Shortly after I turned thirty-nine my mother died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis. Dad had died seven years earlier. So since my brother Kenny, a journalist and my only sibling, was living in London at the time, and my daughter was in her second year of college, I was left alone with the task of going through my mother's things and deciding what should be kept and what should be thrown away. It took a couple of weeks to get out of my rented apartment and move back into the family home but once I was reasonably settled I began what was going to be, no doubt, a time consuming process.
Most of the work was straightforward. Clothes went to thrift stores. The books were keepers. Most of the furniture and kitchen equipment stayed. The things with sentimental value were either left where they were or packed and stored away. I tried to spend time every day after work or on the weekends getting a little more done.
But one piece of furniture, a large chest that squatted in the bedroom next to what had been my parent's bed, was a mystery. It had been there for as long as I could remember. What made it mysterious was the fact that it was securely locked. Very securely. I kept hoping that I'd run across the key.
Now that I was sleeping in my parent's bed I would sometimes wake up and see it crouching there in the dim morning glow. Or I would be reading and glance over to see the dark wood gleaming in the lamplight. As a child I used to play around it. Sometimes it was a table on which I put my dolls. At other times my stuffed toys would congregate on its surface. Later, when I was an adolescent and curious, I tried to pick the lock without success.
After almost three months of steady effort my mom's things had been disposed of and the house was mine. Except for the chest. I still hadn't found the key. And curiosity about what it might contain was looming larger and larger in my consciousness. Several times a day, at least, I would gaze at the dark bulk near the bed and wonder. I tried not to think about it but that simply made me think about it more. Finally, certain that the key was lost forever, I called a locksmith to open it for me.
A young man in his middle twenties with long hair and a scraggly moustache came to the door with a briefcase full of tools. It took him less than ten minutes to make the lock snap open. He started to lift the lid but something made me reach out my hand and gently push it down before the contents had been revealed. Perhaps I had some knowledge of what I'd find. He looked up at me with a slight grin and began putting his tools away. After he'd left I walked back into the bedroom, took a deep breath, and raised the top.
I wasn't ready for what I saw. The first thing to grab my attention was a flesh-colored replica of a man's cock. It was huge. It even had the testicles attached. Beside the cock were two vibrators. And there was a stack of magazines; the one on top showed a smiling woman with a shaved vulva astride a black man. There were video cassettes and computer disks. A large shoebox was jammed full of photos, so full that I couldn't see the pictures. With trembling fingers I pulled a stack about an inch and a half thick out of the shoebox and shuffled through them. I was horrified to see that many of them were pictures of my mom. Naked. Having sex. With men who weren't my dad. And there were other people doing the same thing. I threw the photos still in my hand back into the chest and slammed down the lid. With a bleating cry I sank back onto the edge of the bed and quivered. A part of me seemed to have known that I'd find something like this but most of me wished I hadn't.
I'm not a prude. I like sex. But for me sex was something done in private. I masturbated in order to relieve the tension that built up from being alone. And only with my fingers. I knew of all the things in my mom's secret box but I'd never sought them out. I tried to shut out the images of what I'd seen but they kept invading my mind.
That was a long day. I was in shock. I was confused. One moment I wanted to lock up the chest and ask a couple of my male friends to take it to the dump. The next moment I wanted to take another look inside. My dreams that night were full of crazy scenes of naked people grappling in a thousand lurid poses. One of those people was my mom. I woke up once, in the middle of having an orgasm, and realized the sheet between my thighs was soaked. Shame and excitement burned in me with equal intensity.
The days passed. A decision was made by not making one. The chest continued to hunch in its corner. I yearned to forget what it held. I pretended that it was just a place to put my decorative pillows. But, like Pandora, I slowly learned that once the lid is raised the contents fly into consciousness and can't be returned to oblivion.
Weeks and then months went by. For a long time I wasn't aware of the effect of that brief moment of revelation. I began to masturbate more. Things would catch my attention. A man on the street with an interesting bulge. I'd begin to wonder what it would look like uncovered. And feel like in my hand. My juices would flow. And I'd end up needing to touch myself. I thought about that enormous fake cock. And wondered if it would fit.
A couple of months before my 40th birthday the growing strength of my curiosity began to overpower my reluctance. I still couldn't quite bring myself to lift the lid again. And then one day in the supermarket I passed a display of boxed wine. I very seldom drink alcohol and those few times only in social situations. But I needed a catalyst to give me courage so, after cruising around the store trying to calm the frantic flutters of anticipation, I grabbed one of those boxes and headed for the checkout line.
That box of wine sat unopened in my refrigerator for another week. I now had two boxes tempting me. And then late Saturday afternoon I pulled out the spigot and poured my first glass of the amber liquid. I sat on the patio in the chair my mother had sat in so many times before and emptied the glass. I got another. At the end of the third glass I rose and walked unsteadily towards the bedroom, making a short detour to fill the glass again.
The first thing I did after opening the chest was to divide the contents into separate piles on the bed. The pictures here, the books and magazines there, the videos on the far end, the computer disks in a stack next to the photos, and the toys resting on a pillow. I went to refill my glass. When I returned I started looking at the photos.
After I'd flipped through one handful the realization that I knew one of the men with my mother hit my brain like a hammer. Even with the wine the shock was almost overwhelming.
Uncle Earl. He wasn't really my uncle. He, and his wife Rose, had been our neighbors and close friends of the family for as long as I could remember. He was still my neighbor but Rose had died not long after my dad. They lived two doors down and Kenny and I spent almost as much time at their house, playing with their two daughters Alice and Maggie, as we did our own.
Uncle Earl. Fucking my mom. Oh shit. I found myself looking at my childhood from an alien perspective. Once I'd reshuffled more than three decades of memories I had to get another glass of wine.
Gritting my teeth I continued to make my way through stacks of snapshots. Soon I found pictures of Aunt Rose with my dad. And other men. I started making a pile of those photos that involved Uncle Earl and Aunt Rose. I wasn't sure why.
By the time I finished that pile was almost two inches thick and I was feeling extremely woozy. I pushed everything to one side and stretched out on the bed. The ceiling was moving around. When I closed my eyes I felt like I was tumbling through space. I preferred watching the ceiling move to tumbling through space. And then my stomach revolted and began pushing its contents into my throat. I barely made it to the bathroom in time.
When I awoke the next morning I had a fleet of antique fire engines, brass bells clanging, making repeated dashes across my frontal lobes. It was late afternoon before I felt halfway human.
Several times in the course of the day I'd seen or thought about that stack of photos of Aunt Rose and Uncle Earl. As late afternoon faded into twilight I seized them and stuffed the whole bunch into a manila envelope I'd found and, not giving myself enough time for second thoughts, marched to the house two doors down. Taking a deep breath I rang the doorbell.
"Hello Esther," Uncle Earl said as he opened the door. He pushed the screen door ajar, "come in."
"I just came by to bring you these," I said, handing him the envelope.
"Come in," he said again, accepting the package. I had the feeling he knew what it contained.
My inclination was to run home and hide but I couldn't think of a way to refuse. I followed him down the long hall to the kitchen.
"Do you want some coffee?"
"Sure," I said.
We chatted for awhile about the work I'd done on my parent's house and traded stories about what our families were doing. I was just beginning to relax when he picked up the envelope from the table and took a quick look inside.
