As the reader knows from my last two stories, I became obsessed with the taped narrations I found among the junk in an old house. I had been renovating the tall, narrow triplex, once owned by a family member, in my spare time from my job as a firefighter here in north New Jersey. The tape recordings centered around a disabled young woman, coerced, at least in the beginning, into sex with her horny father. She ended up being essentially his lifelong lover, and enjoyed every twisted second of it, she confessed. I made MP3 copies and listened to sections of them every chance I got, jerking off madly.
With time alone since a bad breakup, I wanted to share these rare confessions, so I transcribed both his tape and hers for my favorite porn story site. Looking for more information about her in the basement, I located some old power bills, photos and phone company employee magazines and deduced her full name and scanned all the pictures of her; bad group photos, but I enlarged her images the best I could. Tiny, crippled, dark-eyed Elizabeth and her voice describing her deviant immersion into sex was my unhealthy obsession for a while and kind of got me through the breakup. Finally I snapped out of it and realized I had to rejoin the real world. I put the revealing recordings out of my mind. I had almost finished the house when a few comments at a July Fourth family picnic sent me into a tailspin.
"Isn't that where Gino and his little girl lived for so long?" An Uncle asked an Aunt as they commented about the dwelling. I had just been showing them pics of the house's fresh paint and shiny refinished floors on my iPhone. We were next to a relative's backyard pool, holding plastic plates of baked beans and grilled burgers. I shrugged off their comments until the next sentence. "Yeah, his wife died and daughter was handicapped, always on crutches. Hit by a car or somethin' as a kid, poor thing. Phone operator, never married that I know of." I almost dropped my food into the pool.
Big Gino was my Grandmother's cousin, or so I remembered, but I never actually met him or knew his last name. He was only referred to as 'Papa' in the tapes, so I had no idea it was the same guy. My pulse raced. Of course I hadn't told anyone about the treasures in that basement. Besides, anyone who I did tell would think it was sick that I was so turned on by the incestuous events anyway.
I began to realize, the woman from the tape, Bess, may still be around and I could maybe meet her! Of course it would be just to satisfy my curiosity; she would be almost seventy by now. It would probably ruin my delusions, meeting her as a grandmotherly, flesh and blood person and not just a vision in my head. Maybe it would be just the dose of reality I would need to resume a normal life. Everyone at the picnic was already asking me if I was 'putting myself back out there yet' in reference to dating.
For the rest of the picnic I nonchalantly polled relatives for information on Bess, er, Elizabeth, my distant cousin. She had moved out to the suburbs the last they heard. Later I practically raced home to check the internet. She had lived in a brick ranch in West Orange since the seventies, but a later another public real estate record out towards Lake Hopatcong had her name on a retirement community condo out there a couple years ago. Bingo.
All during the week of my shift at the firehouse, I pondered what to do. Even my coworkers noticed I was kind of quiet. I made up some bull about coming down with a summer head cold, a close enough cover. I kept telling myself this was just an innocent visit to a long lost relative to return some old magazines and work mementos she may have forgotten from the basement. Innocent, not to further fuel my masturbatory visions, not at all.
2
The next Saturday morning, I nervously drove out to her condo community. I nearly turned around twice. Once there, I suddenly realized my visit may not happen. They had a security gate. If he called her, she wouldn't know who the hell I was. End of trip. However, I was driving my truck with its darkened but big square emergency flashers on the dashboard and firefighter license plates, so luckily the guy waved me on. Maybe he was thinking I was doing smoke alarm courtesy checks or something official.
Heart racing, I tapped on the glass storm door of the well-groomed brick duplex building. Suddenly a short woman in a red track suit and visor appeared. Her hair was white and curly on top of her head and she was towing a scraped up green oxygen tank on wheels. She looked up at me and smiled below her clear nasal tube. Her eyes were a bright blue. Not my cousin.
"Lizzie, you've got a young man here!" the woman called out behind her, as she passed me while I held the door open.
"Okay!" a voice from inside shouted. A little rough from age, but
her
voice, the one from the cassette that I had made into an MP3 and listened to repeatedly. I had to stay calm.
I stepped further into the perfectly clean and cheerfully decorated condo, and turned a corner. The living room was open to the kitchen, which had lowered counters and cabinets to accommodate her vertical challenges. The unusual room was almost a surreal background to my first sight of her.
There she was, sitting on a three-wheeled electric scooter. The olive-skinned beauty could have passed for late fifties. Her eyes were big, pretty and brown, just like the photos I had found. Now her hair was different, of course, silver and straight, down past her chin, and combed straight back off her face and held by a long yellow barrette on the top of her head. She was wrapped loosely in a mauve, shiny robe, open enough above her waist to reveal a yellow flower-print top with a gathered square neckline. It seemed to be thin cotton, probably a nightgown, based on her skinny, bare legs.
To my surprise, she cried out in fear and dropped her mug, it hit the linoleum floor with a thud and a splash of coffee.
"Sorry, your neighbor let me in. I'm..."
"Oh God, it's not that! I thought you were a ghost!" She fanned the air and held a slightly wrinkled hand to her upper chest, at an angle to her collar bones.
Thrown off kilter by the minor accident, I forgot to introduce myself right away. I headed straight for the paper towel holder, and then toward the puddle on the floor.
"You look just like my father when he was young," she said through a gasp of relief. "I thought for a second he was back to take me to Purgatory." She smiled for a moment then frowned. "Hey wait, it's Saturday! You're not from Home Health!"
"No ma'am, I'm..."
"Well, whatever you're sellin' sweetie, I'm not buyin'. All my money is tied up in this little slice of heaven!" she said, referring to the small condo. "When they say 'fixed income', they aren't just blowin' smoke out their asses. Oops, sorry I'm so vulgar. Ahh, you're a big, strappin' young man, I'm sure you can take it." She gestured toward me.
