YD6-51(SHEf) Aetheria's Wishful Destiny: Driving Boys' Father To Folly

 

Step into a world of sensual tension and emotional turmoil. A man, caught between fatherhood and a forbidden attraction, grapples with his desires. A woman, draped in his bathrobe, teases and challenges his stoicism. Vivid imagery and a stream-of-consciousness narrative pull you into their intimate dance. This chapter “Your are my sunshine: Vitrine of consciousness” explores the complexities of love, longing, and the difficult choices that shape our lives. 

You are my Sunshine: Vitrine of Consciousness

YD6-51(SHEf)

Francine slips out from under the duvet. Her fleeting figure tiptoes. Crossing the aisle in the shadow of the night, she vanishes through the cracked-open door. I pivot a wandering eye from the vacated headboard to the plain wall of the repurposed double garage. But turning the crease of the wall, I never thought to decorate. Easy is a dancer’s pose, entangled, my leg bent, sitting on my foot, contorted as a sculptured bedpost. My eyes called to light, crossing a mirage through the panoramic window. Oblivious to Aetheria in her realm, other than a shimmering bright and quiescent Sunday. 

I uncoil as the distant light shines the darkness off the room’s wall. The bright-colored of the New York subway lines, taped beside the yellowed map of the United States. I catch through the door crack, shades flickering over a corner of the bathroom sink. Then on the other wing wall plastered with a jumble of educational paper placemats — children’s educational comic strips. The shower spray spurts, onto hissing. Steam rolls over the door jamb's head, volatilizing. The hissing of the shower falls silent. Francine emerges in my white robe and her hair in a Marie Antoinette 18th century upswing coif towel. She slinks across the aisle, with a teasing grin, her eyes glinting. ‘I feel like being naughty,’ she has in mind. 

My surprise to see Francine without the black Kimono robe printed with rambling red flowers, fades. ‘Does it matter?’ I’m thinking to myself. Her deliberate flouting, realizing her presence, brings life to my stern milieu.

Francine pounces onto the bed, landing on her palms, her knees followed onto the edge. As she attempts to crawl further, she found the robe clung to her, hindered her from advancing. She tugs at the towel skirt, to a hint of frustration crossing her face. She threw a glance back at the unyielding towel beneath her knees. Reaching out with a wrap dancer’s veil motion. But the robe resists, holding her captive in the fabric. She uncoils, kicks back. With the towel fist tight. She tugs the robe’s hemline from her dangling foot over the edge. Riding along her leg. She falls short of a hand pace forward. She found the rhythm, crawling with a fluid grace inside the gown, hand-knee in tandem across the bed. Until she reached the far pillow, through a pause, rose in surfs. Her shoulders, cascade, in disguise bending her leg, rolling back onto her hip between pillows. Her hands drew from the duvet into the crease of her lap. Rising upright, to sit in a Lotus pose, she let go of her gaze with an enigmatic smile. ‘Do you like what you see?’ her eyes seemed to ask.

Francine’s free spirit, in a soft whispering voice, wove the threads of a tapestry across the Aladdin rug, leading my mind out of the fog to her French roots. To see her world emerge during her childhood. Among children playing in the curve of Rue Des Vosges. So different were the mothers, as Ingrid’s house against the hill, and her family a few houses down the hill. Her mother, Jacqueline, a gentle Leo, my sister Ingrid, a stern Sagittarius. 

I glimpsed into Francine’s mind, sensing a conflict. She’s an Aries, a fire sign, but she tempers her flames. A flicker of defiance crosses her face, a memory of Ingrid’s stern as a Matron. With respect for the family thread to me, she refrains from saying as much.

She steered the conversation away from the two families, In my mind’s eyes, I see a rapid GIF animation of the girls — in a repurposed downtown cloister to a school, their growth, their laughter on the playground, their journey through the school grades, until they finally graduate and move on.

My bathrobe’s voluminous enveloped Francine. Its lapped collar shapes an inverted heart, against her whimsical mood. Streamlining from a loop to back folds overlapping seams. Edging down button-less, crumpling loose, wrapping her figure, trailing through the pooled towel covering her crossed legs. 

Sitting at extremes on our Aladdin chatting rug. My Sun in Warthog, the sense of her flourishing femininity. Detecting Francine's crawling nerves, the skeptic of her disguise which hadn’t risen to my consciousness — seeming to have awoken from a melt down last night — a frail little girl imperceptible under the skin of a woman’s body.

Our words carried us across continents, as Francine sits in her Lotus posture. My bathrobe draping from her shoulders, wide crumpled towel sleeves to her hands repose in the crease of her lap. All wrapped up with the skirt cascade over her knees, and the bulge of her feet. A flicker of amusement crosses her face, as she dismisses a thought about my brother-in-law, Rico. My mind, ever the pirate, catches her perception — ‘Weird,’ over of his slight figure, frail, and gentle voice, mute as she can’t describe him to her masculinity. 

Francine’s silky toes pads waxed from the shadows, while her thoughts drift from Ingrid and her mother’s friendship. To her own, cheating her boyfriend, the barman, twice. While the thick overlapping seams’ edge shifts apart, illuminating the sole of her feet from the shadow of the towel skirt. As she drifts, ill understanding of two men, leaving her in the lurch. The thick overlapped seams of a phantom’s wish creeping, exposing her ankles to light. 

At the subtle rhythm of Francine’s breathing, a cosmic symphony filled my head. “It’s a sign of the times - That your love for me is getting so much stronger . . . You’ve changed a lot somehow - from the one I used to know-oh-oh - For when you hold me now - ya’ feel like you never wanna to let me go. . .” A sign alerting me, I’m sailing in another generation. My puritan upbringing has evaporated.

While the creeping towel rippled, the serpentine flimsy belt knot loosens. I turn my leading eyesight away from Francine’s dazzling white lotus posture. Her fine lips brushing a feathery stroke across her heart. In stealth, Gaetano Pesce, her “professor.” He always finds a spot to surges, and sting me with a Scorpio’s fever.   

Overwhelmed by little boys’ souls, reaching out to me. ‘Ten o’clock!’ chimes in my head, echoing like a distant village bell. My body unfolds, with a knee kick. Livening a dance, untangles my bedpost's twisted conversation posture. Out of a pirouette, my dangling foot finding the floor, tip-toeing away from the foot of the bed. Crossing beyond the panoramic window’s glow, severed by the backyard black aerial telephone cable. I flit Aetheria’s mirage, to land eyes on my workspace’s electronic clutter island on the tabletop. A hand vault over the kitchen chair’s backrest, whisking the handset from its charging cradle. 

I swing my hips into the seat’s crease, pivoting on the chair’s hind leg. My fingers tap the keypad, the handset’s belly displaying “011” as the signal radioed out. To stream the landline cord, tethered to the wall socket by the French door, in mind exiting the United States. I key “27,” my mind already in South Africa. Where, the bare veld encroaches the suburb, to the anonymous yellow brick exchange building, windowless behind a concrete palisade in Northway. Kelvin’s “802” rhyme in mind. Elusive and dissonant spatial flurry - click-a-tick - following through the signal. Bridging the shallow valley’s dozen houses. To the walls cradling our boys, lullaby caresses, to wild pattering feet, joyful voices echoing through a maze of rooms. 

Clutching the handset to my cheek, Francine reappears from the corner of my eye. She seems to follow the distant ringing, with a girlish curiosity.  

Jean’s voice breaks in. “Hello…”

“Can I speak to Lionel and Gavin?” I utter.

The line goes dead silent. ‘I dare you…’ I can almost hear Jean’s voice. As I interrupted her passivity, echoing ever since South Africa tested the launching of television broadcasts. Her Moon in Libra. She’s in her realm as though life is eternal, glued to the television diffusions.

‘After all, it’s you who’s imposed visitation rules on Sunday from ten to five?’ I’m thinking, presume she’ll call one of the boys on the phone. 

As cosmic rhymes the aetherial song, “I've got you under my skin, I tried so not to give in, I said to myself, 'this affair never will go so well'...” I’m gazing at Francine’s lotus figure, shining on a throne, in front of the headboard between the pillows nestled our heads last night. With her girlish infatuated eyes, I’m distracted. Hanging on an international call, for the sake of my boys. ‘Where can she have gone — To call one of them — so they are aware I didn’t abandon them?’ 

I turn the hourglass run sand. In my mind, I walk through the passageway, past Gavin’s bedroom door, and Lionel’s door, to the end of the house’s master bedroom. Leap back to the entrance hall, head through the lounge. Where I ceased warming up Jean heart -- the playroom past Jean’s exclusive TV spot. In a horseshoes course through the kitchen and dining room, returning to the entrance hall. The hourglass’ sand runs out, ‘She hung up on me?’ I exclaim to myself.

As the creeping towel shifts, and the skirt’s seam edges fall, her legs in the shadows teasing me, waxing her calves. Refrain from fantasizing into the hollow of her thighs. I press the hang-up call key. 

With the telephone aerial cable running through sunlight and mirage, Aetheria's presence, as I piano again my boys’ house number to a distant ring. Breaking off with Lionel’s eager voice,  “Hello…” shielding his heart, his thought refrained from voicing, ‘Daddy!’ 

Lionel pitching his Aries in symbiosis with Tiger brimming with schemes and ideas, fluttering a father’s heart. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Lionel enters my foreign world. 

“Hi Cooks. . .” I said, from the realm of Aetheria. By the Fire of Francine’s Aries, in symbiosis with Horse, feasting by the Wind of my Gemini and Warthog. The free spirits of Jane and Tarzan in the jungle, as the zodiacal gardens transcended, within the walls of my studio in the converted garage. Aetheria’s delights, orchestrating music rhymes the lyrics “… Once upon a time there was a tavern … Those were the days, my friend; We thought they’d never end; We’d sing and dance forever and a day; We’d live the life we choose. . .”

I’m losing my frustration with Jean, for having hung up the phone earlier, to Francine’s enigmatic smile. Teasing me with an oozing sensuousness. Naive to the double-folded shawl towel creeping off the ball of her shoulders, opening her neckline to the distant sunlight shaded two strokes of collarbones beneath her silky skin.  

The hydra head of my mind reaches along the entrance door, Lionel’s feet of a long reaching amber sidelight by the telephone cradle stooled in the shaded into the floor-through hallway. I overhear Lionel’s ramming call. “Gavin!” saying, “speak to Daddy.”

Gavin’s slick little voice breaks the silent line. “Daddy, when are you coming back?” my heart melts, and hurts that I can’t take him in my arms, shielding him from the iron control of his mother. Saying. ‘Everything will be alright.’

But with my heart folly, inappropriate slipping in an inadvertent joke, Gavin’s warm heart lingers in an eternal patience genetic to his mother. “Would you like to meet somebody?” my words suscitating another woman, I’m left with a deadline handset to my cheek.

The hydra of my mind, catching up Gavin’s shadow across the through-floor of the hallway, in the living wing of the house, crossing the rusty speckled carpet by the far spread turquoise lounge suite. Hell at play, Gavin pauses, turning around facing Lionel in pursuit of teasing — I’m left with the brothers body language, Gavin precising his elder brother from bugging him — and I’m not there to restore the disciple my father had dealt out to us siblings, ‘make up your differences to come out of your punishment,’ his motto.

Lionel sighs, returns to the phone. I fired. “Lionel! You’ve been mean to your brother?”

Helpless as over the ocean, I surprised him. Lionel, caught out, says. “_‘Gavin is peckish…_’ — He’s always complaining.”

While Francine’s heavy creeping towel shawl collars pull, opening her cleavage, subtle feathery strokes the contours curves into the shades of the distant sunlight. ‘Doesn’t she sense my bathrobe undressing her?’ I wondered. Teased by her chest, shadowing her subtle bulges. Aetheria’s mirage, echoing delight, and laughter. ‘Ha-ha, you appreciate this!’

I’m intrigued by the creeping towel, fantasizing about her cute and elegant breasts shy of her nipple aural. My head swims with a lightness. My willpower depleted, as Francine’s coy gaze, in awe, my stoicism faltering, asking Lionel. “Would you like to have another brother or sister?”

“Dad. . .” Lionel’s voice is stunned, echoing across the line. Francine observes a father’s expression. While at the other end of the telephone line figuring out his son.

“Daaad,” Lionel insists. “What are you talking about?” 

I continue bantering for a reply from Lionel. While he avoids answering me in discomfort, his voice rising in a plaintive, “Daaad!” realizing, I'm not quite myself, yet, oblivious to Francine's alluring presence — her lotus pose, an upswept towel coif, my bathrobe hanging loose. Outside the window we’re caught by a mirage of sunlight, Aetheria’s orchestrating her destiny.

Francine exhilarates like a little girl with her first doll. Her eyebrows pulled high, jaw-dropping. As she exhales in awe, her female instinct, as her soft lips part. The folly of my heart tumbling and playing, snowballing as I ask Lionel. “What would you like?” Francine eyes betting on me, gambling with her life.

Until I’m giggling Lionel into shame, repeating. “Would you like a little sister?” 

Lionel stammers, seeking to divert a talk without sense, not seeing Francine’s coy. While I’m visualizing Lionel’s gaze slipping out of shame to his feet. His eyesight jumped to the stooled phone cradle furnishing in the kick-panels darkness beneath the entrance amber sidelights.

To Lionel’s dismay, my frenzy persists. “A little sister — will do?” Until Lionel blurting out. “Dad — I have to go.” His disappointment, tangible, brings me to my senses. In shame of my foolishness, at the cost of my seven-year-old encrusting to mind. In shock, I switch to my normal self. “Lionel!” I say. “Is Gavin still there?” as he vanished, didn’t want to hear one word, ‘sharing with a sister.’  

I hang up the phone, disappointed in myself. I’m landing back to earth. Gazing at Francine’s fixed gaze, her entry into my world on a distant planet. 

Dire, elegant, without a qualm, whispers the music of the French language, her fantasizing lovemaking with her father 

Francine left me in her zoo, echoing the song. “That’s life. . . I said that’s life (that’s life)… I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet. . .”

As I bounce back from my folly, and still have my boys' priority at heart, and some control. Before I give my heart, I have to establish my foundations. I can’t find subtle words to blurt out. “What’s your ideal man?” 

Francine’s eyes reflects, unfazed by my blunt question. Her breath sets free, a sigh adrift from her lips. “Ideally. . . A man of thirty-five.” 

Her words clutch my heart, fist tight from throttling blood. Vulnerable, yet, she didn’t expose me. I’m trying to extricate myself from the fantasy of a relationship. My mind swirls with conflicting thoughts. I’m fighting the urge to cringe, to show my disappointment. But Francine hasn’t blinked an eye, oblivious, her gaze steady, her silence unbroken. 

My ego spins off an escape, out of the zodiacal undergrowth, a distant voice sings, “Young girl, Get out of my mind, My love for you is way out of line…” The lyrics are a stark reminder of the age gap. I concentrate on maintaining my composure. With a hawk’s eyes, I’m peering for signs. She didn’t notice my blood squeezed from circulating. She sees none of this, as her eyes glaze over, her mind traveling afield.

Francine’s gaze sharpens, from her dreamy eyes, nursing a child of her own. With a candid smile across her face, awakening to her castle of ambitions in her thoughtful eyes. I had waited, but she hadn’t, or indifferent to my entrapping question. 

But then, her mind slings back at me, striking me, with a sigh. “[French] How old Are you?” she asks.

I recoil, stirred by Igor, ‘faux-twin brother,’ by a schoolmate’s parents, calling us “The Twins.” Igor, of all people, a year, and short of two months younger. Premature, he handed me a book titled “Forty Years Old,” which in my mind marked the threshold of old age. Remembering the days leading to the single’s evening, at Tavern on the Green, and I turned thirty-nine, already nurturing the thought I was getting ‘Old.’

Now, in sight of Francine’s eager eyes, I’m holding on to my silence. Knowing I didn’t make it into ‘camp’ if I told the truth. It hurt, this doubt, this fear of speaking out. 

As I consider fudging, tampering with my age, Francine’s face lights up, with an exhilarating gaze, her fine lips stretching into a gentle smile, her eyes glittering. ‘You’re just fine!’ but she doesn’t speak, leaving me hanging in suspense as the grandfather clock ticks away the seconds.

I can keep quiet, a street artist, I’m juggling for an appropriate age. Reminiscing, when I walked into the offices of Rapport. As I sought my way through the hallway, Igor, leaving his desk behind, intrudes me to an elegant woman, “My assistant.” She blurted out. “Ho! He’s younger than you?” 

People rendered me conscious that I can pass for ten years younger. But bound to lose myself in my scheme. While Francine slipped away in her silence, she seemed to have forgotten she asked the question. I’m suffocating, holding my breath to silence. Her thoughts drifted to serious consideration. 

Craving a finality, either in or out of favors and bearing the consequences — I focused on Francine as I unleash. “I’m forty-two.” 

Suffering the outcome. My pride dwells, as Francine’s spine sags against the template of a rigid paneled headboard backdrop. Chilled, the glints out of her eye in defiance, her muscles tense, catch up her former posture, claim her brief heart warmth.