I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
When there was really nothing else I could to do to look any better than what God had graced me with, I nodded to myself in the mirror and went to the closet to get my jacket. Ambrose followed me, and I dodged him as he tried to rub against my ankles.
“What are you doing to me, you wee bastard?” I demanded. “I’m trying to impress these people, not look like I rolled in the corpse dumpster at the animal shelter.”
I went down to the car and looked up the address for the restaurant on my phone, then turned on navigation. GPS could be fucking useless in the city, at times, but it would at least get me near the place. Penny had picked a fairly upscale location for this meeting, perhaps out of naiveté. Situations like this were rarely made better by throwing more money on top of them. But I was sure she wanted to impress her family, since she didn’t see them often.
I pulled onto the street just a few minutes late, cursing traffic all the while. Luckily, there was a handy parking place. I half-walked, half-sprinted to the door of the restaurant.
The hostess smiled at me when I approached, but I was too fucking nervous to crack one in return. “I’m meeting someone. The reservation should be under Parker?”
“Right this way.”
I scanned the room, looking for Penny but unable to spot her. A woman whose appearance was remarkably like hers turned her head and smiled, and it took a second and a look away for the jolt of familiarity to sink in. She’d gotten a haircut. A fucking amazing haircut, chin-length and tousled, as if she’d just rolled out of bed.
It looked even better if I adjusted the context to “just rolled out of my bed”.
“Penny, I didn’t recognize you!” I wanted to absolutely maul her, but I held myself back. Instead, I made myself content to put an arm around her waist for a fleeting, but close, hug and a kiss on her cheek. “You got your hair cut. It looks beautiful.”
No, it didn’t. It looked damned sexy, was how it looked.
“Thanks.” She smiled, but it didn’t have the megawatt flash it usually did. Then, she turned to her parents, reminding me of the purpose for the visit. “Mother, Father, this is Ian Pratchett, my boyfriend.” I put out my hand and shook her father’s. He nearly ground my finger bones to dust. I just nodded at him pleasantly. Penny had called me her boyfriend, and not in the hypothetical. I could endure all manner of pain with the endorphins rocketing through my endocrine system.
“Ian, this is my father, James Parker, and my mother, Deborah Smythe-Parker,” Penny finished.
“James, Deborah. Very nice to meet you.” That remained to be seen. They looked as though their pictures could have been beside the definition of WASP in the dictionary. Mrs. Smythe-Parker had a very tight face for someone who was supposed to be close to my age, and blond hair swept up in the kind of hairdo a politician’s wife would wear. She also had the facial expression of a politician’s wife, the frozen smile of a woman standing next to a congressman explaining exactly what he’d been doing with a twenty-year-old male escort in an airport bathroom.
Mr. Parker had a George Hamilton tan, or possibly just a regular tan made darker by the absurd whiteness of his huge teeth, and white hair he wore in a classic side part that eerily echoed my own. I hoped I didn’t look so much like a television news anchor days before retirement as he did.
As we sat, I continued, “Your daughter is one of my favorite people.” I gave Penny a wink.
Deborah laughed, a short, unpleasant sound full of disbelief. “How kind of you to say.”
“Not at all.” I wasn’t sure why should would doubt me. Did she think I was trying to flatter her by complimenting her daughter?
“I notice your accent,” James said, almost accusatory. “Where are you from?”
I considered telling them I was from Germany, but I didn’t think they would get or appreciate the joke. “Scotland.”
They didn’t speak for a long, long time. They just stared across the table at Penny and me. I supposed it would be a bit awkward to meet the man your daughter was dating, only to find that he was your age. It made me feel like a bit of a pervert, when I thought of it in those terms.
Finally, her mother asked, “How did the two of you meet?”
“My boss fixed us up,” Penny told her.
“I went to college with her husband,” I explained, so it would seem less like an older man hooking his hot young secretary up with a friend. “Sophie was adamant that we would like each other.”
“And we do.” Penny smiled at me, and for the first time since I’d arrived, it wasn’t a guarded, hesitant expression.
I smiled back in genuine relief. “That we do.”
“What do you think of this haircut?” her mother interrupted, with another mean-sounding laugh. “Penny is always going through a rebellious stage.”
Going through a stage? What is she, a fucking teenager? “I said I thought it was beautiful,” I reminded her, trying not to come off too terse. But there was a quality about her question that really nagged at me. “Are haircuts considered particularly rebellious these days?”
“It is when Penny does it.” Even just saying her name, Deborah made it seem like her daughter was an unpleasant topic, not fit for discussing at the dinner table. “She’s always been a bit of a problem child.”
What the fuck does she mean by that? It was such an intentionally nasty thing to say, and to someone her daughter cared about. I couldn’t think of a polite response, so I stared back in silence.
Thank God for the waiter, who came by with menus and a wine list. It would give me something to occupy myself while I tried to convince myself that Penny’s parents’ behavior was all a big misunderstanding.
Maybe since her mother was so frosty, I would have better luck with the father. “So, James, Penny says you’re in town for a symposium?”
“Yes, that’s correct.” That was all. The man nodded in punctuation, and the conversation closed.
Penny opened it back up, or tried to. “My dad is a surgeon.”
The busboy came to fill our water glasses, and I leaned back so he could reach mine. “Really? What kind?”
James stared placidly at me. “A hand surgeon.”
“And you’re an architect?” Penny’s mother asked. Her eyebrows lifted, and she blinked in expectation of my answer.
It had been a long time since I’d met a woman’s parents, and even longer since it had felt like a job interview. I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. I could have used a cigarette—no, two cigarettes—at the moment. “Yes. I’m a partner at my firm. Pratchett and Baker. We work on commercial properties, mostly office and medical buildings.”
“The occasional hotel, right?” Penny asked. Though it was an innocent topic of conversation, I hated the mental road it led me down. With each passing week, I could stand the idea of being separated from her a little bit less.
“Not too many,” I explained. “But I am looking at a potential project in the Bahamas, soon.” I gestured to Deborah. “And you, what do you do?”
“I’m an anesthesiologist.”
Those lucky patients. They got to be unconscious in her presence.
“So, you’re a partner?” Deborah brought the conversation right back around to me. “Does that mean you own the firm?”
“Yes. I founded it with an associate I’ve worked with for some time.” What else was there I could say about it, since she was so interested? “It’s challenging, but I enjoy it.”
“It sounds like a lot of work. Long hours?” she asked.
Fair question. I would want to know if my daughter was dating someone who wouldn’t have time for her. “I have a strict policy of staying under sixty hours. There are too many health risks for a man my age if I try to work all the time. Burt, my business partner, he’s already had a heart attack. I’d like to avoid that for the rest of my life.”
“Working so little, you must be salaried?” she asked.
Ah. She hadn’t be
en interested in my job or looking out for Penny. She wanted to know what kind of money I was making. I wasn’t used to this approach; usually people just asked. “Oh, you’re an architect? How much money do you make?” It was somehow less insulting when stated so plainly.
Penny’s father didn’t seem to care about the money as much, asking, “That must be hard on your personal relationships. Have you ever been married?”
“I have. Recently divorced.” I wasn’t ashamed of it. Well, I was ashamed of it, at least, the dishonesty between Gena and I that had led us to the tipping point. But that wasn’t any of their business.
James just grunted an, “Mm-hmm,” in response.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Deborah said, but whatever kindness or sincerity I may have detected in those words immediately evaporated when she added, “I’ve heard spousal support is quite costly in this state.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. First, she’d tried to lure me into her snide judgments about Penny—over a fucking haircut!—and now she was openly fishing for details on my income.
“Why don’t you just ask me how much money I have?” The moment the sentence was out of my mouth, I regretted it, because Penny tried to laugh it off. I should have been playing it cool, not losing my cool. These were her parents, and while I didn’t care for them, she probably did. For her sake, I would swallow all sorts of overly personal inquiries.
The waiter came back to take our orders, blissfully unaware the he’d waded into the most chilly dinner south of the north pole. Though I’d resolved to be polite, no matter what Penny’s mother threw at me, I couldn’t help getting a slight dig in while I could. Before the waiter walked away, I added, “Tonight is on me. As a gesture of gratitude for having such a wonderful daughter.”
I didn’t take my gaze from Deborah’s as I said it. I wanted her to feel every ounce of the anger that had been steadily growing in me since she’d disparaged Penny’s haircut and called her a problem child. And they seemed like the type whose free meal would taste like ashes knowing that the person who’d paid for it felt he made more money than them.
“Hey, here’s something fun. Ian comes from a really large family. Isn’t that interesting?” Penny was that one determined sunbeam that thought it could chase away an entire storm front.
Deborah reached for her water glass. “Oh? How large?”
“I’ve got two brothers and four sisters.” And two dead ones, the cruel, ever-present voice of my memory taunted.
“Do they all live in America?” James asked. Maybe his disdain would be tempered by the fact that we were the immigrants of the European variety.
I shook my head. “Just one sister. She and her husband live in Brooklyn, not far from me.”
“Such a large family.” Deborah chuckled and shook her head a little, a body gesture that read, there but for the grace of my higher social station…
“Yes, well, we’re Catholic, so it’s to be expected,” I told her, the way I always followed up the revelation of my large family.
Penny’s body went still, as though she were avoiding the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Deborah’s facial expression was similarly frozen. I wondered for a moment if she would tell me that her father had been murdered by a nun, she seemed so offended.
“Really?” she asked. “And are you…religious?”
She could have asked me if I was a pedophile and sounded less disgusted. Prying into my financial affairs was one thing, but I wouldn’t put up with someone criticizing my faith. I was no fucking St. Peter, and I wouldn’t deny Christ for this woman. Though the answer seemed obvious, I turned her question back on her. “I would say I am, yes. I attend church regularly. And you? Are you religious?”
Now it was her turn to feel insulted. Good. “No. I don’t have a taste for it.”
“A bunch of superstitious nonsense,” James grumbled. Was his shtick being the cranky old man in the corner or something? If so, he should have been winning Oscars left and right for it.
Penny leapt to my defense. Or, more aptly, Penny threw herself on the conversational grenade. “Well, I’m pretty superstitious.”
“Against our best efforts.” Her mother’s eyes rolled so hard I was surprised they didn’t detach and pop out onto the table. “Believe me, darling, we haven’t forgotten.”
Jesus. The woman couldn’t address her daughter without passing up the chance to criticize her. I couldn’t imagine why these people bothered to speak to Penny at all, or her to them. The more they talked, the more Penny shrank in on herself. The wonderful light that always seemed to surround her wasn’t just hidden under a bushel. It was crushed under a mammoth load of bullshit.
“You can’t really plead innocence, yourself,” Penny said, with a laugh that was obviously forced. “You believe in the family curse.”
“The family curse?” Her mother frowned. “There isn’t any family curse.”
“I’m intrigued.” I turned to Penny and smiled, hoping she would sense the encouragement in it. “What’s the family curse?”
My mouth and my heart were saying very different things. I couldn’t have cared less about some family legend. I didn’t even want to consider that the people sitting across the table from us were her family, at all. Don’t listen to them, Penny. Look at me. Look at me and understand how incredible I believe you are. There was no way to communicate that to her at the moment, and I felt like a caged animal. All I wanted was to spring free and shred her parents to pieces, so they could never make her feel the things I saw in her eyes.
“I’m dying to hear it myself,” Deborah said, while James sat in serious contemplation.
“You know, the curse where if a woman in your family sleeps with a guy, that means he’s her true love, and if you do anything to mess it up, you’ll…never…”
Oh, Penny.
“Oh…” Deborah made a disappointed noise with her tongue. “That story? Darling, that was years ago.”
“I know, but—”
“We made all that up,” Deborah continued, exasperated. Not because she’d been caught it a lie, it seemed, but because Penny had been stupid enough to believe it.
“After what happened with Ashley, we couldn’t be too cautious,” James added.
I didn’t know who Ashley was, and I didn’t know what the consequences of the supposed family curse were. But I did know from Penny’s quiet, “You… You lied?” that it had been something she’d taken very seriously.
“Outright forbidding you from mooning over boys wouldn’t have worked,” Deborah explained, almost smug at her clever parenting.
I wanted to throw my water in her face. Penny’s attitudes toward sexual intimacy had never seemed particularly puzzling to me. They had simply existed as another facet of her personality, and I’d had no reason to question it. Now, it seemed clear as day: Penny wasn’t a virgin because she wanted to be. Penny was a virgin because she’d though she had to be.
“You were so obsessed with tarot cards and horoscopes, so we exploited that a little,” Deborah went on.
“We didn’t think you’d keep on believing it.” James sipped his wine, obviously put out by the fact that his daughter had fallen for their lie too effectively. “It was like the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus.”
“The Tooth Fairy,” I found myself echoing. Beneath the table, my hands shook with rage. I couldn’t punch Penny’s father. I certainly couldn’t punch Penny’s mother. I couldn’t punch anyone; I wasn’t the punching type. But it would have felt very, very good to.
“But for years…” The hurt in Penny’s voice may as well have been an actual knife through my heart. “You guys, I’ve been afraid my entire adult life—”
“We told you that you took all that superstitious nonsense too seriously,” Deborah said, her voice going up toward the end of her sentence.
They had told Penny some lie about never finding true love if she had sex with… Well, I wasn’t sure what the stipulations were. But they’d lied to her to discourage her
from a perfectly natural part of life, and judging from Penny’s reaction, she hadn’t wanted to abstain from it, at all. Now, they were trying to blame her for their lies?
I couldn’t let that stand. “But you actively encouraged this superstition, didn’t you?”
“Penny…developed early,” James said, clearing his throat as though the very thought of his daughter reaching adulthood was disgusting to him. “And she was never the brightest bulb when it came to people. Animals, yes, science…but she didn’t exercise the best judgment.”
Deborah nodded, as though screwing up your child’s attitudes toward sex in a way that had a lasting impact on their lives was a totally normal thing to do.
Granted, having grown up Catholic, I wasn’t entirely foreign to the concept. But this instance seemed particularly cruel.
“We were sure she was going to be an unwed teenage mother, and we did not have the patience for that, at all,” she added.
They hadn’t had patience? For parenting the child they’d chosen to bring into the world? I could see the problem, now. They’d wanted a child, but they’d wanted a child who would live up to their very narrow criteria for acceptability. “This has affected Penny her entire adult life, you realize,” I said, grasping at straws to make them understand what a horrible thing they’d done to this woman, who I loved fiercely enough that I wanted to flip the table we were sitting at, I was so enraged on her behalf. “You don’t feel even a little guilty about that?”
There was Deborah’s laugh again, the dismissive burble that sounded more intentionally mean every time it vomited from her rubber band neck. “Try parenting a disappointing child, Mr. Pratchett. Then, you’ll understand that desperate measures must sometimes be taken.”
Penny’s head sank on her shoulders. Her gaze fixed on her lap. She looked like a child berated over bad marks at school. I wanted to comfort her, but how could I without giving her parents an opening to further opine on all of her flaws?
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 17