“Be right out.” He voice was soggy.
I waited, and a second later Mom reappeared. Her eyes were red and her faced freshly washed. “Mom—”
“Come on. This is a happy day for us all,” she said.
Mom is a real trooper and for the next half hour, put up a good show of being happy for her twin brother and his pregnant wife. She didn’t suspect that she didn’t just have a niece or nephew on the way, but also a grandchild.
Wow! I hadn’t even thought of that before: Mom was going to be a grandmother.
Finally, Uncle Zack said, “Time for us to go. Don’t want to sew too much joy in any one spot, yanno.”
I thought to myself “How can Uncle Zack not recognize how this is affecting Mom? Him with his Twin superpower telepathy and all?”
“Mikey, walk us out to the car.”
Final goodbyes at the door and then it was the three of us alone in the driveway.
“You know what you have to do, right Mikey?”
“Wuddaya mean?” I said, a little bit surly. I guess I was mad at my uncle for making Mom feel like that. I was also afraid of where this could lead. I definitely could see her diving into another depression. And with me heading to college in another month, I would be a mess for sure being away and being guilty I wasn’t there for Mom … and Dad.
“I know how your mother thinks and reacts better than anyone in the world. Always have. I knew I was taking a chance by telling her Lee was pregnant. That’s why I came over—to see her reaction. Don’t think I was fooled by her. Not any more than you were.”
“So you understand why I’m scared.”
“I do,” he said. “I know that there’s one person in this whole world who can fix this. I know there’s one person who can literally save her life. That person is you, Mikey.”
“Me? Uncle Zack, I’d do anything if I could. But I don’t have a clue what to do.”
“I’m glad you said you would do anything.” Uncle Zack took hold of my shoulders and squared me to him; he looked deep into my eyes and said, “Mikey”:
“You have to fuck your own mother.”
“WHAT?”
“You have to get your mother pregnant.”
********************************
I sat on my bed—in shock. I sat there not moving, not seeing what was in front of me. I was alone and isolated in my thoughts that kept circling back over and over:
Mom was sad and would get sadder; the way for her to lose that sadness was to have a baby; that was impossible with Dad; but not impossible with me; but I couldn’t even think of having sex with my own mother; so Mom would get sadder and sadder.
I went over that loop again and again without seeing a way out of it.
And now Uncle Zack had made me feel responsible for my mother’s future. He put me in the middle with no way out. Well—with one way out that I found impossible. It would take some major miracle or revelation or epiphany to make me change my mind on that.
She was my mother. I couldn’t think of her in any other way. I had never even seen her naked—and didn’t want to!
And it wasn’t her age, obviously. Auntie Lee, just a few years younger. Mrs. Branch, twelve years older. Age didn’t bother me.
Mom just wasn’t a woman woman to me; she was a Mom woman, a female, but not in not in a woman way.