Chapter 3

Hazel sat staring at the letter she had reread for he third time. It was a much different letter than she had ever received from her daughter. It was sharp to the point of being rude, and it was a ten-page criticism of her way of managing the family. And, it was also a threat to Hazel's highly satisfactory world.

Anger had flooded her mind at first, when she realized that the letter was in response to another letter that Brad had written to his older sister, appealing for her help in getting him out of the clutches of his mother, and launched into a college career and a life that was far removed from her demands and coaxings. Gail had stated that fact bluntly. She had made the point strongly that, if she weren't concerned about the two boys, she wouldn't even make the trip home when summer vacation started in a few weeks. She had written that she would have taken a job, and that she felt she could make her own way, but she feared what her mother might do to her two weak-willed brothers-"sissies," she had called them in her letter.

Hazel wavered between the decision to face Brad with the letter, or to send off a scathing reply to her daughter. Let Gail go to work as a waitress or some other difficult job. She'd soon come begging to be taken back into her mother's good graces. On the other hand, Hazel felt, this might just be the time to show clearly just who was boss in the family, and that it was futile to try to wrest control from her. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to let Gail walk right into the old lioness' den, for Hazel had no fear of losing battles to her impetuous, sharp-tongued, headstrong daughter.

She put the letter away carefully, but that night at the dinner table, she couldn't resist the opportunity to get her licks in at the perfidious Brad, who had written the letter without her knowledge. She wondered exactly what he had said to arouse Gail to the obviously war-like state she had been in when she had written her mother. She had even mentioned that, if necessary, she would go to a lawyer and see if each of the three children could be given a share in their father's estate and finances.

Hazel pondered this possibility, and finally dismissed it as highly improbable on Gail's part. Even if she did as she hinted, and claimed that Hazel was an unfit mother, no judge would believe her. Surely, neither of her sons would reveal the secret of their sexual relations with their mother. Brad was too frightened, and Bryan was too satisfied with things the way they were.

"Either of you hear from your sister lately?" she asked casually, her eyes pinning Brad suspiciously. He reddened, but shook his head. Bryan merely shook his head and continued eating.

"Have either of you written to her?" she pressed.

"Not me," Bryan said with a shrug.

Brad studied his mother's cruel eyes, wishing he had the courage to pour out all the anger inside him, to humiliate her as she was humiliating him.

"I ... I wrote to her a while back," he admitted.

"Oh?" Hazel eyed her son coldly, enjoying her cat-and-mouse game.

Brad dropped his gaze and picked at his dessert.

"Well, I had a letter from her today." Hazel eyed Brad closely, hoping to see fear in his face. Brad said nothing. He kept his eyes averted.

"She'll be home soon, you know. Summer vacation."

Bryan continued eating, hardly paying any attention to his mother.

"She's a little upset, Brad, by whatever you said in your last letter. Would you care to tell me what it was all about?"

Brad started to speak a couple of times, gulped, heaved a deep sigh and seemed to brace himself. He wanted to sound bold and unafraid, but he didn't manage it. He replied apologetically, "I ... just told her that I wished I could go to college someplace else ... that's all."

"I thought we'd settled that!" Hazel's voice was sharp.

Brad looked meekly at her and said softly, "Well, I still would like to."

Bryan's interest had picked up a bit now, and he said naively, "Where, Brad? To Vassar?" He roared at his witticism, oblivious to his mother's sharp glance and his brother's glare of hatred.

Brad appealed to his mother with his eyes, and Hazel said hotly to Bryan, "You leave the table."

Bryan stopped laughing and rose, walking toward the living room. He mumbled, "Sorehead!" and disappeared, and a moment later, they heard the television sound come on.

"Now, Brad, just what did you say to Gail?" Hazel leaned forward, glaring at her son.

"That's all I said," he whined.

"You said a lot more than that, to have her write me all the crap she did!" Hazel snapped. "I thought I was raising you two to be men. Now, I find you sniveling on your sister's shoulder. As if she could do anything!" Hazel sounded insulted at the very thought.

"Can't I even have my own thoughts-wishes?" It was supposed to come out strongly, but Brad sensed that he was begging, even as the words emerged.

"I think I know what's best for my children until they are of age." Hazel was firm, her jaw muscles rippling as she spoke through clenched teeth. "Have I treated you so badly? Do you have a nice home-good clothes-food-spending money-all the things you need and want?"

"But I want to go away!" It exploded from his mouth in desperation, and he spread his hands wide in a gesture of pleading.

"Hmph!" Hazel snorted contemptuously. "Go away. Do what? You'd starve to death without Mama around to change your diapers!"

Brad's look was filled with hate. "We'll see!"

"Yes, we'll see!" His mother snarled angrily. "It's about time that you and your high-and-mighty sister learned just who is the-boss in this family. And if you two don't like the way I run it-" She let it hang there, like a threatening sword over his head, defying him to risk disaster by defying her mandates.

Brad sat in dejection, digesting her ultimatum. She was right. He didn't have the guts. Gail was different. She should have been the boy, and he the girl, Brad thought miserably. He was struck with the sudden thought that the only way he could hope to escape from Hazel was for her to die, and he found himself wishing that she would drop dead this very moment.

" ... And when Gail gets here, we'll settle this idiocy once and for all." Hazel said with a triumphant leer. "I don't have to be ashamed of the way I've used your father's money to raise my children. Nobody can say I'm not a good mother!"

Brad stared at her in disbelief. He rose from the table wearily, heading for the door. He paused and turned, his eyes and face an empty void. "A good mother..." he said piteously. " ... a mother?" He snorted, shook his head and disappeared down the hall and she heard his bedroom door open and shut.

Hazel sat at the table, staring at the dishes. Why couldn't she let go of them-both of them? Why couldn't she go out with friends, meet some nice men, even have a few affairs? She wasn't that bad-looking, and she wouldn't be looking for a man to support her, like a lot of widows. Her mind drifted back to the two men she had dated in all the years following her husband's death. Both had been older men, much older than she, and both had seemed to be drifting in space, just as she was. They lavished flattery on her about her beauty, and complimented her on her nice home, fine meals and handsome children, and that was that. They just drifted. No sex appeal, on either side. Just people. Not men. Not young and alive, like Bryan and Brad were.

She snapped out of her dismal reverie and told herself that she would have to plan her steps carefully, now that Gail had warned her of her intention to interfere. She was almost nineteen, but that didn't give her the right to tell Hazel how to run her life-nor that of the boys.

As she busied herself with the dishes, Brad's inferences bothered her. He hadn't said it in a smart-alecky way, she recalled. He had said it almost as if he were crying inside, and also, as if he really pitied her.

Finished, Hazel went to her room and undressed and showered. She always felt better inside and out, after a warm shower. As she stood before her huge mirror, she couldn't help but draw comparisons between the face and form she saw reflected in the glass, and the pictures that graced the walls. She hadn't changed much, she reassured herself. She was still beautiful. She was sexually attractive-all but that twisted hip. She had nice breasts, a nice butt, and a well-shaped pelvis. She could turn any man on, just as she could years ago, she told herself. But the misgivings were there, buried deep and denied.

She heard the front doorbell chime, and she opened her door a crack and heard Hal's voice. He was talking with Bryan, who had answered the door, and then Bryan yelled: "Brad! Hal's here!"

As Brad hurried past her door, donning a jacket, Hazel called his name. She wanted to apologize to him. She hated to see him leave the house in this kind of mood. She knew he must feel smothered, or even deserted, but Brad either didn't hear her or he ignored her. She heard Hal say "S'long," to Bryan, and then the front door shut. The only sounds were the indistinguishable voices coming from the TV.

She slipped on a thin robe and sat down at her writing table. Angrily, she took paper and pen, and began a letter to her daughter. She had made up her mind. She didn't want Gail coming home and meddling in the family affairs. She was an outsider, really. She had always been an outsider, in a sense. She was too much her father's daughter, and, Hazel had sensed vaguely through the years, Gail somehow blamed her for her father's death, even though the attitudes and words of those last few moments before the crash had never been revealed to anyone by Hazel.

But the hot words that formed in her mind failed to materialize on the paper. For one of the few times in her life, Hazel felt fear. She wondered if she had perhaps pushed Brad too far. Would he leave? Could he possibly turn hateful enough toward her to actually confess what had taken place between them? Was it hate that she had seen in his eyes, only a few moments ago? Or pity?

She fell to musing, and the letter went unwritten.

Hazel turned on the television set in her room, made herself comfortable in her bed and quickly became absorbed in the problems of the shadowy figures that peopled the screen.

Hal and Brad had walked aimlessly, commiserating in an unspoken empathy, until they found themselves at the park, many blocks from Brad's home.

They sat down in the dimness, backs resting on a low wall that surrounded a flower garden.

"Bad scene?" Hal asked tentatively.

Brad sighed. "Yeah. Same one. She'll never let me go to college anyplace else."

"What about a scholarship? Any word on that?"

"No," Brad sighed. "Mr. Burger placed my name with the board that decides those things, but he hasn't heard anything yet."

"Had an answer from your sister?"

"No," Brad's tone turned bitter, "but my mother did. That was what started it tonight. I guess Gail came on too strong. Threatened to get a lawyer to pry some dough loose for the three of us."

Hal eyed him quizzically in the gloom. "Could she do that?"

"No, I don't think so." He sounded glum as he added, "I shouldn't have written that dumb letter. You're right. The only way for me to go to college someplace else is to just take off, and make the best of it."

Hal put his hand on his friend's arm. "Maybe we could make it together-helping each other." He didn't sound very confident.

They fell silent, each deep in his own thoughts.

Finally, Brad mused, "What makes guys like us the way we are?"

"I don't know-people, I guess. My father-your mother-"

They pondered this for a long time.

"I hate her." Brad said it with such depths of passion that it sounded like a flat, unemotional statement. It was as if he had deliberated the question soberly, for years, and had arrived at a verdict.

"I really do hate her." He said it with wonder, as if surprised that he really felt hate, and was not just using empty words.

"What made her that way, Brad?" Hal asked curiously.

Brad shrugged in the darkness.

"Why do people try to make other people into something they're not, and can't be. Take my old man-he tries to have a second chance at what he wanted to be, through me. He flopped on his ass, and now he's determined that I'm going to make up for his weaknesses. But the more he pushes, the more weak he makes me. I wish I could fight him ... I wish I knew how. But I can't. All I can do is run, and hate him, like you hate your old lady."

They had gradually slid down, and now both lay on their backs, staring at the starry sky above.

Hal's hand slid over to rest on Brad's crotch. He found his flaccid penis beneath the cloth and began to fondle it.

"At least, we can have-this," Hal said, his breathing becoming heavy, his movements speeding up as Brad responded to his touch.

"Yes," Brad panted as he rolled over to face Hal. "And it's enough."

He let Hal kiss his lips, and as he felt his hot tongue flick into his opened mouth, Brad hurriedly unzipped his trousers and let Hal take his rigid penis in his hand. He unzipped Hal's pants, and they played gently with each other's penis, as they kissed fervently.

Without a word, they changed positions quickly, so that each had the other's penis close to his mouth, and a shudder of relief and joyous peace went through Brad as he felt Hal's soft tongue caressing his penis, and then it was sucked deep into the warm, security of Hal's mouth. He took Hal's cock into his hand, lovingly licking the glans and then the shaft, before he too, plunged his eager mouth over the rubbery pole of flesh, letting it slide deep into his mouth, feeling safe, loved, wanted.

When they were finished, each dried the other off with handkerchiefs. In an unspoken, guilty embarrassment, they rose and headed back toward Brad's house, silent for a long time. At the corner near his home, Brad turned to Hal and put his hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly.

"I need you, Buddy. I have to get away, somehow-" He looked nervously toward his house, halfway down the block. "I don't want to do it anymore with her-"

He was half pleading for Hal's help, and he let the statement go unfinished.

"I know," Hal sympathized. "Hang on. We'll work it out. Maybe your sister will be able to help."

Brad sighed. "I don't see how, but-maybe."

He walked a few feet down the street, turned and waved a hand.

Brad walked slowly toward his home, pondering the mixture of emotions that boiled within his troubled mind. He had done a lot of soul-searching after he had first begun to have sex with Hal, and he still wondered why he liked it He had asked himself a hundred times, why he was a homosexual-why he didn't go after some of the girls that were obviously impressed by his dark good looks and fine build.

But almost automatically, when he thought of himself alone with a girl, the face of his mother intervened in his thoughts-the sight of her naked body, her full breasts. Of late, he had felt deep distaste when he had been tricked or trapped into having sex with Hazel. Were it not for the relief of his inner tensions that came when he had oral or anal sex with Hal, Brad doubted that he could even have stayed around his oversexed, warped mother.

And it bothered him to know that she was forcing Bryan into the same web of sex in which he was entrapped. He had come to dislike his brother much of the time, and he wondered if it were simple jealousy, or whether he disliked him merely because he seemed to enjoy sex with Hazel. Whatever the reasons, there was a wall between them of late, and Brad felt that it would break soon under the flood of his emotions, and he dreaded the moment.

Bryan was in his room and the light was off, and Brad tried to hurry past Hazel's door, but she was sitting up in bed, and called to him.

With a sigh, he stepped inside her large bedroom.

He was struck by the softness of her smile as the subdued light from her bed lamp lit her face. He mused that she was a handsome woman, and he again wondered why she didn't make herself available to adult men.

"Brad-" She said gently, holding out a hand to coax him to the bed, "I'm sorry about tonight-and about a lot of things. Here-" she patted the bed, "sit here and talk to me a moment."

He sat down gingerly, not wanting to be close to her. Her magic was too potent, he well knew.

"But you have to understand, dear, that I love you very much. I wouldn't know what to do without you. It isn't that I want to be the boss-it's just that I need you close to me. I'm a lonely woman-" She broke off, and Brad's lips curled in contempt. He hated it when she pulled the whining bit.

"You wouldn't have to be, Mom," Brad cut in with a sharp edge to his voice. "You're not really a cripple. You could get out-meet some men. You're a beautiful enough woman-" His determination wilted as he recalled the times he had suggested these same things, and he fell silent.

"Nonsense!" Hazel tried to be light. "I'm not lonely for men-I meant I would be lonely if you and Bryan were to leave me. I'm perfectly happy with my life-so long as you are here." She patted his hand and he withdrew it hurriedly.

"Honey," Hazel cooed, "if you'll stay at home and go to college here, I'll make it up to you. You'll see. You can have the car-good clothesyou can really just worry about your grades. You won't have to work part-time like a lot of boys would have to. Is it too much to ask that you humor me in this?

Brad recoiled, feeling cold terror forming inside him. She would always win, somehow, either by threats, bullying, sexuality or by wheedling. She knew he wasn't tough-like Gail-and he couldn't kid about serious things, like Bryan, who made a game of it.

Brad stood up suddenly, pacing rapidly about the room. It surprised Hazel a little, but she waited until he was ready to reply.

Brad stopped at the foot of the bed, conscious of her clearly revealed breasts and the nipples that pushed against the flimsy material of her gown. He dropped his eyes, to better coordinate his thoughts.

"Mom-" He spread both hands wide in an unconscious gesture of pleading for understanding, hating himself at the same instant, for being a beggar and not a man. "-I just can't do this! I can't keep going to bed with you! It's dirty! It's wrong! It's-it's incest-don't you know that?"

Hazel's face clouded darkly as her smile faded. "Love is love!" She stormed haughtily. "AH the dirty words you can use won't change the fact that I love you and you love me!" It wasn't a defense, it was an order for Brad to revise his thinking on the matter.

"But-I don't love you!" It came out calmly, and it surprised Brad himself. The truth was out at last, and he felt a wave of relief go through him. Encouraged, he went on quickly, "Sometimes, Mom-I even hate you! Did you know that?"

His eyes were wide, his face set in an expression of surprise, as if he were discovering a great truth in himself.

For one of the few times in her life, Hazel was at a loss for words. She couldn't believe that Brad was saying these things. Bryan-but Bryan always said them in a kidding manner. But Brad meant it. Or-she thought slyly, he thought he did. A coy smile came to her face, and she waved her hand as if to dismiss the whole idea.

"You don't mean that, Brad, dear."

"Yes I do!" His serious look deepened, as if he were examining his own thoughts for reaffirmation. "I really do, sometimes."

Hazel felt her grasp on him slipping, and for an instant, she was tempted to revert to the domineering mother role. But she caught her emotions in time, and allowed herself time to compose her plan of counterattack. Uneasily, she realized that she was on the defensive, and she didn't like it, nor was she used to it.

"I suppose all children do, at times-" she began.

"But I'm not a child!" Brad retorted sharply.

"Brad, don't act like a child, then!" She was stalling for time, seeking the right way to slip under his guard and gain the upper hand again.

"Then leave me alone!" His frustration was giving his anger momentum. "I told you I can't do that-with you anymore! I mean it!"

"All right! All right!" Hazel waved a soothing hand at her son. "You don't have to. But I thought-"

"I know what you thought!" Brad's voice rose hysterically. "But I hate doing it with you-or with any woman!" His control was gone. He had let it come out that he was a homosexual, and in a strange way, he was glad, although he reddened and seemed to wilt under Hazel's shocked gaze. It took a long moment for it to sink into her thinking, and when its true import became clear, her jaw hardened and her eyes grew cold.

"You'd rather be a queer than to make love to a woman, like normal men do?" she said sharply.

"Maybe I am a queer!" Brad was yelling now, waving his hands wildly about. "But if that's not normal, just what do you call fucking and sucking your mother?"

Hazel threw off the covers and, in her awkward way, scrambled to the foot of the bed and slapped his face hard. Brad held his stinging cheek as he backed toward the door. His eyes were dark with hatred and fear, but there was the desperation of a trapped animal in his grating voice.

"You're sick-and you want to make everybody around you sick-me-Bryan-everybody. You're sick-you're insane!"

It was as if he had thrown a bucket of ice water on her. Hazel recoiled from his words, conscious of the fact that he was echoing the same charges that she had leveled at herself so many times, in moments of despair. She crawled back on her pillow, falling limply on her back. She felt a twinge of pain in her chest and it became difficult to breathe.

Brad left her room, still holding his cheek, the hot tears spilling from his eyes and scalding his cheeks. He ran to his room and locked the door and lay on his face on the bed, trying to cry quietly, without much success. He hated himself, yet at the same time, he was proud of himself. He had taken his first step toward manhood, he felt, yet, he had destroyed his own future, and perhaps he had destroyed his mother, also.

Hazel lay in the dark, having shut off the light, staring at the ceiling. For some reason she couldn't fathom, she felt as she had when she had to prepare herself to face life without a husband and a father for her children. She felt as if she were steeling herself to face life without Brad, and she wondered if there were any possible way she could still bring him back to her arms and her body.

Lying in the semi-gloom of his own bedroom, Bryan, who had heard almost all of the noisy exchange between his mother and his brother, shook his head. He was tempted to laugh, but it really wasn't funny. He went over the exchange between them, several times. Finally, he fluffed his pillow, lay on it angrily and said aloud, "What a fucked-up family I picked to get into. A queer brother and a mother who would fuck a male snake-as long as it was young enough!"