly the same way she'd reached out and held him the day before.
But somehow she restrained herself. She stopped just inside the room and stood looking tenderly down at her son. "What is it, Stephan?"
He blushed. "Last night when you were in the bathroom? What was it you were crying about?"
Jean's heartbeat quickened perceptibly, and she was aware of the visible rise and fall of her full swollen breasts with the hastened rate of her breathing. Was this a third degree? Or did it only confirm the fact that Stephan did not know what she'd been doing in the bathroom, did not even suspect her of the shameful act of masturbation?
"I was crying about ... your father," she lied at last, though in an ironic way it was almost true. "I ... I got to thinking about him, looking at his picture..." Jean let her voice trail off. Now Steve was looking up at her. On his face was an expression of hope or relief. "I couldn't sleep," she went on, perhaps unnecessarily. "I thought a hot bath might help me to sleep and then somehow I just broke down." She took a step forward toward the bed. "But it's all right now. Don't worry about me, honey."
Stephan was almost beaming up at her and Jean felt so light on her toes she could have almost leaped toward him. She could feel a tingling in the tips of her fingers, and as she looked down at him, the love and emotion welling up in her was almost enough to make her burst into tears once more. She was on the verge of rushing forward to him. Then she stopped herself and drew back.
"I'll leave you alone to get dressed now. Your breakfast will be ready in a jiffy," she said, noting the slight look of disappointment on her young son's face as she turned and went quickly out the door.
Stephan came into the kitchen just as she was flipping the last of the pancakes she'd made for him. She put the plate on the table before him and smiled with pride. But he didn't immediately start to eat.
"What's the matter Stephan?" she asked after a moment.
"I thought...," he began, his voice faltering as his face again flushed. "I thought you were crying because of something I'd done."
"Stephan!" Jean stepped forward and put her hand lightly on the teenaged boy's shoulder, acutely aware of his strong masculine muscles as she felt his body tense beneath her touch. "What on earth could you have done to make me cry, honey?"
"You know," he muttered ruefully.
"No Steve. Really, I don't."
"It was an accident," Stephan said. "I didn't even realize it until it was already there, and then there was nothing I could do to make it go away. And I guess you think I'm some kind of fiend or freak or something."
"Make what go away?" Jean gasped, completely confused by everything her son had said.
"My hard-on," Steve said glumly.
Jean felt as if she'd been hit on the head with a baseball bat. Her legs went weak at the knees and it seemed as if the floor beneath her feet turned to quicksand. Her head reeled with a confusion of contrasting images. She felt embarrassed and completely speechless, but at the same time her loving sympathy for her son in his moment of discomfort brought tears to her eyes. And to complicate these natural human concerns, the image his remark brought to her mind caused a sudden unwanted excitement to stir in her loins that made her want to cry out with lust.
The young, dark-haired mother didn't even know how long she stood there, wavering on her feet, tongue-tied in her own tormenting confusion. Then at last she pulled herself back together and somehow found her voice. She moved her hand up Steve's shoulder to his neck, then under his chin to tilt his shameful face up towards hers.
"Now," she said weakly, "Listen to me, Stephan. What happened last night was not ... your fault. It was mine. I was ... overdoing my own ... motherly ... well, you know. Your response was natural and physical and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It's just...."
"Just what?" Stephan prompted.
"Sometimes a mother will tend not to realize how rapidly her son is growing up. Maybe it's an unconscious attempt to deny the fact of her own aging, or maybe it's just that time, the years I mean, go by so fast when you get my age. But you are becoming a man ... and we have to keep that in mind. I mean, we just have to be more careful about that kind of physical contact."
"You mean we have to quit touching each other?"
Oh my God, Jean thought in exasperation to herself. How did I ever get into this? "No, I don't mean we have to quit touching. It's just that we have to be careful how we do it." She stopped, at a loss for words or for the will to go on.. "Eat your breakfast, Stephan. It's getting cold and I have a phone call to make."
Leaving the youngster far from satisfied, Jean withdrew from the kitchen and went into the den and sat down on the couch to use the phone. She supposed she should be thankful that her worst fear had been alleviated. It was obvious Steve didn't have the slightest suspicion she'd been masturbating last night in her bath. But she doubted if the boy could even imagine the psychological complications created for her by what he said, or if he could grasp the Freudian symbolism behind almost every statement that had been uttered during their little exchange. But at least this had impressed on her mind the fact that she had to act to find a distraction for herself before something really terrible happened between her and her own son. Resolved, Jean picked up the phone and dialed Ed Barton at the law office where he was employed as a junior partner. The numbers seemed to come automatically to her fingers, though she'd hardly thought of him since the end of last year.
A honey-voiced secretary rattled off a list of expensive sounding names and tagged Barton on the end. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Barton," Jean said when she'd finished.
"Whom may I say is calling please?"
"Jean ... Jean Clayton."
She was left alone on the line for a moment, then there was the sound of the extension phone being lifted and Ed's familiar, long-lost-sounding voice came excitedly to her ears:
"Jean? Jean, is that you? Really?"
"Of course it's me," she answered dryly. Ed's enthusiasm had been evident and for some reason it tended to turn her off. But then her reason for calling hadn't been to seek a turn-on. She just had to have a diversion, any diversion, and Ed was the first person she'd thought of looking to.
"Well, what's happening with you, kid? It's been so long. I didn't think I'd ever hear from you again. Is there something wrong? You need help?"
"No. it's nothing like that." Now that she had Ed on the phone, she didn't really know what to say. "I just..."
"Yeah."
"A lot can happen in eight months, Ed. A lot of things can change. I just thought ... maybe for old times' sake if nothing else ... I thought we could see each other again. I mean, if you haven't gotten deeply involved or engaged or ... married or something."
"Gosh no! I mean, not engaged or married anyway. There are a couple of ... oh, forget it. Sure, I'd love to see you Jean. I'd love to, any time. I never have quit thinking about you."
"I think ... about you," Jean said.
"Well when? When is convenient for you?"
"Tonight?"
They arranged to meet at a restaurant at nine. When she hung up Jean was surprised to see Steve standing in the door, looking at her with something between surprise and disappointment.
"You called him?" the boy blurted. "You're going out with him tonight?"
For some reason Jean was embarrassed. She didn't have any idea how much of the conversation
Steve had heard. "I just wanted to do something different," she explained. "Ed is an old friend now. We're just going out for dinner."
"Oh," Steve said, looking dejected.
Jean stood up and walked toward him, then stopped herself halfway to the door. "What's the matter, honey? I thought you'd be out with your friends. I'm tired of sitting here at home alone."
"We were going for a ride today," he said. "But they've got dates tonight. So there's no room for me on the bike. And anyway, they don't need me when they've all got girls with them. I figured I'd spend the evening here and watch television with you or something. like we always did before."
"Oh Steve. I'm sorry."
"Never mind. It's all right."
Before Jean could say anything else he turned and hurried away down the hall. She heard the front door slam as he went out. Thoughtfully she looked back at the phone. For just an instant she thought of calling Ed back and breaking the date she'd herself just made. Then she rejected the idea offhand. It wouldn't be fair to Ed. And besides, she didn't trust herself, tonight, to spend the whole evening here alone with Steve.