Words & Dreams (Book 1 of Smithers Family Saga)

Chapter 27

Violet watched Eugene as he took a cloth to the table in the second living room on the third floor. It had been over a week since the cleaner came; though things were usually given a light dusting once a week, the cleaning woman had had a vacation and Erica and Dollie were left to clean the house themselves. They cleaned the lower two floors and basement themselves, which they always did, to a degree: but given the fact that their parents insisted on having their legacy cleaned by a professional, they didn't argue. And so the whole house got a deep cleaning; a depth that could only be dirtied by an old dog and puppies.

Violet went and sat down at the table, and as he dusted a chair beside her, she reached over and spanked him.

"Hey!" Eugene said and turned.

"Oh," Violet said, "don't come at me with that 'Hey hey!' innocence. You're a piece of ass to me, little boy. I hear you're trying to unionize my workforce again?"

"Have I?" Eugene said.

"You're bad at roleplay," Violet said, giving up.

Eugene took this, Violet saw, as a personal insult, because if there was one appeal he had to any lady, it was this: an ability to adapt to fantasy.

"Sure, sure," Eugene said, his face came back to what it was before the insult.

"You know I was kidding, right?" Violet said. "About the roleplay. I just- I wanted to- huh- I don't know-"

"Assert dominance?" Eugene suggested.

Violet thought for a moment, and then said, "Yes, I think that's it."

"So what do you think?" Eugene said. "Should we stay?"

"I don't see why not. You've got five days off, and this floor is nicer than our house."

"It hurts to hear you say that."

"Why?"

"We paid for that house."

"Mostly you," Violet said.

"Don't say that," Eugene said.

"I know how money works, my love," Violet said. "An uneducated part-timer makes less than an educated full-timer. Besides, if you paid for it all, I wouldn't care."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," Eugene said, and he had walked to a window and was gazing outside.

"Why?"

"I- I don't know. I hear stories about women. Their reliance on men. Unable to divorce them. Caught in a lifestyle- or something like that."

"If you left me- putting aside the obvious- I'd do fine, financially. I've been poor before."

"You'd never be poor," Eugene said, turning. "And hopefully, never a divorce."

"You get too worked up about theoretical bullshit. Is it what we talked about before? The urge you have?"

"Yes," Eugene said. "The desire to possess you. For myself."

"If you needed that, I'd give it to you," Violet said.

"But it's not what you need. And I fear the contradiction will someday tear us apart."

Violet walked behind him and held him, resisting the urge to turn things sexual, and he lifted her hand and kissed it, and then he turned to her, and as he brushed his hands up her front side, his hands going unconsciously limp at her belly, as though to hide something, she understood- though she didn't consciously connect it to this act; she received the message- that the 'possession' he feared was his desire to make her be a mother. And she knew that he knew, that if he asked for it, she'd give him the child in a spirit of unselfish love; yet, this being a contradiction, as the child would, if the mother was not ready, would see the mother as the selfish one, not having the child for herself, but for the other, the father.

"There are things we need to talk about," Eugene said.

"I thought we were. Are."

"More things. I need to think things over before I tell you. Tomorrow."

"Why keep a secret from me?"

"It's for your- I think; I'm not sure I know- for your own good. No, that's a lie, I think. For our own good. That I think, might be true."