"Uh, Mom?"
"Yeah Sweetie, what is it?" Theresa Johnson looked up at her oldest daughter while she fixed sack lunches for her two other daughters before they left for school.
Becca Johnson was profoundly uncomfortable facing her mother. She was sent to talk to her mother about an uncomfortable subject not because, at 19, she was the oldest of three girls but because she had drawn the short straw – two out of three times. She made her sisters redraw twice and she lost each of the redraws two out of three; maybe it was fate – or maybe her sisters had rigged the draw.
Becca fidgeted and felt herself blush. Her mother was too busy to notice, she was fixing the last sandwich. "What is it, dear?" Theresa asked without looking up.
"Um...Mom. It's been over a year since..."
When Theresa heard
It's been over a year since
she took a deep breath, put the top on her next oldest daughter Alison's sandwich and slowly looked up at Becca.
Becca immediately thought,
Oh, God.
Theresa smiled as she looked at her blushing daughter. "Go ahead, Bec. It's okay. I know what you're going to say; I heard Ali and Lisa talking, no," Theresa corrected herself," conspiring against you, the other night when I was putting the towels in the linen closet."
Becca's mouth was open in exasperation with her sisters and half in relief. "So...I, um, don't need to give you the speech about Dad wanting you to get out..."
"No Sweetie. Your father made it explicitly clear that I was to find someone," she paused, her eyes getting moist, but her voice did not falter, "if he didn't, you know, make it back."
Becca rushed to her mother and hugged her tightly. They both shared a sniffle in remembrance of Colonel Robert W. Johnson, U.S. Marine Corps, husband and father, who one week before rotating home from the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, was killed when a rocket propelled grenade shot down the chopper he was riding in to catch his flight home. Robert and Theresa would have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary just two months after he returned home. He was slated to retire in the spring of the following year.
Theresa and Becca broke their embrace, each wiping tears from their cheeks. Theresa reached out and held her daughter's face tenderly. "Bec, Sweetie, I'd had so much preparation when I saw those two Marines walking up the sidewalk that day in their dress blues with the priest. Your dad had been in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq the first time and Afghanistan and probably a dozen other places I'm not supposed to know about. We both knew someday his luck would run out and...well, baby, it ran out. Okay? Now it's us. And I am so grateful for you girls watching out for me but really, I'm okay. Okay?"
"Sure, Mom."
"Besides, your crazy aunt Victoria has set me up on some blind lunch date today with someone she knows."
Becca's face lit up. "And you're going?"
"Yeah. I figure what the hell, eh?"
Becca hugged her mother again and they both laughed though Theresa was less than enthused about blind dates. But then, she thought, it was lunch.
~~~~~~~~~
After Lunch and the Traffic Stop
The blind lunch date was not a total disaster, in fact, Theresa had a good time. It was a guy she had met at one of her sister's parties and she had a pretty good idea that her lunch date and her sister Victoria were sleeping together on a regular basis.
As Theresa raced from the Plaza, across the state line and west up Shawnee Mission Parkway, she reached for her cell phone and dialed her sister.
"I suppose the fact that you're calling me now and I hear automotive noises means you didn't get laid?" Victoria asked in a matter-of-fact tone.
"No, sweet little sister, I didn't get laid. But I'm not mad. I had fun. I needed some fun all right."
"Well, um, so what happened that, you know, you didn't have a nooner?"
"Well Vic, remember our pet Chihuahua Rod when we were kids at Cherry Point?"
"Yeah."
"And remember how Rod liked to try to mount the neighbor's German Shepherd all the time and how ridiculous that looked?"
"Um, yeah."
"Well, just about the time I was ready to let him take me for a roll in the hay I got this mental picture of my date as Rod and me as the German Shepherd and I started laughing and couldn't stop. Victoria, you do remember I'm almost six feet tall and your friend, my suitor for the day, was all of, what, five six?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then Victoria answered. "Look, sis, a cock is a cock and he knows how to use it pretty well. You should have gotten laid. Beggars can't be choosers, you know. But seriously, sis, he is very good in bed and I was willing to let him have you...I mean, my heart was in it."
Theresa laughed. "I know, you meant well."
Theresa turned south onto Antioch as she continued to talk to her sister. She had just crossed 75th street and was headed down into what most of the area residents knew as the "spider trap." Between 75th and 79th streets there is a small valley and in the swale of the valley usually sat an Overland Park Police cruiser, like a trap door spider, running radar and catching anyone coming down hill from north or south who was going over the 35 mph speed limit. Theresa was going 47 according to the ticket.
Theresa had crossed 79th before she heard the whoop of the siren and looked in her rear view mirror to see the police car in pursuit. Theresa swore softly, said goodbye to her sister and promptly pulled over. She suddenly had an outrageous idea. She giggled to herself; she'd seen it in the movies and thought
oh, why not
?"
She quickly checked her short, razor cut hair in the mirror. It was sort of a modified Marine buzz cut that accented her salt and pepper hair. It also accented her sort of spooky slate gray eyes, her long, sinuous neck and her high cheek bones. She checked her makeup quickly, then she unbuttoned her silk blouse exposing a large amount of fairly firm, bra less cleavage and she hiked her skirt more than half way up her tanned runner's thighs. She was prepared to wow the male patrolman and maybe avoid a ticket.
Theresa's fun ended abruptly, just as in the movies when the female driver has gone to all the trouble of semi-exposing herself, and she is suddenly faced with a female officer.
"Where's the fire ma'am?" The blond female officer with the mirrored aviator glasses asked as she bent into the window and faced Theresa.
"Uh," Theresa gave a little laugh, "before I answer that question officer, could I ask if maybe you're, uh, you know...?"
"If I'm
what
ma'am?" There was the slightest hint of offense in the officer's voice.
"Uh, I mean, um, you don't have a male partner back in the cruiser who would, you know, appreciate the fact that my breasts and thighs are practically bare, do you?"
The officer laughed and smiled a huge smile. "Ma'am, I gotta hand it to you, you have made my day. No. I don't have a male partner and yes, I
am
, if that's what you were wanting to ask and yes, I appreciate what you've done to yourself in order to avoid the ticket. A runner I'm guessing by the tone and shape of those thighs."
"Yes," Theresa smiled up at the officer, "I try to run a few miles a week."
"However, as so very appealing as I find you," the officer continued, her voice relaxed and still holding her pleasure at Theresa's outlandishness, "the fact remains that you were going 47 in a 35 and, please pardon my language, I got your ass dead to rights, ma'am. Now. License, registration and proof of insurance. Please, ma'am."
Theresa felt ridiculous for the way she tried to get out of the ticket but she was pleased that her and the officer seemed to have gotten along so well. She easily produced everything the officer asked for and the officer took all the items back to her cruiser to call it in.
In a few minutes Theresa saw the officer get out of her car and come back to the car. The officer handed Theresa the ticket and asked her to sign. As Theresa was signing the officer took a long, appreciative look at Theresa. Theresa caught the appraisal and fixed a curious stare at the blond officer. But the officer didn't know what to make of Theresa's response; the moment passed. Theresa handed the ticket book back to the officer and the officer handed Theresa her driver's license and other paperwork back and Theresa, somewhat embarrassed, somewhat curiously aroused and somewhat annoyed, continued on her journey to her office.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lonely is the Night
Becca Johnson was out with friends. Alison and Lisa Johnson were each spending the Friday night overnight with separate friends. The house was quiet. Theresa sat, half asleep and nursing her third glass of wine since eating dinner alone, in her favorite chair in the family room and watching TV. She didn't normally drink that much and she rarely sat in front of the TV drinking but she felt different of late. She reluctantly realized she was lonely and not necessarily for just companionship either. Her husband and she had quite a sex life, even when he was thousands of miles from home on assignment he'd send her an email or give her a call (his favorite saying, once he reached full colonel, was
rank has its privileges