Words & Dreams (Book 1 of Smithers Family Saga)

Chapter 10

A week later, as the summer hit its peak, Violet visited Harry and Jamal for breakfast; it was a strange thing, how it worked. The bizarreness at the speed of it it. From meeting to fucking to friendship and intimacy: she had other trysts in the time period, but these two men were the only she found to be sensitive, caring. Perhaps because they already had each other.

No it's me, Violet thought. The reality is that the other men and women never had a purpose for me, a life beyond the act; human vibrators. But she'd only had one threesome, and she had been too afraid of being reminded of Joanne to sleep with any women with a third involved.

So it was that these were the only two people that Violet was sensitive to.

"Thank you, darling," Violet said as Harry handed her a cup of coffee.

This was an in-joke already:

"Of course, precious," he said, and bowed.

"We're not that type of gay," Jamal said again. Although he loved to play the flaming role himself- as a joke- there was a seriousness behind his words. As if he meant them.

"Is something wrong-?" Violet said.

"His family is religious," Harry said. "Sometimes the old nonsense pops back up."

Jamal scratched his head.

"Yeah," he said. "Well, my ancestors were brainwashed, enslaved. Ah..."

Jamal, like Harry, was a sweet man, and he had a vulnerability to him that made Violet want to console him, protect him from the evils of the world. He was a social worker, and Harry a psychologist.

"It's okay," Violet said, and put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed his back.

"Now I remember why I used to pretend to be straight only, and not gay-straight," Jamal said, and he kissed Violet on the cheek. "A man likes to be babied. But not so much by another man," he said, as Harry seemed ready to acknowledge the fact that he would happily baby Jamal.

"Gender roles," Harry said, standing against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, his words a mixture of wisdom and trite sentimentality.

"Say what you will," Violet said, and she kissed Jamal back, "those roles made this man a handsome bastard."

Harry uncrossed his arms.

"I'm getting jealous," he said.

"I can see that," Violet said, seeing the half-erection through his dress pants, as he went to sit down.

"You're both so beautiful," he said. "I feel like I could be the best man at your wedding. Though I'd need to masturbate in the corner, as the marriage was consummated."

"Who said you wouldn't be allowed in the bed with us?" Jamal said and he held his hand out and then they all held hands with their eyes open, like a prayer for silence, sensuality, flesh.

"It's good to be with people," Violet said. "To- I don't know; to... it's like there's a purity that was missing in me that's starting to come back. You're both sweet boys."

"What's missing? Or was-?" Jamal asked.

"I don't know," Violet said, "my marriage bed felt part-coffin or something, with Joanne gone. There was a sadness in fucking; at least for me."

"Do you think you'll be able to get it back?" Harry said. "If it's us, I mean-"

"We can't take away the thing that was lost," Jamal said.

"No, but you can remind me- have reminded me- of something there." She looked down at her wedding ring, twisting and sliding it; it was tight enough to move very little. "I wish he liked men though," Violet said. "We could- ah, it's strange the way these things are. You want a thing, you get a thing, then she leaves you for her own self-worth, marriage, and there's a spite in you; me. I want it to go back to the way it was, the three of us cuddling on the couch, talking, watching TV, as if the world were both more available to us, as three, but also less necessary. We had more experience, variations on a theme. But- then she left. And I'm selfish. My husband is still happy. But I want more- I'm not quite ready to live on, move on- though I'm getting there."

"Have you talked to your husband about having kids?" Harry said.

How the fuck? Violet thought.

Violet took her hands away from the the two men, and then over her face.

"How did you know that?"

"Know what?" Jamal said. He was confused.

"It's my profession," Harry said. "I hate to say it, but your situation, while unusual, isn't that unusual."

"What do you-" Violet said.

Jamal caught on:

"Is it that you can't have children, or that you don't want them?"

"Goddamn it," Violet said. "Goddamn it. To my knowledge- I can. I had an... abortion when I was younger. I don't-"

"It's not wrong to," Harry said, "be afraid of it. Or not to have them. Children, I mean."

"What's your fear?" Jamal said. "Being a bad mother?"

"Yeah," Violet said. "And many other things. The pain of birth itself. Dying, the children dying- my husband leaving me; the complications... being a single mother; being overbearing, overprotective, or even resentful of them, for having what I never had. And what do I have? Ten-twenty- years? Then I can't. It's strange, it's strange, it's strange."

"Huh," Jamal said. "Have you talked with women about this? Joanne?"

"Not too much," Violet said, and breathed in, as if she wanted to flee, and was doing her best to stay where she was. "She- she, she's pregnant now."

"She is?"

"Yes," Violet said. "And I never told my husband. For the record's it's definitely her husband's unless my husband and her have been sneaking around, which I doubt, since I probably would have joined them."

"I think he knows," Jamal said.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"And he-?" Violet said. "Now I feel like shit."

"Why?" Harry said.

"All this... to protect my feelings... and I don't know, like they think I'm a child. Which makes me angry. But I know it's the right thing, her telling us separately, if you're right. But it still makes me angry: I don't like that; that I'm like that, that I'd need to be like that. That they'd have to walk on eggshells. And- just so Eugene and I don't have to have the conversation he knows I don't want to have."

"Whatever the case," Jamal said, "you need to talk to him."

"Fuck," Violet said. "Why does it have to be like that? You don't want to do a thing and then you have to do it?"