Barbara's tears fell on the white pillow case. After sobbing for several minutes, she reflected on what she had heard. She couldn't have imagined that comments regarding a photograph that had been taken twenty-years ago--nearly half a lifetime ago--could hurt so much. The photograph of Gordon and her displayed in the antique, sterling silver frame that sat on the grand piano in the study, was her favorite. It had been snapped at the beach. They were hugging each other and smiling. She wore a modest one-piece bathing suit but it did little to hide her perfect figure. They were about as attractive as a couple could be. It was what had been said, a few minutes earlier, about that picture that caused her to run to her room and bury her head in her pillow.
"Who's the fox in the photo with your dad?" Asked Troy, Megan's new boyfriend. Troy was a junior and Megan was a sophomore at state college. Barbara thought they may be getting serious. She remembered that she was also a sophomore, but Gordon had been a senior, when she met his family and he met hers for the first time. She never became a junior because they were married when Gordon graduated, then she worked full-time to put him through law school.
Neither Megan nor Troy knew that Barbara was standing just around the corner from the study, or they would never have said what they did. They weren't being cruel, just candid. Barbara hadn't intended to eavesdrop on their conversation but she clearly heard every word.
"That's my mom in the photo with my dad," answered Megan.
"You must be kidding! Well, tell me . . . what happened to her? Did she get sick or something?"
"No," Megan sighed, then, with a touch of embarrassment, she explained. "She just got old."
"Gee Meg, your dad looks better today than he did in the picture but . . . your mom . . . well she must have gained a lot of weight and the grey hair sure doesn't help," he said candidly and sympathetically.
"Yeah," Megan agreed. "She doesn't take care of herself like she used to when I was a little girl. She never goes to the beauty parlor anymore," she said. We've sort of given up . . . neither of us push her anymore, maybe we should," said Megan.
"How old are your folks?" Asked Troy.
"My dad's forty-five, mom's forty-three."
"Forty-three! I can't believe it, my mom's older than that . . . you've seen her, she's still hot."
Megan sighed again and turned away from Troy. She wished this unpleasant conversation would end. "She really is forty-three, Troy, like I told you. I know, I know she looks much older than that. I guess some people just age faster than others."
"I'll say. She looks more like sixty. Too bad."
Barbara couldn't bear to just stand there and listen to one more word. She turned and ran to the master bedroom that she had shared with Gordon since they moved into the house fifteen years ago. She remembered that when they moved into the house she still looked very much as she did in the picture on the piano. She was trim, well groomed, some called her beautiful. Not just Gordon, he had to say that she was beautiful because he was her husband, but she knew that others frequently referred to her as beautiful. Then, she was tall, elegant and moved gracefully. Back then, long brown, glistening hair crowned her head and framed her gorgeous face. Her big eyes were brown, her complexion creamy and without a blemish.
She wasn't stupid, she knew that what they had said was the truth and sometimes the truth hurts, this was one of those times. She once was a fox, as the kids called sexy women today and as Troy had called the smiling woman in the photograph with Gordon. That seemed so very long ago. Now, she was carrying an extra sixty pounds, no wonder she was always tired. Her waist was nearly as big around as her hips and bosom. It seemed that her dress size had been increasing one size each year until now it was a size fourteen. Her hair was no longer brown and shining but grey and dull. Her face had been her best feature, now it was the puffy, sad face of a woman who had aged before her time. The lines at the corners of her eyes that had been so fine when she first noticed them, were now deeply etched into the surface of her skin. Her lips were seldom covered with lipstick anymore and when they were it didn't take long for the color to flare into the small cracks. She had stopped wearing contact lenses several years ago. They were just too much trouble and had been replaced by sensible but unflattering glasses. She knew she was a mess and she hated it.
The worst thing about her deterioration was that she no longer liked for Gordon to see or touch her naked body. When she slipped into the big bed at night, she always wore a comfortable nightgown that left only her feet and arms uncovered. But when they first moved into the house she longed for his caresses. She loved for him to see her naked, to make love to her, the more frequently, the better. Then, she was always moist and ready. Now, she literally seemed to be drying up.
She had heard Troy ask Megan, "did your mom get sick?" Megan said that she hadn't, she had just gotten old but forty-three wasn't old, thought Barbara. Maybe Megan was wrong, maybe she was ill, maybe her illness was depression or some other psychological problem. No matter what the reason, she knew that she couldn't go on like this. Something had to change and change very soon. She wanted to become, once again, the woman in the photo. Alive, eager, beautiful, sexy, sexual, in other words, as Troy had said, a fox.
Barbara wished that Gordon would hurry home from the office. She so desperately needed to talk with him.
Chapter 2
As Gordon Barton aimed the silver Mercedes 500 S north along the lake shore, he thought that he should be the happiest man on earth. He was a partner in a prestigious law-firm. He loved his work. Megan, his daughter, was the apple of his eye. She was smart as a whip. Everything should have been perfect, but it wasn't perfect. He was very worried about his wife. He had been worried about her for years. He wasn't at all proud of one aspect, an intimate side, of his personal life.
God, how he loved her. But their relationship had evolved into one that was much more like a brother sister relationship than a husband wife relationship. It had been more than a month since they had made hasty love one morning before the sun came up. They both knew that his desire for her did not cause his morning erections, or anything that she had done because of her desire for him, but by the pressure from his bladder. Now, it would have been impossible for her to place her legs over his shoulders and pound up against him. Yet that was the way it had been for them for several years, a dramatic reduction not only in frequency but also the intensity of their love making. Her weight and the nightgowns she wore were like layers of armor and a real turn- off for him. Nonetheless, he deeply cared for her. He had almost resigned himself to a relationship that was becoming only platonic. They did cuddle in the big king-size bed but that was about it except for the infrequent, furtive morning couplings.
They had planned on a sister or a brother for Megan but it was not to be. They tried and tried by Barbara didn't get pregnant. Finally, a fertility specialist ran several tests and reported that he produced enough potent sperm to create an army but, because of scarring, Barbara would never create and bear another child. He really believed that there might be a correlation between her weight gain, disinterest in her appearance, the waning of her libido and the early end of her child bearing years.
Half his partners had solved similar problems in a way that was distasteful to him. They had married second wives, trophy wives. Though the firm had a policy against it, most of their trophy wives had been young associates, para-legals, receptionists or assistants at the firm or someone that they had met from the client side. He wasn't blind or dead and found himself surrounded every day by beautiful, sexy, bright women. Women whom he knew found him attractive and let it be known, oh so subtly, that they were available and would welcome an advance from him. The availability was tempting and sure wasn't easy to resist but he had never strayed. Well, he had never strayed in Chicago.
His practice, securities law, required that he travel to New York City several times a year. After the day's work was completed, more often than not, he found himself alone with nothing to do and he really hated being alone. Hell, he was only in his forties. He didn't want the life of a seventy-year-old until he was a seventy-year-old, or maybe even an eighty-year-old.
Gordon had no idea what possessed him to do it but, for some reason, one night nearly a year ago when he was in New York, he was restless and wandered into a topless bar near his hotel. He felt out of place. He took a seat in the shadows against a wall as far from the stage as possible. What he saw excited him in a way that he hadn't been excited since the old Barbara was absorbed into the enlarged body of the asexual new Barbara. Two young, very beautiful dancers were on the stage. They weren't just topless, as he expected them to be, they were bottomless as well. They were smiling at the men who were leering up at them and tossing dollar bills on the wooden stage. They brazenly rubbed their breasts and tweaked their swollen nipples. Then, they would crouch down and spread their legs giving those men seated around the stage a bird's eye, gynecological view of their trimmed vaginas.
As he watched the dancers and the audience's reaction to them, he too found himself becoming aroused. He stayed at the club and watched the dancers for half an hour. He couldn't relax in the place because he feared he would be discovered by a client or a colleague. As he was leaving, he noticed a stack of tabloid newspapers near the entrance door and a sign above them inviting customers to "take one." He took a copy of "New York After Dark," rolled it up and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
