Family Ties Read online

  Annie lit the Christmas tree then, so it would be festive and bright when the others got up. A little while later Kate emerged from her bedroom, looking sleepy, in a rock star T-shirt, and her spiky hair sticking up straight. Annie noticed then that she was wearing a tiny diamond in her nose, which was new. She didn’t say anything to Kate about it, but she would never get used to her pierces and tattoos.

  “Santa left me a cool note,” Kate commented then with a yawn as she smiled at her aunt.

  “Really? What does it say?” Annie feigned innocence, as she always did, and particularly had when they still believed in Santa Claus. She had gone to great lengths to preserve the myth for them. She had wanted them to have all the joy and magic in their lives that they deserved.

  “Santa said he loves my new Tinkerbell tattoo, and he just got one himself. He got a huge tattoo of Rudolph on his ass. He promised to leave me a picture of it next year.” Katie grinned.

  “That is not what the note from Santa says!” Annie said with a disapproving look. “I read the note myself when I got up!”

  “Yes, it is!” Katie insisted, and ran to get the note. She had written one herself with a funny drawing on it, of Santa with the Rudolph tattoo on his bare behind. Annie burst out laughing when Kate handed it to her, and then taped it up on the fireplace, just as Liz wandered out in a man’s pajama top that looked sexy with her beautiful long legs. Annie was wearing an old flannel nightgown and a pink cashmere robe. And Ted emerged a few minutes later wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Comfort was the order of the day on Christmas morning, not elegance. And a few minutes later they all exchanged gifts in front of the brightly lit tree.

  Kate’s paintings of the three of them were a huge hit, and for her brother and sister she had done a portrait of Annie. She had done portraits of her parents too, from photographs, but she had left them tacked on the wall in her dorm room. She hadn’t wanted to upset anyone by bringing them home. Annie loved the three beautiful portraits of the children, and Katie promised to have them framed for her. Annie said she was going to take down a painting and put them up in the living room. There were tears in her eyes as she hugged Kate. And Ted and Liz loved the portrait of Annie.

  Ted’s gifts to everyone were a big hit too, and Annie put her personalized hard hat on immediately. Liz had given Annie and Kate beautiful gold cuff bracelets, and an elegant Cartier watch for Ted, with a sporty rubber diver’s band.

  And afterward they all had breakfast in the kitchen. Liz had half a grapefruit as usual and was thinner than ever. Katie had granola, and Ted made eggs sunny side up for Annie and himself. The smell of bacon was delicious, and the turkey in the oven was turning golden brown. It occurred to Annie as she watched them talking and laughing with each other that they had a life of fragments of loaves and fishes. Somehow she had managed to bring up three children, not her own, with no idea of what she was doing, and they had turned out wonderfully, they all loved each other, and they enriched her life in ways she never would have dreamed. She felt very lucky as she put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and silently thanked her sister for the three terrific children she had inherited from her. They had filled her life with love and joy ever since.

  Everyone went to their rooms for a while after breakfast. All of them had friends they wanted to call. Ted closed the door to his room while he called Pattie, and she finally picked up this time, although she still sounded very upset. He wished her a merry Christmas.

  “You should be here with me and the kids,” she said mournfully, and a moment later she was in tears again.

  “I have to be with my family today,” he explained again. She just didn’t seem to get it, or didn’t want to. There was no way he would have been anywhere but here today. And after only four weeks it wasn’t fair of Pattie to expect him to ditch his family for her. He was upset that she had made such a fuss about it, but he offered to come to see her late that afternoon. He had presents he wanted to give them. He promised to call Pattie as soon as he thought he could get away.

  “Have a nice day,” she said, still sounding hurt and disappointed, and he didn’t apologize to her again. She had to understand that his family was important to him. “I love you, Ted,” Pattie said sadly. She sounded as though she had lost her best friend.

  “I’ll see you later,” Ted responded. He still wasn’t ready to tell her that he loved her, and surely not as an apology for spending Christmas with his sisters and aunt. He was upset but not feeling guilty, and it bothered him that Pattie was so possessive of him.

  Ted looked more relaxed when he came out of his room again. At least this time Pattie had talked to him.

  “Love troubles?” Liz asked him with a raised eyebrow, and he shook his head, surprised that she had guessed and not anxious to open up to her.

  “Why would you say that?” Ted commented to his older sister.

  “You never close your door when you’re on the phone, unless you’re fighting with a girl. Someone new?” she asked with interest, and he shook his head.

  “No, just someone I’ve gone out with a few times.” He could just imagine the look on her face if he told his older sister she was thirty-six years old and had two kids. “I might go see her this afternoon,” he volunteered, and Liz nodded. It didn’t sound unusual to her, and she had to go back to her place and pick up a few things for her trip too.

  While they were talking, Annie had wandered into Katie’s room to thank her for the beautiful portraits again. She truly loved them. She noticed a book on Katie’s desk, about Muslim culture and customs. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Katie usually read. She had never been much of a reader, and her taste ran more to biographies of contemporary artists and rock stars. And she’d never had an interest in other religions before, or even her own.

  “That looks interesting,” Annie said, picking it up. “Are you taking a class in Eastern religions? It might actually help us to understand some of the conflicts in the world today.”

  “I borrowed it from a friend,” Katie said, and turned away. Annie went back to the living room to join the others then. They had all dressed nicely for lunch, and Ted was wearing a coat and tie as he always did for family events. She had always insisted that they dress properly for the holidays when they were children.

  Liz was wearing a simple little black wool dress, although it barely reached her thighs. Annie was wearing her favorite red Christmas dress, and Katie appeared a moment later in a red leather skirt, Raggedy Ann stockings, red combat boots, a fuzzy white sweater, and Christmas balls hanging from her ears as earrings. She was definitely her own person, but she had just proved to all of them again what a talented artist she was. And Annie was impressed by the book she had seen in her room. She liked to see that Kate was interested in different things and cultures. Kate was a freethinker and never borrowed anyone’s ideas without checking them out for herself first. She was a totally independent individual. Annie had tried to open as many doors to them as she could. She had never wanted them to live in a narrow, limited world. And she loved the fact that each of them was so different. Of the three, Ted was the most traditional, and Katie the least. She thought that Jane and Bill would have been proud of them too.

  The conversation was lively at their Christmas lunch table, and Annie poured them each champagne. They were all old enough to drink, and rarely did to excess, although Ted had had his occasional sophomoric moments during his first two years in college, but now they were all adults, and reasonable about how much they drank.

  Liz said she was excited about going to Paris and spending time with Jean-Louis. The shoot she was doing in the first week of January was an important one and was being done by a famous French photographer, with important jewels from all over Europe. The Queen of England had even lent them a piece, which Lizzie was planning to put on the cover. She talked animatedly about it. Only Ted was a little quieter than usual, and Annie could sense that something was bothering him, but whatever it was, he didn’t want to share
it with them.

  He watched a little football after the meal, and then he stood up and said vaguely that he was going out for a while to see friends. He waited to see if anyone objected, and when they didn’t, he went to his room and picked up the wrapped gifts for Pattie’s kids. He had bought each of them a game. He wasn’t sure what kids liked at that age. He had already given Pattie her gift, in case he hadn’t been able to get out on Christmas Day.

  He put on his coat and bent to kiss Annie while she chatted with Kate and Liz, and he looked very serious. He had left the gifts for Jessica and Justin at the front door, so as not to draw attention to them.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he promised, picked up his keys on the hall table, and the gifts for Pattie’s kids, and left.

  “What’s eating him?” Liz asked the others, and Katie said she had no idea. He hadn’t said anything to her, although she had heard him arguing with someone on the phone in his room.

  “Sounds like a girl to me,” Annie suggested calmly. “He’s being very quiet about it.”

  “He always is,” Liz volunteered, and they all agreed that he seemed to be unusually so this time.

  “If he keeps seeing her, she’ll show up eventually. Maybe she’s funny looking or weird or something,” Kate suggested.

  “Yeah, like with a lot of pierces and tattoos,” Liz teased her, and they all laughed. Whatever Ted was up to, they all assumed correctly that he would tell them about it when he was ready to. For now it was a mystery, and he wanted it that way. And Annie respected them all too much to try and pry it out of him.

  Ted ran up the stairs in Pattie’s building as fast as he could. He had promised her he’d try to be there by five, and it was nearly six. But he hadn’t been able to get away before that. He hadn’t wanted to run out on Annie and his sisters on Christmas. Their traditions were important to all of them, and to him too.

  He rang the doorbell, and for a long moment she didn’t answer, and Ted was worried that she might not let him in. She had said she’d be there. He felt suddenly like a very young boy who was in trouble. It was an unfamiliar sensation to him. He had always been responsible and well behaved. Annie had very rarely been angry at him, and when she was, it was hot, clear, and direct. She gave a short blast, and it was over. She had never dragged it out, held a grudge, or been passive-aggressive with any of them. Pattie seemed to be punishing him for spending Christmas with his family. And then finally she opened the door to him with a pained look. It was obvious that she’d been crying, and she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms the moment he walked into the room. Ted was stunned.

  “How could you leave me alone today?” she said accusingly, and he looked around and didn’t see her kids.

  “Where are Jessica and Justin?” he asked, looking baffled.

  “I sent them to the movies with Mrs. Pacheco. I wanted to be alone with you when you came.”

  “I brought some little presents for them,” he said, setting the gift-wrapped boxes down on the table. “And I didn’t leave you alone, Pattie. You were with your kids, and I was with my family. I couldn’t just walk out on them.” He sounded calm and reasonable, but her hysteria and demands on him concerned him. It was too soon in the relationship for her to expect so much.

  “So you walked out on me instead,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t walk out on you,” he corrected firmly. “And we’ve only been dating for four weeks.”

  “I’m in love with you, Ted.” He would have been more convinced if she hadn’t said it to him the first night. For him, love was something that grew slowly over time, not something that burst into full bloom on the first night. He was growing more and more attached to her, but he still wanted to be sure that it was love and not just fabulous sex.

  He was pleased to see that she was wearing the sweater he had given her, although she hadn’t seemed excited about his gift and wanted something else from him. She forgot that he was twenty-four years old and a student, and a white cashmere sweater was a big gift for him. Annie had been thrilled with the cashmere shawl he had gotten from the same place. But Pattie had made it clear she wanted a promise ring. The very idea of that had stunned him. It wasn’t appropriate after only four weeks. She was going much too fast for him, and it made him uncomfortable. Even a man her own age wouldn’t have been ready to move that quickly.

  As he looked at her tenderly, she handed him his gift. And as he took off the wrapping, he was ill at ease to see that it was some kind of jewelry box. He gasped when he opened it—it was a beautiful old gold man’s watch, and not at all the kind of thing he would wear. He was wearing the Cartier diver’s watch from his sister, which was much more age appropriate. And he was even more uncomfortable seeing that Pattie’s was an expensive gift.

  “Do you like it?” Pattie asked hopefully. “It was my father’s.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he said quietly, closing the box, without putting it on his wrist. “But I can’t accept it. That’s a really big gift, and it was your father’s. You can’t just give that to someone like me.”

  “Why not? What do you mean?” She looked hurt.

  “You hardly know me. What if we break up? You don’t want me going off with your father’s watch. You should keep that for Justin one day.” Just as his own father’s watch was waiting for him, but he had never worn it yet. Annie had it in a safe for him.

  “Then don’t break up with me,” Pattie said, sounding pathetic. “I want you to have it, Ted.”

  “Not now,” he said gently, and silenced her with a kiss. And a moment later the predictable happened, their clothes were in a heap on the floor, and the tensions of the past two days had found release. Their passion overwhelmed them both, and they lay breathless, first on the couch and then in her bed, clinging to each other insatiably. He couldn’t get enough of her, and she seemed desperate in the way she made love to him, as though she wanted to swallow him whole and become a part of him.

  It was ten o’clock when Mrs. Pacheco called her and asked if she could bring the children home. She wanted to go to bed. They had totally forgotten the time, and Ted still hadn’t left. They dressed hurriedly, and a few minutes later Jessica and Justin rang the bell, and Ted gave them their gifts as soon as they walked in. They loved the games, and Pattie looked happy and relaxed again. The past few hours had convinced her that Ted was still addicted to her. She had been terrified that she had lost him and had made him miserable as a result, punishing him for going home.

  “I have to go,” he whispered to her, and she shook her head. She wanted him to stay, but her kids were home, and he didn’t want to do something crazy with them there. Instead he wished them all a merry Christmas, kissed her, put on his coat, and hurried down the stairs. He wanted to get home. He didn’t know why, but tonight had made him sad. She seemed so desperate, and her father’s watch had been too big a gift. It hadn’t touched him, it had scared him. He had left the gold watch on the dresser in her bedroom. They weren’t married or engaged, he didn’t even know if he was in love. He liked her a lot and he wanted to be with her, and their lovemaking was extraordinary, but he didn’t want to become her prisoner either, and sometimes there was a hint of that. He took a big gulp of air as he hailed a cab and got in. She had been sexier than ever, but for the first time in a month of making love to her, he was relieved to leave. He wasn’t sure why he felt that way, but he suddenly felt as though Pattie were suffocating him.

  The others were asleep when he got home. It had been a long day. When Ted left, they had watched a movie, and after that Kate and Annie had played Scrabble while Liz finished packing for Paris, and then they all went to bed.

  Ted tiptoed in when he got home. Annie had left the Christmas tree lit for him, and he sat down on the couch and looked at it, thinking of where he had just been. It was so exciting and intense being with Pattie, but the white heat of her passion seared him at times. And all he could think of now was that it felt good to be home, in the apart
ment where he’d grown up, with the people he loved. Pattie was like a wild fantasy he couldn’t get enough of. But this was real. He sat in the living room, feeling like a kid again, smiling at the Christmas tree, and happy to be home.

  Chapter 8

  On the day after Christmas, Ted slept till almost noon. Lizzie left the house at ten in the morning for a one P.M. flight to Paris, and Annie was at her desk, working on some plans for Jim Watson’s apartment, when Kate wandered in and asked if she could have a friend over for pizza that night. She was always considerate about asking if she could have people in, and Annie was happy to have her entertain her friends. She had always been very welcoming to all of them.

  “Of course. You don’t have to ask, but thank you anyway.” And then she looked at her and smiled. “Is this a new love interest you haven’t told me about?”

  “No, he’s just a friend.” But Annie knew better than that after being a surrogate parent for all these years. New boyfriends and girlfriends were always announced as friends. “We might go to a movie, or stay here.”

  “Do whatever you like. I have some work to do. I can stay in my room.”

  “You don’t have to hide.” Kate smiled at her. “I’m not fifteen. I’m not ashamed of you.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know. I was pretty embarrassing there for a while.”

  “You’ve improved,” Katie said magnanimously with a broad grin.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Paul. He goes to my school. He’s really talented. He wants to be a graphic artist one day, but he’s really good at fine arts. His parents want him to learn something practical, like design.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-three.” It seemed like a reasonable age to Annie, and she nodded.

  “I’ll be happy to meet him. I like it when you bring your friends home.” Katie nodded and went back to her room and called Paul. He said he’d come over around five. And after she talked to Paul, Ted emerged from his room. He looked exhausted. His sexual adventures with Pattie were wearing him out. Pattie had just called and invited him out to lunch with her kids. There was still snow on the ground in the park, and she had suggested a snowball fight or maybe skating for the afternoon. He liked the idea and had agreed.