Journeys - SF10

by Meagher, Susan X

  "Yes, dear. I told you that she had three vouchers for international travel. Maeve used one, your father used the second…it seemed silly to let the third go to waste." She was blinking up at Ryan innocently, not quite able to pull that ruse off any more, but Ryan wasn't complaining.

  "I did well for myself, didn't I, Aunt Moira?" Ryan was beaming with pride, her blue eyes sparkling with affection as she gazed at her partner.

  "If she's half as special as Maeve and your father say, I'd have to wholeheartedly agree with that claim, Ryan." Moira stood and smoothed her dress into place as she said, "Let's hitch the pony to the wagon, girls. We've got a wedding to prepare for!"

  Moira's arrival threw the house into a tizzy, and wedding plans were largely ignored for the better part of the afternoon. All of the other aunts had to come over to greet the visitor, and she and Maeve eventually escaped back to Maeve's house so Moira could take a much-needed nap.

  The children had planned a rehearsal dinner at a small neighborhood restaurant, so everyone agreed to meet back at the house before the seven o'clock rehearsal. Ryan's suit was ready for pickup, and she and Jamie left to run that errand as soon as Moira left. "I can't get over how thoughtful it was for you to bring my aunt over for the wedding, Jamie," she said as they drove along.

  "I knew how much it would mean to Maeve," Jamie said simply. "If I can do a little something to make her happy, why wouldn't I?"

  "You've really come to love my family, haven't you?" Ryan reflected quietly.

  Jamie paused for a minute and said, "I don't think of them as your family anymore, Ryan, I think of them as mine. Even though I've never met Moira, I feel a bond with her because of you. She's very special to me, because she's so special to you."

  Ryan reached over and clamped her hand upon Jamie's thigh, the emotion of the moment causing her to squeeze a little harder than was prudent. "Thank you, sweetheart." Her voice was a little shaky as she said, "Moira is truly a wonderful person, Jamie. She's been there for me when I really needed her, and she's protected me just like my own mother would have."

  Jamie recalled that Ryan had gone to stay with her aunt after the debacle with Sara, and she assumed that's what she was speaking of now. "She sure seems comfortable with us as a couple, and I can't imagine she has a lot of experience being around gay people."

  "Yeah, she's generally very accepting, but she's known about me since I was seventeen, so it's not surprising for her."

  "Still, knowing something and seeing something can be very different things," Jamie reminded her partner.

  "Yeah, I guess I forget that sometimes. It would never dawn on me that Moira would be anything but totally accepting of me and the woman I love. That's just who she is."

  "That must be a wonderful gift," Jamie said softly. "To know that your family will support and embrace you--no matter what."

  "It is," Ryan agreed. "I have that from almost everyone in my family. I really have been blessed." They were close to the tailor's, and Ryan shook her head at the dearth of parking spaces. "We're gonna have a hike," she muttered.

  "There is a pay lot close to the place," Jamie said, knowing that she was wasting her breath.

  Ryan shot her a look and offered, "I'm happy to drop you off, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I pay ten bucks to park for an hour. Ain't gonna happen."

  "I'll hike with you," Jamie decided. "It wasn't a serious suggestion anyway. I know you better than that by now."

  "I should hope so," Ryan chuckled. "Pinching pennies is one of my core traits!"

  It was just four when they returned home, and Martin was out running a few of his own errands, accompanied by Rory. Conor was working at a house in Atherton, and he was going to have to rush just to make it to the rehearsal, so Ryan and Jamie had the house to themselves for a change. "We've got three hours," Jamie said, "How about a nice, long nap?"

  "Only if you'll agree to put me to sleep the fun way," Ryan teased, her blue eyes dancing merrily.

  "It has been a while, hasn't it, Tiger?" Jamie peered up at her partner, trailing her fingers up and down her arm as their eyes locked. They hadn't been intimate in over a week, Ryan's fatigue--coupled with her bad mood--having conspired against them.

  "Yeah, it has," Ryan agreed, placing her arms on Jamie's shoulders and clasping her hands together behind her neck. "But I'm feeling much more normal now that I finally got my period. I think the old Ryan's back, ba-bee."

  "Ooo, I like the old Ryan," Jamie teased. "'Of course, any old Ryan's fine with me. I'm crazy about all of her incarnations."

  "Yeah, but you mated with the old one-I'll try to keep her front and center."

  "Sounds like a deal. Do you need a little snack? We won't get to eat until 8:30 or so, you know."

  "Ya know, I could stand a snack. I think I'll make myself a big bowl of ice cream." As she walked into the kitchen, Jamie could hear her mumbling to herself, "What flavor goes best with, and on, Jamie?"

  Ooo, she is back, thought the smaller woman with delight.

  Ryan was still sensitive to cold, and the large dent she had put into her enormous bowl of ice cream had her shivering by the time Jamie emerged from the bath. The comforter was pulled up almost to her ears, and when Jamie saw her she couldn't help but tease her a little. "Hey, Tiger, where are those hands? Come on, let me see 'em. I don't want you to start without me."

  A frighteningly dark look flashed across Ryan's face, and for just a minute Jamie thought that her guess had been wrong and that the new and unimproved Ryan had returned. But just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, and the dark woman composed her face and seemed to force a smile. "I won't start without you, Jamie," she said, a little too brightly. "You're the guest of honor."

  "Hey," the blonde said softly as she slid into bed, "why did my teasing upset you?"

  Ryan shook her head, and tried to slough off her reaction. "No biggie. It just reminded me of something."

  Jamie cuddled up close, and started to draw neat little designs on Ryan's bare skin, gazing intently at the patterns as she spoke. "You don't have to tell me when things bother you. I just want to make sure you know that I'm always interested in what you have to say. So, if you want to keep it to yourself-that's one thing…but if you don't tell me 'cause you think I'm not interested-you're dead wrong."

  Ryan gave her a squeeze and said, "I uh…I should talk about this a little, 'cause it's obviously on my mind." She sighed heavily and said, "I guess it's what we talked about earlier about my Aunt Moira," she admitted. "I'm totally glad that you brought her here, Jamie, but Moira is entwined with my Granny in my mind, and little memories have been bombarding me all day. As a matter of fact, that's been true ever since Da and Aunt Maeve went over to Ireland. I just had a flashback to a really hard time when you made the comment about my hands."

  "But, I didn't mean anything…"

  "Shhh…I know you didn't mean anything by it, love," Ryan insisted. "Don't give it another thought. It's just a bad memory…nothing to do with you."

  "Wanna tell me about it?" Jamie asked softly, her hand still gliding over Ryan's skin.

  "It's…it's kinda embarrassing." Jamie could hear her swallow, and could tell by her tense muscles that Ryan was really uncomfortable.

  "Sweetheart, you never have to be embarrassed to tell me anything. I would never judge you…don't you know that?"

  Ryan bit her lip and admitted what the real problem was. "I don't want to make this into a bigger deal than it was, and I also don't want you to think less of my Granny because of this. It sounds pretty harsh, Jamie."

  "Baby, I won't think less of her. I tend to make up my own mind about people. Don't let that influence you. If you want to tell me about it, please do."

  "Okay." Ryan sighed and closed her eyes, obviously trying to remember the event. "I'm not sure how old I was…oh, wait…yes, I am. I was in third grade. I was staying with Granny for the whole summer, and it was the first time I went alone."

  Jamie still struggled with t
he fact that Martin had let his precious daughter fly to Ireland alone at such a young age, but she knew he must have had his reasons. "Granny and I always…and I do mean always…had our disagreements," Ryan revealed. "I wasn't an obnoxious kid at all, and I was polite and respectful of my elders. Of course, I was always pretty active, and I was, as you would expect, pretty hardheaded, and Granny didn't like that. I got swatted pretty hard when I did something that she didn't like, and I received more than my share of spankings, mostly because I just couldn't be the kid that she wanted me to be. I had to run around like a banshee, and I had to question things-I would have gone mad if I couldn't do that!"

  "Of course you had to be yourself," Jamie soothed, continuing to rub her gently.

  "I learned to deal with her rigidity, and I thought I knew how to stay out of trouble. I'd learned that she had a real thing about lying. It was…a real hot button for her, and I knew that no matter what, I couldn't lie to my Granny."

  Jamie's eyes had narrowed, and she knew her heart rate was picking up at the mere thought of someone hitting the vulnerable child that her precious lover had been. She tried her best to control her reactions, though, because she knew Ryan would not be open about her feelings if she reacted badly.

  "We had this ongoing fight about taking an afternoon nap. I was in third grade, and I hadn't had an enforced nap since I was four…but that didn't matter to Granny. She made me lie down on the sofa in the living room every afternoon. There were two rules…you had to close your eyes, and you had to keep your hands outside of the blanket."

  "Because…?" Ryan just raised an eyebrow, and the implication dawned on her. "So you wouldn't…touch yourself?" Jamie asked slowly, amazed that someone would supervise a young girl's personal habits so closely.

  "I assume so," Ryan said. "She didn't explain herself, and I didn't ask, 'cause I knew I wouldn't get a straight answer. She didn't really like to offer reasons for her rules," she said.

  "That must have been hard for you, honey. With your quick little mind, it must have driven you nuts to be forced to do things that made no sense."

  "Yeah, it did, but I wanted to be in Ireland, and staying with her was the price of admission," Ryan related. "Anyway, one day it was kinda cold, and I pulled the blanket up to my chin…you know…like I always do."

  "Yes, I know," Jamie said, finding the habit one of Ryan's most adorable traits. Coming into the bedroom to see nothing but that shock of jet-black hair and those vibrant blue eyes peering out of the blanket always put a smile on her face.

  "I had forgotten the rule until I heard Granny come into the room. I whipped my arms out, but she saw me. She marched right over to me and demanded to know if I had been 'interfering' with myself. Now, I had no earthly idea what she was talking about, but I assumed she was asking if I had broken the rule about my hands. Since I had my eyes closed I wasn't sure if she had seen me or not. But even though I knew I'd get in trouble for breaking the rule--lying wasn't an option-I knew that was a capital crime in Granny's world."

  "My God, she sounds like a tyrant!" Jamie cried, unable to control her reaction any longer.

  Ryan shook her head and insisted, "No, no she wasn't, Jamie. She's an older woman from a very different time. She's just a product of her environment. If you don't know the influence that the Church had with that generation, you really can't understand this."

  "I'm sorry, honey," the smaller woman offered, closing her eyes briefly while she struggled with her emotions. "I don't want to criticize her. Please, go on."

  "You're not gonna like the end of the story," Ryan warned, but she continued anyway. "She grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet and gave me a lecture about how touching myself was the most sinful thing a little girl could do, and that doing it would send me straight to hell. God, she scared the shit out of me…and I still didn't know what she was talking about!"

  "You poor little thing." Jamie was about to cry, but she wanted Ryan to finish, so she bit her tongue to keep from interrupting again.

  "She demanded to know how long I'd been doing it, and whether my father knew. Knowing her, she probably thought he told me to do it," she scoffed. "It finally dawned on me that she was accusing me of doing something that I hadn't done, even though I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to explain that I had just been trying to stay warm, but I'm sure my excuse didn't sound very convincing at that point."

  "I take it that she didn't believe you," Jamie said quietly.

  "No." Ryan shivered at the memory, and related, "She went to her room and came back with this leather strap."

  Jamie's whole body tensed, and she willed herself not to comment.

  "She gave me one chance to tell the truth…but I had been," she said softly. "I wasn't going to lie…no matter what. I didn't care if she beat me to death." Ryan's voice was hard and bore the marks of years of bitterness over the false accusations of her grandmother. "She made me hold out my hands, and she gave me a dozen lashes on each one," Ryan related quietly. "It hurt…God, did it hurt…but what hurt worse was that she didn't believe me."

  Unable to hold herself back any longer, Jamie wrapped her partner in her arms and began to cry softly as she hugged her fiercely. "That's so wrong, Ryan. That's child abuse!"

  "Yeah, it would be here," she admitted. "I could hardly hold a fork the next day, my hands were so swollen. I was eating lunch at my Aunt Moira's, and she saw that I was having trouble feeding myself. I still remember the look on her face when she saw my hands. She didn't even ask me what happened. She stormed out of the house and didn't come back for the longest time. I wouldn't tell Aisling what was going on, but I think she knew…she had been at the wrong end of Granny's temper a time or two, also. I was so worried that I couldn't eat, but when Moira came back she was carrying my little suitcase. She squatted down in front of me and said that she and Granny had decided that I'd be happier staying at her house from then on."

  "I like Moira better and better," Jamie said, sniffing her tears away.

  "Yeah…she's a great mom," Ryan said, feeling very much like all three Ryan sisters had co-mothered her. "She held me on her lap that night, even though I was nearly as big as she was by that time," she laughed gently. "She told me that it was perfectly all right to touch my body any way that I wanted…that it was my body, and no one had the right to tell me what to do with it."

  "Good for her," Jamie whispered fiercely.

  "Yeah. I told her the whole story, mainly because I was so confused. She tried to explain what she thought Granny had been trying to do--that she believed it was wrong for little girls to touch certain parts of their bodies. But Moira clearly told me that she thought Granny was wrong, and she told me that she knew my mother would feel the same way."

  "You still must have been horribly mixed up about the whole thing, Ryan."

  "Yeah, I was. But the important part is that I understood that my aunt would look out for me…that she wouldn't let anyone, even her own mother, hurt me. That was worth getting a beating for," she said softly.

  "I wish you could have learned that lesson in a gentler way, sweetheart," Jamie sighed, still reeling from the thought of the woman beating a small child for such a ridiculous thing. "I can't think of what I'd do if someone beat our children."

  Shivering at the mental image, Ryan assured her, "That will never happen. I'll never leave our children with anyone that I don't trust implicitly."

  "Were you angry with your father for placing you in her care?" Jamie asked, a note of hesitation in her voice.

  "No. He didn't know. I'm sure my mother never told him that they were beaten when they were kids. It's really humiliating," she said quietly. "It's not the kind of thing you like to talk about."

  "Do you think your father ever knew?" Jamie asked, wondering why the older woman was still alive if Martin knew she had struck his daughter.

  "Yeah. He knew. We never talked about it, though. When I got off the plane that fall, he squeezed me until I thought my ribs would break, then he l
ooked at my hands. I swear he studied them for three minutes, obviously making sure there were no permanent marks on them. It was never an issue where I would stay from then on, though. I've not slept in my grandparents' house since."

  "I hope your granny lives to a very ripe old age," Jamie said, her voice filled with emotion, "but our children will never be with her alone. She's lost that privilege."

  Ryan nodded, agreeing with her partner completely. She thought it wise to not tell Jamie about the other times she had been beaten for even more inconsequential reasons. Like when she was whipped with a switch for not being home by dinner, or the time she had been spanked so hard she couldn't sit down for a day for trampling some of her Granny's flowers. As humiliating as those incidents had been, they hadn't stuck with her long, since she thought that each was somewhat deserved. It was the injustice of the accusation that she had never been able to forgive, and she pledged once again to always try to listen to her own children, no matter how compelling the evidence against them.

  They made love for a very long time that afternoon, even though they didn't technically have sex. The story had cooled Ryan's ardor, and Jamie was much more interested in expressing her love for her partner than in slaking her desire.

  Jamie took out a bottle of moisture lotion and rubbed and stroked nearly every inch of Ryan's body, whispering loving sentiments the whole time. When she was finished, Ryan returned the favor, both of them feeling refreshed and very well loved by the time their alarm went off. "Well, we didn't get that nap, and we didn't get to put each other to sleep the fun way, but I'm very pleased with how we spent our afternoon," Jamie said when they got up to shower. "Knowing everything about you--good and bad--is always a positive thing for our relationship, Ryan. Thanks for sharing this with me…even though I know it was hard for you."

  "You make things easy, Jamie. Ya know," she said speculatively as she regarded her partner fondly, "your listening style reminds me very much of my Aunt Moira. I wonder if that's one of the reasons I was instantly attracted to you."