Balancing Act - Part 7

 

I woke gasping—already knowing, before my eyes even flinched open, what I’d done.

I’d done it. I’d slept with my dad. With the full apparatus of this maternal body and all the betraying, traitorous pleasure it seemed to carry.

I willed myself to steady my breath, but the harder I tried, the more my lungs seized.

I made it as far as the master bath before the nausea rolled up on me, black and tidal, a living thing with its own teeth. I slammed the door, fumbled with the lock, and braced myself against the granite countertop, retching dryly over the sink.

I was at a crossroads. Either get consumed by guilt or lean into it. Own the taboo. Mom never had to find out what I did, right? I was the only one in the whole world who knew what I’d done. And there was freedom in that.

I stared at my hands gripping the marble counter, at the deep grooves where the wedding band pressed into my finger, at the sick burlesque of a life I’d only ever seen from a safe, childish distance, and now inhabited so thoroughly. I wanted to vomit, to peel the skin off, to confess everything, but I also felt something else, something even fouler and hotter. Something sadistic.

I pictured myself at the kitchen table with Dad, calmly buttering a bagel while he read the news. I pictured myself massaging his feet on the couch as we watched TV, the casual, practiced gestures of a woman who had never known anything but this life.

I took another look at my body, forcing myself to really see it—see her—as a person separate from the one who’d raised me. Just a woman. A little older, perhaps, than the ones I would have lusted after in the safe, digital solitude of my previous self, but only a little. She was, from the neck down, what any algorithm would call standard-issue MILF: taut arms and a forgiving belly, the faintest fan of pale stretchmarks on the outer hips, breasts that were not so much fallen as ripened and poised, with the kind of weight and shape that only comes from having been, at some point in the past, useful. I dragged my gaze up and down, over the curve of shoulder, the practical neatness of her haircut, the small constellation of moles along the collarbone, the slightly uneven tan lines at the edge of her bra. I felt the heat building in my cheeks, embarrassment crowding alongside a creeping measure of pride—like I was seeing myself naked for the first time, and all the old rules for shame and expectation had been reset.

It was impossible not to measure every feature against memory. Impossible, too, not to imagine how someone else—someone like my father—would see this body, would want it, would love it with a kind of gentle resignation to the arithmetic of age and beauty and time.

I pressed my hand to the stomach, felt the soft play over taut muscle beneath; I cupped a breast; I traced my own jaw, turning side to side.

I turned away from the mirror, shaking, not sure whether I was disgusted or aroused or simply stunned by the magnitude of the thing I had done.

I remembered trying on Mom’s one-piece yesterday. The memory of that day’s fitting flashed now, vivid and obscene, as I hunched over the bathroom sink spitting bile and regret. That version of me, the one in the mirror, had no idea what she would allow herself to become by nightfall.

I straightened my shoulders and stared at my reflection with an expression that was meant to be cheerful, practiced, plausible. My lips looked fuller, my teeth off-white and maternal, the practiced mask of suburban optimism.

I wanted to see how far it could go, what other mysteries her face and form might unlock.

There was only one thing to do: I had to keep going. I had to know more. I needed to see what else in the closet of her life would fit me, would swallow me whole.

The walk-in was cold and dark, a cathedral of orderly excess, every hanger equidistant, nothing out of place. I thumbed through silks and cottons, running the new pads of my fingers over cashmere sleeves, the dense corduroy ribs, her favorite sweater.

Each touch conjured a moment: a laugh from the kitchen, a stifled argument in the car, the subtle clink of her jewelry as she reached for a glass of wine.

I tried on a bunch of them:

The yellow cardigan, so thin the light shone through it, rendered my arms as delicate as the wings of a moth. I buttoned it up and posed in the mirror: a woman on her way to Trader Joe’s, maybe, or to pick up a kid from clarinet rehearsal. I tried the paisley sundress, the one Mom always wore with sandals in the summer, and let the cotton scaffold the shape of my new hips and thighs. I could have been a soccer mom or a wine-mom or just some adult, any adult.

Buried deepest in the closet was an evening dress, rich plum, with a plunging neckline and a gauzy overlay like the wing of a beetle. I remembered the party she wore it to—some hospital charity, when I was in eighth grade.

I laughed and smiled joyously, effeminately at my reflection. It was girlish, even a little coquettish, and as I saw it happen—saw myself doing it—I felt this electric, animal surge of possibility run through every cell in my skin.

I smiled then, full and reckless, the muscle memory of Mom’s warmest expressions taking over. For a wild second I tried out all the variations: the demure, lips-closed smile, the self-satisfied smirk, the lopsided, open-mouth grin that showed all my teeth.

I looked at myself, really looked, and saw a woman who could believably run errands, host book clubs, flirt absently with cashiers at the grocery store. I saw a woman who could walk into a PTA meeting or a wine bar and pass through undetected, unnoticed, perfectly camouflaged among the rest.

The most astonishing part, as I turned and posed, was the way my sense of shame vanished. I marveled at the weight and sway of my breasts, the ripe curve of my hips, the padded, round parade float of my new ass. There was a delighted, almost drunken shamelessness as I twisted and preened, grabbing a handful of my own tit, or glancing back over my shoulder to watch the shelf of my butt bounce and settle with each step.