"I don't think you're hearing me," I said angrily to the twelve men sitting around the table in front of me. "You've got to improve all your time tables by three weeks and I don't want to hear a word about overruns." I'd officially been running things for over six months now, but I knew the project managers running each of our sites didn't respect me. They saw me as some punk twenty-four-year-old kid who was only running things because his father's name was on the company. That was hard to argue, since they were essentially correct. Before he was forced to throw himself headfirst into the business, Tony knew virtually nothing about construction, but with his father's stroke Tony had little choice but to learn quickly.
"We're hearing you," one of the men, who like most of them, was around his father's age and had worked his way up the ladder the hard way. "But we're just trying to say it might not get done. You don't understand some of the problems we can encounter. Like if the spring continues to be so wet it's going to push everything back."
"I do understand, but I also understand that if interest rates nose up again it could change the whole dynamic of the marketplace and we want to have deals in place before that happens. George tells me even a quarter percent could have huge consequences." George was George Markarian, CFO of Di Angelo Construction. "Come on, guys, work with me here. I know you're all professionals and I trust your advice, but I need you to trust me a little too. We need to keep this all running until my father can come back and take control again." Yeah, I know bringing my father up was cheap, but it always got them to fall into line.
It's not like bringing my father up was easy for me. The truth was that baring a miracle, Paul DiAngelo would never be running his company or anything else again. Eight months ago he'd suffered a massive stroke at our beach house and was now in a coma in a rehab center. His brain activity was nil and doctors told us there was just no coming back from what he'd suffered. Still, I knew my mom had hope and I did too, if for no other reason than just to assuage my guilt.
Only two people know the details surrounding my father's stroke and my sister Gwen and I are the only two that will ever know the truth. Of course he was stressed, running a multi-million dollar company, but what could fell a strong, healthy fifty-one-year-old man like that? It could have been the shock of seeing his son, who he'd been at odds with for years, fucking his little princess in the hot tub. Not one of my prouder moments, but honestly we weren't hurting anyone. We loved each other and we were taking proper precautions against pregnancy. If our affair stayed secret it wouldn't have hurt anyone. But our father caught us and keeled over and had been in that hospital bed ever since. The irony is that because of that very turn of events my father got what he'd always wanted, his son running his business.
After the meeting, I went over the mounds of paperwork and contracts on my desk until well past sunset; before finally turning out the light and heading home. I worked so many late nights that the cleaning woman and I were on a first name basis. I knew Mom would be at home alone and I felt bad that I couldn't be there for her more, but the only way I could learn the business was to put in the time.
Katherine DiAngelo was a strong woman and I knew she was coping as best as she could. My father wasn't dead, but even so my mother was alone for the first time in her adult life. After months of friends' urging she was getting back to her old routine, but she still relied heavily on me to be the man in her life. Of course I didn't mind; I loved my mother deeply and would have done anything she asked, even take my father's place at his company, but the guilt motivated me too.
When I parked the Range Rover on the circular driveway in front of the house I could see the light on in the foyer, but the rest of the house was dark. The maid would have gone home for the night and Mom was alone in the house. I called out her name as I walked in, but received no response and figured she must have been upstairs in her room. Our house is very large, one of those mansions the nouveau riche build, so it's easy to imagine she couldn't hear me. I dropped my bag at the bottom of the steps and headed into the kitchen to crack a beer. I was halfway through it when Mom appeared.
"Mind if I join you?" She asked.
"Of course not. Let me open one for you." I fetched a second beer from the fridge and poured it into a frosty mug from the fridge. For myself, drinking from the bottle was just fine.
"Tough day?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"I just recognize the look. Your father had the same expression when he came home from work late, which was almost every night. It's amazing how much you look like him, but yet you couldn't be more different."
I felt like saying thank you, but I didn't want to upset her. The fact that I wasn't more like the old man had been the main source of friction between us. "I'm sorry I don't get out of the office earlier."
"Tony, you don't owe me an apology. I am a grown woman and I can look after myself. Besides, like I said, your father was usually home later than this anyway."
Yes, Mom was a grown woman, although it was uncomfortable to think of her that way. Unfortunately, sometimes I thought of her more as a woman than as my mother, which was not a good thing. Although she was approaching fifty, she looked a good ten years younger and there was no mistaking that she'd been a beauty queen in her youth. With a little salon help, Mom's hair was the same soft honey blonde it had always been; and even with the stress of the last months her beautiful face was still unlined, except for some laugh lines that only made her more comely. She's an active woman, so her body is still curvy in all the right places. If anything, having two children only served to make her more womanly. I know it's odd to think of your mother in these terms, but ever since I'd heard some friends commenting on how hot she was when I was a teen I hadn't been able to ignore it. I'll never forget them commenting on her breasts, which are admittedly beautiful, and her round ass. But just because I noticed didn't mean it ever went beyond that. I'm ashamed of the times I masturbated and images of her would pop into my head.
"I know you're a grown woman, Mom, but you can't blame me for wanting to look after you. I feel like it's my place now."
"It's very sweet that you want to take care of me," Mom said, setting her mug down and pulling me into a tight hug. God, could she hug. Mom was in her bedclothes, which on a warm spring night meant a silk pajama shirt and little matching shorts. Of course I'd noticed the way her breasts swayed under the top and the thin silk did nothing to hide her thick nipples; and now all that was pressed right against me. I made sure to turn so she wouldn't feel anything if my little friend decided not to cooperate. Still, it felt good to hug Mom back.
"I'm starving. Is there anything good?" I asked.
"I kept a plate for you from dinner. I want you to sit down while I heat it up for you."
Sitting at the table while Mom heated dinner up for me felt nice and it made me think about how nice it would be to have a wife of my own someday. I know it's a cliché, but a woman just like Mom would be great. While she went about pulling my dinner together I asked Mom how her day went.
"I went to the club and worked on my tennis game, but I've become quite dreadful, I'm afraid. I'm not good enough to take months off from the game and just pick it up again. I'm thinking of taking some time with the pro to get back up to snuff. There's a doubles tournament coming up in a few weeks and I don't want to let Missy Carrington down if we play together."
"That's a great idea." I always found it funny that these grown women went by names like Missy and Muffy and Buffy. Even my mother was known as Kitty among her friends.
"Do you think your sister will come home for spring break?" Mom asked sadly.
"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if she was headed somewhere tropic."
"I would love to see her again."
"I'll try to call her again, but I can't promise anything." Gwen hadn't been home since she'd left for college weeks after our father's stroke. I know guilt is what kept her away. She couldn't stand seeing Dad in that bed feeling partially responsible for putting him there. I told her she couldn't blame herself, but she just wouldn't listen. I also know that she can't face me. She didn't return my emails and was always conveniently out when I called. I desperately wanted to talk to her about what happened, but if she wasn't ready to deal with it yet I had to respect that.
Mom set a plate down in front of me and brought a fresh beer. There was her delicious homemade meatloaf and a giant mound of mashed potatoes and I attacked that plate like I hadn't eaten for a week. Mom was smiling and I knew she liked that I was home again where she could take care of me. Before I returned last summer, I'd been gone for five years, serving my country in the Marine Corps. Most recently I'd been in Iraq, trying to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East. I saw a lot of things over there that made me doubt our mission, but I'd never had a reason to doubt the bravery and dedication of the people I served with over there. Being in Iraq was one of the worst times in my life, but knowing those men and women was one of the best. My father's disapproval had been the thing that kept me away for so long. It's funny how someone who was so strong and independent didn't want me to be my own man.
"Tony, you're so tense. You feel like steel," Mom said, placing her hands on my broad shoulders. "You really should take a massage at the club, or at least soak in the hot tub for a while." As I finished up eating, Mom began to rub my shoulders, digging into the muscles with surprising strength. I closed my eyes and rested my head back against her chest as she rubbed me. I took a deep breath and let it out and Mom told me, "That's it sweetie, just let it all go. You can't carry that kind of tension around, it's not healthy." She was doing an excellent job of relieving that tension. As a relaxed I settled down, pressed my head harder against her chest and I could feel Mom breathing. In the back of my neck I felt one of her puffy nipples, very hard, poking in the back of my neck. Oh boy, that was the last thing I needed. For just a second I almost forgot she was my mother and I knew I should make her stop, but I wasn't about to try and stand up. Instead I just sat there and thought about baseball and the Pledge of Allegiance.
