horrible, and guilty, not because I had fucked my mother, not that in itself; but because of what it implied about my loyalty to Sandy. And I remembered what she had said about me in relation to Mother, that I would go to bed with her, given half an opportunity. If she were ever to find out, it would be the last straw for her. It would end everything between us for good.
I slept late in the morning, not having been awoken as usual by Mother. Her door was closed, and when I went down to breakfast Grandma asked me how come both of us had slept so late and how come Ava was still in bed.
“I guess she's not feeling too well,” I said. “Maybe you better go see if something's wrong with her.”
“You know I can't get up those stairs any more. Why don't you go see what it is?”
“I'd rather not.”
“Why not, Terry? She's your own mother. Have you two been fighting again? You seemed to be getting along so nicely recently.”
“We were. It'll probably be different now, though.”
“How's that?”
“Nothing. I'll go see how she is.” I walked slowly upstairs and knocked on her door.
“Who is it?”
“Terry.”
There was dead silence for what seemed five minutes. I finally said, “Grandma sent me up to find out if you're all right.”
“I'm dandy. Look, will you get a pot of coffee, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of aspirin and my cigarettes like a good little boy?”
I got what she asked for and knocked again. This time she told me to come in. She was still in bed, but had put on a nightgown and held the sheets up to her chin. She looked dazed, hung-over, sheepish and guilty and never once met my darting, furtive looks at her.
“Look, Terry,” she said, and then trailed off into silence.
I was relieved. I had expected her to be furious with me. Instead, apparently, she was all girded up for my hate for her, which I didn't feel.
I said what I had planned to say. “Maybe it would be better if I went away for the rest of the summer. I wouldn't mind spending a little time at camp.”
“It would do you some good, probably, Terry. Because I'm going back to the city today, anyway. It'd be pretty lonely for you up here by yourself with Grandma.”
“I thought maybe Quivering Pines.”
She shook her head. “That's too close to where Sandy is. I don't want you two that close together after what happened…” her voice trailed off again as she realized she no longer had much of a moral case against us. “Anyway, that's all boys there. I think the way you're getting you'd rather go to a co-ed camp, like Camp Interplay.”
“Sure, wherever you like,” I said. “You're footing the bill.”
I started out the door. “Oh, Terry,” she said. I turned to her. “About last night. I hope you'll just forget about it and not let it bother you. I guess I've been up here too long, and then seeing you and Sandy… I hope you won't make too much of it. It happens more often than you think.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, relieved that she was trying to toss it all off as lightly as I was inclined to do.
“I guess you'd better start getting your things together. Oh, and go get me the telephone number of Camp Interplay.”
THIRTEEN
The first thing I found in my luggage when I started to unpack at the camp was a packet of letters from Sandy. One had been mailed from Camp Climax every day, and they had all been opened. Each one became successively more erotic, more desperate and each one asked why I wasn't writing.
The bitch of a Mother! She'd opened every one, confiscated them, kept them for herself and progressively got the hots for me through Sandy's eyes. And didn't even have the nerve to give the letters back that morning and admit what she'd done. Instead, she had to sneak them into my luggage, not having the guts to throw them in the garbage, as she probably wanted to do.
I sat down and wrote a long letter to her explaining everything (except what had taken place in Mother's bed last night), mailed that and spent the rest of the evening replying to each of her letters in turn.
The summer passed with excruciating slowness. I spent most of my energy waiting for Sandy's letters reading them and writing to her. We wanted to see each other before we were shipped off to our respective schools, but we couldn't figure out any way to do it. I asked my counselor, Matt, if he knew of some way I could get together with a girl friend of mine at the end of the season and he said we could use one of the cabins in the camp-only a few counselors, he among them, hung around for the week or two after the camp closed, and he'd be more than willing to look the other way if I was sure the girl and I could cover our tracks. I told him we'd stay in hiding the whole time and wrote Sandy, giving her the dates.
The camp was pretty much of a bore-but pleasant enough. The kids-most in their early and mid-teens- seemed attractive enough and the counselors-in their late teens and early twenties-seemed free-and-easy.
I managed to avoid most of the organized activities, preferring instead to take off by myself every morning in a canoe and explore the area, sometimes taking along a couple of sandwiches and staying out all day.
This had its advantages, since no one paid much attention to where I was, or what I was up to.
On one of my first mornings out, a girl was sitting on the pier when I came for my canoe. She couldn't have been much more than thirteen, but she was dazzlingly pretty, with long, shiny brown hair and amber eyes that sparkled mischievously when I said hello to her and asked her what her name was.
“Dolores,” she said.
“I'm Terry. What are you doing today, Dolores?”
“Just sitting here.”
“Feel like going for a ride in my canoe?”
She nodded her head. “Uh-huh.” She hopped into the canoe and sat opposite me at the other end. We talked about how much we hated the camp, how much we hated our parents, how much we hated school. We got further and further away from the camp; the sun was getting higher and hotter.
“Let's get out of this sun for a while,” I said, moving the canoe toward the tree-lined shore.
“Why don't we go for a swim?” she said.
“Do you have your bathing suit?”
“Who needs one? We can go bare-ass. There's nobody around.”
“Do you like to do that, Dolores? Swim bare-ass?”
“Yeah.”
I beached the canoe, pulled off my shorts and watched her strip. She had a perfect girlish body, with smooth, skinny legs and hips, a light, fluffy pubescent thatch, breasts the size of small saucers but with big, pink nipples that made my mouth water.
She smiled wryly at my lustful stare and at my burgeoning erection. She stood there waiting for me to make a move toward her. I did. She jumped into the water.
We swam well out into the lake, playing sexy tickling games and dunked one another. During the course of our sporting I managed to kiss, bite, suck, pinch and feel just about every inch of her vibrant young body, and my excitement was getting the better of me.
“Let's go back in,” I said. “I'm getting tired.”
“What's the big rush?”
“Come on,” I said impatiently.
Once on shore we lay down on the grass alongside the canoe. Dolores crawled into my arms and started nipping at my ears.
“Are you a virgin?” I asked.
