Robert Lubrican - A Model Mother

"I suppose I never looked," she said. That was true. After that first night she didn’t keep an eye on her friend when they went to the bar. Also, it never would have occurred to her to look for sexual behavior between a mother and son.

She did look after that. She watched us during art lab, and she saw things she’d missed before. Afterwards, while my mom was getting dressed, Maureen said she needed to talk to her.

"What about?" asked my mother.

"It’s complicated. It may take some time. You don’t have anywhere to go … do you?"

"I was going to meet someone, but I can put it off," said Mom.

"Meet someone," Maureen repeated. "Do you have a date?"

"It’s nothing like that," said Mom. "Like I said, I can see him later."

"Would that him be … Bob?"

Something in her voice made the hairs stand up on the back of my mother’s neck.

"What?"

Maureen wasn’t one to sugar-coat things.

"Are you having sex with Bob?"

"Maureen!" gasped my mother. "Why would you ask me something like that?" Obviously, Mom tried to deflect. I don’t know if it was convincing or not, because I wasn’t there. I just heard about it later.

"Because his classmates believe it’s true."

I waited by the front door a long time that night. I was alone. Phil didn’t wait for her after art lab anymore. Now, if they were getting together, he just went to her house.

I began to get worried that something was wrong, and finally they showed up. It was obvious my mother had been crying.

"What’s wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Maureen. "It’s a girl thing. She and I need some more time to work it out. Why don’t you go on home."

"Are you okay?" I asked, ignoring Mrs. Gaskill. I leaned in.

"I think so," she whispered.

"She’ll be fine," said Maureen. "She just needs to talk."

"You’re sure?" I asked, looking at my mom.

She nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.

"I could go with you," I suggested.

"Bob, part of what we’re going to talk about is you," said Maureen, bringing out the big guns. "Go home. I’ll take care of her. Things will be fine."

"What about me?" I asked, stubbornly.

Like I said, Maureen didn’t beat around the bush.

"Among other things, the fact that your classmates all seem to think that Bob and Phil both got lucky with older women."

She glared at me. She was actually pretty tactful, considering the fact that my mother had already spilled the beans. My mother was caught in a venn diagram of sorts. In the two circles of her life, there were those who knew I was her son. Then there were those who thought I was her lover. Until now, the only intersection of those circles included Jennifer Hart and Bob Jenkins. Now it included Maureen Gaskill. I guess the pressure of convention had made it impossible to avoid the catharsis of confession to her friend. What they were going to do now was go flesh out all the details and see if the situation could be saved. It turned out that Maureen Gaskill wasn’t bound by convention, either. I should have had a clue about that based on her willingness to flout convention with Phil, but I had other things on my mind, I guess.

"Oh," I said, as I felt the planet drop out from beneath my feet. It must have shown on my face.

"It isn’t the end of the world, Bob," said Maureen. "We just need to talk about it … you know … make plans?"

"Plans?"

I guess it was obvious I was stuck on things like a leech. Maureen really didn’t want me along. She figured things would be difficult/emotional enough with just the two of them, and all I’d do was muck things up.

"Do you love your mother, Bob?" she asked.

"Of course," I said, instantly.

"Do you trust me?"

"I guess so," I said, a little reluctance in my voice.

"Then trust that everything will be fine," she said. "There aren’t actual problems yet, but there is the potential for big ones. She and I need to plan to avoid that. We’ll bring you into it when the time is right. Can you trust that?"

I don’t know why, but at that particular moment I suddenly trusted Maureen Gaskill a lot.

"Okay," I said.

"Just go home and wait."

"Okay," I said again.

"And don’t worry."

"Right," I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

Her eyes were fine when she came in the house. I was in the kitchen. She looked tired, but not devastated.

"It’s going to be okay," she said. "We need to talk."

"You think?" I asked, a little testily. I’d been on pins and needles all night and it was pretty close to one in the morning.

"She’s not going to tell anyone."

"Start at the beginning," I said.

"In bed," she said.

"Really?" I was astonished.

"Really," she said.

We stayed up all night talking.

I heard about the things I listed above, like the stuff between Maureen and Phil. I learned a lot about my mother I hadn’t known before.

And, of course, I heard about the plan they concocted to make things not blow up.

I thought it was the stupidest plan I ever heard.

Why?

Well, for starters, because I was supposed to tell Phil … and my entire class … that Jennifer Hart was actually Jennifer Jenkins … my mother.

Yup. I was supposed to tell all those people who thought I was sleeping with Jennifer that the one-time babysitter they thought I was sleeping with was my own mother.

As it turned out, it wasn’t as stupid as it sounded to me at first. Basically, the way Maureen thought about it was this: We could be embarrassed about my mother posing nude, and people finding out about it … or we could be embarrassed about people finding out I was fucking my mother.

The first of those could be engineered by me admitting that the woman posing was my mom, and that I hadn’t known about it beforehand. The arrival of the three stooges that first night was what caused things to go off rail, and for my mom to adopt a fake last name, in an effort to spare me the embarrassment. Since Mrs. Gaskill hadn’t known about it - only me and my mother - her urging of Jennifer to go out and loosen up had just made things worse. One thing led to another and people started to get the wrong idea about us. If everybody’s attention was on this engineered outcome, then it would deflect attention away from the indicators that there was a sexual relationship there.

You see the beauty of this plan. It had the genius of my mother saying she used to take care of me and change my diapers. It was true, technically. Well mostly true. She was my mother, not my babysitter, but it was plausible. Embarrassing, but plausible. The fact that I wasn’t dating anybody could be chalked up to any number of things. After all, I was going to graduate and move away somewhere to find a job. Why get involved with a girl and maybe get attached, only to have to end it? That was plausible, too.

The down side was that it was going to be embarrassing - in spades.

But Maureen was right. Plan A was much less embarrassing than plan B.

It was about three-thirty in the morning when my mother finally said, "So what do you think?"

I didn’t have to think all that hard. I sure didn’t have a better idea.

"I think I’m going to be awarded a new nickname," I said. "I bet people start calling me Mamma’s Boy."

"I wouldn’t mind that," she said. "You are my little boy."

I shot her a look. She shrugged. "Mamma’s little man?" she teased.

"It’s not funny," I said.

"I know." She was serious now. "You’re so much more than that," she said, rolling toward me to kiss my chest. "Nothing has to change with us, Bobby."

"Everything’s going to change," I said. "I’ll be the talk of the town. You, too. Can your reputation stand it? Real estate agent poses nude! Will your broker cause any problems?"