Heather Brown: Wayward wife

It was 3:30 in the afternoon and I had nothing to do. I had finished my washing and cleaning. It would be at least a couple of hours until it was practical for me to put the TV dinners in the oven so that supper would be on the table when George walked through the door. I felt as lifeless and listless as the dust mop standing over in the corner.

There wasn't even anything worth watching on television. Nothing but soap operas at this time of day. I couldn't stand to watch them. They made me so depressed. I guess the reason was that the characters were all so unhappy. Just like me.

Suddenly itching with tension and frustration, I got up and rearranged the furniture, moving one chair here, the coffee table over there. Then I stopped in the middle of it when I realized that it was the third time I'd moved the furniture this week.

I just left the coffee table right in the middle of the living room so that there was no way you could pass through the room without stepping around or over it. At least that would give me something to think about every time I crossed the room or I'd crash my shins into it. Come to think of it, at least the pain would take my mind off my boredom.

Where were the kids? It was summer. They were out someplace, and probably wouldn't be back until dinner when their father got home. I'd already fed them lunch so they'd lost interest in me until it was time for them to eat again. I found myself wishing that they were here now, even getting into mischief, so I could yell at them. The excitement of getting angry at them would have picked me up the way I was feeling.

I was so jumpy that I couldn't sit down and remain still, so I walked around the room smoking a cigarette. The ashes fluttered to the floor, but I didn't care. If enough of them got on the rug it would be dirty enough to clean again and that would give me something to do. I looked at making a mess as sort of an investment.

When I had finished my cigarette I stopped circling the room and looked around. Suddenly I realized that I couldn't stand to be in the living room another second. I was sick of it. If I stayed here another minute I'd start smashing the furniture.

Dashing into the bedroom, I threw myself across the bed, sobbing for lack of anything better to do. But finally the tears dried up because they really weren't connected with anything specific. If I had known exactly why I was so upset maybe my grief wouldn't have been so bad. However, the fact of the matter was that I couldn't explain why I was so unhappy.

My husband George made good money. He had a good job and was willing to buy whatever I needed for myself and the house. I had the best appliances money could buy to make housekeeping a snap, and a 24-inch color television set to watch whenever I felt like it. My two children were both normal and healthy. I had a closet full of clothes. There was a station wagon out in the driveway of our beautiful ranch-style home that I could drive anywhere I wanted to.

So what was wrong with my life? I didn't know. If I had been able to identify my problems I might have been able to do something about them. As it was, I felt like I was under a spell – turned by some unseen force over which I had no control. I had everything I had thought I wanted when I'd married George at eighteen – and yet here I was practically on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I rolled over on the bed so that I was laying on my back. The bed faced a vanity table which had been in my family for years. My parents had given it to us as a wedding present. Before I had married George it had always been in our home, and now every morning when I woke up as a woman it was still the first thing I saw. It seemed like it had always been with me, as though it were part of me.

It had an enormous oblong mirror that reflected everything in the room. As I lay on the bed I could see myself in it, and I studied myself the way I had so many times over the years. When I was a girl and the vanity table was in my room, I had often fantasized that I was Alice peering into the looking-glass when I was alone. As a child I'd been sure that it was no coincidence my name was also Alice, just like the little girl in the fairy tale, and that if I concentrated long enough I would wind up in Wonderland just like the fictional Alice.

The truth was that I had never gotten over my fantasy about the mirror having magical qualities. Even now, at thirty-eight, some lingering residue of my childhood forced me to concentrate on the mirror during moments like this, hoping through my imagination to escape from reality into some fantastic wonderland.

I peered across the room at my face in the mirror. It was a pretty face, of that I was sure. People had always said so, ever since I was a little girl. Those who had known me as a child frequently remarked when they saw me now that my face was as innocent and fresh and youthful as it had been when I was eight.

I was proud of my looks, and kept my blonde hair long and free, just like a girl's. Some people hate their freckles, but I was glad I had never, outgrown mine. They kept me in touch with my childhood, a soothing consolation at moments like this when being grown up seemed like a one-way ticket into a maze of boredom and frustration.

My face and hair were the same, but the rest of my body had changed. As I looked from the bed into the mirror I could see the peaks of my breasts using from under the thin sweater I was wearing, not lessened in their firmness because I wasn't wearing a bra today. Even from across the room I could make out the erect shape of my nipples pressing through the clinging fabric.

I looked from the reflection of my breasts swelling under my sweater down to my bare legs. I had always been proud of them. They were long and shapely and perfectly complemented the paradoxical combination of my innocent-looking face and lush womanly breasts. I gazed appreciatively at them, beginning at my ankles and moving my eyes slowly along them until they disappeared beneath my skirt.

Alice in Wonderland? Over the years I must have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours staring into my own personal looking-glass, and I had never run into any fantastic characters like the March Hare or the Queen of Hearts. But I had discovered a substitute that was almost as effective at taking my mind off reality: the reflection of my body in the mirror.

I rested my hands on my stomach for a moment, placing my palms flat against my belly and feeling myself breathe. Then, as my breathing accelerated so that I was almost panting, I moved my hands downward and caught the hem of my skirt with my fingers.

As I drew my skirt up over my waist, I instinctively spread my legs, looking straight ahead into the mirror at the reflection of the bulging crotch of my sheer panties. They were an old pair that I had picked at random out of the dresser drawer this morning, and the crotch was worn to a thin gauze by frequent washings and the rub of my pussy against the cloth over a two- or three-year period.

My mouth watered at the sight of the folds of my pussy boldly pushing through the flimsy fabric. Even from across the room I could see the suggestion of the muffled tangle of my cunt hair massing to spring free, the whole mound of my pussy flexing pulsingly. The filmy, clinging panty cloth stretched tautly between my thighs, my cunt throbbing to be free.

I liked to tease myself during my magic moments alone with myself and the mirror. Knowing that my pussy craved its freedom, I led it on by sliding my fingers under the elastic top of my panties and gently rubbing my fingertips over my rubbery pussy lips. Inside I could feel the cunt juice started to bubble. Within seconds my pussy would be sopping wet.