Reason number four hundred and thirty that you need this resort job, I told myself. What if your child is born with some kind of defect? Do you think treatments and surgery come cheap?
“Well, we can compare our plans later. But you’ll go with me on Thursday?” I double checked.
“Yes. I’ll go anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”
My chest tightened. Ask her, you stupid arsehole. Ask her to come to Nassau with you. It wasn’t the kind of thing you asked someone over the phone during the middle of their workday. That would be inconsiderate. “Noted. Do you want to stay at my place on Wednesday night?”
“No, it’s the biggest bar night of the year. I’m going out with a couple of friends. But I can meet you at your place on Thursday.”
“Fair enough. I’ll find out what time we should be there and I’ll let you know tonight.”
We said our I-love-yous and hung up, and I turned my chair to face my computer. I woke up the screen, confronting myself with the detailed floor plans Carrie’s office had sent over. She was looking for a change.
I just wanted everything to stay the same.
Chapter Seventeen
Somewhere in Manhattan, Santa Claus was on his way to Macy’s. Hopefully, my girlfriend was on her way to my place. She was almost twenty minutes late, and likely hung over, judging from the drunk texts I’d received the night before. It wasn’t like her to be late, and I was annoyed.
My annoyance was driven mostly by anxiety. I wanted everything to be perfect when Penny met Annie, but give that woman an ounce of ammunition and she would fire. Showing up late would be a hand grenade with the pin already pulled.
The buzzer sounded. I hit the button.
“I’m here!” Penny shouted, her words distorted by her volume. “I’m sorry!”
“Meet me inside.” I couldn’t stay upset at her. My irritation had completely faded by the time I released the intercom button.
I took the elevator down and found Penny in the lobby. She wore a sweet little dress, a brown plaid number with a cut straight from the 1960’s, tied at her waist with a wide yellow band. I’d just thrown on a sweater and some corduroy slacks.
“You look beautiful!” I exclaimed, meaning every single ounce of my enthusiasm. Somehow, she looked better every time I saw her. Absence made the heart grow fonder, so they said, but I’d never realized that absences of a couple days counted.
“Thanks,” she said, looking down. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“It’s no big deal. Annie knows what a mess the city is on parade day.” She would also point out that everyone who lived in the city knew about that mess, and that they all planned accordingly. I looked on the bright side. “She’ll just be thrilled that you weren’t my overnight guest.”
“She has a problem with you having sex?” Penny asked, sounding a bit apprehensive.
“Only extramarital.” Ah, but that hadn’t helped.
“Okay, so, what level of physical contact am I allowed to have with you?” Penny asked as we walked to the car. “I mean, obviously I won’t maul you in front of your family, but if your sister is so weird about you and sex, is she going to expect me to leave room for Jesus if I sit next to you?”
That was a phrase I hadn’t heard in a while. “Leaving room for Jesus only applies to dancing.”
I opened the car door for her and closed it when she slid inside. I’d no sooner gotten into the driver’s seat when she said, “You know, I want to be on my best behavior here and make a good impression.”
“Just be yourself. You’re not on trial.” I would be on trial, and possibly facing execution. Penny would just be entered into evidence.
When we pulled up to Annie’s place, I reached for Penny’s hand. “Ready?”
Penny just smiled back at me, like someone about to brave a very unpleasant medical procedure. As we walked up to the door, she smoothed her dress and checked her hair obsessively. I ignored her and pushed open the door, calling, “We’re here!”
Danny was lying on the couch, the big stupid oaf, and not helping in the kitchen as he should have been. He got to his feet. “Uncle Ian. Penny. Good to see you, again.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Penny said, and gave Danny a hug that shocked him and me both. It warmed me to see her so comfortable with someone important to me.
She stepped back, saying, “Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of affection as a child. I don’t know how to do family dinners.”
“Nah, you’re fine.” I put my hand on the small of her back and led her toward the kitchen. She stepped around the La-Z-Boy and into the dining room, where Annie had decorated the table with one of my mom’s pristine lace tablecloths and a centerpiece she’d probably copied from Martha Stewart’s website. Penny slowed her steps as we passed the wall of family photos, so I tugged impatiently on her hand. The 80’s hadn’t been a good era for me. She didn’t need to see that.
In the kitchen, we found Bill pulling a pie from the oven and Annie wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“We’re here,” I said again, and Annie came toward us, smiling.
She gave me a hug that nearly squeezed the life out of me. “I’d almost forgotten what you looked like.”
“I thought you’d wait at least until after the blessing to start guilting me.” When she released her crushing hold, I gave Penny a little nudge forward with my hand on her back. “This is Penny.”
“Ah, the infamous Penny,” Bill said, with a smile far more genuine than Annie’s was at the moment. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”
“This is my sister, Annie, and her husband, Bill,” I introduced them.
Annie tried to look welcoming and enthusiastic, but she was a terrible liar. “How nice of you to come.”
“How nice of you to have me,” Penny said, her eagerness too apparent. Annie would already be formulating her attack. “This will be a great chance to get to know you all.”
“Well, not all of us,” Annie corrected her. “Don’t forget, there are many of us across the pond. I hope you have a passport.”
“Is there anything we can help with?” I asked, giving my sister a warning look. She could have just graciously accepted the fucking good wishes.
“No, no, I’ve got it all under control. Why don’t you go and visit with Danny and keep out of the way,” Annie suggested, and she shooed us toward the door with the same gesture Mum had used when we were children.
We left the kitchen, and Penny stopped me by the pictures on the wall. She pointed to one, taken in Glasgow on a trip to visit my brother, David. It had to have been at least twenty years old, as their youngest child looked to be about four in the picture.
I looked twenty years younger in it, too. My hair was dark, and my face not quite as lined. And I was skinny. Dear God, I’d almost been gangly back then. I must not have grown into my body until I was forty.
“Are these more of your siblings?” Penny asked. “The ones I need a passport to meet?”
I jolted from my nostalgic walk down vanity lane. I pointed to my brother in the photo. “Yeah, that’s David, and his wife, Brandy. She’s from California,” I added, just to give Penny someone to feel solidarity with, though they’d never met. “And those are their children. That’s Devon, and Ashleigh, and Peter, James, Mark, Dakota, and Madison.”
“Big families,” Penny said, sounding a little worried.
“Well, you know, Catholic,” I said with a shrug.
“Don’t blame the Church.” Danny came to stand beside us. “Nobody forced them to have that many.”
The kitchen door swung open, announcing the arrival of the turkey. Bill carried it out on one of Mum’s silver platters. Though it shouldn’t have been possible, Annie somehow managed to keep the family silver polished more brightly than Mum ever had. The bird looked incredible, with a crisp brown skin that would no doubt taste as buttery and amazing as always.
When Annie did a holiday, she made it good enough for a television special.
&n
bsp; Annie emerged from the kitchen with a bowl of mashed potatoes, cooked from a family recipe meant to feed eleven people instead of five. That was a peril of growing up in a large family; there was no way you could cook the proper amount of food.
“Annie, the turkey looks amazing,” Penny enthused.
Annie groused, “Well, it didn’t come out as brown as I would have liked.”
I put my hand on Penny’s shoulder, which was rock hard with tension. “Take the compliment, Annie.”
“Can I help bring anything to the table?” Penny asked. God, she was a trooper. As much as I admired that, Annie would condemn her for “trying too hard”, or some similar nonsense. Would it kill my sister to just be nice to my girlfriend?
“No, the kitchen is far too small for three people, you’d just be in the way,” Annie told her. Then, in the next breath, she snapped, “Danny, come help with this.”
All three of them went back to the kitchen to fetch more of the food, and Penny turned to me, mouthing, “What the fuck?”
I didn’t have time to explain to her all the reasons why my sister wasn’t being the warm, loving person I knew. Because the reasons were stupid, and rooted entirely in Annie’s paranoid judgments about me. Judgments I had, admittedly, created for myself when I hadn’t told her the truth about why Gena and I had separated. But just for once, she could have kept all of that nonsense to herself.
I put my arms around Penny and kissed her forehead, saying in a low voice, “Just let it go, for now. She’ll thaw.”
“None of that monkey business in my house,” Bill said, chuckling as he put a plate of sliced canned cranberry sauce on the table. Annie was right behind him with onions au gratin. One by one, bread, green bean casserole, corn casserole, gravy, stuffing, the works filled the table. It looked as though Annie were hosting the entire U.S. Olympic weightlifting team.
Penny looked doubtfully at all the food and asked, “Do you have other kids coming?”
Oh God. The one thing I should have mentioned to Penny before we’d arrived, the single subject I’d needed her to avoid, I’d forgotten to mention. This was all my fault.
“No, Danny is our only child,” Annie said tersely. It was a question she’d been answering her entire life. These days, it was usually followed with, “Aren’t you sad that you won’t have any grandchildren?”
I needed to steer the conversation into shallower waters. I coughed into my hand to clear my throat. “Everything looks great, Annie. You’ve really outdone yourself.”
“Well, apparently, I’ve made too much.” She turned and pushed through the kitchen door so hard it swung violently on its hinges.
I wished I could convey to Penny that this wasn’t her fault, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a gift for telepathy. “I’ll be right back.”
The back door slammed shut as I entered the kitchen, and I followed Annie out to the backyard. It was freezing out, and neither of us had our coats, so I hoped this argument wouldn’t be too long.
“Is there something I’ve done,” I began, pressing my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes in the gray, but oddly blinding, afternoon light, “to make you feel the need to treat my girlfriend this way?”
“Girl is a pretty apt word for her, isn’t it?” Annie said disdainfully. “‘Can I help you with anything?’ ‘Are your other children coming?’ She is the definition of trying too hard.”
Right on time.
“She didn’t know that children were a sore spot for you,” I pointed out. “She was just trying to engage you.”
“Well, she doesn’t have to get so personal,” Annie protested. Once she was angry, she was like a dog with a bone.
“She’s here to meet you all because you’re very likely to be her family in the near future,” I blurted, then I wished I hadn’t.
“Is that so?” Annie laughed as though she’d just heard the most amazing joke. “For how long, Ian? Until some other young thing comes along? And then, you’ll marry her, too?”
“If you’re implying that I cheated on Gena with Penny—”
“I’m not implying. I’m accusing,” Annie corrected me. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Look at that girl. Blond hair and big boobs, my God, she looks like she should be in one of those sleazy videos, going wild.”
“I don’t think they even make those anymore,” I said then remembered to be offended. “And how dare you say that about her? Penny can’t help it if she’s blond or has great tits!”
“Language!”
Oh, fuck Annie’s language. “If she wants to go out there and ‘go wild’ on a video, more power to her. I would still love her. And I told you before, she was a virgin when we started dating, so there was no ‘going wild’.”
Keep digging, you idiot. Maybe you’ll make a hole deep enough for your sister to bury you.
Annie’s eyes got so wide, I expected her whole face to bend out of shape. “Was? So, she isn’t now?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Ian David Pratchett. You’ve made some poor choices in your life—”
“It wasn’t a poor choice,” I defended myself. “It was her decision to sleep with me.”
“And you were powerless to resist?” Annie challenged. “Even though you were married?”
“Penny isn’t the woman I—” I stopped myself. It was time to put that lie to rest. “Annie, Gena and I didn’t get divorced because I cheated on her. I never cheated on her. We got divorced because she didn’t want to have children.”
Annie made a “pff” of denial, but as the seconds passed and I didn’t say anything further, her expression changed. She wasn’t as sure of her condemnation, now. “But you were trying. And you went to the fertility doctor.”
“We were trying, you’re right. And we went to the fertility doctor. But Gena didn’t want to try anything else.” I hated talking about this, especially now. Because while I was defending myself, I was just kindling my sister’s misplaced sense of motherhood toward me. She wasn’t going to go back into the dining room and consider Penny in a new light. She would only see another potential heartache for me.
“Just because she didn’t want to keep facing the disappointment, that doesn’t mean she didn’t want children,” Annie protested. “Believe me, Ian, I know what that’s like, facing a monthly tragedy. Men don’t understand—”
“Oh, believe me, I understand.” I knew my sister hurt all these years later because she and Bill had never conceived another child, but I carried a hurt of my own, and I wasn’t going to compare the two. I reserved the right to have my own troubles, even if they didn’t seem as serious as Annie’s. “Every time Gena would tell me that it didn’t work, that there was always next month… It was all right, the first few times. But the tenth? The eleventh? I would cry. I would be strong for Gena, because I thought she wanted a baby as much as I did. But I would sit at my desk and cry.”
“I never knew,” Annie said, tears rising in her voice.
“No, you didn’t know, because you’re always so quick to believe the worst of me.” That wasn’t true, and I knew it. But my emotions were raw, and I wanted her to feel some of that hurt. It wasn’t fair, because this was all blowback from my own lie. “That’s why I told you I cheated on Gena. Or part of it. I didn’t want you to hate her, but I also didn’t want you to believe that I’d left a perfectly good marriage just because I wanted something she couldn’t give me.”
“But you did do that,” Annie said angrily. “Just because she couldn’t have children, you left? There was always adoption, or—”
“She didn’t want children, Annie!” I shouted. “Why don’t you just listen to the whole story before you speak? She didn’t want children. She told me that, finally, after putting me through all of that, getting my hopes up, making me believe that we were both working toward something we wanted. She told me that she didn’t want kids, and she’d just been trying to make me happy. But she was giving up.”
“You should have…” Annie stopped herse
lf.
“I couldn’t tell you.” What should I have told her? That my wife had lied to me for our entire marriage? How could Annie have fixed that? “I couldn’t tell you because I felt stupid. I felt tricked. And I certainly didn’t want to listen to you rant and rave against her while I was hurting.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Annie said quietly. She turned and fled up the steps, into the kitchen.
I followed her, slamming the door behind me.
“You would have. You would have wanted me to be angry, to hate her. And all I was trying to do was keep myself from going off the fucking deep end.” I shook my head. I couldn’t stand to look at Annie, partially because I was so angry with her for her easy acceptance of my lie, and partially because I was angry with myself for creating this whole situation in the first place. “It was easier for me if you blamed me the way I blamed myself. But I’m not going to blame Penny. I want to marry her—”
“Marry her?” Annie whispered vehemently.
“Yeah. Marry her.”
Bill came into the kitchen and mumbled, “Everything all right in here?”
In other words, we’d been overheard. Great.
In the other room, I heard Danny asking Penny if our children would be raised in the church. For God’s sake, it was like this family was set against me having any sort of love life.
“Danny! Get away from my girlfriend!” I barked as I strode through the door. He guiltily began threading his white collar back into his shirt.
Annie came in and at least had the grace to smile at Penny. Bill came behind, and everyone sat in their respective places.
“Danny,” Bill said, in his ever patient, let’s-all-forge-ahead tone. “You wanna bless this?”
“Sure, Dad.” Danny made the sign of the cross, and we all followed suit.
He said some very nice words about giving thanks for everything we had, and the privileges of our lives that we could sometimes take for granted. I only half listened, my brain still whirling with anger and misunderstanding.
“Thank you, Danny,” I said when he was finished. I shook out my napkin and laid it over my lap.
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 25
