Melody Snyder was not a happy camper. In fact she was a bitter woman. Worse, she knew she was a bitter woman and the acknowledgement of such fact made her even more miserable.
She had been a widow now for some five years and she had not had any sex in all that time. For the four years immediately prior to her husband's death she had had very little sex then either. So it had been nine years since she had enjoyed regular sex and that was the true source of most of her unhappiness.
However the paucity of sex was not what made her bitter. It was the discovery upon the death of her husband that he had had a mistress. Richard, her late husband, had the effrontery to announce his illicit affair right in his will. He had bequeathed $100K to the unnamed mistress. The attorney who drafted the will was the only person privy to the identity of the mistress, and because of client-attorney privilege, Melody could not pry the information out of the lawyer.
Melody did not begrudge this money, that otherwise would have come to her. She was well provided for by the will. Her son Walter was a whiz at investment strategies and so she had no money worries as he managed her portfolio perfectly. No what was humiliating to Melody was the public announcement via the contents of the will that Richard declared he had a mistress, whom he thought highly enough to bequeath such a substantial sum.
The nature of this bequest eventually became commonly known amongst her circle of friends and acquaintances. As a result Melody was aware that everyone was speculating on the identity of that mistress. Melody herself was tormented by her own speculations on this subject. As time passed, such interest naturally died down amongst her friends, but Melody remained continuously bothered.
Melody had suspected that Richard had occasionally cheated on her, but she had come to live with that. Melody was a virgin when she first met Richard and consequently, he was the only man she had ever had sex with. She knew of course he was not a virgin when she met him, so she attributed his occasional cheating as simply his way of letting off steam. As she saw it, when he was single he was used to having various sex partners, and thus it had become a habit on his part that marriage did not restrain him.
She had believed their sex life was adequate, as they did have sex frequently enough. However she had to admit in the back of her mind that they could have used some more excitement in their couplings. The lack of such excitement probably was what prompted him to stray occasionally. That thought did nothing for her self esteem of course, but since she loyally loved Richard, she believed it was just one of those things she had to put up with.
With such compliancy on her part, perhaps thought Melody she should not have not been as shocked as she was to learn that Richard had an ongoing affair. But she was shocked. Until this discovery, she was under the impression that whatever extracurricular sex he might have indulged in had to have been meaningless to him, and very infrequent. As far as Melody could tell he never acted like a man with a regular mistress on the side.
However she did note that about four years prior to his death, the frequency of sex between them declined drastically. Like from an average of about once or twice per week to virtually none; that drastically. At the time Melody simply chalked it up as a normal loss of libido on his part; after all Richard was 54 years of age then. However with the acknowledgment of an affair boldly stated in his will, Melody had come to a different conclusion.
It now seemed obvious to Melody in retrospect that the diminishing of their sex life had to coincide with Richard's acquisition of this mistress. Continuing with such reasoning was the recognition that their son, Walter got married around about that same time, and the wedding was rather a lavish affair with some 200 guests. Melody now wandered if Richard had met his mistress on that occasion.
She recalled that Richard was called away for a medical emergency that night. He was absent for about two hours before he was able to join in with the post reception festivities at his brother's home. Melody sort of remembered that Richard's explanation for the emergency was regrettable but plausible, and so she was not suspicious at the time. However now on further reflection she had to think surely for their son's wedding Richard would have arranged an iron clad agreement that he would be covered by another doctor without exception.
So now the conclusion had to be that he had sex with that mistress on that night Walter got married. And Melody was sickened on further speculating the possibility that this might have been the beginning of the affair. Of course Melody had not paid any attention at the time, and in any case could no longer remember who Richard might have danced with that night. But it seems like a safe bet that he did dance with the mystery mistress.
In reviewing the guest list in her mind, Melody believed she could rule out their friends. Surely she would have recognized a partiality amongst their female acquaintances. She also discounted Walter's young female friends at the reception since she could not believe Richard would form a liaison with someone that young. No the mystery mistress must have been one of the female guests invited by the Porters. And of course if that were the case, Melody would have no idea how to make a reasonable calculation on whom that might have been.
To further plague Melody's mind, she realized she could not with utmost certainty rule out the possibility that the mystery mistress might have been a man. True throughout the years she was married to Richard, she could not detect any homosexual tendency on his part. But then she did not detect he had had an affair either. There does seem to be a lot of incidences nowadays of long standing marriages dissolving because one of the spouses in later life discover he/she is gay and that the marriage had become a sham. Yes the will was drafted leaving the impression of a female mistress, but Melody knew that this meant nothing. If the mistress was really a man Richard would most likely still have worded the will in exactly the same manner.
Such continuous disturbing thoughts were not helped with the fact that Melody was having no sex. And she knew she missed having sex. She knew she wanted sex. The trouble was that after thirty years of marriage she did not know how to date.
It was not that she did not know how to get a date. There are internet dating services galore. There are personal columns in newspapers and magazines one could resort to. Some of her female friends could be counted on to set up a blind date. There are all kinds of social organizations that could be a source for meeting members of the opposite sex. And if all else fails there are singles bars that she could have resorted to.
Her problem was that in her mind she believed she did not know how to act on a date. She had had an average social life when she was single and had dates with about ten different men before she met Richard and then settled on him. But all these dates occurred when she was younger than nineteen. Given that past history she was unsure of herself. She believed she did not have the requisite sophistication needed to ensure a successful date at her age. Thus being gun shy, she just stayed at home and bemoaned the fact that she lacked a sex life.
This was the mental baggage that Melody carried with her as she went to visit her daughter Connie. At this point in her life Melody's main joy was to visit her children twice a year. From her home in Grosse Pointe, MI she would travel to Memphis, TN to visit her daughter. After a two week stay there, she would head north to Chicago for a two week stay with her son, Walter, and his wife Linda and their six children. Then she would return home content with the knowledge of her childrens' successes.
Her daughter, Connie Snyder, was both a source of pride and dismay for Melody. One the plus side Connie was well off having inherited a substantial sum of money from the death of her fiancée. She had graduated from Duke Law School and with her sister-in-law Brenda Porter, the sister of Walter's wife, had opened a family law practice in Memphis, TN. Their law firm was so successful that they had to hire four associate lawyers to staff and meet the demands of their ever-growing practice. Connie's professional career seemed well in hand.
On the minus side, at least from Melody's point of view, Connie and Brenda were lesbian lovers. They had lived together for the past ten years ever since the two of them were dormitory roommates in their freshman year at Michigan State University. At first Melody didn't have any inkling that they were lovers especially since each of them became engaged to the star players of the Spartans football team. Unfortunately by the cruelest of coincidences both of these men died on the same day in May at the end of the girls' freshman college year.
The love between Connie and her fiancée was of the strongest kind. Bruce Fielding, Connie's fiancée, by fortuitous foresight had made a will leaving everything to Connie just as if they had been married. Bruce had acquired a substantial life insurance policy as well as having received a lucrative sum of money as a signing bonus for being a high NFL draft pick that year.
Since Bruce's death, Connie had told Melody, that she just could not find another man that would come close to equaling the virtues of Bruce. Since she was living with Brenda and having sex with her, she was content with her sex life. Maybe a man might come on to the scene that would float her boat, but she was not holding her breath waiting for such an event.
Melody did not abhor lesbianism per se, she just wished her daughter wasn't one. In particular she wished she could have some grandchildren from her daughter. In answer to this complaint, Connie assured her mother that she intended to become pregnant within the next couple of years. She promised that Walter's children would not be Melody's only grandchildren.
So with that, Melody had to be content to believe that her daughter was satisfied with her life. It was her life and her only concern as a parent, was her desire that her daughter be indeed happy. And there was no denying that her daughter seemed very content with her life with the only cloud being the death of her fiancée. However that tragedy occurred some nine years previous, and Connie had smoothly got on with her life since.
In contrast to her daughter's serendipitous life, Melody only had misery to report when Connie asked her how she was doing during the latest visit. On this visit was Brenda was away. As there were only the two of them, Melody was inspired to be absolutely candid and frank with her daughter. She bared her soul and revealed her innermost thoughts and feelings.
Connie was aware that her mother had been unhappy since the death of her father, but she was surprised at the depth of her despair. Obviously the death of her father with the resultant discovery of his affair had hit her mother hard. However she felt her mother was feeling too sorry for herself and was wasting away some good living left. After all she was only 54 years old, and it was stupid of her to act as if her life was over.
