David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

“I’m Bobby.” he said, forcing the words past an uncooperative tongue. He clutched the good luck medal around his neck and squeezed it tightly.

A cloud of anger crossed Dee’s face but quickly faded into disappointment. She pinched the nightgown in both hands and held it out wide from her body. It rode up even higher on her thighs.

“I went to a lot of trouble, you know.” she said. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody. I wanted our first night together to be special.”

“He thinks you look beautiful, don’t you. Tommy?” Ash said.

“I’m talking to Tommy,” Dee said.

“Bobby,” said the boy, his voice so low he was barely audible.

“What? What did you say?”

Bobby looked frantically around the room, hoping desperately that he had missed what he sought before.

Dee stood right in front of him now, her body close to the chair. Bobby could see through the nightgown to the dark mounds of her breasts, the darker shape below. He hadn’t allowed himself to look at these parts of his mother for years.

“What do you have to say to me after all the trouble I’ve gone to for you?” Dee asked.

Bobby’s anxiety burst forth in an uncontrollable gasp. “Where am I going to sleep? There’s only one bed!”

He began to cry, hating himself for it but unable to stop. Dee chuckled indulgently and pulled him to his feet so that he stood on the chair. His head was level with hers when she pulled his naked body into an embrace. He could feel her breasts pressing against his bare chest.

“You silly goose,” she said. “Where do you think you’re going to sleep? You’re going to sleep in the bed. Is that what’s bothering you, is that what’s bothering my little boy? Why didn’t you say so? You can always talk to me, you know. You can always, always, always say anything at all to me. And do you know why?”

She released him from the embrace but kept her hands on his shoulders and she leaned her face in close to his.

“Do you know why you can say anything you want to me?” Bobby shook his head to indicate he did not know.

“Because I love you. Tommy. That’s why.” She hugged him again, this time so hard it took his breath away. “Oooooh, I love you sooo much!”

Her whole body was pressed into his. Bobby tried to slip his hands over his groin so she wouldn’t know that he was growing hard, but he couldn’t do it without touching her. He knew that if they saw he was stiff they would make fun of him and if they did that now he was certain he would never be able to stop crying.

“But now it’s lime for you to get some sleep, young man,” Dee said. ‘Today was a special day so we let you stay up late, but enough is enough.”

She lifted him onto the bed and pulled the sheet over him. Bobby didn’t think she noticed his stiffness.

For a moment it looked as if everything was going to be all right. Bobby looked at the man by the door to see if he was coming to bed. Ash was watching Bobby and smiling, but he made no move to leave the door.

Dee noticed and laughed. “Did you think you were going to have to share the bed with him? No wonder you were upset. Don’t worry about Ash, he never sleeps, do you. Ash?”

“I never sleep,” Ash said.

“He’ll stay by that door all night making sure nobody comes in that we don’t want in. That should make you feel nice and safe.”

Dee sat on the bed beside him as his mother did at home, tugging the covers up under his chin. Bobby tried to keep from looking at her breasts, whose shape he could make out just above his face. Her breath was still sweet.

“Now we had a very exciting day together, didn’t we? We had fun, didn’t we?”

Bobby nodded.

“You’re going to have to learn to talk more, honey. When I talk to you I want you to take part-but don’t worry about that now. There are a lot of things you’ll have to learn, but no more for tonight. You just close your eyes and go to sleep now.”

Bobby dutifully closed his eyes. He felt her lean down to him. The kiss on his check was no harder to take than the ones from his mother.

“Aren’t you forgetting to say something?” Dee whispered.

Bobby kept his eyes squeezed closed.

“Who do you love?” she asked.

He knew what she wanted, but he also knew how much his mother would hate to hear him say it.

“Tommy?… Who do you love?”

He was so tired; if only they would leave him alone and let him sleep he could figure everything out tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow the police would come.

“Who do you love?”

“I love you. Dee,” he said.

He could detect her pleasure without opening his eyes. Her weight lifted from the bed and he was alone at last. It was going to be all right after all, he thought. He would have his own bed and tomorrow he would make them give him his clothes back and when he had a chance he would open the window and… he felt her pull the covers back on the other side of the bed, then sensed the change in balance as her body slipped onto the mattress. She wasn’t touching him, but she was there, in his bed.

He opened his eyes and was looking directly into the eyes of Ash, who remained at his position on the floor in front of the door. The huge man stared at Bobby with the face of longing of a dog made to stay behind while his master went away. Next to him. Dee still had not touched him, but Bobby could feel the heat of her body.

He grasped the medal around his neck, squeezed his eyes closed, and vowed not to open them again until his parents burst through the door to save him.

Becker rose with his plate and carried it to the sink, prompting Karen to say, “I’ll do the dishes. It won’t take a minute. You two just go in the other room and relax.”

“We’ve been relaxing all through dinner,” Becker said. He returned to the table and picked up his glass, his silverware, the crumpled napkin. They had eaten in the kitchen and the trip from table to sink was only a few steps.

“Go on, go on,” Karen protested. “I can do it quicker if you’re out of here.”

Becker looked at the sink, which now held all of the plates, the cutlery, the serving dishes, the two cooking pots. All together it looked to him as if it would take something less than two minutes to rinse, scrape, and stack everything in the dishwasher. It had taken little more than that to prepare the meal in the first place, a warmed-up conglomeration of a chicken and tomato ragout, rice, and a green salad. Karen cooked four entrees on the weekend and froze them for use later in the week, she had explained. On the fifth day she and the boy either went out to eat or ordered Chinese food delivered. She had not mentioned the weekend, but Becker knew that Jack’s father frequently had the boy with him then. It was not hard to imagine Karen eating leftovers while standing over the sink when she was alone. It was the way Becker took most of his meals himself.

“Happy to help,” Becker said.

“It’s basically a one-person job,” she said, standing with her back to the sink, protectively.

Becker understood that the object of the exercise was not to get the dishes done but to put him alone with the boy for a few minutes. Dutifully, he turned and walked to the living room, where Karen’s son was already sprawled on the floor in front of the television set.

“No television. Jack!” Karen called from the kitchen.

“Mom!”

“I mean it!”

Sullenly, Jack turned off the set.

“She’s tough,” Becker said.

Jack nodded his head in agreement and looked at an area in space about three feet to the side of Becker’s head. After an initial stare of surprise when he first arrived at the door, Becker had noticed that the boy had never looked directly at him. Nor had he volunteered a word of conversation. On the few occasions when Becker had directed a question to him. Jack had frozen as if stunned by the need to come up with an answer. His shyness and embarrassment were so palpable that Becker changed his method of converse. He worded his statements so that they could be agreed to or denied with a simple movement of the head. In that way he was able to string several sentences together, giving both the questions and voicing the answers himself, with Jack registering some sort of involvement so that it appeared to be a dialogue. It certainly wasn’t an exchange of ideas, but it wasn’t silence, either. Neither of the participants was fooled, of course, but Becker hoped that Karen was. It seemed to be important to her that all should go well.