By Sammy
Lizzie’s face was a soft foggy circle in my side window, still struggling to defrost in the morning air. The long drive up had been mostly silent, both of us knowing this moment was coming, yet neither able to prepare for it.
The way my daughter’s gold hair shone, even then, warmed me out of winter’s clutches, the hidden sun slipping from mind until I realized just how many mornings in the coming months I’d be clinging to it in her absence.
As she grew smaller in my rearview mirror, finally taking Brenda’s hand once we were just about out of sight of each other, it finally sunk in that I was going to be stuck for three hours in a car with no company and a radio I couldn’t afford to replace.
Oh, the things I do for her.
The things she does to me.
. . . . .
I’d guess it started with her stockings.
They were the first piece of skating gear I ever bought her. I can still see her stubby legs in Sears, scurrying over the minute she saw them. Pale, pink, with puffs on the heels. Probably not the best choice for squeezing into skates, but at least she had the good sense to head straight for the bargain rack.
She won her first competition in those stockings. And her second, third, and fourth. And every time, alone in the locker room or, in the arenas too small for them, a lone bathroom stall, I’d get the privilege of sliding them up her thin legs, Far too toned for five, I might think with silly jealousy, my hands cupping her thighs nearly all the way around and knowing even then that my pleasure was much less than motherly. (Or would that be more?) Which might have started to gnaw at me for a moment. Then Lizzie would peck me on the lips with an ecstatic “Thank you, Mommy!” and I’d smooth her short hair by the back of her neck, and everything would be okay again. Because I knew that whatever was inside me, whatever it was growing into, I would never, ever do anything to hurt her. She was my baby girl. My very life. And, well, just because she was that, it didn’t mean she couldn’t also be my own personal pixie in darling pink stockings.
And watching her, in them, in action… different pairs through the years, sure, but some things never changed. The pink crinkling slightly at the knees as she’d crouch for a jump. Legs spreading at the top of the arc, skirt flitting up around her hips just enough for that round little bottom to peek out, hiding the briefest pooch in the centre. And her muscles tensing when she landed, and the smile she’d effortlessly flash without losing a smidgen of focus, picking me out of the crowd wherever I was.
And then them, in the laundry… I’d make sure to wash everything right when we got home, as then I could still feel the sublime blend of chill and sweat as I rubbed them on my face, my breasts, my stomach, further below… she, upstairs in the dead midst of her post-skate nap, and me, in the laundry room struggling with feelings it took me far too long to understand, as if there was much to understand about sliding my daughter’s various underthings across my mound, the tangled frills of little-girl-lace mingling with the wisps of my wheat-blonde pubic hair, then deep inside, deep as I could go, till I was coming again and again.
And that was about how it went. Until the day when Lizzie was five, and I moved from the laundry room into her bedroom.
She had gone immediately from the rink to a birthday dinner for Felicia, the closest (and cutest) friend she had made of all her fellow skaters. I had the house to myself, and before I knew it I was crossing the house, from the veiled motherliness of laundry inspection to the abject perviness of basket-raiding, mining her big beige bucket for the freshest pair I could find, dried sweat and specks of whatever else — God, everything else — on the gusset I was soon sucking off, feeling out of my body as I was furiously cumming on her bed, my eyes drifting, at the very last moment, to the family of soft brown teddies staring at me from the corner they had claimed long ago. I was stilled by that in a way I still can’t describe. Every time thereafter, I made sure there was enough room for all of us.
And there were many thereafters — the dam had burst. My dreamland grew all the more intricate, imagining my daughter into all manner of scenarios. We toured the house in my head, me showing her the wonders of making love, taking her slowly and softly through her first time, relishing the moment I first touched my tongue to her virgin underneath. Eventually, the bathtub became my locale of choice. Soaking, soaping, my legs spread wide and just touching the sides of the tub in symmetry, Lizzie nestled in my center, my ankles crisscrossed behind her legs as I held her tight, filling her unsure mouth with my tongue as her smooth mound slid against my belly in the sudsy mess. Feeling every quiver as she came for the first time, her tiny body invaded by impossible pleasures she had no conception of… and that was only the beginning.
And the funny thing is, I don’t know whether I ever could have started out on this grandest of adventures if Lizzie hadn’t been so intent on her own.
She was a born explorer, whether through the thick evergreens surrounding our little backyard pond, or the endless nooks and crannies of our large, winding country home. She loved our crawlspace in particular, so much so I had to place a six-foot wardrobe in front of the entrance to it in my bedroom. That only seemed to enchant her more, though — the Narnia effect? — and one night while I was out with my friends, she “accidentally” tossed a sock behind it. When Brenda, her babysitter, had managed to budge it just enough, Lizzie scurried between her legs, right into the darkness, and refused to come out.
Poor Brenda was beside herself. And then Lizzie found the skates.
They were in the back, right behind the Christmas lights and boxes of ugly heirloom glassware, where they’d been sitting, untouched, since my mother’s death from Alzheimer’s ten years before.
I suppose what happened next would best for Brenda to explain. Not to mention that transcribing the voicemail, which I still have after all these years, means I get to listen to that faint sexy lisp for the millionth time.
Uh, hi, Ms. Masters. This is Brenda… Brenda the babysitter… of course. God, so stupid. I, um, just wanted to warn you that you might be coming home to a little situation here at the house. See, Lizzie tricked me and got into the crawlspace and absolutely would not come out, and then she found this really old pair of skates, and begged me to take her out to the pond. I know I shouldn’t have, but she said just for a few minutes, and now she won’t stop! … But, um, Ms. M, I really gotta say, you wouldn’t believe how quickly she took to it. You know I trained with my Aunt Ellen up north and have been doing competitions for a few years, and I think I’ve never seen such a natural. And I’ve definitely never seen a four-year-old get a foot off the ground and actually stay on her feet, let alone in skates I had to stuff with extra socks. And I’m sorry if this seems nosey… but I really have to ask… there was a “Pat” sewn into the heel of the skates… Pat Masters… was she Lizzie’s grandmother?
I came home shortly after that, to a brilliant glow from the backyard, arching out to the limits of the driveway. As I made my way towards the back of the house, I saw that the Christmas lights on our inside ring of evergreens were on and heard Lizzie laughing louder than I ever had before. She was circling the pond, tracing primitive but confident figures, and Brenda was on the stone bench beside the pond, hot chocolate in hand, cheering as Lizzie zipped around the ice. And I mean zipped.
I noticed Brenda’s thighs subtly rubbing together. Her eyes were on Lizzie, intent, unblinking. But she turned towards me immediately when my foot crunched snow.
“Hi, Ms. M!”
“Please, Brenda, I told you. Abby is fine.”
She blushed. Lizzie, skating, still hadn’t seen me. “She’s really taken to it, huh?”
“Yup. We’ve been out here two hours now. She’s barely stopped for a breath.”
“But I mean… the figures. She’s actually doing figures.”
She shrugged and smiled shyly. “Once I realized she wasn’t getting off the ice, I thought I might as well pass the time somehow. So I showed her a few things. I hope you don’t mind… ”
I stopped and looked at my daughter on the ice. She was in her own world, completely, her body seemingly relishing its testing of these new boundaries in this new world, the cruelty of my hiding it from her making me flinch.
I glanced at Brenda, whose own eyes were set on Lizzie.
“No, Brenda, I don’t mind. And, to answer your earlier question… yes.”
“Yes, what… Abby?”
“Yes, my mother was Pat Masters.”
She seemed as if she hadn’t understood me.
“Olympics Pat Masters?”
“Yes, Brenda… ” I smiled, unable to resist the urge to mimic her incredulity, if just a little. “Olympics Pat Masters.”
Right then, Lizzie spotted me.
“Mommy!” She sped over to us, leaping over the snow at the edge of the pond and into my open arms. I held her tight and pressed my cheek to hers. “Did you see me?!”
“I sure did, baby.”
She pulled back and smiled at me with every last tooth. “Did you see what Brenny taught me? All of my… my fingers?”
I chuckled. “Figures, sweetie. They’re called figures.”
“Yeah, my figures! Did you see? I made an eight!”
“Wow, a four-year-old making a whole eight on her first try. That must be some kind of record.”
“Yeah! Do you know how to do any, Mommy?”
My eyes caught Brenda’s, peeking out from beneath her purple knit cap, boring deeply into mine. She grinned.
“Yeah, Abby… do you?”
. . . . .
And for her age and experience, Brenda certainly was accomplished. She had been on the ice herself since the age of three, and had even begun coaching skaters younger than herself when she turned thirteen. She was also persistent and curious, which, I think, are just about the two most important qualities for success in anything.
And did I forget to mention she was gorgeous? God, was she gorgeous. This was some time before I had come to accept my feelings for Lizzie, but upon meeting Brenda, I had indulged freely and fully. She was thin and wiry, in a way that seemed to be both from and naturally gifted for her sport, with nipples that were delectably erect more often than not, usually braless under her thin t-shirts and knit sweaters. I had been letting myself leer maybe a little too often lately, and I was pretty sure she’d noticed at least once or twice. I couldn’t help it, nor a snuck whiff of her fragrant brown hair just about every time we were close. And I simply enjoyed spending time with her: she made me laugh. She often came off as naive, even for her age, and yet… there was a more-than-occasional fierceness to her I found irresistible. She was a fighter, another symbiotic match to her skating. I could always tell there was more to her than I, or I bet anyone else in her life, her prudish parents included, knew there was.
In the weeks after my daughter’s home ice debut, Brenda repeatedly skirted around the question of my own mother. She was a fan, that much was clear, but she was also perceptive enough to see it was something of a sore issue.
One night, we were sitting in my car in her driveway after a night of babysitting.
“I kinda wanna ask you something, Ms. Masters — sorry, Abby… but it’s personal.”
“Please don’t be shy, Brenda. I trust you like a member of the family now. Really, I have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lizzie thinks the world of you, and as far as she’s concerned, you’re her way to the championships.”
We both giggled. “Championships, huh? Did she mention… which?”
“She wasn’t able to narrow it down. But you know what? I believe her. As much as it makes me feel like some kind of filthy careerist, I believe her. And more importantly, I believe you can help her there.”
She demurred. “Wow. That means a lot, Abby. Like I told you, Lizzie is incredibly talented.”
“Thank you, dear. I know she is.”
“What I wanted to ask you, though… it’s not about Lizzie.”
I smiled politely. “Just ask what you want to ask, Brenda.”
“Your mother.”
“That’s not a question, dear.”
She grimaced and pursed her forehead. I have to say I enjoyed it, if just a little bit.
“Okay. What was up with your skating? Or… your not skating… and, well, your mother? I mean… she’s a legend. Medalling at three Olympics in a row, the Order of Canada, frenching Maggie Trudeau… ” She blushed and looked away for a moment. “But you told me you don’t even skate.”
“That’s right. I don’t.”
Her eyes searched mine. “But why? What happened?”
I struggled to answer. My mother had been forgotten by most. She seemed to be one of the few cases where post-glory reclusiveness had actually seemed to work, instead of increasing the attention paid to her. I hadn’t had to answer anything like this for years. Reporters and documentarians had stopped scouring long ago.
“You see, Brenda… my mother was a difficult woman. Demanding. Exacting.”
“You mean… abusive?”
“No. Never. But there’s a thinner line than you may think between abuse and ritual.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My mother, and she was a good mother… well, I suppose she found it difficult to distinguish between a pupil and a daughter.”
“So… ”
“So… I stopped skating.”
“You mean altogether?”
“Yes, Brenda. Altogether.”
“Was that hard for her? I mean… ”
I bristled. “She managed.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to imply that, well —”
“It’s okay, sweetie. I understand.”
“But I don’t. Understand, I mean. And I want to… ”
The yearning in her eyes was unmistakable. I had no chance to think before Brenda’s lips were on mine, firmly, right there in the driveway in front of her parents’ house. I let my pleasure overtake my reason and met the movements of her lips with my own. We went back and forth a few times, chewing, sucking. Her breathing got heavier. She made a sound from the back of her throat and muttered my name dreamily. I reached a hand out to hers and grasped it, intertwining our fingers. She was sweating, and anxious, determined. Everything I did with my lips, she seemed to match. We continued like that for some minutes until a light emerged from the second floor of her house, causing her hand to pause about an inch from my breast, half-uncovered in my blouse. Then, somehow, I managed to grab her shoulders and pull my mouth away.
“Brenda, we can’t do this.”
“But… why? I mean, I’ve seen the way you look at me… ”
“I’m attracted to you, okay? I can’t deny that. You’re a beautiful girl, Brenda.”
She looked out the window towards the front door, hiding her face. The mother in me sensed intimately the parents in there, waiting up for her.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You’re fifteen. And Lizzie’s babysitter. And fifteen.”
“I know. Boy, don’t I know… ”
She still hadn’t met my eyes, and I was still racking my brain for an appropriate way to tell her I’d probably fuck her, no matter how old she was, if we weren’t in her parent’s driveway.
“Look, we’ll talk about this tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, Ms. M… as long as I get to talk to you.”
I cupped her chin. “Hey. You’ll always get to talk to me. Okay?”
A smile. “Okay.”
Then I found myself treading the pervert’s well-trod path. “Just… make sure you don’t tell your parents about any of this, all right?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t tell my parents anything.”
I chuckled. “Well, that doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”
She shook her head. “Look. I feel close to you, Abby. Okay? In a way I can’t be to either of them. It might be messed up, but I just can’t. Whatever happens with us, or” — she took an almost imperceptible breath and looked away — “with Lizzie, they won’t know about.”
I felt overwhelmed, by everything. “Okay, dear. Just… Christ, tell me what you tell them, okay?”
“Okay, Ms. M.”
We shared some silence.
“Well, I gotta get back. That light’s been on for like five minutes.”
“Good night, dear.”
“Good night… Abby.”
She left the car, jogged up to her front door, and waved just a little too enthusiastically before ducking inside. I laid my head on the back of my car seat, reeling over what I told her. It was more, by far, than I’d ever told anyone, including every woman I’d ever fucked.
What I hadn’t told Brenda, however, was that, the night I came home to Lizzie’s skating, after I had driven her home… I showed my daughter my mother. By that, I mean, I sat Lizzie down and, for the first time, showed her the freestyle program that had won her grandmother the Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating. The two of them never had a chance to meet, my mother having passed several years before Lizzie was born.
We snuggled into the couch, our eyes set on the television. We watched my mother psyching herself up, the camera catching scattered glimpses of her in the dimly lit hallway of the arena, offset by her bright blue skirt and brighter red hair. By the time Pat started her routine, Lizzie’s eyes were glued to the screen. I tried to see what she was seeing, divorced from my eyes, this woman my daughter knew only in old photos and scattered stories, reaching and exceeding the summit of what she now sensed was her birthright. But all of that trying to see what she could see was quickly supplanted by what I was seeing. Namely, the object of my most intense adolescent fantasies flexing every physical and emotional muscle while I cradled the impossibly beautiful creature I had given birth to. Who turned me on more than my mother ever did. No small task.
I soon realized my dancing fingers on my daughter’s skin, begun as innocent warming as our house heating geared up, were timing themselves to the rhythms of my mother’s intricate movements on the ice, to which I had masturbated more times than I could count. Not only this routine, but variations of it in competitions the months and years following, one jump exchanged for another, newer and sharper feats of physicality that only strengthened my desire to fuck my mother’s brains out. And holding Lizzie in my arms, her attention unbroken from the screen, I didn’t fight it — I embraced it. I fed off of her, my palms flat and open, feeling her tensing and flinching in excitement to what she was watching. Tiny belly clenching when Pat landed a jump, letting out a little half-giggle I could feel in her neck when the crowd cheered. I was both gladdened and disappointed that Lizzie didn’t seem to notice my encroachments, intent as she seemed to be to connect what my mother was doing on the ice to what Brenda had taught her. And once I made that connection, I was helpless: my daughter was joining me and Brenda, linked between our hands, trading kisses with each of us before we bent our lips to her breasts barely there, nibbling her ripe young nipples, the purpose and vast pleasures of which she was so ignorant of. I made her in my mind watch Brenda and I make love, letting her know what I was doing immediately after I did it, preparing her for a life of lesbian servitude to her insatiable mother.
Okay. So I lied. I guess it didn’t entirely start with her stockings.
As I carried Lizzie down the hall to her room, she made me promise to show her as much of “Gramma on the ice” as I could (and I could show her pretty much everything). I moved us across the hardwood to her bed, not bothering with the lamp, and as I lowered her from my arms into the waves of moonlight on her sheets, I let my lips touch hers, and kept them there, close and tight, as I fell with her to the bed. We lay there, unmoving for some moments, then more, my hand firm to the back of her neck. I finally pulled away, shame and doubt rising up till I found myself melting in the glow of my daughter’s brilliant smile.
“I… I liked that, Mommy.”
“I did too, Lizzie.”
“Why don’t we kiss always like that, when we kiss?”
“That’s a good question, sweetie.” A really good question, I thought to myself. Enough that I struggled to answer it. “That was more like a grown-up kiss than a kiss for mommies and daughters.”
“Grown-up? You mean like you and Daddy?”
“Yes, kind of like that.” I softly stroked her palm with my thumb. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve asked about Daddy since he went away.”
“I know… ”
“Have you been thinking about him?”
“Not really. But Felicia’s dad also got really sick went away, so we were talking about it.”
“I’m glad you have someone to talk to about that with, Lizzie.”
“Me too.”
“You like Felicia a lot, huh?”
“Yeah. I love her.”
I chuckled. “Love, huh? You’re growing up before my very eyes. But slow down a bit, hey? I’m not ready to have an adult daughter yet.”
“Why don’t you have a new grown-up friend since Daddy’s gone?”
“I guess I don’t need one right now, baby. It wouldn’t be fair to them. You’re all I have time for. All I need. And I love you more than I could ever love anyone.”
Her face took on a look of intense concentration. “Then maybe… maybe we can kiss like before, like grown-ups? Just sometimes?” She cast her eyes downward. “You’re so pr-etty… ”
It took everything in me not to ravage her right then. “Thank you, Lizzie. Mommy thinks you’re beautiful, too. But we’ll talk some other time about the kissing, okay?”
“Okay.” She seemed to have lost her shyness. “But, oh! I know a grown-up you can kiss.” She giggled. “Who really wants to kiss you, too!”
“And who would that be?”
“Felicia’s mommy.”
“Paulette… ” I murmured, half to myself as I pictured the fit, fetching woman with the short black hair.
“Yeah, we heard her on the phone in the other room. She was talking to Felicia’s Aunt Sarah. Felicia’s mom told her that I was staying for dinner, then she laughed, and said ‘yeah, the real cute one with the real hot mama.'” My face flushed. “That means she likes you, doesn’t it, Mommy?”
“Erm, well, sounds like she likes you too, darling.” And with the way cute sounded in that context, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much…
“Yeah, but you guys can be grown-up friends, like you said. Felly and I talked all about it.”
“Boy, you two sure have everything figured out, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess you’re more grown-up than I thought.” Again fighting off wild urges, my tongue worming between her perfect little lips, I pecked her on the cheek and tucked her in tight.
“Mommy, can I ask you one more question?”
“Of course, sweetie.”
“Can we watch more of Gramma tomorrow?”
“That I can say yes to. Absolutely.”
Continue on to Chapter 2