“We would still sleep together in your bed every night, and make love?” I asked.
“Yes, my bed and become lovers,” she said.
Taking my mother as a lover with no strings attached, an erotic affair had an immediate attraction. Sex on tap with a beautiful mature woman was a dream come true.
But I thought beyond instant gratification.
Then I remembered Simone.
“Sue I have a confession to make. And I’m afraid to tell you, in case you hate me for it,” I said, lowering my head in shame.
“What is it Jack, it can’t be that terrible. Whatever it is I’m sure I can forgive you?”
I paused, dreading saying the words, dreading their destructive potential.
Sue squeezed my hand in reassurance.
“I had sex with Simone today!”
I raised my head and expected Sue to be disgusted with me and kick me out of her bedroom.
“Is that all?” she said. “Do you love her?”
“Hell no!” I exclaimed without thinking. “It just happened. She wants to make it a regular thing. We’ve arranged to do it again at her house tomorrow.”
Sue was smiling. “Is that all?” she said again.
“Is that all?” I repeated incredulously, “Is that all? I let you down. I violated your trust!”
“Think about it for a moment will you Jack? I slept with several men before I married your Dad, and of course I had sex with him thousands of times during the 18 years we were together.” She looked sympathetically at me.
“Can you live with that? Can you still love me? Do you still want to have me knowing that Jack? Do you hate me for it?”
“Of course not Sue, I love you so much it would break my heart to lose you. But can you live with me shagging Simone, even if we are married?”.
“We need to be realistic Jack. If we live together without other partners we risk discovery. I will have to be seen out with other men occasionally, perhaps even go to bed with one or two. Sex isn’t the same as love. We need to be seen to be living normal lives to the outside world. We could go to prison for incest. Do you understand the risks we will be taking?”
I lifted my head and looked into her eyes.
“So what difference would the rings make?” I said nodding towards the rings she still held.
“All the difference in the world!” she said adamantly. “When we put on the rings we become man and wife, equals. No are longer mother and son. We share all our problems and solve them together.”
I listened carefully. She was making a powerful argument.
“We only wear the rings in the house. We put them on when we get home. When we walk through that door you are my husband. I’m your wife?”
“And outside we are still mum and son living together but having other partners. Make them a sort of security wall against discovery!”
“Yes?”
She offered me the rings again, in one the wedding ring in the other the engagement band.
“Ask me again,” I said, my mind now certain of my reply.
“Want me to get down on one knee?” She said, her face losing some of its seriousness.
I shook my head.
“Jack, will you marry me?” She said gravely, “Live with me forever as my husband?”
How could I see into the future? Yet I had to decide.