Her mother paused perhaps a beat too long.
“Oh, God,” Paige moaned. “You had sex with him?”
Her mother looked toward her lap.
“I’m sorry,” Paige apologized immediately. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel embarrassed or bad about yourself or anything. Honestly. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. I’m just a little surprised, that’s all. Oh, my God,” she said as her mother lifted her head. “You’re not embarrassed. You’re smiling.”
“I can’t help it,” her mother said, her impish grin spreading toward her ears.
Paige wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
“To be honest,” her mother continued, “I think Harry was just as surprised. I don’t think he expected things to progress quite so quickly. But he kissed me, and it’s been a very long time since anyone has kissed me like that—it was some kiss, let me tell you…”
Please don’t,Paige thought.
“And so, when he suggested we go into the bedroom,” her mother continued, oblivious to Paige’s inner pleading, “I thought, well, what the hell? Why not? Go for it. I mean, who wants to play hard-to-get at my age? And to be honest,” she said again, “I was quite turned on…”
Could you stop being so damn honest?Paige thought.
“Your father and I always had a very active sex life, and then he got sick, and well…”
“Okay, stop,” Paige interrupted, no longer able to keep her thoughts to herself. “That’s enough. Please stop.”
“I’m sorry, darling. But youdidask…”
“Yes, and now I’m asking you to stop.”
Tears sprang to her mother’s eyes. “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you, darling.”
“Oh, Mom, no. Please don’t cry. You haven’t disappointed me. That’s not it. You could never disappoint me. It’s just that, well, we’re not girlfriends here. You’re mymother.”
“And mothers don’t have sex?”
“Well, they usually don’t talk about it with their daughters. Unless it’s to tell them not to.”
Her mother laughed. “I’m sorry, darling. I’ll stop.” She patted Paige’s bare knee. “Now go to bed. Get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
Paige pushed herself off the sofa. She was almost at the hall when she stopped, her curiosity getting the better of her.I’m going to regret this,she thought. “Was it good?” she asked anyway.
“Oh, darling,” came her mother’s response. “It was wonderful.”
—
Paige stared into the mirror over her dresser. “My mother’s having sex,” she told her tired reflection.With a man she just met,she continued silently.A man who isn’t my father.
Had she really expected her mother to remain celibate for the rest of her life? And was that what was really bothering her? Or was it that her mother was having more sex than she was?
Maybe it was less the fact that she was having sex than the threat that she could fall in love.
“I’m a horrible person,” Paige whined, climbing into bed and pulling the covers up to her chin, trying to ferret out the source of her confusion. Had she expected her mother to bury her sexuality when she buried her husband? Had she assumed that while her mother might be interested in some form of companionship, it wouldn’t include anything of a sexual nature? That Joan Hamilton was too grown up, too mature, toooldfor that?
Except that, in everything but years, Joan Hamilton was one of the youngest women Paige knew. She had the energy, the curiosity, thelegsof a woman decades younger. And wasn’t the internet full of articles about the sex lives of senior citizens? Men and women in their seventies, eighties, and even—dear God!—their nineties, who were still not only interested in sex, but active participants.
She remembered reading about an outbreak of venereal disease in a retirement home somewhere in Florida. It appeared that the residents, free from responsibility and no longer concerned with either propriety or pregnancy, were making up for lost time and not only having sex, but having it often, and with multiple partners. Since most of them had come of age post-Pill and pre-AIDS, they’d never had much use for condoms and weren’t about to start now. Safe sex was as foreign a concept as Facebook. As a result, venereal disease was rampant. And not just in that one home. Similar outbreaks were being reported in retirement communities throughout the country.
Had her mother taken the necessary precautions? Paige wondered.
“No, no, no. I am not going there,” she admonished herself, trying to turn off all conscious thought. But the more she tried, the worse things got. After half an hour of thinking about not thinking about anything, the result was a blinding headache. She sat up, turned on the light, and reached for her cellphone, opening her messages and rereading the texts she’d received earlier from Mr. Right Now.