Helen was visiting her daughter, Lucy, and Lucy's fiancé, Jason. Unusually for Helen, instead of driving for five hours - which Bob always insisted on whenever they visited Lucy - she came on the train. She also came alone. (Bob had work.) Lucy asked Jason to meet Helen off the 20:14 at Wilmington station.
From her window seat Helen watched the slowly approaching red-brick station along the curve in the track and felt the immense power of the engine vibrating through the train and through her body as steel brakes gripped steel wheels. The momentum of the train ebbed and the cars were finally brought to a halt.
She stepped down from the car. She looked tiny with the smooth silver capsule of the Amtrak train towering above her. She was wearing a black wool overcoat with an embroidered pattern in black thread. A small black overnight case on wheels stood next to her; she was holding a second bag with a thin rope handle and the look of a department store or boutique.
As always, Helen's face was heavily made up. Her red lips seemed to leap off her whitened face. She smiled when she caught sight of Jason, leaning against the wall by the stairs that led down to the street. In return Jason looked relieved to see her smile, as though he might have been expecting something less warm from his fiancée's mother. Helen half lifted an arm to wave but by then Jason was on her, embracing her. She felt her slight body completely engulfed by his strong arms.
Well, she thought, he seems pleased to see me.
And it was good to see him. She felt that familiar, slight disappointment that Jason was of the generation behind hers, and that in a few short months he would be her relation by marriage. She loved the sensation of being enveloped by his hugs - always so enthusiastic - and the feeling that at least for these moments being such a small woman was an unadulterated pleasure. The wild thought of being physically consumed by this man occurred to her again, as it had many times before tonight.
Jason peered at her, smiling, but he seemed to be checking her face as though he were seeing it for the first time, looking at her wrinkled eyes and mouth, perhaps, or checking the roots of her freshly colored hair. She was slightly older, of course, since the last time they had all been together, but she was enough past sixty now that she would probably look more or less the same for many years to come. Physical aging seems to come in sharp and sudden declines after long, idle stretches. Helen thought she was in for a steady run of a few years after an alarming physical decline in her late fifties. She had always been a fit woman, however, and the decline was measured more in terms of looser muscles and increasing sag around the arms and thighs. By any measure she was still a striking woman.
Her make-up was a little too much, as always – even she would concede that. Her eyes were black-lined (in an expressive way, she had thought when she checked herself in the compact just before getting off the train) and foundation powder had caught in the tiny crevices of her face to reveal, instead of conceal, the pattern of wrinkles there; more like finger-print powder. Her hair was a version of blond, reddish, shoulder-length; better-looking, she felt, for a little extra length these last few months. It was held back from her ears with barrettes, which she always thought was a bold and youthful way to wear her hair. And why not? You only go around once.
After a few seconds of 'how are you' and 'you look great,' the typical awkwardness set in between them. It never failed: halting, superficial conversation, and the unshakeable impression that they were meeting for the first time. Their backgrounds were so different – one an egghead PhD in his thirties, the other now in her sixties and a homemaker for nearly forty years with no education past high school – that Helen used to wonder whether Jason's stiltedness was because he thought he was too smart for her. Granted, he'd never actually said anything to suggest as much. Perhaps, she reflected, it was her own insecurity that made her think that way.
It was all very silly, Helen thought. They got along well enough, after all, but she was unable to break through to Jason, to connect at a deeper level. So why, as the train pulled into Wilmington station, had she felt her heartbeat quickening at the prospect of seeing her future son-in-law?
Jason offered his elbow to Helen as they crossed the street to the parking garage. He had never done that before, but Helen smiled with pleasure and gladly slipped her arm through his. Somehow it felt more intimate even than if he had put his arm around her.
Waiting for the elevator in the garage, after a few more lightweight and inconsequential exchanges, Jason surprised Helen with a sudden seriousness that came over his face. He spoke with a frown creasing his brow. He looked like a man carrying a heavy burden that he could no longer shoulder alone.
"You know, Helen, I think I finally know what it is that's made me so uncomfortable around you all these years."
Helen looked at him questioningly.
"It's Bob. It's not you, it's Bob. The reason we keep each other at arm's length like this. The way we can't speak about anything but the weather."
"I'm not following, dear. I didn't know you were uncomfortable with me."
It helps to feign ignorance sometimes.
Jason went on. "It makes perfect sense, really, that the father of my girlfriend and future wife would automatically – even if unconsciously - be a rival to me. It's no wonder that he and I have never got on. And in the same way I can see now that it's natural for me to feel attracted to you, the mother of my future wife."
Helen stared up at his soft brown eyes, set in that angular and muscular face. He looked so earnest, like he'd been struggling with this for a while and had finally worked up the nerve to say it aloud. The moment was mercifully dissolved when the elevator door slid open with a ding and two teenage boys tumbled out, cutting between them. Helen stepped into the elevator then assumed the automatic position, back to the wall and facing straight out through the door.
Jason violated elevator protocol by standing right in front of her, facing her. He was intimidatingly close, towering above her. She felt a small shiver of fear run through her.
Looking down at her he picked up where he had left off.
"I tried to ignore it for years, and then I agonized over it for years more. But when you think about it, if there's some natural resemblance - in looks and mannerism, and also maybe in some aspect of personality - what man wouldn't be attracted by someone who's, in essence, another version of his selected mate?"
In spite of her show of not understanding what he was saying, as she listened to these words (my future son-in-law, she thought, the nerdy professor with the body of a quarterback) Helen felt a small popping sensation in her belly, as though a bubble had just burst inside her, and a soft outward flow of warmth spread upward to her breasts and down to her groin and thighs. She curled her toes inside her black mid-rise pumps as she recognized the very beginnings of a sensation that came all too infrequently these days.
"I'm sorry, Helen." Jason was still looking at her, but now there was a scared, pleading look in his eyes. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. Helen, I'm sorry. Can you please forget what I just said?"
She couldn't help laughing.
"Jason, my dear. Are you okay?" She reached up to feel his forehead.
"Oh god, I'm so embarrassed," he said. "Why did I ever think it was a good idea to actually say something like that?"
"It's okay, Jason. It's not as if I haven't wondered about it myself."
He looked up quickly. "You have?"
"From time to time. I mean, I don't spend all day long on it, that would be foolish, but I defy any woman in my situation to say she's never thought about it."
Jason half-smiled, still looking sheepish.
"Having said that," Helen continued, "thinking about it and acting on it are two very different things."
As she spoke she realized she could feel Jason's hand on her side, inside her coat and against her black cotton dress, gently squeezing her ribcage. She could feel individually each fingertip and thumb pressing into her.
"Jason." Her tone was sharp. A battle was stirring inside her between logic and sensation, clouding her brain as it sent waves of heat cascading through her. There was good common sense in Helen, and a strong sense of right and wrong, especially where her children were concerned; but what was beginning to surge through her, she knew, might be stronger than all of that. She had to fight it while her judgment still held.
The elevator door opened and Jason stepped back. He could not look Helen in the eye; in fact he looked abject, thoroughly ashamed.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered.
In the car, with nothing more said between them, they sat there with the engine on and the heater blowing warm air onto their laps. Jason seemed hesitant; he looked pale and scared by the low light of the dashboard. After a false start he said, with slurred speech as though he wasn't quite in control of himself, "Helen, would you do me a big favor?"
Helen looked over at him. Her mind was in turmoil. "I don't think I can answer that unless I know what the favor is."
"Would you mind if, while we drove home, you hitched up your dress so I could see your legs?"
Helen caught her breath for just a second. She felt her face tighten as she automatically reacted the way she would to any inappropriate suggestion. Jason saw the change and immediately looked panicked. In his scared eyes she could see the collapse of all he had with Lucy, the ugly scenes that would play out, the humiliation and shame. She also saw his terror at the idea of losing what he obviously valued so much. She realized then that Jason was at the mercy of his physical attraction to her, and it was so powerful that he was risking everything for it. He was a slave to his passion for Helen.
That's the kind of attention that can make a woman do bold things.
Did she decide, or did she react instinctively? Was her body making this decision? Her body was certainly making a suggestion... Her mind would never allow her to think that this was a good idea, and yet the mind can be overruled.
She sighed in confusion.
