The Secret I Keep About My Boyfriend’s Mother

Tomás’s mother is sixty-two years old, though you’d never guess it. She got pregnant with him at forty-four, after years of trying and two losses that almost broke her. His father was ten years younger than her, and together they built a life that’s obvious the moment you walk through the door of their house in Acassuso.

They own three restaurants. One is upscale, with white tablecloths and a waiting list, and two are more popular, neighborhood places, the kind ordinary people go to. Contrary to what anyone would think, it’s the two popular ones that bring in almost all the money. She explained that to me one afternoon with a clarity that left me speechless, as if she were telling me something obvious I still hadn’t understood.

I’m describing her and I’m not doing her justice. Renata is five foot ten, thin, slender, with that way of moving only women who once made a living off their bodies have. She looks fifty at most. She’s intelligent, well read, and always dresses with an elegance that doesn’t seem like effort. Tomás’s father was stocky, five foot eight, one of those men who clearly did a lot of sports when they were young and never quite gave them up.

Renata was a model. One of the elegant ones, from back then. If you look up her name, magazine covers still come up, high-fashion campaigns, the occasional lingerie shot from an imported catalog. She is, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. And I thought that from the first time I saw her, long before I understood what it meant to think it.

I was twenty when I started dating Tomás. They welcomed me into that house like a daughter from the very beginning. They looked after me, asked me about university, served me the biggest plate. They never made me feel like a guest. Over time, that made everything more confusing.

***

One autumn afternoon I was left alone with her. Tomás had gone out with his father to one of the restaurants because of a problem with a supplier, and Renata offered to stay with me and wait for them with tea. I accepted without thinking. I liked listening to her.

She started telling me about her life. The trips, the seasons in Milan, the fashion shows, the people she met. I listened the way you listen to a film, cup cooling between your hands, fascinated by a world that felt far too big for me.

—Wait —she said suddenly, getting up—. I have something I want to show you.

She came back with two heavy hardcover albums and sat down beside me on the sofa. So close I could smell her perfume, something woody and expensive, and feel the warmth of her arm almost brushing mine.

—This was one of my first shoots —she said, opening the first one.

In the photo there was a girl of about twenty-two, in lingerie, in a studio, posing with the kind of natural ease you don’t learn. It was her. Any one of my friends would have killed for that body. I stared longer than I should have and covered it by quickly turning the page.

—I hope these photos don’t make you uncomfortable —she said, never looking away from the album.

—Not at all —I answered, and my voice came out steadier than I expected—. You were and are a beautiful woman. I only feel admiration.

It was half true. I did feel admiration, yes, but underneath there was something else, a warm current rising up through my chest that I knew well. By then I’d been considering myself bisexual for a while, almost in secret, almost as if I were lying to myself. I wouldn’t date a woman, I told myself. But some of them turned me on. I’d kissed friends at parties, I’d looked at a professor longer than I should have. This was different. This was my boyfriend’s mother.

Don’t look at her like that. She’s Tomás’s mother. Stop looking at her like that.

But I looked anyway. And while I looked, I felt my panties getting wet, slowly, with a quiet betrayal I couldn’t stop. I pressed my thighs together in a pretend casual way, and the friction sent a jolt up to my navel. I was wet because of her. Because of Tomás’s mother. And I kept looking at her.

***

—If it doesn’t bother you —she said, and for the first time I noticed something like pride in her voice—, I’d like to show you the last set of photos I ever did.

—Of course —I said, too quickly.

She got up and went into another room. It took her a while. I took the chance to breathe deeply, to settle into the sofa, to repeat to myself that nothing was happening, that it was just a woman showing old photos to her son’s girlfriend. I slipped my hand quickly between my legs, over my jeans, and felt the fabric, hot and damp. I brought my hand to my nose for a second, embarrassed, and smelled it. I smelled like I was turned on. I closed my eyes. When she came back, she was carrying a different album, slimmer, with a cloth-covered cover.

—I put this together for my husband and me —she said, sitting beside me again—. To commemorate one of the happiest moments of our life.

She opened it slowly, carefully, like someone opening something sacred.

In the first photo she was pregnant. Six or seven months along, wearing a cropped top that left her belly bare. Her skin was shining. Her breasts were full, firm, the nipples pressing against the thin fabric of the top, dark and large from the pregnancy, and she had a smile that wasn’t a pose, it was real. She looked radiant in a way studio photos couldn’t come close to.

—I was waiting for Tomás here —she said, touching the image with the tip of her finger.

My throat closed up. I was looking at my boyfriend inside her, and at his mother, more desirable than in any magazine campaign. Both things at once, and I didn’t know what to do with either one. I thought, unable to stop myself, of Tomás’s father’s semen inside that body, of how he must have fucked her to leave her like that, of whether she would have screamed, of whether she would have come with him on top of her. And I dug my nails into my palm to come back to myself.

She turned the page. And the next. Photos of her in imported lace lingerie, the kind that costs a fortune. The pregnancy had changed her body and made her, if that was possible, even more beautiful. The poses varied, all sensual, all deliberate. Light fell diagonally across the curve of her belly, across the beginning of her swollen breasts, across the barely covered triangle of her panties, where the shape of her cunt showed behind the lace.

—My husband took almost all of them —she said softly—. He said he’d never seen me so beautiful. I believed him.

I believed him too. I could hardly breathe.

I found myself studying every photo in detail, and it made me ashamed. The line of her back, the way the lace outlined her hip, the way she held the camera’s gaze without shame, as if the entire world belonged to her. In one of the photos she was in profile, with her bra open and her breasts out, holding her belly with both hands. Her nipples looked enormous, a pinkish brown I had never seen on a real body. My mouth watered. I thought about sucking those nipples, about biting them between my teeth, about whether she’d leaked milk when Tomás was born. I thought about my own friends, about how far we all were from that kind of confidence, and I thought about Tomás, who existed thanks to that body, and everything got tangled together in a way I didn’t know how to undo.

—Can I confess something? —I said, and regretted opening my mouth the instant I did.

—Of course.

—I’d give anything to have half your confidence. The way you look at the camera. I take a picture and hide.

She gave a low laugh, a throat laugh, and rested her hand on my forearm.

—That isn’t inherited or bought —she said—. It’s learned. And you learn it when someone looks at you the way you deserve. What you’re missing is someone who looks at you like that.

I swallowed. I didn’t know if she was talking about Tomás or something else. I didn’t want to find out either, because either answer scared me.

***

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, shoulder against shoulder, turning those pages. At some point she rested her hand on my knee, with no intention behind it, just to point out a detail in a photo, and left it there a second too long. A second I counted in full, my heart pounding in my ears and my cunt throbbing against the seam of my jeans. I felt my nipples tightening inside my bra, hard, sore, so prominent I was sure they showed through my T-shirt.

—You’re very pretty too —she said suddenly, looking me in the eyes—. Tomás is lucky.

Her hand was still on my knee. And without taking her eyes off mine, she moved it up a little, two or three centimeters, to the middle of my thigh. It was so little and yet so much. I parted my legs a millimeter without thinking, and she noticed. I saw the flash in her eyes. I saw the tip of her tongue appear for a second to wet her upper lip.

—Renata —I said, and it came out like a plea for help.

—Yes, my love?

And that phrase, “my love,” said in that low voice, with her hand on my thigh and her face ten centimeters from mine, made me lose the last remnants of common sense. I moved closer. She moved closer. We kissed. A slow, adult kiss, unhurried, with the tongue slipping in little by little, tasting of cold tea and expensive lipstick. She sucked my lower lip, nipped it lightly, and pushed her tongue in all the way. A moan escaped me into her mouth.

Her hand went all the way up. She slid her palm over my jeans, right over my cunt, and squeezed. She only squeezed. She felt the heat and the wetness through the fabric and smiled against my mouth.

—You’re soaked —she whispered—. Baby, you’re soaked.

—I’m sorry —I said, eyes closed.

—No. Don’t apologize for this.

She undid the button on my jeans with a slowness that hurt. Lowered the zipper. Slipped her hand inside my panties and touched me directly. Her fingers sank straight away into the wetness, and I opened my legs as far as the jeans would let me. She found my clit with the tip of her middle finger and started circling it slowly, as if she knew exactly how I touched myself.

—Be quiet —she told me when I moaned—. The door’s closed, but be quiet anyway.

She put one finger inside me. Then two. She moved them in with a calm that was worse than any haste, pressing my pubic mound into the palm of her hand, her thumb on my clit. I grabbed the back of her neck with both hands and kissed her like a madwoman, sucking her tongue, biting her lip, pressing myself against her fingers.

—Take your jeans off —she whispered in my ear—. Fast.

I pulled them down to my knees, with my panties still on. I stayed there open on the living room sofa, with my boyfriend’s mother kneeling between my legs. She looked at my cunt up close, lips parted, the way you look at something you’re going to eat slowly.

—You’re gorgeous —she said—. What a gorgeous cunt you have.

And she lowered her head. She ran her whole tongue from bottom to clit in one long, firm lick, and I shoved my fist into my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. She spread my lips with her fingers and started sucking my clit directly, in circles, using her whole tongue, while she slipped the two fingers back in and bent them inside me. She found a spot. She found it. She started pressing it with the pad of her finger while she sucked me, and I thought I was going to die.

—Renata —I murmured—, Renata, Renata.

She didn’t answer. She licked me and finger-fucked me with the technique of a woman who had fucked a lot, without doubting anything. She sucked me with hunger. Every so often she lifted her face for a second, her lips shiny with me, and looked me in the eyes before going back down. That look finished breaking me.

I came in her mouth a few minutes later, both hands buried in her hair, arched against the back of the sofa, choking a cry in my throat. The fucking of her fingers kept going while I shook, taking everything out of me, until I had to pull her face away because I couldn’t stand her clit anymore. Renata laughed softly, her mouth still messy, and pulled me up to kiss me. I got the pleasure of tasting myself in her mouth.

—Now you —she said.

She stood up, slipped off her dress pants without any drama, and sat beside me, kneeling on the sofa, one leg up on the backrest. She had a pair of expensive black lace panties, soaked in the middle. She moved them aside with two fingers and showed me my mother-in-law’s cunt. Hairless, pink, shiny, with the inner lips just peeking out, swollen.

—Lick me —she said, not asking, ordering—. Lick me, because nobody’s licked me in a long time.

I threw myself at her. I buried my face there, hungry, not knowing what I was doing, letting myself be carried along. I ran my tongue over her entire cunt the way she had done to me, and felt the salty, clean, acidic taste of a real woman. I found her clit. It was big, pronounced. I started sucking it the way I wanted to be sucked, and she pressed my head against her body and began moving beneath my tongue.

—Like that —she guided me, voice hoarse—. Slower. Put it inside. Put it in.

I pushed my tongue in as far as I could. I slipped in one finger, then two, while I kept sucking her clit. She was hot inside, tight, wet in a way I had never seen in anyone before. She took her sweater off with one hand without stopping her movements, pushed her bra down and grabbed one breast to offer it to me. I lifted my face from her cunt and took it into my mouth. I sucked her nipple while I kept finger-fucking her. I bit it slowly. I bit harder when she asked for it with a moan.

—Back down —she ordered two minutes later—. Lick me again. I’m going to come.

I went back down. I sucked her clit without stopping, moving the two fingers inside her, pressing the spot she had pressed in me. She came in my mouth seconds later, with a long moan she muffled against the back of the sofa, crushing my head with both hands, covering my face completely. I felt the contractions close around my fingers. I felt the taste change, denser, stronger, and I swallowed it.

I stayed there, cheek resting against the inside of her thigh, breathing. She stroked my hair slowly, in silence. Then she lifted my face with two fingers, looked at me all messy like that, and kissed me again, long and calm, sucking herself out of my mouth.

—Get dressed —she whispered in my ear, not stopping kissing me—. He’s about to be back.

We got dressed quickly, in silence, stealing sideways glances at each other with a new smile. She fixed her hair, reapplied her lipstick in the hallway mirror, washed her hands, and put the kettle back on. I pulled up my jeans with my legs still weak, washed my face in the guest bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. My lips were swollen, my eyes bright, and I had a red mark on my neck that I quickly hid with the collar of my T-shirt.

She closed the album slowly, set it on the coffee table, and smiled at me as if none of what had just happened had happened. Maybe for her, with all the life behind her, it hadn’t been that much. For me, it had been everything.

When Tomás and his father got back, I was still holding the cold cup in my hands, now full again and steaming with the tea she had poured me. My boyfriend kissed my forehead and asked if I had been bored. I told him no, that his mom had told me about when she was a model. Renata winked at me from the kitchen, conspiratorial, as if the two of us were keeping a secret that now, in fact, we were both keeping.

I couldn’t think of anything else for the whole drive back. Tomás was driving and talking about the supplier problem, and I nodded without hearing a single word, with those images stuck behind my eyes and the taste of his mother still in my mouth, no matter how many times I ran my tongue over my teeth.

***

I got home after eleven. I showered, tried reading something to distract myself, and it didn’t work. I turned off the light. I got into bed and spent a very long time staring at the ceiling, wrestling with what I knew I was going to do.

I lost the fight, of course.

I turned off every light, slid my hand under the sheets, and touched myself thinking about her. About the lace, the shining belly, the hand that had stayed a second too long on my knee, the “you’re very pretty too,” my mother-in-law’s tongue sucking my clit on the sofa where she serves me lunch on Sundays. I slipped two fingers in and tried to imitate what she had done to me, the exact curve, the exact pressure. It didn’t come out the same but it was enough. I licked my fingers afterward, searching for the taste, imagining it was hers. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t make a sound, even though I lived alone and there was no one to wake. It didn’t take long. Embarrassingly little time.

Afterward I lay still in the dark, my breathing slowly settling back into place and a strange mixture of guilt and relief settling in my chest.

It’s the biggest secret of my life and I’ve never told anyone. I’m still Tomás’s girlfriend. I still go to Sunday lunches, I still get the biggest plate from Renata’s hands. And every time she hugs me when I arrive, with that woody, expensive perfume, I go back for an instant to that autumn afternoon, to the sofa, to the open album, to her mouth between my legs.

That night, in the dark of my room, I masturbated thinking about my mother-in-law. And the truth, the only truth I dare write, is that it wasn’t the last time. Not with my hand. Not with her.