I felt so strange and dirty talking about Kathy in this way at the very moment Bob was making love to me. It seemed that when he spoke of her body or that she was sexually attractive, I could actually feel his penis get harder, his thrust more forceful. It was terribly upsetting, and I had a great deal of difficulty in coming.
THE following Monday, my car was in the shop, so I went downtown that morning to do some shopping on the bus, and told Bob and Kathy that I would go directly from there to the Institute. I had actually chosen that day to have the car worked on because there was no school at the Institute. It was closed for some carpentry work that had to be done on the stage. But Bob and Kathy were not aware of that.
At two o'clock, I got off the bus a block away from the house, walking down the alleyway and slipping in the back door. I heard nothing from the kitchen. The house seemed unusually quiet and still. The whole downstairs was vacant, no sign of anything, no sound.
And then I heard Kathy's voice!
“… crazy darling… oh, crazy darling…”
It came from her room, accompanied by the muffled and unintelligible words of a man. My first impulse was to dash right up to her bedroom and fling open the door! I wanted to claw at Bob with my bare hands, call him every kind of rotten and cheating liar I could think of!
But I paused. I grabbed hold of the banister by the stairway and squeezed it with all my might. I tried to think of what to do, what a rational person would do. Yes! They were in Kathy's bedroom! The spy-scopes Bob had put in three summers before were still in the hall closet! I would see for myself. I would see with my own eyes, and then all of Bob Morgan's powerful brainwashing would not convince me that it was only my imagination. I would see it for myself!
I gained amazing control and crept up the stairs stealthily in my stocking feet. I opened the closet door very slowly, anticipating the slightest squeek and stopping short, pushing up or pulling down to correct it. Parting the hanging clothes very quietly, I was soon up against the back wall of the closet, felling along in front of me for the spy-scopes.
I When I found the one to the right, I stopped dead in my movements. I realized that I was shaking all over. I had been so intent on what I was doing, that I had not listened to the words that were occasionally audible to me.
“… darling oh, crazy, darling,” Kathy was carrying on like before, “Do it more… that way… oh, crazy darling…”
The blood flushed through me like I had just yanked the handle of a toilet. And that was how filthy and dirty I felt too. Like a toilet. Bob was in bed making love to Kathy! I was trembling all over, filled with rage. Yet I still had to see it with my own eyes. I did not want to look. But I had to be one hundred percent sure!
I put both hands flat against the wall on either side of the spy-scope. I leaned forward and let my right eye come to rest against it. The vision was blurred, obscured, there was dirt and dust all over the lens. I pushed myself away and began to breathe, realizing that I had been holding my breath. With my finger, I brushed away the dirt from the lens, and I immediately pressed my eye to it again.
The view was crystal clear this time. Kathy was lying on the bed totally naked, her legs raised in the air and spread apart, her arms wrapped around him, her hips pumping away like mad in a frenzy of lovemaking. It was horrible! I could see his penis stroking as it entered and withdrew from my own daughter in a patterned rhythm and technique that I had taught him.
Ricky was making love to Kathy!
Was it a shock wave of relief I felt, or just a surprise, when I saw that it was Ricky who was making love to my daughter? I don't really know. The confusion and questions welled up in me and I couldn't think straight. Why Ricky? How did he ever get to know Kathy? Why hadn't she told me she knew him? Why? How? Why? How?
I threw reason and logic to the winds when I heard Kathy say, “Oh, Ricky! I'm coming… screw me harder!” I charged through the rack of clothes and out into the hall. When I found the door to Kathy's room locked, I began kicking, screaming and beating on it. I went delirious, hysterical. I was a virtual mad woman!
Within seconds, it seemed, Kathy opened the door and tried to come outside. I pushed her away and entered the room, going straight for the closet door and pulling it open. The sight of Ricky, cowering behind the rack of Kathy's dresses, so idiotically trying to cover his penis with his hands, sobered me more than anything else. For a second, I had the impulse to burst into crazed laughter at the spectacle he presented, but I reached in to grab him by the shoulder and drag him out. He flopped onto the bed when I let go, and quickly covered himself with a sheet.
Kathy had managed to get on a robe before she unlocked the door. There was something so bizarre about this, I thought. Ricky, the boy who I had taught to make love like a man, who I had been naked with in bed for hours at a time, covering himself up like some Victorian prude. But it was not a funny situation. Not when my daughter was involved.
“Denise… let me explain something about…” Ricky tried to speak up like a man.
“Mrs. Bryant!” I shouted him down, glaring at Kathy, who had maintained more composure than he and was standing by the foot of the bed. “What have… how did you meet my daughter?”
“Mrs. Bryant,” he addressed me most courteously, still scared out of his wits, “I… called you last month… about helping me… giving me some extra help in drama before school starts, Kathy… Kathy answered, and we just got to talking, and… well, she invited me over to see her…”
“How long has this been going on? I demanded, looking at Kathy.
“Mother, I am 17-year-old girl now,” she stated, walking up to me as if to challenge my maternal authority, assuming an attitude of pseudomaturity, “I am not that confused little teenager you talked with two years ago… the last time I had a chance to talk with you privately about things a girl needs to talk with her mother about!”
“Ricky… get your clothes and leave,” I managed to say, hiding my face in my hands as I collapsed into a chair.
“Mrs. Bryant… I want to say…”
“Just go…” I insisted, not saying anything or moving until I heard him walking down the steps.
Slowly, I took my hands away from my face and opened my eyes too look at Kathy. She was standing there facing me, the strangest look on her face. I think she was trying to decide, which way to react. At one moment, I was sure she was going to get very angry and strike out for her “rights” and independence. In the next instant, she seemed as if on the verge of tears.
“Oh, Mother! Mother! Help me! Help me-ee!” she cried out suddenly, dropping to her knees and clutching my legs, her eyes searching mine so soulfully. “Mother… I can't help… it. I can't help it, Mother…”
“My darling, beautiful Kathy,” was all I could come up with, as I ran my fingers through her long brown hair and pressed her cheek against my knee. “I never… knew you had such problems… I guess. Oh, I don't know what I'm saying, Kathy. I love you, precious. I've never been able to be much of a… a good mother, even when we're together. How… when did it first happen…?”
“Last fall,” she told me immediately, realizing at once what I meant, “I tried, Mother, but it was no good. This guy I was crazy about… he never gave me a chance when he was in school. Then he dropped out and went in the Army. When he was home on leave, I met him at a dance… and we got, oh, I don't know how it happened. We were dancing, and I just knew that was it. We both got so turned on it was embarrassing for us to stay there in public. He ditched his date and I ditched mine and we went to a motel.”