Impossible Moments, Part One

  • Posted on June 8, 2015 at 12:12 pm

By Karen Cypher

How glad I am that she doesn’t look like any of my three daughters. That is quite possibly a hypocritical perspective considering my current situation – especially in the last years where I have pursued all manner of stimulation both physical and mental. I almost feel as if I never had time before now or that I’m worried that my time will run out. After all, I do inhabit this frail, time-limited world of mercurial conditions and impossible moments.

Still, if Laura were to remind me of one of my daughters, I’d be uncomfortable. But she doesn’t. Being Robert’s only child, she looks vaguely like her father did at that age. I think her resemblance to my son lies more in mannerism than in physical appearance, at least as I remember his childhood those many years ago. It is still hard to think of him gone. Not hard because it is a difficult practice, hard because it is painful. Parents should not outlive their children.

Yet another mercurial condition is my now aging body, wracked these days with the storms of pre-menopause. Being 51 is not old. Looking at Laura again, I understand that given this perspective, what can our relative ages matter?

Sighing heavily, I know that it matters a world of difference. An impossible moment made real.

Creaks and pops sound randomly as the afternoon sun heats different parts of the house. Some days I feel a rather keen kinship with the single dwelling in which Kevin, myself, and now Laura live. Worn and faded but still colorful, cracking at its foundation and threatening to slide down the steep lawn in front, it sits with undeniable charm in the Pennsylvania hills. Kevin says the house speaks to him of a gracious, leisurely decade when trees were more numerous than houses up on the hill; as years later, our presence must awake in Laura a nostalgia for a father lost, for a time when life was innocent and trusting. I am not, myself, interested in those lost decades of my youth, or in the years of mothering that came after.

I am really only interested in this particular moment in the big shadowy bedroom with its view of the distant rolling hills, green beneath streamers of cloud. In this quiet afternoon, now and then I hear the skittering of tiny claws when the squirrels use my roof as a shortcut to another tree. It is a crisp sound that registers from somewhere far away. It enters my mind as I look at the black tuft of hair lying flat, wet with our sweat and a sweeter, thicker juice. Wisps of curl feather at random to touch her thigh in a few places, others reach up to point at the ceiling. A bower of dark hair, thin enough and sparse enough that the skin is visible underneath – damp and warm – welcoming me. I lick each curl, moving to where the hair grows more thickly on her young body and finding that the odor deepens. An odor of salty wetness that opens vast reaches in my mind, a rich odor of deep secrets, of sun-warmed skin, and transmuted to a thick honey-golden liquid in which I lie suspended. It is my granddaughter’s odor, Laura’s odor.

I stroke the tender skin of the inside of her thighs, my fingers converging at the darker lips visible under the hair, brushing lightly over them. Her voice comes from above me, a soft ‘ohhhh’ of anticipation. I lift my head to look up at her, see her sparkling eyes watching me with that same intent look that takes over her face when she leans to my breast, takes my nipple in her mouth and examines it gently with her tongue and lips. Such concentration! Such passionate attention! My own cunt has begun to throb, my body going hot and seeming to swell, heightening my skin’s sensitivity.

The fingers of my right hand play in her hair, moving lightly over her vulva. With my left, I reach to take her hand. I notice that it is damp, slick and somewhat stronger feeling than I remember it being before. I kiss her fingers, linger in her palm, suck her thumb, and move my tongue around in a slow revolving twirl. ‘Ahhh’ she says this time, lifting her pelvis, offering herself. I let my breast lie against the open lips, feeling their wet warmth on my skin, on my tightening nipple. Laura shudders, says my name, and I lower my face to brush her thigh, moving carefully upward until I am kissing her outer lips. She has begun to move her hips in smooth, subtle circles, each time coming toward me as a gesture of desire, each time drawing away as an invitation to follow her. It’s an invitation I am happy to accept. Slightly spreading her lips with my fingers, I place my wet mouth between them, greeting her tight bud of a clitoris – slipping my tongue down to probe the opening of her pussy, moving up again to suck. Laura makes a low crooning sound that vibrates through her body and into my mouth. Slipping my arms under her now lifted thighs, I reach up to cup her breasts, tease the hard pink nipples as my mouth answers hungrily each thrusting, seeking movement of her desire.

We sit in the deep hot water of the bathtub a half hour later. When I invited her in, she asked, “When is Granddad coming home?”

“Not until seven,” I replied. “I think.”

“You think!

But she got in the tub with me, lifting her muscular legs over the side and lowering her small ass into the water so that we faced one another. I soap her breasts – full breasts with nipples pointing proudly. Even at fifteen, they are so full, overflowing my hands with their slippery weight. She touches mine and I glance down, not able to stop the comparison from entering my mind. I’ve lost weight, and every time I do, my boobs hang with no hint of the firmness of youth Laura’s possess. Mine are long and heavy, with nipples pointing down.

“Your breasts comfort me.” Laura murmurs into my hair as she leans in.

“Hmmmmm…” is my only reply, with no small sound of satisfaction.

It is only in these stolen afternoons that we are able to be together. I have been married for thirty-three years, off and on, to two different men who fathered two children each. Some women find marriage restricting; I find it liberating, even marriage to a man like Kevin, who gets more satisfaction from the routine of working than he cares about making money. But he does support me. Nicely. And now, of course, he supports Laura, too. I like the safety of marriage, and to be honest, I also like its comforting routine, its coziness. My mother encouraged me to develop a practical attitude to life coupled with a vivid appetite for its pleasures. Lately, those pleasures take on many forms.

Laura loves Kevin too, but the relationship is a bit stilted, a bit distant. Robert was not his son, and although he holds his responsibility and compassion for Laura proudly, there is still a gulf between them that may never be spanned.

She carries her love for me like a secret treasure, folded and wrapped and close to her heart. Sometimes Laura’s eyes catch me unawares, as when, after leaning over Kevin to pour coffee, I glance up to where she sits on the window seat. Her eyes are watching my movements with an attention so focused it startles me. She looks into me, and without moving an inch, I feel myself falling toward her, plummeting with her down, down, down deep inside to the place we visit together, the place where stillness lies holding us.

Now, in the bathtub, we have leaned our heads into each other’s shoulder; the steam rising from the water and wetting every cool surface. I don’t know whether it’s my rampaging hormones or the heat of the bath that causes the sweat to streak my forehead. As my hands move under the water to stroke her sides and slide down to play with her buttocks, Laura turns her head to nuzzle my neck. I smile, remembering when she came to live with us, how impossible it would have been for me then to release the grief over losing Robert to even imagine this joy that floods through me at the touch of her lips on my throat.

She was a coltish seven year-old in a dirty blue dress whose black hair hung limp and straight to just below her ears. She was digging with her toe in the front yard, hugging herself repeatedly with her head low. On the second day, we had washed her hair to a shiny softness and got her a brand new dress. She sat on the porch swing talking to me, smiling occasionally as we both tried not to let the pain of loss overwhelm us, but instead worked on creating a bond of love and trust. And that is how we did it that first year, how we got through – day by day.

I am feeling the soft firmness of her ass and letting my fingers wander deeper into the crack as I squeeze and knead, when suddenly she stiffens, sending a little tidal wave of hot water across my belly. Her head snaps back, her eyes widening.

“Was that a car in the drive?” Laura asks

I listen, hearing nothing.

Laura rises from the tub, her body streaming and lunges for the window that faces the driveway. “Oh, god, it’s Granddad!”she shrieks before coming back to stand next to the tub, her body arranged in odd, stiff angles of panic.

“What should I do!” she asks, her eyes on me pleadingly.

I sit in the hot water, surrounded by steam, and the nervousness suddenly erupts from me in a low giggle.

“Grandma, what should I do?”she asks again, spreading her hands in a helpless gesture.

“Put on your clothes,” I sputter. “Quick!” I can hear the sound of Kevin opening the door downstairs, his footsteps in the living room.

She is pulling on little grey socks over her wet feet, and they look ridiculous half-on, half-off. Black sweatpants next, followed by a thin red tee over her wet body.

“He’s in the kitchen now,” I hiss. “Go down and talk to him… otherwise he will come up here!”

“My underpants!” Laura whispers loudly, gesturing to the open bedroom.

“I’ll take care of them.” I offer.

She rubs the steamy mirror to clear it, looks at her red, moist face, her tangled hair.

I am still giggling.

In a few minutes, I hear voices in the kitchen, Kevin and Laura carrying on a conversation. He has probably offered her a cool drink since she looks so flush; she has probably asked him about airplanes – a safe call, for he will lose all touch with his surroundings and wax rhapsodic about the latest modification he wants to do to his own.

In my steamy hideaway, I let myself go, slipping down into the still-hot water and giving myself to the shudders of mirth that contort me. Downstairs, the voices go on, or Kevin’s voice, that is. I can imagine his rapt face, the excited lift of his chin. And Laura looking at him with big relieved eyes.

Continue on to Part Two

 

8 Comments on Impossible Moments, Part One

  1. hludens says:

    Another literate author, well done. Cliffhanger. Plus pix that resemble real people and not unattainable models. Continue por favor.

  2. Karen Cypher says:

    Thank you for your kind words, hludens. I have part two finished, but it needs a good deal of polishing before I post… certainly by the end of the week.

    Karen

  3. My god, this is good. I’ve just read it for maybe the fourth or fifth time. It’s like I’m right there in the bathtub with them, feeling what they feel. So sensual, so sexy!

  4. Karen Cypher says:

    Thank you, N.M. As a huge fan of your body of work here, it kind of blows me away that you think so highly of this story! I hope to be just as sexy, just as sensual in my next chapter — which should be submitted by the end of this afternoon or early tomorrow, by the way.

    Karen

  5. Lynn says:

    OMG this story hits home for me lol just delicious to read

  6. Karen Cypher says:

    Sounds like you have a story of your own you might wish to tell, Lynn! 🙂 I am glad you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you find as much stimulation from the next installment as well. I appreciate your feedback!

    Karen

  7. ClitLicker says:

    Mmmm. …I’d love to be fondling Laura’s breasts in the bath…..

  8. Ed says:

    Really enjoyed this chapter, the details are so lovely to take in. Not a story to read in a hurry but to savor. Where else can you find a paragraph describing green hills touching the blue sky, and wisps of curl feather touching a thigh and also pointing to the ceiling. And the back and forth between paragraphs where sexuality weaves in and out of the daily life experience. Saving Chapter 2 for later as something to look forward to.

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