Your Mom & Your Dad

Your mom silently slips under the sheets while your dad changes into a fresh tee and washes his face. She is so quiet and pale, a sadness that you wouldn’t recognize, fetal and unmoving, her back uncharacteristically pointed in the direction of your dad as he prepares for bed. He plops himself down on his side of the mattress so that it sends the largest possible shock in the direction of your mom, probably hoping to bounce her upward and out of this silence so unlike her. Your mom just lies there. “Honey?” your dad coos. She acknowledges his call nonverbally with a weak noise from her throat that he almost cannot hear. “It now has been two weeks,” he continues. Your mom exhales. She says she knows but misses you the same. Your dad places his hand on top of the covers over the mound made by your mom’s substantial thighs, you know the ones, you got them too, and reminds her that she knew from the very beginning that these days would come. Your mom repeats that she knows but still she misses you the same! Your dad sighs. “That’s actually not what I meant,” he tells her. Your mom turns now to look at him and asks just what he meant. “I meant that it’s been two weeks since we’ve... you know,” he says, and then he adds that, for Christ’s sake, he misses her, punctuating his plea with a round of bouncing eyebrows. Your dad takes his finger and taps her on the shoulder. This is what he does to let your mom know he wants to go down. Catching on, your mom starts to smile, maybe for the first time since you left, then touches the hand still resting over her thigh and scoots toward him so that she can lean on his chest. Your mom tells your dad carefully that she loves him but is not in the mood. Your dad already knew this; it isn’t hard to figure out, but shifts anyway into face-to-face spooning and tells her he loves her so much. After trying to persuade her by attempting to stare deeply into her eyes, resisting the urge to blink, he decides to bring up the notion that you’re probably having the time of your life. “I know,” she says. “A new place,” your dad reasons, “with new people and new classes... new and pretty fucking expensive!” He tells her it’s probably everything you’ve been waiting to experience. “I know,” she says again and again but she doesn’t know really because your mom never went to college. Neither did your dad. “But I still—” she starts to say but this time your dad interrupts and reminds her that he misses you too! “But you know what?” he says, “life goes on and on and we’ve simply got to go on with it, or else we’ll get plowed over!” So that he knows she heard him, your mom nods her head against your dad’s chest, no longer as impressively rock-hard as it once was but still thick and obviously manly and runs her fingers over the broad bulb of his belly. He returns these gestures by finding a breast beneath her shirt, letting the warm bag of flesh hang over his grip. “We do have the house all to ourselves now,” she says, kind of teasingly but with a sexy shimmer in her eye. “That’s one way to look at it,” he replies, trying not to sound too excited despite the obvious evidence underneath. Your mom tells your dad that she wants to make another baby. He laughs but stops when he realizes she is not laughing. “Tomorrow I’ll go in to have my vasectomy reversed,” he says. She asks if he’s serious, half-knowing he isn’t. “Besides,” he says, “another baby would grow up and leave us just the same. Do you want to do it all over?” Your mom tells your dad that she would not want to do it all over. She will always miss you, she adds. No matter what. At this point, your mom buries her face into the warmth of your dad’s armpit while he slowly slides a hand, the one that’s been resting on the outside over her hip this whole time, the one now cold from the nighttime air, under the covers and behind the skin of her knee. Your mom jumps forward, yipes that the hand is freezing, but lets him keep it there anyway. Before long, your dad’s hand warms up, at which point he moves it up and toward the thicker end of her body until reaching that faint border over which your mom’s leg becomes your mom’s big butt. He holds what he can of it with his hand wide open and she lifts her head and kisses his chin as if to say, “I’ve missed you too, honey.”

The next day, your dad comes home from work and the house is quiet and appears empty. “Honey?” he calls out. “Let’s do it again but this time in the kitchen.” When he receives no answer, your dad looks around and finds light seeping from the closed door of the bathroom. Your dad taps the door with his knuckle and says “Baby? I’m home.” But instead of the expected reciprocation, a quick “Hi honey!” possibly between private pushing, he hears short, almost soundless spurts of someone sobbing. He opens the door, which your mom didn’t think to lock, and finds her sitting on the closed toilet, bent over with her wet face in her hands. Your dad goes to her and asks, “What happened? What’s wrong?” Your mom opens her arms and attaches to him. She cries. On the counter, your dad notices a pregnancy test. “You’re kidding me!” he exclaims as he picks it up and reads the only possible result. “Honey... I’m clipped and you’re well past menopause, so how could you even—” he begins to ask, but as she continues to cry louder and he moves to hold your mom with both of his arms, your dad begins to understand.