TABOO TALES(erotica)

“I think you should read this before you make any rash decisions, David.” she stated, and watched as I opened the folder and thumbed through the thick sheaf of papers inside.

“Mid-Carib Equity… Trust & Fidelity Investments… Windward Island Equity Management… Luxembourg Equity… Mother, what are all these papers? Who are these people, and why should I read through this, what does it mean?” I asked her, completely at sea.

“Those are the trust and investment accounts you father set up for you when you were born,” she replied, “it’s your trust fund, it matures on your 18th birthday, so you see, when the time comes, you’ll have all the money you need to study medicine here, near your family.”

But I wanted to study in England, not here.

Mother looked at me, already aware of my answer, and leaned back, away from me, her body language showing avoidance, anger, and distance.

“Very well, I will contact your trustees and discuss with them your request that they provide you with the means to attend a good boarding school, to at least give you a chance to prep for the A-Level examinations.”

She stood up and left the room, stiff and angry.

Now I had to talk to Charlie, a prospect I was not relishing; not because I was scared of him, but because I loved and respected him, and I knew my request would hurt him.

As it turned out, Charlie came looking for me. I trailed him into the den, more than a little apprehensively. He waved me into a chair, and looked gravely at me.

“So Davey, your mom’s upstairs crying; she told me what happened, what’s been going on. Do you want to tell me your side of it?”

I walked through the conversation I’d had with mother, giving all my reasons, my feelings of being lost, displaced, here in Iowa, my need to follow after my father, Charlie nodding as I spoke, seeming to understand. At last he spoke.

“Davey, now that you know about your trust, that you’ll have all the money you’ll ever need once you hit 18, does that make a difference to you, or do you still want to go back to England? This is your home, you know that. When your mom lost your father, all she had left of him was you, all I had of him was you, now you want to go as well. This is tearing her up, but she’s still willing to let you go. She can see your daddy in you, all over you, just like I can, and I promised I’d look after you. So if that means I have to let you go, well okay. All I want is your word you’ll come back one day.”

I promised Charlie faithfully that I would, as soon as I qualified, if I got that far. There was just one last thing, and it was a big deal, for me as well as mother and Charlie.

“Charlie, there was one more thing, and it’s a big ask.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to go on.

“I want to go back to my own name; I want to be David Denham again. I don’t mean to throw anything back at you, but I so very much want to qualify under my own name…..” I trailed off as I realised Charlie was smiling.

“Davey, you always were David Denham. Your name was never changed when I adopted you; we just registered you under my name in the school system so there’d be no complications if I had to pick you up or take you to the ER or anything like that. I promised your daddy I’d look after you, not steal your name away. I loved your daddy like a brother, closer than a brother, and I wanted to keep his boy safe, and keep his name alive a little longer. So, you’re not hurting me if you call yourself by your name, it’s your daddy’s name too, and I’m proud for you to keep it. So you go, you go be a doctor, like your daddy, just remember where your home is. Now I got to see your mom, I think she needs me. You come and see her in a while, OK? I think you got some apologising to do, and a couple of fences to mend.”

With that he left the room, squeezing my shoulder just once, and ruffling my hair as he passed, his only physical expressions of affection.

Three weeks later, I was waiting for my flight to be called at Des Moines Airport, all four of us, Charlie, Mother, Lori and me, standing in silence. Enough had been said already, and I was going anyway, because I wanted to, leaving my family behind, because I thought I needed to. Lori was avoiding me, her face streaked with angry tears, mother stiff and unbending, anger in every line of her body, and Charlie silent, probably tired of being the peacemaker.

The silence was becoming oppressive, and finally, to my relief, I heard my flight being called. I trudged to the departure gate, even now wondering if I was doing the right thing, but still convinced that Iowa was not the place for me, and so I barely registered when someone called my name and again. I heard running footsteps behind me, and as I turned, Mother ran full tilt into me, nearly knocking me over, hugging me, crying, telling me to behave, telling me to call, clinging on to me.

I looked back over her shoulder, Charlie had his back to me, his shoulders shaking, and little Lori was glaring daggers at me, her eyes like little blue coals, hot anger burning in them. Eventually I managed to disengage mother, my flight was boarding, and walked through the gates.

I soon settled into boarding-school life. My fees were paid on the nail by my trustees, and very soon the scholastic life engulfed me. I would spend coach-weekends with one or other of my friends, Christmas, Easter and summer holidays with those same friends and their families, usually studying to catch up with the rest of my classmates, who had spent their entire lives in the British school system, working feverishly to pass my A-Level examinations. I would call mother unfailingly every Sunday evening, tell her about my week, ask about Lori, and have few words with Charlie, who never failed ask if I needed anything, and when was I going to come home and see them, and to tell me he loved me. I always promised him I would come home as soon as I could, time and studies permitting, but I never managed it; there was always too much to do, and never enough hours in the day to do it all.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Eventually I was accepted at one of the major teaching hospitals in London, and worked steadily towards my medical goals; I wanted to be a Cardiothoracic surgeon like my father, and gradually worked my way through the clinical, medical and surgical phases of my training. I was in the middle of my surgical elective when I got a terse call from Lori;

“Davey, Dad died this morning, you need to come home, now, Mom is in pieces, and I don’t know what to do”.

She hung up, and I stood numbly, all the promises I had made to Charlie now less than worthless; he had gone, and I had lost another father.

I got the first available flight home, and there was Lori, waiting for me at Des Moines, but not the Lori I remembered; when I left she was a gangly 11-year old, 8 years later she was a full-blown stunner, a regular pin-up girl. Gone were the scrunchies, straggly black hair and dowdy tracksuit/sneaker combinations she seemed to live in, now she was wearing skin-tight black leather jeans, accentuating her perfect rump, silver-tipped patent cowboy boots with silver heels, and a low-cut top outlining her killer breasts, probably a 36B cup, full, firm and enticingly feminine; nothing flat-chested or boyish about my kid sister, that was for sure!

With her long glossy black curls tumbled over her shoulder, setting off her cornflower-blue eyes, she looked like a vision, a total head-turner, and not just to me, judging by the stares of the other men walking through the Arrivals Lounge. In so many ways, she was a snapshot of how mother must have looked 30 years ago. I just stood there, mouth agape, dazzled by my baby sister.

“Seen enough yet? Close your mouth, David, you’re causing a draught.” was her acerbic comment, her deep blue eyes glittering like arctic stars, sharp, brilliant, and cold. That was enough to jerk me back to my senses, and hold out my arms to hug her in commiseration and mutual loss. As I hugged her, I realised how much I had missed my little sister. But, she had called me “David”, not ‘Davey’, my family and fireside name, and she had been stiff and unyielding when I hugged her.

“She’s still angry with me…” I thought, apprehensively.

Lori led me out to Charlie’s old Saturn, with ‘Ouch’ still painted on the ding on the rear bumper, another powerful reminder of our loss, and all I managed was some inane comment about the old bus still going strong, which Lori pointedly ignored.

On the way back to the house Lori and I talked in a desultory manner about Charlie, I reminisced about his patient coaching of me when I played Little League, teaching me to slide in for a base, the way he took pains to make sure I remembered as much as possible about my father, his fund of really funny clean jokes, his fondness for terrible puns, and his complete inability to cook even a frozen meal without burning it. Mother used to ask him how he could possibly fly and land a multi-million-dollar fighter jet with one hand, and yet be incapable of understanding a simple stove. We went on in this vein for a while, exchanging happy memories about good times, and then Lori dropped the bombshell.

“Davey, there’s more, I couldn’t tell you over the phone, I don’t know how to tell you now, but here goes. Mom had a malignant tumour removed from her liver two years ago. She had the chemo, and it looked like it was gone, she came up all-clear just a few months ago. The cancer’s back, it’s spread, and she has tumours on her lungs, her liver, and her kidneys; it’s bad, and she’s pretty far gone. I’m sorry, she wouldn’t let me tell you, she didn’t want to disrupt your studies, and she knew what being a doctor meant to you. Dad waited for you to come home, he lived for the day you’d come home, he missed you so, now it’s too late, it’s too late for everything, why did you have to go away, why did you stay away so long, we needed you…”