The Secret of My Mother-in-Law and a Night with My Son

It has been more than twenty years since what I am about to tell, and I still keep the notebooks where I wrote down almost every day of that time. I am a woman of order. I always was. Perhaps that is why it took me so long to accept that the most important thing in my life never fit in any column or any record.

My name is Setsuko. Back then I lived on the outskirts of Osaka, in a small, rigid house like so many others, where silence was managed the same way as money. My husband, Hideo Arima, had died a year earlier. He worked for a logistics company I will call Kansai Cargo Lines, twelve or thirteen hours a day, six days a week, until his body told him enough one morning in March, without warning anyone. No one had taught me how to be a widow. Much less to be one with a son and a new post at the Ministry of Labor that devoured my hours.

My son’s name was Itsuki. He was nineteen, swam for the university club, and spoke little, just like his father. At night we shared the same futon, as we had done since I became a widow, because the house was small and because his warmth, I suppose, drove away some of the cold.

It was in those months that I started drinking. One measure of whisky before bed; then two. I told myself I had it under control, and in a way that was true: my habit of watching everything never left me, not even drunk.

***

The trigger came with a phone call. A woman from a nursing home in Nara pronounced my full name with a seriousness that chilled my blood. I thought of Itsuki, of an accident. But no. It was Chiyo, Hideo’s mother, my mother-in-law, who had been institutionalized there since before her own son’s death.

Between Chiyo and me there had never been anything more than mute contempt. Something in the way she looked at me, and above all in the way she treated Hideo, had always disgusted me without my being able to explain why. Dementia had taken almost everything from her, but she was asking for me, repeating my name, and the facility decided to call me in.

I found her sitting on the bed, looking out the window. When I sat down in front of her, she stopped moving her lips. In that murmur my name could no longer be read, but rather that of her dead son.

—So it ended the same as your father’s —she said, and for an instant something lucid crossed her eyes, as if the woman she had once been had pierced the fog.

She fell silent. When I was already thinking of leaving, she spoke again, slowly, as though reciting.

—Your father replaced him in my bed. And shared his fate.

A tear ran down her cheek. She turned back to the window and did not look away again. But her words exploded in my head like thunder. Had she said bed? I wanted to ask. I knew at a glance that she was no longer there.

I went home shaken. I not only remembered strange gestures between Hideo and his mother, old scenes that suddenly took on a different meaning; those words also ignited something in me, something buried long ago.

***

Because I too had a mother. Her name was Emiko. And she had an older brother, Kaoru, who slept beside her until the day he left to study engineering in Kobe.

My mother hugged Kaoru more than she hugged me. She kissed him more. And I knew, with that certainty children have about what no one names, that it was not a simple preference. It was another kind of love. I remember two gold rings she always wore, identical, and how sometimes she would look at my brother while slowly turning them on her finger.

That night I dreamed of all of it. And asleep, for an instant, Itsuki’s face blurred with Kaoru’s, and in my own hand I thought I felt the weight of those rings. In the dream, a hand slid up my thigh, opened my legs, slid two fingers into my wet cunt without asking, and I moaned my brother’s name and my son’s name mixed together in one gasp. I woke with my panties soaked, my breathing short and a hot pounding between my legs that took a long time to fade. I slipped my hand under my nightgown without thinking, found my clit swollen and slippery, and rubbed myself in slow circles until I came, biting the pillow, alone, with my eyes closed and the image of Itsuki sleeping beside me burning behind my eyelids.

I woke ashamed and told no one. But, according to my notebooks, it was three weeks later when I stopped looking at my son the way I had looked at him before.

***

Work gave me both a reprieve and a trap. I was coordinating a report on deaths from overwork, the same sickness that had taken Hideo. When I presented it, it made too many people uncomfortable. A federation of major corporations felt targeted, and my boss, Tetsuo, warned me to be careful, that there were men you did not want to spit in the face.

—Since I can’t stop you from going to the hearing —he told me with almost theatrical solemnity— try not to speak. And if you do speak, say nothing.

The hearing was in Sendai, several hours away, and I was to stay three days. Too long to leave Itsuki alone. I asked permission to take him with me. It was granted, but the reservation was not changed: one room, one bed.

***

We arrived at the Aoba Central Hotel in the middle of the night, battered by the overnight bus. The room was designed for an executive who arrives late and leaves early: a wide Western-style bed against the wall, a desk, a minibar with a transparent door. There was no second bed or sofa. Itsuki had no place of his own.

I did not ask to be moved. I did not want to leave him alone in another room, not at that hour, not in a city that was not ours. I set the alarm for four hours later and told him to lie down beside me.

—Try to sleep a little —I said. My voice sounded too loud in that silence. He did not answer me.

The alarm woke me. I silenced it with a slap and lay on my side, still in the haze of sleep. Behind me, Itsuki was sleeping. I felt his young body pressed against my back, his arms loosely around me, an unconscious embrace.

Then I noticed the pressure. A firm hardness against the curve of my buttocks. My son’s cock, stiff inside his pajama trousers, pushing between my ass cheeks like a hot bar. I wondered if he was asleep; everything suggested he was, that it was an innocent contact. But I felt every millimeter of it: the length, the thickness, the tip outlined beneath the thin fabric, moving only slightly with the rhythm of his breathing.

My body, on that border between sleep and waking, reacted without asking my permission. Heat rose up my back to my scalp and fell through my belly until my cunt was suddenly soaked. Move away, I thought. And instead of moving away, I felt my muscles tense in a tiny, instinctive, shameful counterpressure: I pushed my ass back, barely an inch, searching for the shape of his cock against my flesh. My nipples hardened beneath my nightgown, so hard they hurt. Between my thighs, wetness spread, warm, sticky, until it stained my underwear. I stayed still, breathing through my mouth slowly so he wouldn’t hear, and I hated myself for how good it felt to have him like that, hard against my mother’s ass.

—Is it time already? —he murmured, waking, and rolled onto his back.

A long sigh escaped me. My heart was pounding against my chest.

—Yes —I answered, rougher than I meant to—. It’s time.

We washed in silence. When he took off his pajamas, the erection was still there, obvious beneath his underwear, bulging to one side, long, thick, the swollen tip pressing at the cloth. It was not a sight that should have surprised me, and yet it did not leave me indifferent. My mouth went dry. With a clarity that frightened me, I thought about how it would look outside the briefs, the weight of that young cock in the palm of my hand, the taste of it. I stripped completely and changed in front of the mirror without hurrying. Through the glass I caught him looking at my back, my ass, my breasts in profile, intermittently, like someone who did not dare. I saw him swallow. I saw his hand brush the bulge over the fabric for a second, trying to hide it, before turning away. Or perhaps he simply had nowhere else to rest his eyes in that immaculate room.

***

That day we wandered aimlessly through Sendai while I dodged the hearing inside my head. We ate in a narrow place that smelled of broth, sitting opposite each other, and I asked him, as if it were nothing, whether there was any girl he liked.

—No —he said, after only a brief hesitation—. Not yet.

—All the better —I replied without looking at him—. You have more important things to think about.

I felt him settle in his chair, as if he had given the right answer. Before going back to the hotel I went into a watch shop lit with the harsh clarity of a clinic. I chose two identical watches, polished steel, pale faces, without asking anyone’s opinion. We put them on right there.

—It’s heavy —he said, turning his wrist to watch the light slide over the metal.

—That’s good —I replied. And I thought of my mother, of two identical gold rings, still not knowing exactly what had begun.

***

I could not say which night the final boundary fell. There was no seduction scene, no plan laid in advance. It was something that kept tilting, like water, until it found its level. One dawn, back home already, on our futon, I did not move away when I felt him against my back again. This time neither of us was asleep, and we both knew it.

I turned toward him in the dark. We said nothing. I found his mouth and he answered with clumsy urgency, months of restraint in it. He devoured my lips, pushed his tongue deep, gasping into my mouth as if he had been drowning for years. I took his hand and put it on one breast, over the nightgown; I showed him how to squeeze it, how to find my nipple with his thumb, how to pinch it until I let out a low moan. I pulled my nightgown up to my waist and he finished taking it off over my head with tender awkwardness.

—M-mom... —he whispered against my neck, and I covered his mouth with two fingers.

—Not here —I told him in his ear—. Here I’m only Setsuko. Say it.

—Setsuko —he repeated, hoarse.

I slipped my hand into his pajama pants and closed my fingers around his cock. It was rock-hard, hot, thicker than I had imagined on so many nights without naming it. I pulled back his foreskin slowly, feeling his whole body tremble, and discovered the tip already wet with fluid, slippery. I rubbed it with my thumb, in circles, listening to him breathe in short bursts against my hair. I pulled his pants down to his knees and slid down his body, kissing his chest, his flat stomach, the line of hair below his navel, until I found his cock knocking against my cheek.

—Setsuko, wait, there’s no need to...

I took it into my mouth before he could finish. A moan escaped him, muffled against his arm. I sucked him slowly at first, lips closed around the tip, tasting his salty pre-cum; then I swallowed him whole, to the back of my throat, until I felt him strike it. I ran my tongue underneath, over the thick vein, up and down, sucking him with hunger, eyes closed, gorging myself as I had never gorged on anything before. My son. My son had his cock in my mouth and I sucked it like a grateful whore. I never said it to him in those words, but I thought it, and the thought tightened my cunt until I gasped around his cock.

—I’m going to... —he murmured, arching—. Setsuko, I’m going to come...

I pulled it from my mouth just in time, kept stroking him with my hand, and whispered for him to hold on, not yet. He drew a deep breath, trembling, his cock shining with saliva pointed at my face. I climbed over his body again, opened his mouth with mine, let him taste the flavor of his own cock on my tongue. Then I took his hand and led it between my legs.

—Touch me —I told him—. However you want. Learn.

He found the soaked cunt and let out a gasp of surprise. I guided his fingers to my clit, showed him how to circle it, with what pressure, with what rhythm. I took one of his fingers inside me and then another, pressing myself against his hand, riding his knuckles while I bit his shoulder so I wouldn’t scream. He opened me with two fingers, awkward and curious, and I asked for a third, and another, until I felt full, until the sleeping house became a distant murmur and only my son’s hand probing inside me existed.

—Get on top —I asked, barely able to speak—. Now.

I lay on my back and spread my legs. He settled between them, trembling, the tip brushing my entrance. I took his cock in my hand and guided it myself, rubbing it first against my clit, soaking it in my juices, until it fit at the mouth of my cunt.

—Push —I whispered.

He pushed slowly, centimeter by centimeter, his mouth open against my neck. I felt myself opening, felt my son’s cock fill me completely for the first time, felt a place inside me that had been asleep for a year wake with a sweet, sour pang. When he was all the way in, he stayed still, panting into my ear, his whole body tense. I wrapped my legs around his waist and forced him deeper still.

—Now fuck me —I begged in his ear, and I did not recognize my own voice—. Slowly. Just like I taught you.

He started to move. Awkward at first, searching for the rhythm, then firmer, longer, almost all the way out and then sinking back to the root. I bit his shoulder so I wouldn’t scream, scratched his back, whispered filthy things into his ear that I never thought would come out of my mouth: that’s it, my love, like that, go on, fuck my cunt, give it all to me, harder, don’t hold back, I’m yours, tonight I’m yours. He moaned, muffled against my neck, faster and faster, and the futon creaked beneath our bodies like a traitor.

I made him switch with me. I rode him, straddling him, and impaled myself on his cock until a long moan escaped me. I rode him slowly at first, rocking, letting him see my breasts, letting him take them in his mouth to suck them. I gripped his head with both hands and pressed his face to my tits as I rose and fell, threading myself on his cock alone, my clit striking his bone on every downstroke. I felt the orgasm gather in the pit of my stomach, rise up my back, felt my thighs shaking. I came on top of my son, biting my fist, eyes closed, feeling my cunt close in spasms around his cock.

—Setsuko, I can’t take it anymore —he panted beneath me—, I’m going to come, I’m...

—Inside —I said without thinking—. Come inside. All of it.

He grabbed my hips with both hands, dug his fingers in, thrust up into me three, four more times, and came with a strangled groan, arching his whole body. I felt the hot spurts emptying into the depths of my cunt, one after another, each one accompanied by a shudder. I stayed still on top of him, impaled, feeling him pulse inside me until the last drop. Then I collapsed onto his chest and he held me the way one holds a son and the way one holds a lover, no longer knowing where one thing ended and the other began. My body, for the first time in years, was at peace.

Before falling asleep I asked myself a question in the dimness. Why had I been so scandalized by Chiyo? Why had I spent so many nights on that report, untangling the sickness of an entire country, if what I felt was so elemental, so organic, so radically good? Why did something that felt this good have to be wrong?

***

The nights were not few. They lasted months. The futon became the center of our existence, a universe apart from the formality of the day, from bows and schedules. Itsuki turned out tireless, curious, willing to learn things that no conservative man would have even dared to hint at. I taught him to eat my cunt until he learned to make me come with his tongue alone, his arms around my thighs, his nose buried in the hair, sucking my clit until it was swollen and burning. I taught him to fuck me from behind, on his knees, my face crushed into the pillow to muffle my cries, while he pulled my hair gently and buried his cock all the way in with a rhythm he had learned to master. I taught him to come in my mouth, to come on my tits, to come on my face. One night I asked him, in a whisper that cost me to form, to try the other hole; he smeared his fingers with saliva, opened me slowly, put one in and then two, and when he finally pushed it into my ass I bit the sheet and came harder than I ever had before, with his hand covering my mouth and his cock opening me from the inside. With him I had a trust I had had with no one else and would never have again. An intimacy in which the roles were erased: I was no longer entirely his mother, he was no longer entirely my son.

I thought many times of my mother and Kaoru, of Chiyo and Hideo. I stopped judging them. I understood that blood, in my family, repeated a desire the way an inherited gesture repeats itself, without choosing it entirely. We both wore the same watch, just as she had worn her two rings.

***

The calm lasted five months. The controversy over my report faded in the newspapers until it seemed forgotten. And when no one was talking about it anymore, catastrophe arrived.

The phone rang. A man’s voice, deep and calm, said my name with a familiarity that raised the hairs on my skin.

—Do you remember your trip to Sendai? —he asked.

I could barely answer yes.

—You should have searched your house more carefully when you got back —he said, in the same flat tone—. Walk to your room, Setsuko. The place where you sleep and enjoy your nights with Itsuki. With your son.

A sheet of ice ran from the nape of my neck to my feet.

—Who are you? —I asked in a thread of a voice, my throat suddenly dry.

—As far as you’re concerned —he replied with icy mockery—, I am God. You meddled in our work, you spat in our faces. Time to pay the consequences.

I walked toward the room trembling. Then I remembered the light I had found on when I returned from Sendai, that small disarray I attributed to my own haste. The man made me look up at the ceiling lamp. And between its two bulbs, camouflaged in the white metal, I discovered a tiny, cold lens aimed straight at the futon where my son and I had been, for the first time in my life, completely happy.

I understood that those men had been watching me all that time. That my most intimate sin, the only one I never wrote down in any notebook, had been recorded forever in the hands of my enemies.

—Please —I begged, and my voice broke—. I’ll do whatever I...

—Too late —the man said—. Much too late.

And he hung up, leaving me standing under that light, the watch weighing on my wrist like a sentence.