It wasn't okay. What had happened would never be all right. Marge felt like crawling under the bed, not getting up to make breakfast. Kenny had seen her having intercourse and she was wretched with guilt. But it was done. There was no undoing it, and life had to go on. So Marge, sick at heart, dragged herself out of bed.
Happy go lucky as usual – when he wasn't drinking too much or sexing – Frank wolfed down a big plate of fried ham and scrambled eggs, with Kenny pecking halfheartedly at his smaller portion and Marge chain smoking cigarettes as she sipped steaming black coffee. She had no appetite this morning, was grateful for the lack of conversation.
"Gotta get rolling," Frank said, jumping up soon as he'd bolted his food. "Be finished with this job today. Maybe we'll celebrate tonight," he called over his shoulder as he went out the door without kissing Marge goodbye.
"What was he doing to you, Mama?" Kenny asked the instant they were alone.
Marge had known the question was coming, and she'd been dreading it. She gulped, fought down the urge to run and dive under the bed, and deciding the simple truth would be best, she said, in as calm and matter-of-fact a voice as she could muster, "He was making love to me, Son."
For a moment Kenny said nothing. It was obvious he didn't understand. "Sounded like he was hurting you. I got scared. I didn't know what to do."
How could she explain it to him? He was only nine years old. "It's too complicated. You won't understand such things until you're much older, but Frank and I love each other. We're going to be married soon. He's your new daddy now."
"I don't want him to be my daddy," Kenny pouted.
"But, Kenny, your real father deserted us, and I…"
"I don't want no other daddy! Or my real one back either!" the boy sobbed, throwing himself at her, locking his arms around her as he climbed onto her lap and buried his face against her padded bosom. "All I want is you, Mama! Let's go back to Grandma's and live! I don't want you to love that old Frank! I want you to love me!"
"Oh, precious, I do love you," she crooned, and hugged him tight.
"But you sleep with him now!" Kenny sobbed. "At Grandma's you slept with me! I don't like it here! I don't want you to sleep with that old Frank! You don't love me no more!"
"Oh, yes, I do love you, Kenny. Just because I love Frank doesn't mean that I can't love you, too. I love you both!"
"But you love him better!" the child sobbed. "He's the one you was sleepin' with!"
Kenny's reaction of frightened jealousy was quite normal for a child his age, under the circumstances. He'd lost his father and now feared he was about to lose his mother, too. It had been a traumatic experience for the nine-year-old, seeing his mother in the primal act with the big redheaded man who was a virtual stranger to him. It had shaken the very foundation of Kenny's already damaged sense of security.
"Honey, listen to me," Marge pleaded, her hands caressing his back as she gently rocked him to and fro, the way she'd done countless times when he was younger. "You've got to understand that there're many different kinds of love. I love Frank, yes, the way a woman loves a man. I love him the way I loved your father. Can you understand that?"
Kenny nodded. "I think so."
"Well, I loved you, too, didn't I, when your father was living with us?"
"Yeah."
"And didn't I sleep with him?"
Kenny nodded grudgingly but said nothing. "Then don't you see how it's the same way now, only with Frank instead of your real daddy?"
"I guess so," the child sniffed.
"Of course you do. Now, the way I love you, that's the strongest love of all. You're my little boy, and no man can ever take your place in my heart. I'll never stop loving you, Kenny, no matter what, because I'm your mother. You're my kid, my own flesh and blood, and you're the most precious thing in the whole world to me."
He drew back, studying her face hopefully as he asked, "Does that mean you love me more than you do Frank or Daddy either?"
"I guess it must," she replied honestly. "Because I love you even more than I love myself."
"Then let's go back to Grandma's!" he chirped.
"No, Son, we can't. Grandma doesn't want me in her house anymore. We're going to stay right here with Frank."
The boy didn't like it, but finally he drawled, "Well… okay, I guess, if we gotta. But he can sleep on the couch, 'cause from now on, me and Bobo's sleepin' with you, Mama."
Marge couldn't help smiling. "Why, Kenny, I believe you're jealous of me."
"What's that mean?"
She laughed softly. "Jealous? It means you want to keep me all to yourself, that you don't want me to love Frank, too."
"I don't mind too much if you love him just a little bit, but I don't want you sleepin' with him no more. Is it a deal? Him on the couch and me and Bobo in the bed with you?"
"No, honey, Frank would never go for that deal. Me, either, for that matter. When a man and woman love each other, they want to sleep together. You won't have to sleep on the couch for long. Soon as I find a job, we're going to move to a nice house and you'll have your own bedroom again."
"Then till we move, I'll sleep with you and Frank, in the middle, and Bobo can sleep on the floor."
"Oh, no, you won't," she chuckled, and kissed the tip of his nose. "Our sleeping arrangement stays just as it is. And, Kenny, I don't want you coming into the bedroom again without knocking first, do you understand?"
"All right," he grumbled. "But I don't like it."
Marge hugged him impulsively, and purred, "I know you don't, jealous, but that's the way it's going to be. Oh, precious, isn't it enough that Mother loves you the most?"
"No, I want to sleep with you like at Grandma's."
"Well, you can't, so you may as well forget it."
"Why? Because you want him to make love to you some more?"
"Kenny! What a thing to say to your mother!"
"Well, you do, don't you?" he demanded, looking her right in the eye.
Her cheeks flushed. She started to deny it, then changed her mind and decided to stick with the truth. He'd already caught her in the act and would probably hear them doing it again anyway. "All right, mister nosy, if you must know, yes, I do want him to make love to me again. You're too young to understand that a woman needs that sort of thing, but you will some day."
"But, Mama, you don't need him. I love you more'n he does! I saw what he was doing to you. Heck, I could make love to you good as him. I know I could!"
"Kenny! Hush! You don't know what you're saying!" Marge gasped. "Now, not another word, young man! I won't have you talking that way! Go brush your teeth! Scoot! Hurry! I've got to take you to school right now! You're late already!"
If Kenny had known what he was suggesting, Marge would've been mortified. The very idea! Her nine-year-old son making love to her! But he didn't know, and although it embarrassed her, she was secretly pleased that the little bugger was so jealous of her, the ludicrousness of his naive notion notwithstanding.
It wasn't the type of school Marge wanted her son to attend, but for the present she had no choice in the matter. She enrolled him, told him she would meet him at the door they'd come in when the day's classes were over, then pecked his forehead and left him in the care of a middle-aged Mexican-teacher as wide as she was tall.
Marge walked hurriedly back to the apartment, fighting the awful feeling that she'd permanently come down several notches in the world. Her husband had been a successful real estate salesman. The previous year he'd earned almost sixteen thousand dollars in commissions. They'd been living in a thirty-thousand-dollar home, mortgaged of course, with two cars in the garage, one of them three years old and paid for, the other new with monthly payments due at the bank. They'd wanted for nothing they really needed, and until five weeks before her husband deserted her for a woman half her age, running off to God knows where with the home-wrecking slut, Marge had thought all was well in her middle-class world.
And look at me now, she thought miserably, realistically appraising her current situation as she climbed the narrow, dark stairs toward the shoddy little apartment located above a second-hand furniture store. Still married to that bastard Carl and living with a house painter in a dump like this! Maybe I don't deserve any better, but Kenny does. I won't let my son become white trash!
Their savings had disappeared along with Marge's husband. All he'd left her was a few hundred dollars in their joint checking account, and now that was gone. The mortgage company had evicted her from her home. Her husband had taken the paid-for car and the bank had eventually repossessed the other.
Choking back tears of self-pity, Marge entered the apartment and began tidying up. She refused to think about what she might do with the place to make it more liveable. Enrolling Kenny in that dreadful school with all those Mexican and Negro children had made her desperate to move into a house in a decent neighborhood again. She'd had no luck finding a suitable job as yet, but she had to start trying again. Immediately! Today!
And as soon as she saved enough money, she would start divorce proceedings against Carl. She loved Frank despite his coarseness, but she couldn't go on shacking up with him forever. Now that her son was with them, it made her feel even cheaper than before. For all their sakes, she wanted to divorce Carl and marry Frank as soon as possible.
Once they were married and living as a family in a nice little home of their own, then she could subtly start to work on Frank. At forty-three, with one marriage failure behind her, Marge had no illusions about remaking a second husband into her ideal of what a man should be. But Frank was a bit on the lazy side, which was no way for a self-employed man to be, and he drank more than she thought he should.
When Frank worked, he worked hard and Marge knew he must be an exceptionally good house painter because he turned down at least two jobs for every one he accepted. All she would have to do was get him to ease off on the drinking some, and imbue him with enough ambition so he would want to make something of himself, and there was virtually no limit to how far he could rise in the world.
At the very least, even if Frank insisted on continuing to work alone – he'd said he didn't want a paint contracting business with all the problems of hiring other painters and everything – he could easily handle twice as many jobs as he was now doing, and make upward of a thousand dollars a month.
To push Frank this far was Marge's first goal, and if he sincerely wanted to go no further up the ladder of success, then she would ease up on him and be satisfied. But she didn't dare start working on him until after they were married, and before she could get a divorce or a decent house, she had to get herself out and find a suitable job of her own, so as to show Frank what a little ambition and initiative could do to make life more pleasant and enjoyable for them as a family.
Marge showered and then shaved her armpits. With a hand mirror, she closely examined her pussy and, finding three crisp pubic hairs with telltale gray near the roots, she plucked them out and flushed them down the toilet. Lord only knew how much gray there would be on her head if she ever stopped dyeing her shoulder-length brunette tresses. But she wasn't about to stop dyeing her hair now or ever. She couldn't bear to see a gray hair on her head or between her legs, and she shuddered at the thought of Frank ever finding one on her. She would either pluck her cunt bald or start shaving it before she would ever let that happen. At least until he started turning gray himself, because he must never learn that she'd lied to him about her age.
In the bedroom, Bobo wagging his tail as he watched her every move, she hooked a white garter belt around her flared hips then sat down on the edge of the bed to put on a pair of sheer, flesh-toned nylon stockings. Standing, she stepped into a pair of lavender, lace-trimmed panties and drew them up her long, shapely legs and over her rounded buttocks. She put on a bra of the same color as her panties and filled the too-large cups with a set of foam rubber falsies.
Back in the bathroom, she reapplied the make-up base which the shower had washed off – it hid the tiny age lines in her face which Frank had never seen since she wore her make-up even in bed nowadays. Her eyebrows were thin lines, carefully plucked and arched. She darkened and lengthened them with a dark brown eyebrow pencil, giving them a slight, somewhat catlike upward curve at the outer ends. She darkened her eyelashes with mascara, brushed a faint blue eyeshadow over the lids, concealed the bags under her eyes with an expensive make-up specially designed for that purpose and topped the eye job off with a thin line of jet black along the lower edge of her eyelids that ended in an upward angle giving the appearance of a perpetual smile about a quarter of an inch past the corners of her eyes.
She applied a generous coat of wet-red lipstick to her full, well-proportioned oral petals, a shade that complemented rather than matched the bright red color of her carefully polished fingernails and toenails. On impulse she moistened the tip of her eyebrow pencil with her tongue and applied a tiny beauty mark, an almost imperceptible round dot, just below the finely chiseled prominence of her right cheekbone.
Beaming approval – she thought the heavy but tastefully applied face make-up made her look a good ten years younger – Marge returned to the bedroom to finish dressing. She donned a light brown sheath dress, a mini that would show off her attractive legs to best advantage, and put on a pair of brown, high-heeled, ankle-strap shoes that would be sure to call attention to her legs.
Adding a modest, becoming pair of small gold earrings to her pierced lobes, and a broad brown belt cinched tightly about her trim waist so as to highlight the undulating curves of her womanly hips and buttocks, Marge tripped lightly from the apartment with high hopes of finding that suitable, ladylike job which she wanted and needed so badly.