Rex Taylor: Mother lover

"I don't understand," Don puzzled. "He told me when he left that he was going out with a prime young piece he'd met the other day. A girl named Cathy-all legs and ass and-"

"And my daughter, goddamn it!" Gwen shouted.

"Her name's Susan," Don protested. "Little Susie. We named her after my mother."

"Her name is Susan Catherine, you blockhead, and you may have recalled her as little Susie all these years, but if you think I wanted anything to remind me of your mother-"

"We're not going to get anywhere by screaming," Don pointed out. "My God, I saw her a day or so ago, and it never entered my mind."

"I suppose you never bid Chris about me? Or about his sister?"

"There was no reason. I thought the divorce settlement was final enough."

Gwen nodded. "I thought so, too, but something has gone very badly wrong." She fumbled in her purse for cigarettes, knocked one from the pack, and sat smoking in short, heavy puffs, her eyes studying Don Robinson. It was like going to sleep and picking up a fresh installment of an old nightmare.

Gwen had been in her senior year at college-Reckardsville University, one of Ohio's mass-market institutions of higher learning-when she had first met Don Robinson. God, she thought, he had been so attractive then. President of his fraternity, tennis star, all-American rich boy, and she had been a poor orphan girl from Akron, attending school on a scholarship from her father's union local. They had met in photography class, and she had lost her heart at first sight. A few dates, a few evenings together, and Gwen's virgin resistance yielded unconditionally before his advances. A get-acquainted fuck in the back of his jalopy at Shawnee Lake, Reckardsville's unofficial official parking lot, a wild., and forbidden after-hours visit to his fraternity house for a romp on the presidential bed, a few trips to a Marietta motel-it had added up in the long run, as it must inexorably have done in those pre-Pill days. The first time Gwen skipped a period, she was certain it

was due to the crush of midterm exams. Four weeks later it happened again, and she began to chew her nails. After the third stoppage in her menstrual cycle, she bolstered up enough courage to visit a doctor who gave her the happy news.

Don's parents suggested an abortion, but Gwen refused completely, and there was nothing to do but marry in haste. She'd left school, of course-by that time her belly was swelling enormously and 1958 universities cast a dubious eye upon visibly pregnant coeds, married or not.

In her sixth month the doctor thought it wise to tell Gwen that her joys of motherhood would be doubled before they had fairly begun. She was most. definitely carrying twins. A stranger would have been hard put to calculate the effect this had upon the former Miss Gwendolyn Corby, now Mrs. Donald Robinson.

On the twenty-ninth of June, 1958, Reckardsville University Hospital's obstetrics staff went to work, and within a short time the population of southeastern Ohio and, by extension, the world, was larger by two souls. Within some six months the American divorce statistics for that year had received a slight degree of augmentation as well.

The marriage had been doomed from the start. Gwen knew before the honeymoon was over that she could not under any circumstances endure living the rest of her life with Don Robinson. Everything which had attracted her to him now loomed larger than life as a debit on his account, and when his parents came to her with a reasonable solution, she was quick to seize upon it.

Briefly stated, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson offered Gwen an easy divorce and very substantial cash settlement, provided she would remove herself from their son's life forever. The only condition was that she surrender custody of the son and daughter conceived most probably in Don's car on that night of Gwen's adieu to her maidenhood.

Gwen had countered with a suggestion of her own. She would allow them to take away her son, but she intended to keep her daughter-little Susan Catherine, "Susie" to the Robinson family and a definite "Cathy" as far as Owen was concerned. There had been haggling back and forth, but in the end Gwen carried her point. She went her way with Cathy and a check for $10,000-and in 1958 that was a hell of a lot of money. It financed Gwen's return to college and acquisition of her B.A. and M.A. in journalism, and it enabled her to go to New York and begin knocking upon doors in her search for a job.

She had covered her path carefully. All the lies to Cathy about a long-ago divorce and the later death of the male parent; her own legal resumption of her maiden name to further, confuse the issue. Gwen had determined many years before that she wanted absolutely nothing more to. do with Don Robinson, and she had stuck to her guns. She had not seen him since he drove her to the airport and put her on the Reno-bound plane in the midst of a light snow one early November day in 1958. She had, indeed, never expected to see him again, and the possibility of his path ever crossing hers or Cathy's was so remote she had not even considered it.

Now her world had crumbled into chaos. All the steps she had taken to create a secure environment for Cathy were made a mockery.

When she finally spoke, furiously grinding out her second cigarette in a row, her voice was angry. "Why in the hell did you and Chris have to show up here? Now?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Don protested. "As far as he's concerned, you're dead,

and have been since he was still in the cradle. Chris has never even seen a picture of you." He thought a moment. "Well, once. He found a little Kodak snapshot I took of you in college, but it wasn't a very good photo and, besides, as soon as I saw him with it, I took it away from him and tore it up. I doubt if he even remembers."

"When did they meet each other?" she wondered aloud. "You said something about the other day?"

He nodded. "Yes. I think it was Tuesday. I'm sure it was, because I'd been over on the mainland most of the day and she was leaving as I pulled into the carport. And that was the day before yesterday."

Gwen shivered. "She never mentioned him to me at all. Until last evening, when she said she'd met a boy on the beach and he'd invited her to a party. He came into the house after he brought her home last night, and I talked to him for a while but it never occurred to me-" She stopped, wincing in pain as she thought of the way he had stolen upon that opportunity to put his hands on her body-to feel her ass, to rub his fingers through her crotch. Her own son and she hadn't known it.

"Oh, dear God," she said quickly, trying to shake away the feeling of self-disgust that overwhelmed her, "they've got to be told. Now. Before it's too late. Before something happens…"

Don nodded, and then he felt a freezing chill that began on the back of his neck and raced along his spine. He could remember, as plainly as if it were happening at that moment, the way he and Chris had talked trash day before yesterday about his son's newest girl. What was it the boy had said? Something about going back for thirds because he'd already gotten seconds from Cathy. Good God! No, he thought frantically. Chris was lying about it. He was only feeding his old dad a line of bullshit. That was it. No, that wasn't it. Chris was his father's son. He'd never had any trouble getting girls, and he'd never had to lie about it. If he said he had screwed Cathy, then he had. It was that simple. Don felt sick about it, but not half as sick as he did when he recalled his own curious lustful glances directed towards Cathy's bikini-covered body, towards her high young tits and her ripe little ass.

"Of course, I can trust Cathy," Gwen was saying. "I'm certain that she's a virgin-I'd stake my life on it. And last night she seemed to be angry with Chris for some reason or another. She was still very upset this morning, too, now that I think of it." Her face grew a bit brighter. "Maybe we've got time to end this painlessly." She stood up, gathering up her bag. "I'm going back to our place. Cathy didn't say anything about going out today, so she should be there. I'll get our things packed up, and we can start back for New York first thing this afternoon. I think I'd rather tell her the whole story there, instead of here."