First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (35 page)

“
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.

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 herself.

“
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.

There was so much about Annie that reminded
me of Mum. The linen napkins. The polished silver. The unyielding
pessimism.

“
All right. Now that that’s
out of the way,” Bill said, wielding a battery-powered carving
knife with a manic gleam in his eye. “Let’s eat.”

Passing the dishes about gave Annie and I
time to cool off from our argument. Penny seemed bewildered by the
amount of food and the speed at which it was distributed, and since
her attention was focused on the elaborate culinary dance that was
a Pratchett family dinner, Annie didn’t get a chance to dig at her.
But once we were all served and our glasses were full of the wine
that likely would not help our tempers, my sister was back at
it.

“
So, Penny. How long have
you and Ian been together?” she asked as she cut a bite of turkey
and brought it to her mouth.

“
Since the end of August,”
Penny answered, her eyes drifting upward as she mentally counted.
“So, three months now?”

Annie swallowed. “Three whole months. My
brother tells me the two of you are quite serious. Talking about
marriage, already.”