I think I said it all in one breath, but I was pretty much unconscious right then.
Mom might have been unconscious too for all she was saying. She sat there without blinking, and maybe without breathing either. I shut up and waited. She waited too, until she said:
“I don’t believe you. This can’t be true.”
This time I pulled out MY phone, fiddled for a moment to find the video file, and did something I never in a million years thought I’d show my own mother—me masturbating!
I turned the phone screen to her and hit the play triangle.
The video showed a hand vigorously pumping an erect cock, and aiming it at a plastic cup with a printed sticker on its side. It didn’t take long until long streams of sperm were hitting the bullseye and doing their best to fill the small container. I voiced a little “Ah!” with each squirt. We unconsciously counted silently together, our lips moving in unison. We got to eight.
The disembodied hand released the still-hard cock and screwed on the container’s lid. Then it picked it up and focused the camera on the printed sticker. It had my dad’s name and his personal identifying info.
My voice said, “Today is Wednesday, January twenty third, and I’m at the Claxxton Clinic.
Mom still hadn’t moved or said a word.
“Mom? Mom?”
It started with a whisper, but built quickly into hysteria: “Oh my God… oh my God… oh my GOD… OH MY GOD… OH MY GOD!”
“MOM! MOM!”
“YOU GOT ME PREGNANT! YOU GOT ME PREGNANT!
“MOM! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never wanted you to know. I never thought we’d have to.”
“That baby I was carrying. That baby! I was carrying MY SON’S BABY!” Her words filled the house, every corner of it.
She started to get up, and I was afraid of what she would do, so I put my hands on her shoulders to hold her down.
That’s when she slapped me, hard. Hard on the face. The sound wasn’t as loud as her words, but they didn’t carry the same sting. The slap knocked me back in my chair, and my eyes blurred with tears. Not so much the slap, but it acted like a switch that let the tears of my emotions out.
That same slap brought Mom to a weird and eerie calm, as if it were electricity that came through that thunderbolt of a slap and left all discharged behind it.
“Are you all right?” she asked with her sane voice.
“I’m okay,” I said, rubbing my face and not looking at her.
“Who’s seen that?” She pointed to my phone.
“Nobody. That’s the first time even I watched it.”
“Why would you record that filth? Why would you keep it?”
“I figured, like it was important. Like if I ever had to prove something a hundred years from now.”
“Prove that it was yours?” Mom not so much asked as reasoned. She was looking far away when she spoke.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Scott? Why? Why?”
“I wanted you and Dad to be happy. To have another baby that you wanted for so long. And I thought everything was going to be great. Dad was so proud and you were singing all the time you were…”
“Pregnant,” Mom finished.
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed again. Like always after you tried. You get so depressed for so long, Mom. When I saw Dad’s cup… it all happened before I could think.”