Balancing Act - Part 14

 

I tried to shake off the dream.

I lingered on the couch, flexing my toes, crossing and uncrossing my legs. I felt the rough seam of Mom's suit rasp against the tenderness between my legs and jabbed a finger at the elastic.

After a while, I went inside to change. I wriggled out of the one-piece in the bathroom, peeling off the wet, splotchy fabric and watching, in the full-length mirror, the way Mom’s body—my body—reappeared in stages: the wedge of her belly, then the breasts, as the suit came away. A triangle of wetness clung between my legs, a blurry, sticky marker of what had happened on the couch outside.

I towel-dried, staring at the her body. I cupped the breasts, bouncing them in my hands. I gripped the soft pad of the belly, pinched the skin at the hip. Still there, still me.

I stepped closer to the mirror, toes splayed on the tile, and leaned in until my nose almost touched the glass. I studied the face. It was mine now: not the mask or the echo, but the entire living reality of her.

I stared. I really stared.

I leaned in until my own breath fogged the glass, then traced a fingertip down the bridge of my nose, feeling the slope and the slight bump at the ridge—an inheritance from her father, she used to claim, though I hadn’t ever met the man.

I thought briefly, with a pang of vertigo, about the last time I'd seen my real face. How easy it was to imagine Mom’s features now as my real self, to let the old angularity and Adam’s apple and unkempt eyebrows erode into a footnote in my own story.

What difference did it make, really, if I was once Peter and now I was Mary? The world would adapt. The world would forget.

I thought about that as I toweled off. I was now this woman, this wife and mother who’d given birth to Peter.

I slipped into her robe and let myself sway down the hallway.

The robe was old—at least ten years by my guess—and the fabric had thinned in places to a plush transparency. It held the ghost of her perfume, a scent like orange blossom and dryer sheet and something faintly mineral—like the air in the shower after she’d finished washing her hair. I let myself luxuriate in it for a few breaths, cinching the tie so that it gathered the fabric under my bust and left the fullness of my chest shifting freely beneath. I liked that it didn’t quite contain me. I liked the way the belt made the hips flare, the way the open collar showed the sweep of clavicle, the faint shadow between breasts.

The door to what had been my room was closed, but a slice of light bled out at the seam above the carpet.

I pressed my ear to the door. For a moment, nothing—then a rustle, a muffled gasp, a faint rhythmic thumping that conjured images I very much did not want to have.

I nearly gasped. Mom was jacking off. Jacking off as me.

My hands flew to my mouth, stifling a gasp, and for a moment I nearly bolted.

But I stood in the dark, listening, heart hammering.

I let my head fall against the doorframe and squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to imagine what was happening in there—but in the way of all forbidden things, my mind conjured it in perfect detail.

I saw Mom’s hands—my hands—gripping my old, familiar shaft. I saw the way my knuckles would whiten as I worked it, rubbing viciously up and down.

Somehow, the thought made me relieved. If anything, it felt fair.

I inched away from the door, soft-stepping backwards. I let my breath out in a long, silent exhale. The world carried on.