"I'm just saying that the house is more than you need to be handling now, Mother."
"I like this house, John. I'm not going to just cut and run because I'm alone now."
"I've seen the toll it's taken on you." Joyce's son, determined to get the unpleasant topic out in the open now that his dad had been gone for four months, set his jaw, prepared to dig in.
"That was because all of the care your dad required those last two years," John's wife, Susan, chimed in. "Mother Creasy looks absolutely luminous now, don't you think? And the house. It's never been in better shape. Look out into the garden. It looks terrific. I'd say your mother was doing just fine here."
John glared at his wife across the patio table on the terrace. They had had this discussion before they'd driven over here. Susan hadn't supported him then, but she certainly hadn't indicated that she would undercut him here. His mother was pushing seventy. She'd been frail and depressed by her husband's long illness, and they'd all feared she wouldn't be able to cope even until her husband had passed. She had, but now she was alone, she was old, and the house was too much for her. John was quite willing to take the house over when his mother went into a retirement community. In fact he was anxious to do so; it was just what Susan and he needed, in the right neighborhood, and, he had to admit that Susan was right; it looked in top shape right now.
Joyce set her gaze past her son and daughter-in-law, politely acting like she didn't see the daggers being tossed back and forth. Her focus went to the young, black college student, Travis, she'd hired two months before her husband had died out of desperation as a general handyman and to bring the garden back from the brink of jungle and to do some of the minor repairs on the house itself. Travis had finished mowing what little yard there was in Joyce's naturalized garden and now was pruning the bushes that were best cut back as they were preparing to go dormant in the fall.
Travis had been a godsend—in so many ways.
"I think I can manage quite well here as long as Travis is willing to provide his services," she said, cutting in over the muttering between John and Susan. "He's been a godsend. He's highly capable, and it gives me a good feeling to provide a disadvantaged but deserving young man like that a job while he's struggling through college."
"Well, I wish he'd wear more than that when he works here," John muttered. "I don't know why the young women in this neighborhood wag their tongues at someone from over in his section of town when they pass your yard. Whenever we're here there's some young woman walking slow past here and mooning over him."
It's probably because he has a body to die for, Joyce thought. But she didn't say it.
"More cake or iced tea?" was what she said instead, smiling sweetly.
* * * *
"More cake or iced tea?" Joyce asked Travis as he cooled down from his shower at the end of his day in the garden. He was sitting at the kitchen table with just a towel around his waist. It had been three months since Joyce had insisted that it was silly that he would have to go home clear across town sweaty from a day's work on a particularly hot summer. Since then, having him shower here was more of a benefit for Joyce than for him, she recognized.
"No, ma'am, thanks. It was good, but I've had enough."
"Would you be interested in something else sweet today? You've finished early. I've paid you through another hour."
"Yes, ma'am, that would be nice."
Joyce rose from her chair, took a step toward his, and lowered her face for a kiss. Her hand ran down to his heavily muscled chocolate-brown chest and she sighed at the hardness of him and the way his nipples puffed up at her touch. The glories of young men, she thought. Always ready to go.
His hand went to the buttons on her blouse. After John and Susan had left and before Travis had come into the house, Joyce had taken her bra off. She liked the feel of skin on the material as she contemplated the services Travis provided for her. He fumbled with the button and zipper of her pants, and as they lowered, she happily felt him shudder and heard him gasp when he realized she wasn't wearing any panties either. His lips went to her belly and he licked and kissed her there as she held his head to her stomach between her hands, enjoying the feel of short coarse hair and the clean, musky scent of a young man. She enjoyed everything about Travis' hard-muscled body, especially the ramrod thickness of him inside her.