Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters)

by Ramin, Terese

  The sandwich did him a world of good, but it was the pat on his cheek and the cheery sarcasm that cured him.

  By midaftemoon he was parked in front of a football game with Max, Zach and Libby. The seven–year–old continually competed with the sportscasters to give Nat the blow–by–blow, while Max described all the colors and uniforms and Zach maintained an expressionless silence.

  Jane and Cara played tea party behind the couch, offering Nat tiny cups of something that tasted suspiciously like Hi–C Ecto Cooler. Green, Cara informed him, because it wouldn’t stain the carpet like grape juice if they spilled it.

  And Helen thought she didn’t have what it took to be a mother.

  Smiling, Nat listened to her bustle about the house, imagined her as she came to him in his dreams: visually ageless, indomitably beautiful. Saw her naturally curly hair deceptively short so that only if a man had his hands in it would he understand how much of it there was. Got drunk on the remembered depth of her sea green eyes, the creamy paleness of her black–Irish skin. Added to the conjured imagery the portrait his mind had created of her with Jane sleeping atop her, Madonna and Child, the crux of the most anticipated season of the year in a modern day, well–used, velour rocking–reclining chair.

  Visualized the gentle sway of her breasts beneath the loosely wrapped terry robe she wore when she got up in the middle of the night to take care of the children; felt the strength in the arms she’d slipped around him trying to help warm him through his fevered chills, the gentle press of her length along his back.

  The longing ache that had coursed through him even in the midst of his flu sufferings and fretful sleep. The want elicited by every drift of her fingers across his brow, the back of his neck, his shoulders, his chest.

  The volcanic, nerves–to–instant–attention jolt his system had experienced when she’d slid her fingers down his arm and into his palm. She’d only been handing him a couple of Tylenol at the time, but the resulting shock was no less intense for all that.

  He wanted her.

  After a month in her company, he’d grown accustomed to having her around.

  After three nights of marriage, sharing her bed with only pajamas and his flu between them, he was starving for her, hungry beyond anything even his dreams were capable of creating.

  He needed her.

  Urgently.

  With every passing moment he grew more aware of her, who she was. Became manifestly more disturbed by what she was beginning to mean to him, more mindful of the intolerable burn thirty–two days of touch–but–don’t–feel proximity had created.

  Perhaps it was the simple adrenaline surge of feeling well after spending days in a hell where he knew he wasn’t about to die but had occasionally felt bad enough to wish he might do so just to get the torture over with. Perhaps it was the years of knowing how much he’d wanted her before they’d spent any time together. Whichever, for the first time in a month of wanting Helen insanity diluted by wanting to make sure they wouldn’t lose the kids lunacy, he truly itched for time alone with his wife—without their children interfering.

  Without having to even remember they had children.

  Judas Priest, he thought, guilty because the wish wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he tried to make it do just that, what kind of a parent didn’t want to remember he had children?

  And the joker who lived in his mind rejoined promptly, A real one. The same way real kids don’t always want to recall they’ve got parents.

  Everybody—kid, parent, bus driver, naval commander, priest—needed time out now and again. That’s why the military invented "leaves," universities offered sabbaticals and God created vacations. And today, right now, this minute, Nat wanted an immediate vacation with his bride, a chance to explore and broaden the boundaries of their marriage.

  Provided she was willing.

  Shifting Max out of his lap and onto the couch, Nat collected his cane and followed the sound of Helen’s sotto voce, off–key humming into the laundry room.

  And shut the door behind him.

  And leaned against it, waiting for her to say something so he’d know exactly where she was. He could hardly ravish her if all he wound up doing was clutching at air. Not to mention that tripping over piles of laundry and knocking himself out could prove a real mood killer.

  "Hey," Helen said. Her voice sounded hollow and metallic, as though she might be peering down into the washer or maybe stooped in front of the dryer. "What’s up?"

  Ah, good, higher up. She was standing in front of the washer.

  "Me."

  He put out a hand and felt his way carefully toward her, allowed his palm to glide familiarly over her hip. Slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him to nuzzle her neck.

  She stilled at his touch, stiffened briefly, then fitted herself into his caress.

  The way he’d known she would.

  The way she had from the first time he’d given in to the urge to kiss her, on Guy Fawkes Day.

  "Nat." Her neck arched into his mouth, belying the scolding even as she gave it. "You’re sick."

  "I was sick." His hands molded her stomach, strayed restlessly down across her belly and along the front of her thighs. His mouth dragged across the nape of her neck, teeth and tongue laid waste to the other side. "Now I’m better."

  Helen’s breath caught and she sighed. "You won’t be if you overdo it. If I let you."

  "I trust you. You won’t let me overdo anything."

  "Don’t tempt me. I might." She was turning to him, twisting in his arms to get her own taste of him, to get closer to his mouth. "I’m not very trustworthy when I want something. I go all out for it, no holds barred, damn the torpedoes, full speed and all’s fair. Ask anybody who graduated with me from the Point."

  "Consider me warned." He found her mouth, supped briefly, lifted his head. "Now, one for you. I want you, Helen—"

  "Big surprise," she interrupted mildly, tucking her arms underneath his to link them around his waist. "It had to either be that or you’re outgrowing your sweatpants in a major way—"

  He bent his head and stole the rest of the observation with her breath in a mind–numbing, devastating kiss that reached inside her and plunged something sharp and searing, uniquely unexpected into her soul.

  She’d had a month to learn to accept the desire between them, a fortnight to reconcile herself to the choice they’d made to make a marriage in name only, and four days to understand that their choice to remain celibate was unrealistic at best, absolute denial of the truth at worst. She had no time at all to comprehend the warning he gave her in this kiss, only a heartbeat to grasp an iota of the danger before she was engulfed in the whirlpool and sucked under.

  She opened to him and demanded what he gave: hard hands laced in her hair, hard body taut against hers, hard tongue claiming her mouth in quick, brutal lashes that wouldn’t be denied.

  She was the fountain to be drunk from, the field to be harvested and hoarded without sharing. Then suddenly she was the repository to be filled, the starving stranger to be shared with—the feast and a partaker in the feast… Greedy. Gluttonous. Selfless. A human rainbow colored with sin and sainthood in the breadth of a kiss.

  He’d begun the kiss to shut her up, to illustrate a warning he knew he should give her, punish her for making a joke out of something that was more deadly serious to him than he’d known. But that had been the beginning, and they were way beyond the beginning now, well out in a rough surf without a life preserver to share between them.

  He’d begun and now he couldn’t stop. At the crest of every small wave a bigger wave rose up, crashed down and drove him deeper; rose, crashed, drove until there was only a roaring in his ears and the darkness caved in and his mind went blank. Then he didn’t care that he was drowning because living had never felt anything like this. Living had never been this insanely risky nor this absurdly safe. And not even when he’d held a camera in his hands, focused on the single, instinctive
instant when he and it seemed to fuse to capture moments rarer than any gem—not even then had he felt this… This intensity of purpose, this singleness of direction, the absolute obsession to complete what he’d begun.

  He couldn’t breathe, yet he couldn’t come up for air. His pulse was off the charts, yet he couldn’t stop and slow down.

  And this was what he’d needed to tell her, the caution he had to give.

  But it was too late for cautions now.

  Too late for anything.

  His knees gave, her knees gave; it didn’t matter, they were down. Something hard and angular was sticking in his back—a carved door panel, the sharp edge of a wicker laundry basket. He didn’t care, it didn’t matter. Helen’s blouse was open, her bra was undone. The scent of her was in his nostrils, filling his lungs. Her taste was on his tongue, in his mouth, swallowed to nourish his famished system. The sound of her breath, the thud of her heart were in his ears, tattooed in his brain, making and matching the rhythm of his. The feel of her skin was on his hands, under his fingers, a part of him. Her fatigue pants were gone, his sweats were bunched down around his thighs, her knees splayed to either side of his lap. The elastic leg of her French–cut briefs was stretched aside; her fingers were on him, around him, guiding him in.

  And then he was in, hot, wet and deep.

  The pleasure was sharp, a minefield of sensation, and madness surrounded by delirium. Her body stiffened and relaxed, rose and fell, riding him. He clamped one arm about her hips and speared up into her, hard and harder, correcting the pace, setting it. His other hand twisted in her hair, brought her gasping mouth down to his, tongue thrust violently in. She was the earth and he was both rain and seed, planted and driving in.

  And greedy as fresh–turned soil, she accepted the one and drank the other dry.

  When it came, the earthquake rocked them both, leveled them, sent aftershocks rumbling through in long, sustained tremors that shattered whatever pieces of them might have remained intact.

  Lost and abandoned but not alone, they held onto each other, unaware of anything but that glowing, stormy place where lovers went to leap while the shudders that joined their bodies gradually subsided, released them slowly back to where they’d begun: linoleum floor, wooden door, clothing in sorted mounds, the scent of laundry detergent, fabric softener and bleach.

  The sound of the telephone ringing and children rushing to answer it.

  The slap of basketball shoes outside the laundry room door, the rattle of the knob when a child tried to push the door open, looking for Helen to come to the phone.

  Zach’s voice demanding to be let in, to know if everything was okay, if the Colonel needed any help, was all right, if she’d gotten sick.

  Zach’s voice concerned when he didn’t get a prompt answer, then afraid.

  It took all of Nat’s remaining willpower to stay quiet, every bit of Helen’s strength to collect her wits and make her voice sound normal when she said, "What? Oh, sorry, Zach, you caught me wool–gathering. Don’t come in, I spilled the laundry soap all over the floor and I don’t want anyone to slip. What do you need?"

  "Phone," Zach responded. Toneless. Denying the moment of fear. "It’s…" He hesitated, weighing relationships. Decided to conditionally accept this one. "It’s Aunt Alice. Something about all us kids not drawing names on Thanksgiving as usual so she and Aunt Twink went ahead and did it for everybody and now she wants to give you ours."

  "Oh, ah, okay." Draw names? Thanksgiving? She couldn’t think straight enough to remember what either might be. "Umm, will you ask her to give the names to you, or, ah, tell her I’ll call her back after I get this mess cleaned up or something?"

  "Yeah." Laconic. The slap of rubber soles retreating back toward the other phone.

  Helen’s attention reverted to her and Nat still united intimately—on the laundry–room floor.

  Nat’s ragged breath still warm on her bare chest, the pounding of his heart keeping concert tempo with hers.

  The milky evidence of passion beginning to leak around their joining, soak into the cotton of her underpants and cool.

  Nat’s silence and the tremble of his arms as they went around her, gathering her tight while he pressed his forehead hard into her breast.

  The beast of shame and guilt rearing back to bare its teeth and snarl its laughter at her. How could they have chosen here, now…? And with the children awake and able to walk in on them at any moment…? And never mind that Nat was pressed so hard against the door that it would have taken a Mack truck to move him before he was ready to go. How could they simply step so far outside themselves and forget who they were and what their priorities were here? Plus Nat was sick, damn it, just getting well, and overexertion could give him a relapse and how could she, damn it all to hell, how could she?

  The sensation of dampness running down the valley between her breasts and the muffled, inarticulate sound of Nat’s voice, his groan stung her ears.

  His face raised to hers, tracked with tears.

  His hand shaky at the back of her neck, hauled her into his kiss.

  His sex already hard inside her again, eliciting tension and constriction in her corresponding muscles before they’d even had time to relax.

  The scratchy, gravelly texture of his beard along her cheek, the harshness of his remorse beside her ear.

  "God forgive me, I need you, Helen. Be my lover, be my lover, you are my wife…."

  * * *

  They should have realized that if they didn’t deal with it in a more appropriate time and place it would get away from them—had realized it, in fact, and still managed to let it get away from them.

  And because they’d let it get away, get in the way, in the end it didn’t bring them closer the way it should have. It manufactured a distance, fostered an awkwardness that hadn’t separated them since their first night under the same roof.

  They were both passionate people, individuals who rarely let common sense stand in the path of a goal.

  Which meant that chaos stood there now in the center of a bramble thicket, with them on opposite sides, and the only boulevards through it were a thousand miles to either side or straight through the roughest and thorniest part directly in front of them.

  They avoided the thorns as best they could.

  "Where’d you go, Dad?" Libby complained over a light dinner of Campbell’s chicken soup with rice. "You missed the best play of the game. Suh made this tackle and Kevin Smith made this run—you should have seen it! Bodies flying everywhere…"

  Dad.

  Why’d she have to pick now to call him that when at least three–quarters of the rest of the time she called him simply "Nat?"

  He didn’t feel the need to be quite so superhuman when all she called him was Nat.

  "Bathroom, Lib," he lied, glad he didn’t have to think about meeting her eyes. "Guess this flu wasn’t as out of my system as I thought."

  "That’s too bad, it was some game and the Lions won for a change and—"

  "Daddo…"

  Daddo. Max at his elbow with the calendar, tapping his arm.

  "…tomorrow you hafta bemember to be at school at quarter after nine to go on Cara’s field trip to Greenfield Village and call your eye doctor and Kern’l’s taking us all to the dentist after school, even Jane, and you have a class tomorrow night at six—"

  "Tern’l." Jane leaned over in her high youth chair, earnestly patting Helen’s arm.

  "Whatcha need, sweet pea?"

  "D’zert."

  "Dessert?" Helen’s glance drifted across the kitchen table to Nat, slunk away, a voyeur with nothing to look at. Not sure what she needed to see. "Already? Did you finish your soup?"

  Jane waggled her head regretfully. "Tan’t."

  "Full?" Helen asked.

  "No." Emphatic. Illustrated by Jane picking up her bowl and sloshing it forward to show Helen what was left in the bottom. "Tan’t stoop it up."

  "Slurp it," Helen suggested.

  Jan
e eyed her a moment, reflecting, then grinned and picked up her bowl and slurped the contents into her mouth, spilling half of what was left down her bib in the process. Expression serious, she pulled the dish away from her mouth, peered into it for several seconds, then swung it at Helen, beaming.

  "Gone," she crowed.

  "So I see," Helen agreed dryly.

  She caught the bib before Jane could whip it off and scatter spilled dinner into her hair and to the four winds, folded crumbs to the inside and mopped the tyke’s face with it after she took it off. The she released Jane from her chair and handed her two cookies. Jane promptly climbed into her lap and wiggled into a comfortable position, using Helen like an easy chair.

  "My Tern’l," Jane announced, munching happily, waving her arms in the air and offering a mushy bite of cookie that Helen wisely declined. "My fern–cher."

  "Furniture," Helen concurred. "That’s certainly what I feel like sometimes."

  Again her gaze slipped to Nat, studying the mobile features, remarkable in stillness. What was she looking for? What did she want to see?

  Reassurance, familiarity, ease… Mobility. Expression. Not this… Blankness. Not guilt.

  Not regret.

  Family life, routine, filtered back in.

  "…It’s part of social studies, so when we go tomorrow I have to dress like people who lived in the 1870s," Cara was explaining to Nat. "Grammy Sanders made me a dress and a pinafore, with a bonnet and a pair of bloomers. The dress is kind of minty–green–and–white striped and the pinafore and bonnet are kind of a stripy–plaid–patchwork sort of stuff—she says it’s calico—that match the dress pretty good, and the bloomers are white." Softly, wistfully, she added, "I wish you could see me."

  "Oh, darlin’."

  Nat reached for her and she came to him, pressing in for a hug, and Helen, watching, felt a stab of pain for them both.