Don Russell - Mother every way

Helen Fredericson's auburn hair, piled high in a French twist, accentuated her creamy complexion and the shimmer of her emerald-green eyes. The stark white of a high-necked hostess gown revealed a size thirty-seven bust line that even a severe bra failed to confine and the firm curvature of size thirty-six hips; the effect was to give her five-foot-six-inch figure a regal appearance that was reinforced by her grace and composure. She busied herself straightening up evidence of company, emptying ashtrays, wiping away rings left by glasses, and smoothing wrinkled cushions.

Art Fredericson hovered over his wife, hands deep-thrust into his pockets, lips compressed, and weight shifting from one foot to the other. His gaze wandered over her body, drawn by each movement of a muscle, and he continually wetted his lips with his tongue tip. His sun-bleached hair was tousled, and it seemed natural above a face roughened by years of exposure to the weather and eyes whose blue had faded in the wind. His lean six-one frame saved him from looking short in contrast to his wife's height, and he had an aura of suppressed explosiveness about him.

Helen brushed past her husband and bent to wipe a spot from a corner of the coffee table. Art's hand came out of his pocket to caress her ass. She jerked and whirled to face him, angry red spots flaming over her cheekbones.

"Art! For God's sake!"

"Sorry." Art mumbled and returned his hand to his pocket.

Helen doubted that. "After all, there's a time and a place for everything! Honestly! I think you're getting as bad as Barry."

"Sure, sure. Dirty old man."

"Don't be sarcastic. He is. I don't know why Van lets him get away with it." Vanessa Rush was the closest friend Helen had – they'd been like sisters since high school days – but Helen disapproved of Van's permissive attitude. Letting him look at other women the way he does! she thought. And giggling and simpering when he feels her up – right out in public! Ugh! Grandma would have a word for it; she'd have called Van a "strumpet"!

"Shit! He's only thirty-one. How can he be a dirty old man? And she lets him because it's natural and she likes it!"

"That's right. When you can't think how to get out of it, use bad language." She moved out of Art's reach and continued her work.

"At least I live in the real world. Christ, Helen, sex isn't a disease!" Art sounded quietly desperate. "Nothing dirty about it, except what you make it in your mind."

"Art Fredericson! Blame it all on me! Grandma would have said…"

"GRANDMA, HORSESHIT! Goddamned prude! I never will know how come your old man couldn't walk on water after that immaculate conception!"

"Art! How dare you!"

He grumbled and subsided. Helen finished the coffee table and turned to the last end table. Suddenly she felt Art's hand slide up the inner slope of her thigh. She clamped her knees together and struck at his arm.

"Damn it! You want Danny to see something like that?" She blazed at her husband.

"Do him good. His age, he ought to start learning."

"Oh! So I've neglected his education!"

"No! He gets the theory in those school courses! But you've sure warped it! Hell, a kid ought to know a pat on the fanny is a sign of affection!"

"Sign of affection! Just lewd, that's what! He saw enough of that between Barry and Van tonight!"

Art chuckled. "And wondered how it would be to try it on that hot-eyed kid sister of Van's! See the way he kept sizing her up?"

"Terrible! That's what I mean! And Olga actually flirted!"

"Like with a ten-year-old. That chick isn't going to break in a fifteen-year-old."

"She's a tramp!" Helen glanced about the room to see if she'd missed any spot of disorder. "He's more mature than any of the boys she's dated here."

"Carries himself like a man, all right. She may be overlooking an experience!"

"Oh, Art, don't always be dirty-minded!"

"Okay, okay. Come on, baby, let's go to bed. The house can wait."

"A lot you care! You don't have to face it in the morning. You just go off to work and let me worry about it."

"And you do. Twenty-four hours a day."

She stiffened. "I have to do something to take my mind off how grouchy you've gotten!"

"Who the hell wouldn't be grouchy? Takes a national holiday around here for a guy to get a piece of ass! And then its like reading the Declaration of Independence through bulletproof glass!"

"Art Fredericson! You're mean and crude! Go on in, I'll be there in a minute."

She clenched her fists as she watched her husband go into the hallway. She hated these scenes and had a knot in her belly that kept getting larger as the scenes became more frequent. Her grandmother had warned her, long before she was old enough to understand.

"Selfish, flesh-loving beasts, all of them," the old lady had said often. "Even your father, dear thing."

And while Helen's parents had fun and went places, her paternal grandmother had stuck to the dreadful task of reshaping a lustful, filthy-minded child into a civilized girl. Helen knew that's what old Mrs. Farrell had done. Hadn't she been told often enough? She'd rebelled, she remembered. She'd played with herself and spied on her father, filled with wonder at that enormous cock of his, and made up fantastic stories in her mind about relations with all the boys she knew. Yes, she thought, Grandma had a real challenge. She'd been losing it, too, until that wilderness trip with the Indian guide.

"Not that he made the difference," she muttered bitterly to herself. "But what it did to Grandma."

Even Helen's mother had agreed Grandma Farrell's death – her massive stroke – had come as a direct result of Helen's pregnancy. And Helen had never lost the black worm of guilt over the fact she'd regretted those hours with Tony, the guide, only for her grandmother's death – not for the mortal sin she, herself had committed with him. That personal lust – that terrible, conscience-deadening pleasure – had burned into her the truth of what her grandmother had steadfastly maintained.

"You're your mother all over again," her grandmother had said darkly, over and over. "No shame. No moral fiber. You'll never be a Farrell."

And on the old lady's abrupt death, Helen had realized that she really loved her grandmother. She'd resolved in that moment – fully aware of the insatiable sex-hunger in her – that she would atone to her grandmother by becoming what the Victorian woman had wanted. She buried the hot-pussied self and built instead a poised, frigid shell. She'd done it well, she reminded herself now. Well enough that she'd kept Danny on the right track; well enough that she'd never let herself progress to an orgasm since that summer in the woods. Her grandmother must be proud, looking down from heaven on the granddaughter she'd given up for hopeless.

Helen hurried to the bedroom. She had time to get into her nightgown and into bed before Art finished in the bathroom. And there were moments to recall that summer. There had been a lake and a camp and Tony – he'd had a name even her father couldn't pronounce, so they'd nicknamed him Tony – had gone to scout trail for the next day's move. Helen had gone for a lone hike, then turned back because of a bear. And she's heard her mother's squeal and her father's carefree, eager laugh.

"Abe! That tickles! Behave yourself!"

"Behave myself! When I can have my nooky in this setting?"

"Your language!"

"Fraud! Get my hand on that snatch and your language will make me blush!"

"Nooky… Pussy!" Helen whispered from where she now hid in the brush. They were delightful, tingle-producing words. If she crept only a few feet further, she might – just might – get to watch them fuck.