Balancing Act - Part 11

 

That afternoon, a familiar call drifted up from the pool—Dad’s voice, beckoning.

This was a chance to flaunt the one-piece bathing suit that I had taken such a liking to.

Oh, what a bold statement it would be to step into it again, in her presence. To let her see me adjust the straps on my shoulders with deliberate slowness, to feel the snugness of it as I pulled it over her hips.

The words left my lips before I could reconsider their implications: "Hey, Mom?" My voice trembled with an undercurrent of daring anticipation, "Can you help me get dressed?"

She raised an eyebrow, “Uh, sure hon.”

She followed me back to the bedroom. I took the suit out of the drawer—her suit, but also now mine—and tossed it onto the bed.

I let the blouse hang open, then off, dropping it to the carpet. The skin along my collarbones still glowed with a light sunburn; the upper slopes of my breasts creased delicately where the bra pressed.

“Can you—” I started, gesturing at the hooks in back, “you know, the thing?”

“You can’t do it yourself?”

“I want it done right,” I said.

She hesitated for the briefest moment, then stepped behind me. Three hooks, then a gentle tug. The cups fell forward; the straps slithered off my shoulders. My breasts, freed, felt cool in the conditioned air.

My breath shook. This was when I wanted to push it further. To see if she would stop me.

I cupped one, then the other, as if weighing them.

I looked over my shoulder at her—at Peter, at Mom in my old body—and I saw the hunger there, the unspoken challenge. Neither of us wanted to admit how far we needed to take this, or why.

She tossed the bathing suit at me, “Here, enjoy yourself.”

The suit, still damp from yesterday, felt slippery and tight—a single, cool, wriggling squeeze to get it on. I stepped into the legs, gripped the hips, and hauled the stretch material up over my new curves, trying not to gasp at the compression. I turned to the mirror and saw the costume snap into place: the bold blue panels, the chest plumped and pushed together, the straps etched deep into my sunburned skin. My breasts—her breasts—looked magnificent. Distractingly so.

Every inch of skin, every muscle clasped beneath the tight embrace of the bathing suit, was mine.

I was more confident in wielding her body this time in front of her.

In the muted glow of the afternoon sun filtering through the blinds, I caught sight of Dad in the backyard. His figure moved lazily around the pool, casting a long shadow across the water's surface, a familiar rhythm that had accompanied countless summers before.

But my attention was quickly drawn back to Mom.

She stood with arms crossed loosely over her chest, watching me.

Slowly, I let her see me pull the straps of the bathing suit taut over my shoulders again. The fabric stretched and settled into place fittingly—a second skin that highlighted every line and curve.

Eventually, Mom crossed the carpet, reached around, and drew a finger along the contour of the suit where it cupped the side of her—my—breast.

"You did it wrong," she muttered, "You gotta pull the side up, like this. Otherwise, you're gonna chafe for sure."

With the air of a person correcting a math error, she worked the blue fabric up and under, lifting the breast just a little, settling it perfectly into the cup.

“What do you think?” I asked her finally, unable to hide the note of defiance in my voice—a childish impulse to gauge her reaction, to see what limits might still be left to push.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I think you’re figuring things out.”

“Figuring things out?”

“I mean, you’re doing a great job, being me. But there are some small things…”

“What do you mean?”

She tilted her head, that assessing tick she used when she was debating how much to let slip, "You’re not acting …feminine enough."

I blinked.

She didn’t say it in the way Peter might have, as an insult; she said it almost as an invitation, an opening to see if Mary dared.

Peter—Mary—ran a hand along her hip, smoothing the suit, "You mean like smiling more? Or...?"

Mom’s (Peter’s) arms stayed crossed, "No. It’s more the little things. The way you walk, gesture, sit. The way you hold your body in space. You move like a guy in drag. Sorry."

A grin, that old bladed smile, flicked across her lips.

My cheeks flushed, “Oh.”

“I’ll help you. Just …close your eyes, okay hun?” Mom put her hands –my old hands– on my shoulders.

“Relax,” she said, her voice lower now, “Take a second and really be me.”

“Mom…” I laughed.

“I mean it, Peter. I mean, you are me.”

I let Mom knead my shoulders, eyes obediently closed. She could feel her own pulse, thumping against the pressure.

“Come on, relax,” Mom said again.

So I let my body relax, or tried to. Easier said than done; even with my eyes closed, I remained aware of the upright posture, the gentle outward sweep of Mom’s hips inside the tight suit, the soft, smothered pressure of breasts under the nylon.

“My little baby boy is all grown up,” she joked.

“Very funny,” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, seriously,” she continued, “Imagine you were me, right now. Not as a joke. Really try it. Feel how the chest sits, how the legs balance, how the air feels on your skin. You’re a woman, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying it out loud, “I’m a woman. I’m… I’m your mother.”

“Yes. Yes you are.”

I opened my eyes and met my reflection in the oval mirror across the bedroom.

My reflection caught me off guard, enough to make me gasp, not with embarrassment, but with a kind of delighted shock. The woman in the glass—a full-grown, unapologetic woman—was me. My shoulders relaxed, my posture open, looking like I belonged in this body, as if I'd never worn any other. The thick blue of the bathing suit clung to my ribs and hips in a way that accentuated every curve, every subtle line of muscle or softness. The freckles on my nose and collarbone, the sunburned flush at my cheeks and the tips of my shoulders, all felt suddenly and utterly right, as if this strange improvisational play had become the truth somewhere along the way.

For a wild, electric moment, I felt grateful. Grateful for the strangeness, for the body that had once belonged to my mother and now belonged to me just as surely. Grateful for the chance to inhabit it, to play at being not just a woman, but this woman—the specific, tangled, sun-dappled person I'd spent my life orbiting. My mother. I felt, for the first time, not like a trespasser, not like an imposter, but like the rightful occupant of my own skin.

My eyes lingered on the swell of my chest, the way the suit gathered and pushed my breasts together, the faint shadow of cleavage above the hard elastic line. I ran my hand along the edge of the suit, feeling the heat of my own skin, the soft indent where the fabric pressed in. There was a thrill in it, but also a kind of peace—a sense that this was not just a costume, not just a prank, but a revelation. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so wholly myself, or so wholly someone else.

I heard a quiet, involuntary laugh escape my lips.

"Oh my God," I whispered, almost reverently, then louder, laughing again, "Oh my God."

It didn't sound like my old voice at all, but it suited my new face perfectly.

I felt, in every atom, extravagantly, definitively feminine.

I tried the words again, this time with more conviction, as if saying them would make them truer, or would at least accustom my brain to their shape.

“I’m your mother,” I repeated, rolling the syllables in his mouth, “Peter, I’m your mother. I’m Mary.”

It was a wild concept: a mother giving birth to a baby boy, and that very boy growing up and quite literally becoming her, just as she becomes her baby boy. It wasn't quite an Oedipus complex, but something else. Something somehow even more intimate. I was the very woman who had birthed me. Her history, her self, her …everything was now mine.

A part of me wondered if we would ever go back. I could imagine waking up every morning for months or years with these breasts, this belly, growing older in this body, finding new aches and pleasures, gaining and losing weight, letting the hair go gray. I saw myself ten, twenty years from now, the same blue bathing suit a little more faded, the same body but softened here, strengthened there, the same laugh lines but deeper, more earned.

I knew Mom was just trying to help me get more comfortable and blend in more. But I think my reaction made her uncomfortable, because she watched me hover in the mirror, turning this way and that, not with embarrassment but something more primal, distracting. That giggle wasn't a joke. It was pride, as obvious as a sunburn. Pink, raw, shameless.

And Mom—Peter—stood in the doorway, arms crossed, voice a shade too neutral as she said, "You gonna go out and actually swim, or just stand there flexing all day?"

I shot her a look, then shrugged and tossed my hair back, which trailed a cool brush along my nape and somehow made the body stand even taller, "Maybe I just like the way it looks."

I didn't even try to modulate the affect; it came out wry and womanly, the kind of line I'd heard Mom toss off a dozen times to Dad or her friends. Now it came from my lips.

“Your father’s waiting outside.”

“You mean my husband?” I teased.