The following is part of a novel in progress. There is some sex but not highly explicit. It is a fantasy set in the not so distant/possible future. Please let me know what you think. E-mail me at: rwig@hotmail.com
Legal stuff: The story is mine so don't steal it or I'll be pissed.
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RClayton
SEVEN
After returning from dinner with Cynthia, she sent the child off to her room to do homework. She had her mind on Ricky and wanted to figure out what she needed to do to help the boy. Her first option was a psychologist which she was loath to do but so little choice. If the problem wasn't handled now she could be faced with a far worse situation in the not too distant future.
"Carmen," she called out.
"Yes, Mrs. Carter?" The maid replied.
"Where is my son?"
"He was doing homework on the back patio an hour ago, ma'am." The Spanish woman said as she continued to dust the expensive furniture.
"Thank you." Gloria placed her purse on the foyer table and walked through the open space of the entry hall and down a carpeted hallway to a set of double glass doors which led to the poolside patio. She opened the right hand door and stepped out, closing the door softly so as not to disturb the boy who seemed to be writing away steadily in a notebook. Gloria walked carefully trying to keep her high heels from clicking to loudly on the tiled patio deck.
Ricky sat dressed in a pair of swim trunks and nothing else. His flip flops lay discarded under the table. There was a tank top shirt and a towel in a chair near by.
"What are you doing, dear?" Gloria asked.
Ricky jumped as though he'd been grabbed. "Oh, Mom! You scared me. I was working on some homework before I take a swim."
"That's good. Did you have some dinner," Gloria asked.
"Not hungry," he replied. There was a can of Diet Pepsi on the table with a flexible blue straw sticking out of it. As though the boy needed to drink diet drinks; he was painfully thin already.
"I worry about you not eating properly, Ricky. You only drink diet drinks or water, never eat sweats or even pop corn."
"I just want to take care of myself, mom." Ricky said.
"I know, dear, but you have to put a little weight on. You look like a prison refugee or something. Someone will think you have AIDS." Gloria sat in an empty chair and took her cigarette's from a dress pocket.
"I wish you wouldn't do that mom."
"I know, dear. I can't help it." Gloria lit up the cigarette and took deep drag, then out the smoke slowly into the air. "Mommy is stressed."
"Mommy is going to die of lung cancer before she hits fifty." Ricky said.
In those few words Ricky sounded so much like his father that she shot him a look to melt steel. She realized who she was talking to a cooled down.
"I'm sorry mom, not my business." Ricky said shyly.
"Yes, it is." She snubbed the cigarette in a glass ashtray on the table and crossed her arms. "You know, you remind me more and more of your father all the time."
"Yeah, I know. You use to give him the same look a lot of the time." Ricky said. He looked out over the pool.
"I'm sorry about that dear, I really am. I just forgot..."
"You thought I was dad." Ricky said.
"Yeah, I did."
"I take that as a compliment." Ricky smiled.
"You are so much his son, Ricky. I often wonder how much you realize it. I wonder how many ways the two of you really are alike." She examined her son. She hadn't met Jerrison until he was twenty one so all she had to g one was the many pictures from his youth that his parents had kept but from those she knew that Ricky looked exactly like except for the hair color. That he got from her, or a mix of her and Jerrison anyway. If only he wasn't so damn thin. That was a difference. Jerrison had been a bigger boy body wise, not fat, just more filled out. She wondered if it would help to show him some of the pictures of his father from that age, maybe he would see it was okay to eat a little.
"After your swim when you've showed and gotten ready for bed come to my room. I have some of pictures of your father I think you might like to see."
"Really? Cool! I can skip the swim..."
"No, go ahead. I have to locate what I want and that could take a while, plus I want some alone time."
"Okay," Ricky said. He knew what alone time meant. His mom wanted to drink and probably do other things by herself, things that adults enjoyed doing.
Gloria stood and ran her hand through the boy's hair. "I love you baby, you know that?"
"Sure, mom, I know."
"Your dad loved you too."
"I know that." He smiled up at her.
"I know you do." She turned and walked back to the house, not bothering to avoid the noise her shoes made on the tile.
"I just don't know why you stopped loving each other." Ricky said above a whisper. He wiped a tear from his eye and ran over to the pool and jumped into the deep end.