Ch 130 Talk with Mom

          

          Janet stood outside her mother’s bedroom door drumming up the courage for this most important talk with her mom. At last she knocked softly. “Mom? Can I come in please?”

          “Sure,” came Wendy’s muffled voice from inside the room.

          Janet opened the door and was immediately treated to her mother’s nearly bare backside. “Really, Mom, a thong?” Janet said, rolling her eyes while closing over the door.

          Wendy laughed and continued slipping the stockings over her long, shapely leg, hooking it in place with the garter and proceeding to the other one. “I don’t want VPLs. The dress is so tight it’ll show everything!” she said, then looking over her shoulder she smiled. “You look stunning, Honey!”

          “Thanks,” Janet said, chewing on a thumb nail.

          “Oh, Janet, don’t bit your nails. You haven’t done that in years. It’s nerves, isn’t it? Well, don’t be nervous. You’ll be wonderful!”

          “Being biased again, Mom,” Janet said, but it helped calm her nerves slightly and she put down her hands, clasping them in front of her. “I’d like to talk if you don’t mind.”

          “About the birds and the bees?” Wendy said, half joking.

          “Not quite.” Janet said, until she thought of Wes and wondered if he did have some ulterior motive for getting her those expensive Jimmy Choo shoes. Funny thing was, Janet had been rethinking her previous stand on never having sex or getting married. She couldn’t deny, not even to herself, that she was having very strong feelings for Wes—frighteningly so. What were they about and what should she do about them? She had no clue, but perhaps her mother would.

“Mom, how do you know when you’re in love?” Janet tentatively asked, fixing her eyes on her mother’s reflection in the mirror. She saw her expression softened and a sweet smile emerge.

“Oh, Honey, the question of the ages!”

“What… um…does that mean you don’t know or it’s something I have to find out for myself?”

“It means,” Wendy said, snapping the other hose in place and straightening up to grab her dress which hung at the back of the closet door. “Every person you ask may very well give you a different answer, and maybe none of them are wrong.”

“So…you don’t know?”

“I only know how it was for me and I’ve told you only a million times already. You don’t really want me to do that again, do you?” Wendy smiled and slipping into the dress, pulling it up passed her hips and then placing the straps on her shoulders. “Mind zipping me up?”

Janet moved forward and together, Wendy sucking it in and Janet tugging the two halves of the dress together, inch by inch it got zipped, fitting her like a glove…a very tight glove.

“What do you think?” Wendy asked, turning around so Janet could see the front.

“Can you still breathe in it?”

Wendy laughed. “Yes… just barely!”

“Then you look great. You’ll have everyone drooling and staring at you, so they won’t be paying me much attention, which is fine with me,” Janet said, unconsciously placing a hand over her tummy, attempting to calm the butterflies fluttering about.

“Good,” Wendy said, turning to the mirror, appraising what she saw. “This is an in-your-face kinda dress, so that’s the reaction you’re supposed to get.”

“Is that what you want to do to Dad… or Mr. Sebastian?” Janet asked shrewdly.

Wendy frowned at the reflection in the mirror, then turned to face her daughter. “I was actually thinking of Karen Harris. I’m sure she’ll be at the gala and I can’t help but fall back in high school mode. I just want to stick it to her. She hated me back then because people liked me better than her. Imagine that! People she used to spit on liked me better because I treated them nicely. Well, she can chew on the fact that I still look good and I can still make heads turn and people like me without my even trying,” Wendy huffed. She then took in a deep breath, smoothing down the dress, and more calmly she added, “I think your dad will like me in this dress.”

“He will always like you in anything you wear and you know it,” Janet snapped. She didn’t mean to say it so harshly, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of her mother flirting with every man in sight while ignoring and torturing her father was too much to bear in silence.

“Janet, what’s the matter?” Wendy said, reaching to take her hand, but Janet pulled away. “Surely you’re not this nervous, are you?”

“No, it’s not that. Why did you go to Boston with Mr. Sebastian?” Janet whispered, her chest feeling so tight she could barely breathe.

Wendy’s jaw dropped, her eyes widened and she quickly turned away picking up a hair brush and playing with it. “How did you find out?”

“So, it’s true? Oh, God,” Janet said, her heart sinking. “Jasmine found your stash of Boston tourist brochures.”

Wendy closed her eyes for a few seconds then took in a deep breath before answering. “I didn’t want you kids thinking there was anything to it. That’s why I didn’t say anything about it, but nothing happened. We had separate rooms and…”

“If nothing happened, and I really would like to believe it didn’t, then you can tell me everything you did with Mr. Sebastian, right? Just like Dad told me what he remembered about his encounter with Karen Harris,” Janet said.

Wendy stared at her daughter’s reflection in the mirror. “Why do you want to know?” she said, sitting down at her dressing table.

“Because…because I want to know what stupid things you both did and what it is I have to defend you for.”

“Defend me? To whom?”

“Dad. It’s called damage control, Mom. I had to do it for Dad even when it turned out he didn’t really do anything. I hope the same holds for you.”

“I just told you nothing happened, so you don’t have to tell Jeffery.”

“Don’t want to tell him, but I may have to, cuz Jasmine just told me she’s planning on telling Dad that you had an affair with Mr. Sebastian if you don’t let her go to the gala.”

“But I didn’t!”

“When has the truth ever mattered? It doesn’t matter to you that Dad didn’t do anything!”

“I…” Wendy stopped and bit her lip. “I want to believe he didn’t, but…. okay, tell me what you know.”

“First, you tell me everything, because we don’t have too much time. Jasmine’s telling Dad if I don’t convince you to let her go to the gala.”

“Then I guess she wins,” Wendy muttered angrily.

“But if you let her get away with this, I hope you realize she will use this to blackmail you every time she wants something that you won’t let her have.”

Storm clouds settled in Wendy’s eyes. She looked mad enough to spit nails. “The little bi…brat,” she muttered. “Fine. I’ll tell Jeffery myself.”

“Tell me first, Mom, and I’ll tell him. He’ll take it better coming from me. He knows I believed in him even when he didn’t. He knows I won’t lie to him about anything, even this…if there truly isn’t anything to it,” Janet said, biting down on her lip and wishing there wasn’t. “Please, tell me everything, Mom.”

Wendy sighed. “Okay. We flew to Boston that Friday. We got there early enough to do a little sightseeing. Then we went to the hotel, where we had separate rooms…”

“Like you already said. Continue,” Janet interjected impatiently.

“Yes, we dressed for dinner. There was a big party for all the alumni and we sat at a table with some of Donny’s college friends. They spent most of the next few hours reminiscing while I spoke to some of the wives and girlfriends of his friends and I ran interference for Donny. Then...”

“Interference? What does that mean?” Janet said.

“Uh…he told me the last time he went to a reunion, after his wife died, he got bombarded by women looking for…uh…”

Janet held up a hand and grimaced. “I don’t have to know. So what did you do to stop this?”

“Uh…since it never happened when his wife was still alive…”

“You told everybody you were married?” Janet shrieked.

“No! Uh…just engaged,” Wendy said.

Janet put her face in her hands and after a couple of seconds she looked up again. “Go on and leave nothing out!”

“Toward the end of the night, they were getting pretty drunk and…”

“Mr. Sebastian, too?” Janet shrieked.

“No, not Donny, but he was getting a bit annoyed with his pals and he asked me to dance just to get away from them,” Wendy said, biting down on her lip before continuing.

“And then what happened, Mom?” Janet prompted, and she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear any more of this. Dancing could only lead to… Weren’t she and Wes dancing, after all, the first time they kissed? She closed her eyes for a second then said, “Please, don’t lie, Mom.”

Wendy nodded and took a minute before saying, “We were dancing. He’s an excellent dancer and…I kissed him…or he kissed me…we kissed and we left the party.”

“Oh, God,” Janet whispered, putting her head in her hands again and slumping down onto the bed.

“Nothing happened!”

“Mom, that’s not exactly nothing, okay?” Janet shouted. “What else?”

Wendy drew in yet another deep breath and let it all out in a gush of words, almost tumbling over each other. “We went up to our rooms… into… my room… and… and we kissed a little more and… I slipped out of my dress and we dropped onto the bed and he called me Margarita and I called him Jeffery and that was the end of that. We parted as friends, never to mention it again. And that was it.”

“Are you telling me you and Mr. Sebastian got naked and …”

“Not entirely naked! I still had my underwear on and he was fully dressed.”

“Yeah, that makes it much better,” Janet said sarcastically. “And then what? You played cards?”

“I told you, we parted as friends. We both knew it wasn’t right and we promised to not let this bit of craziness ruin our friendship. He went to his room and I stayed in mine and…and I called Jeffery…I called home.”

“What for?” Janet snapped.

“I just wanted to hear… his voice, but no one was home,” Wendy said.

“He took Stevie and Cindy to the movies that night,” Janet said, purposely omitting mentioning the party at Wes’ house. “Then what happened?”

“The next day we had breakfast and went with the group for a tour of the city. Then we went to the airport and we flew back to New York.”

“Mr. Sebastian stayed with you in New York, too?” Janet said.

“Of course not,” Wendy said. “Don’t you remember he went to get Tristan for me? He offered to go so I could stay with Alec. And I’m so glad he did. Look what’s happened. He and May Lyn are going to the gala together. This could lead to something special for them and he already loves Tristan and…oh, I do hope they get on well.”

“Do you…really?” Janet asked, shrewdly. “If you went to bed with him…”

“We didn’t! I didn’t! I couldn’t because…because I realized I still loved your father too much to do to him what he did to me.”

“But as it turns out, Mom, he didn’t do it, but you almost did!” Janet shouted.

Wendy sat with her eyes closed for a full minute, then finally whispered, “Why don’t you tell me how you know that with such certainty,” Wendy said.

“Dad said he told you already.”

“Yes, and so did Dawn, but I can’t trust either of them in this. I think, though, that you wouldn’t lie to me, and even if you did, I could probably tell if you did lie.”

Janet made a grumpy face. “Why does everybody keep saying that about me?”

Wendy laughed. “Because you have a good soul, Janet. Good souls are just not very good at lying.”

“Dad is a terrible liar, too,” Janet retorted.

Wendy smiled. “True. He has a wonderful soul. He just does a stupid thing every once in a while,” Wendy said.

“Hello, Kettle, let me introduce you to pot,” Janet retorted.

Wendy drew in a fortifying breath, getting up from her seat and sitting down beside Janet on the bed. “So, what have you discovered, Nancy?”

“Huh?”

“Nancy Drew, teenage detective. I’m pretty sure you’ve read all the books I gave you. Most likely they taught you how to be a good detective. You impressed your father, you know, especially in this case.”

Janet’s eyes widened at the memory. “Oh, yeah… I forgot all about them. I guess I am like Nancy Drew. Cool!”

Wendy laughed, but quickly sobered. “So, tell what you know and don’t let anything out, even if it hurts.”          

“It won’t hurt. It should heal, if you let it,” Janet said, then braced herself and proceeded to tell of her conversations with Dawn at the Picadillo  and the one with Gus at the bar. At this point, Wendy scolded her for going to such a rough section of town.

“Wes came with me, Mom. I was totally safe,” she said and proceeded to describe in detail her encounter with Karen Harris. Her mother looked alternately angry, stunned and skeptical, but listened intently and asked few questions. Then she got to what her father said he recalled of that night, and Wendy interrupted her at every turn.

“Mom, just listen to me! He spent most of the time at her place puking, first on her lawn, then on a hydrangea and then—Dad laughed when he told me this part—on her white carpet! Kissing and then sleeping with a guy that just threw up all over her house… real turn on, I don’t think so! Then he passed out cold on the couch. Don’t you see, Mom? He couldn’t have slept with her. If he had, he wouldn’t have woken up on the couch and did I mention he was fully clothed when he woke up?”

Wendy frowned and thought this through.

“I don’t know much about sex or affairs or anything really…”

“Thank God,” Wendy muttered.

“But from what I’ve seen in movies, this just doesn’t add up to a passion fill night. Dad said he woke up and could barely see straight his head hurt so much, so, you think his hangover let him have any fun when he finally did wake up? And he told me how much he hated her in high school and still does. He was so ticked when I told him Karen had lied, and he couldn’t believe he would actually go to bed with her since he hates her so much, so… no, Mom… I just don’t think so. Alcohol might make you do dumb things, but it doesn’t totally change who you are. So I just don’t believe Dad did it,” Janet said.

“So, he wasn’t lying. He really didn’t remember anything. He really didn’t...”

“No, but you know what this does mean?” Janet said. “He didn’t cheat on you, but you cheated on him. You may not have slept with Mr. Sebastian, but you kissed him and took your clothes off and almost did and Dad didn’t do any of that.”

      Wendy stared at her for a full minute then covered her face with her hands and burst out in tears.

      “Hey, stop that! You’ll make me cry, too, and that’ll ruin my makeup then you’ll have to do it all over again,” Janet said. “There’s nothing to do about it, so…just…forget it.”

      Wendy half laughed, half cried. “Sorry, but… I was so hoping… He really didn’t sleep with Karen. Oh, Janet, I gotta call Jeffery, like right this minute,” she said, standing up and wiping her tears away, searching for her cell phone.

      “Don’t you want me to tell him first about Boston and Mr. Sebastian?” Janet said, handing over her purse which undoubtedly hid the phone in its fathomless depths.

      “No, Baby, I gotta do this on my own…and in person,” Wendy replied.

      “Okay, um, I’ll go wait downstairs. They should be coming for me soon. I hope,” Janet muttered just as she heard her father’s voice, only not over the phone. It was coming from downstairs.

      “Jeffery? I…I was hoping you’d come over,” Wendy rushed to speak. “…uh, to see Janet off with us. I want pictures, tons of them, the whole family. Think you could come?”

      “Well, I’m already downstairs,” he said.

      “You are?” Wendy said, a panicked look in her eyes. “Um…are you alone?”

      “Obviously not if others are in the house. Only Stevie’s with me at the moment. I’m fixing his tie, but it looks worse than mine. Think we both need some female help,” Jeffery said, laughing a little. “Do we gotta talk over the phone when we’re in the same house?”

      She forced a laugh. “No, I suppose not. I’ll be right down…uh, soon. Gotta do my makeup.”

      “Gotcha. That means a half hour. We got plenty of time, Stevie,” he said, hanging up.

      “Great,” Stevie grumbled, whipping the black bow tie off his collar and walking away to watch TV.

      “Daddy?”

      Jeffery turned around and looked up the stairs. A huge smile spread over his face. “Oh, my Janet Baby, you look beautiful!”

      “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said rushing down the steps and throwing herself into his arms. She tried her best not to cry, but it was difficult. She couldn’t imagine her parent getting together now, not after…. It was a lost cause now.

      “What? You think I’d miss this?” he said, hugging her tightly. “This is better than the prom, cuz I get to come too.”

      “Hey, Dad,” Jasmine said, coming out of the family room. “It’s good you’re here today. I have something very interesting to tell you.”

      “Jazzy,” Janet warned.

      Jasmine glared at Janet, tapping her watch and muttered, “Time’s up.”

      “Jasmine, why aren’t you dressed?” Jeff asked. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

      “My fairy Godmother hasn’t come yet, so no,” Jasmine said. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

      “Your mom’s still mad at you, I guess,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to her.”

      “Really, Dad?” Jasmine said, excitedly.

      He smiled. “I can try. Pretty sure it’ll take. Run up and get dressed.”

      “Oh, Dad, you’re the best!” Jasmine shouted, hugging him tightly, and she ran up the stairs squealing.

      Janet stared at him incredulously. “So, you’re not mad at her?”

      “Wouldn’t help anything to be mad, would it?” Jeff said. “Besides, Wendy’s mad enough for the both of us. This is a special night for you and the whole family should be there, despite…this.”

      “So you’re gonna let Jasmine get away with murder?” Janet shouted.

      “I don’t think she killed Troy, Janet,” Jeff said, calmly.

      “So, it’s okay? You’re perfectly fine with Jazzy sleeping with Troy?” Janet shrieked.

      “I wouldn’t say that,” Jeff replied, bracingly. “I just know when it’s fruitless to wish for things you can’t have.”

      “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Janet said.

      Jeff deeply sighed. “It means I knew a long time ago that you and Jazzy were very different people and that I couldn’t expect the same things from both of you. Wendy, however, hasn’t yet figured that out.”

      Janet gaped at him. “So, you’d be fine if I had sex with Wes?” she shouted.

      “Whoa… what?” Wes said.

      Janet spun around and blushed. She hadn’t heard him come in the front door. “Wes, what are you doing here?”

      “Uh…Not to have sex with you, but…”

      “Good to know, cuz I would not be okay with that,” Jeff sternly interjected.

      “Nor I,” Donny said, coming in with Cindy. “If this is a bad time, we could come back later.”

      “No, it’s fine,” Jeff said, his eyes never leaving Wes, as if he expected him to jump Janet at any moment. “Stevie is in the other room, Cindy. Why don’t you try your charm on him. He’s grumpy as all get-out. Must be the tux.”

      Cindy laughed and skipped away.

      “Wow, just on time,” May Lyn said, as she came down the steps, resplendent in a slim fitting ruby gown with her camera at the ready.

      “Aunt May, you are so beautiful!” Janet gushed.

      Donny looked up and his jaw dropped. “Wow,” he mumbled.

      “May, you look gorgeous,” Jeff said.

      “Thank you, kind Sir,” May Lyn replied. Turning to Donny whose mouth hung open she said, “Will this one do?”

      He nodded mutely which made her laugh. she snapped his picture and that seemed to snap him out of it.

      “Well, I need to take photos,” she said and she started directing Janet to pose by herself first and then with everybody in sundry combinations.

      “Aunt May, can this wait a bit? I need to talk to Dad,” Janet said.

      “No, Janet,” Wendy said, coming down the stairs and stopping for a picture. “I need to talk to Jeffery first.”

      Jeff smiled and held his hand out to her. “I’m all yours, Wendy.”

      Wendy nervously placed her hand in his. Would he want to hold her hand, or even look at her like this anymore, after their conversation?

      She would soon find out.

       

      

©2013 Glory Lennon All Rights Reserved