Weekend by Andrew Neiderman, Tania Grossinger Page B

his father admitted she was still beautiful. “One thing I’ve got to say for her, Grant, is that she keeps her figure 100 percent. She’s some piece of ass, your mother is.”
    How he hated that expression and how many times he had heard it … especially from the fellows at school when they thought he couldn’t hear. “Boy, is Grant’s mother a piece of ass. What I wouldn’t do to get into that!” What was he supposed to do? Donate her to the charity auction they held every year? It was his mother they were talking about, for Christ’s sake, his mother. Didn’t anybody understand?
    It never occurred to him he might be jealous.
    “Are you still on that couch, Grant?” She stepped out of the bathroom, an oversized terry cloth towel wrapped around her body and a smaller one around her head.
    “What else is there to do?”
    “Oh, God, don’t start that the moment we arrive. Put on your bathing suit and go down to the pool. Maybe you’ll meet some kids your own age. There’s got to be lots of teenage girls up here this weekend.”
    “I don’t feel like swimming.”
    “Look Grant,” now she was getting serious, “all I’m asking you to do is to give it a chance. Get involved in something. You don’t have to fall in love with the place, but there has to be something, someone you’d like. And you’ll never find out if you just mope around the room.” Besides, she thought to herself, I’ll never have any privacy if you’re always hanging around.
    He got up and walked to the window. They were very high up so the view was encompassing. He could see the main highways in the distance, heavy with traffic now. The cars moved like insects. He wished he had the power to step on them and squash them into the macadam. And the people walking around the grounds below, they looked more like mechanical wind-up robots than human beings to him.
    As he stood gazing down, he was struck by the sheer immensity, of the place. To think that he, Grant Kaplan, would be able to do anything significant to damage it was ridiculous. He was outnumbered, outsized and outclassed. It depressed him to have his fantasy deflated.
    Melinda was still chattering away, repeating her now too familiar speech about his not being a loner, mixing with others, developing relationships, etc. He imagined a small long-playing record in her head. She just pressed the button and on it went. She could do lots of other things at the same time because the record ran itself. He was sure, for instance, that even now while she was talking to him, her mind was on other things. He was afraid to think about what.
    When he turned from the window, he looked into her bedroom where she was standing in front of a vanity mirror, clad only in the bikini panties she had newly purchased last week. They had a hole where the crotch would normally be. As she brushed out her hair, her firm breasts vibrated. He found it embarrassing to admit, but his mother’s body really appealed to him and he could understand why strangers enjoyed looking at her the way they did. As for her, in some strange, peculiar way, she enjoyed showing off to him too.
    What if he had an erection, he thought, staring at her with fascination. No, that would be sick. After all, she was his …
    Most of his friends got erections constantly, at least they said they did, but Grant had always had difficulty. He was as turned on, at least in his head, by pictures of foldouts from
Playboy
as they were and even one night at a dance he had gotten his hands on a girl’s tits but … nothing. Of course, Melinda never knew.
    “All I can tell you,” (she started another record in her head), “is to be very careful when you’re with a girl up here. I trust you know enough not to get a girl pregnant.” Wonderful, he thought, just picturing himself going to the canteen and asking for a box of rubbers. Not that it would ever come to that, but …
    “I don’t make mistakes with girls,” he said.
    “Well,