Watching her body move with the freedom of youth it was hard to believe that Louise was my mother-in-law, would be the grandmother of my children. Her figure was pert and firm and damned alluring. It often reminded me that I could have married Louise just as easily as Bet. And then I wouldn’t have had to wait for the money.
Her body brushed my legs under water. I could feel her hands sliding up my legs, using my body like a diver’s life line steering her toward the surface. She rose slowly, her hands gliding along my skin, groping toward the air, seemingly innocent. She surfaced her body tight against mine. She held the position, in full contact with my torso, while she made a show of working air into her lungs. Her back arched, pressing hard against me with each breath. She made it last until she laughed at my reaction and withdrew into the innocence and unassailable position of my wife’s mother. Somehow, the warm contacts — firm and soft — made it hard to believe we planned to kill her.
I let myself drift away, breaking the contact. Louise’s face was bland as she stared into my eyes. I stared back. Then I felt her leg moving over to touch mine. I spashed backward. Assured of her powers, she gave me a slow, sly smile.
“Someday,” I said, “I’m going to...”
“What?”
“Drown you.”
“Such a waste. And me in the full bloom of youth.”
“Ha. You’re a potential grandmother. A hard woman who harried one man already to his grave.”
She gave a low throaty chuckle. “But he died happy, lover.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She breast-stroked close to me and her toes started exploring my leg. It was an old game with her. She had been at it, with increasing boldness, since the day I had married Bet. But she played with her own special rules. Enticing and teasing without ever making it clear whether she was after an adventure or testing the fidelity of her daughter’s husband. There was always the air of combined threat and promise. So even when things proceeded too far, as they were this morning, I never made a counter-move. It made me feel a little silly.
I pulled myself backwards again and studied her face.
She grinned back at me, her face shining with water in the glare of the sun. “Go ahead. Drown me. Collect all that yummy insurance.”
I felt a sudden urge to do it. It would be so easy. Then it would be over with. But the feeling immediately gave way to a heavy emotional shock. Even it wasn’t one sided. It was a mixture, like my relation with Louise. I felt a heated desire, half sexual, to grab her and hold her lithe body, squiring and struggling, beneath the water until it stilled. It was what she deserved in a way; pay her back for the misery she had given me with her teasing. But the thought of it hurt. The pain of loss. Life would not be the same without Louise. And hovering over all of these feelings was fear, made worse by the realization that someday, somehow, I would actually do it.
Louise rolled over on her back and paddled gently toward me. Her smile was speculative. “Hmnnh. think. All that insurance. You and Bet could live here in solitude and comfort... hog heaven.”
Her description was apt. And Bet was the sow. She was everything Louise wasn’t. Louise was petite. Bet was huge. Even when I first met her she was exceptionally large. She had a heavy body, muscular and athletic, with huge firm breasts that could barely be contained in a swim suit. She had been a statuesque beauty in the classical style. Her life of indolence and steady drinking had changed her to a — the exact word was — pig. Her muscular thighs had degenerated to huge hams covered with rippling fat. Her torso looked like a chunk out of a redwood log with two waterfalls of flesh attached to the front. Her face resembled a doughy albino basset hound.
At first, I had been shocked when Bet suggested we get rid of Louise. It seemed strange. It was her own mother. Soon, however, I understood it. Louise was — and probably always had been — one of Bet’s major frustrations, a continuing, living example of what she was not.
I felt Louise’s leg drift over against mine. I rolled over and started a sloshy imitation of the Australian crawl. I had hoped it would change my train of thought, but it didn’t. As I plugged along I realized Bet had been thinking about it a long time. It started with the insurance.
When Bet had suggested the policies, Louise had laughingly declined. Bet stayed with it for several days. She harped on the unfairness of her grandfather’s will. It stated that the money stayed with the blood lines. Of course, Bet would continue to get her small income, but Louise’s income would go to her sister unless we had children at the time of her death. And since Bet and I had had no luck at having children, it would leave us in a bad spot if something happened.
Louise merely recommended we apply ourselves more assiduously in the bedroom. And then she had laughed, quite loud and quite long. She knew it was becoming increasingly hard for me to do. At least with Bet.
I had listened for several days to this running battle and then suggested, as a joke, “But what if something happens to you and Bet both... like getting hit by a truck on the freeway. It would leave me destitute.” I hadn’t even had time to laugh before a studious look had come into Louise’s eyes. To my everlasting surprise she liked the idea. The next morning they went down to start arranging for the policies. Louise even insisted — her idea of going along with the joke — that both sets of policies name me as the beneficiary.
Since then I hadn’t thought about the policies. Not until Bet started harping on me to help her kill Louise. “It’s our only sure way of getting hold of some money right now,” she had said. Churning through the pool, I couldn’t help wondering how long she had planned it. I hated myself for not realizing it when she started talking about the insurance. Maybe then I would have had the strength to stop it. Now I didn’t.
Blowing hard I gave up after seven laps just as Bet came out onto the pool deck. She was wearing a faded blue wrapper and carrying an extremely dark looking drink.
Louise broke off her laps several feet from me. “Where’s your suit?” she called. “Come on in, the water’s — you know how.”
Bet looked at her without a smile and settled herself into the hammock. I watched as the synthetic marvel strained nearly to the breaking point with her bulk.
She raised her heap up and looked at us. “Not for me. I’m saving myself for Mazatlan. Warm water. Sunshine. I’m going to have a real fling.” She gave me a jowly grin.
A real fling. A final one. Another of Bet’s ideas. She wanted to do it on the trip. There were too many complications and I was trying to talk her out of it. Better to do it in the United States, not Mexico. For one thing, I had my own plans for this trip. It was also going to be Bet’s last fling. When we came home I intended to do something about restoring her to her former glory, shape her up, physically and spiritually. Strangely, I also suspected that once Louise was gone Bet would regain some of her self-respect. Also I intended to relax myself. I had about had it. I only had one job, keeping some control over how much booze Bet put away. She needed it. Even though she was an experienced drinker, she didn’t know when to stop. Without external control she became a sloppy, obnoxious, vomiting drunk. Therapy for me and for her: let her. Maybe it would burn some of it out.
We spent the next week getting ready for the trip. When we were finally on the road, it was obvious that Bet had taken something of a head-start. She was a half-bottle gone. However, without any more fuel, she got groggy and slept all the way to Tijuana.
We dumped Bet in the room to sleep it out, Louise changed and we went to dinner. As we were led to our table, her small gloved hand slipped momentarily into mine and she gave me a glowing smile.