Chapter 5

I don't remember how or when we got home. Izzy told me a security guard helped put me in the car. She told him that I'd had a bad reaction to some medication I was taking for malaria.

"Malaria? Izzy, we don't live in Egypt or Panama."

"Hey, it shut him up, and that's all I cared about. Be grateful I didn't say it was syphilis."

"What's that?" Izzy laughed really hard and for a pretty long time.

"You never heard of syphilis?" she asked me, once she'd stopped laughing.

I said I hadn't.

"Has Mom or Dad given you the 'birds and bees' talk?"

I shook my head, 'no'.

"I don't believe this..."

"Izzy, maybe they figured that since I don't go outside much it wasn't important for me to know."

She looked at me like I had just stepped off of a flying saucer and told her I wanted to be taken to her leader.

"You could be right about that. Look, Ike, I know you're smart and I know you read a lot. You don't know anything about sex? Nothing at all?"

I slowly grinned at her.

"Well, I know more today than I did yesterday."

Izzy blushed brightly. I swear I could see the glow on her cheeks.

"Yeah, I guess you do at that. But nothing besides that?"

"Just what I picked up from Ivan. Mostly names for the penis, vagina and breasts."

"Christ! Most kids learn at least a little just talking with their friends." She groused.

"Hey, Izzy... remember who we're talking about here?"

So Izzy spent the next hour telling me about the 'birds and bees', and then she told me about sex. Of the two, sex was more interesting. The bit about where babies came from was all well and good, and to be honest I couldn't have given a damn about gametes and and/or zygotes. Those I had read about. But tits, clits and pussies? She had my undivided attention like no teacher I'd ever had before in my life.

"Have you ever had sex, Izzy." She quickly turned away and started gathering up our coffee cups and saucers.

"That's not the kind of question a gentleman asks a lady." She replied.

"How come?"

"It just isn't polite, that's how come."

Once more in my newly burgeoning relationship with my sister I recognized, without using the link, that what she was saying didn't quite jibe with the way she was acting. Many of you must have experienced the same kinds of reactions and struggled with working out what that difference between the two was. I didn't have to struggle.

I got up and followed my sister into the kitchen and watched her wash off the cups and saucers and put them in the dishwasher. When she turned around she started some to see me leaning against the doorway watching her.

"I know you're hiding something from me, Izzy. I may only be a kid, but I'm not stupid."

She hung her head down and refused to look at me.

"I'm not linked to you Izzy. I won't do that anymore without your permission. I don't want you to think I'm spying on you. So if you don't want to tell me, I guess that's that."

I turned and went upstairs to my room. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. The alarm clock showed that it was only two in the afternoon, but I was as tired as if it had been midnight. I'd nearly dozed off when I heard the door open. It shut quietly moments later and was followed by someone sitting on the bed beside me. I opened my eyes and looked over at my sister.

"Sex, or making love, should be something special and private between people who care about each other. It shouldn't be something you brag about or spread around to make yourself look more important or make someone else look bad." She began. "To answer your question, yes I've had sex before; one time, when I was a little younger than you. I thought I was in love. The next week he told all his pals and before I knew it word was all over school. I was ashamed and humiliated. I beat the shit out of him for doing what he did. And then I started taking out my anger at boys on all boys. That's a big part of why I was mean to you for so long."

"Why didn't you want to tell me you'd had sex before?" I asked.

"Fear." She sighed miserably. "Afraid that you'd think less of me, that you wouldn't love me anymore. That's why I never told Mom about it. I was afraid that you'd be hurt."

I sat up and slid next to Izzy, putting my arm around her shoulders.

"Not telling Mom, I understand that. Being afraid that I'd think less of you or not love you... I guess I can understand that too, considering how little time we've actually been on good terms. But why would you think I'd be hurt?"

"Because of what happened this morning." She looked up at me and brushed her fingers along my jaw. "You don't understand what I mean, do you?"

I shook my head.

Izzy smiled. "You've gotten so big. Between that and what you did to me this morning it's getting hard for me to think of you as just a kid."

"Thanks... I think."

"Ike, sometimes when people have sex, or make love, or even just do what we did, well sometimes one of them start to feel possessive of the other. They start to think they have a personal claim on that person. Understand what I'm saying?"

"I think so. You thought I'd be jealous that you had sex with someone other than me."

"Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."

I pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.

"I still love you, big sister. Don't be afraid to talk to me, huh? I'll listen. And I'll always love you."

Notice how I never said I wasn't jealous? Slowly but surely, I was learning.

Izzy hugged me hard. I heard noises downstairs. Time to face the family.

Dinner that evening was an adventure in long silences and brief outbursts.

Isabeau and I were the last ones to take our places around the kitchen table where the family customarily ate dinner together. The dining room table was saved for entertaining and special events, like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mom seemed to come to life when she saw me follow Izzy into the kitchen and take my usual seat next to her. Dad sat at one end, on Izzy's left, Mom on the other end, to my right, and Ivan sat opposite the two of us.

"Are you feeling better, Ike?" Mom always worried about me, even before the hunting trip. I think it was because I was the baby. Later I found out that she carried a lot of guilt over the loss of Isabeau's twin, the one that died. My birth was a vindication for her of sorts.

"Much better, thanks to Izzy. She's been a big help." Mom's eyes grew a bit and her eyebrows lifted with surprise.

She shifted from looking at me over to my Dad, who was studiously ignoring everything but his plate. Her good mood was quickly being leeched out.

Then Ivan had to open his mouth and make things worse.

"So you're done hiding in your room like a little puss? Jeez, see a little blood and start crying like a baby."

"Ivan!" Mom snarled, getting ready to lay into her oldest.

"He's eighteen, Marian. He's entitled to his own opinion." Dad inserted his two cents worth.

"It's okay Mom," I said "every asshole's going to vent once in a while. Can't be helped."

I locked eyes with my brother and I linked. Resentment, dislike, mistrust, and jealously?

I saw from the corner of my eye my mother struggle to keep a straight face. You have no idea how much seeing that pleased me.

"Watch your mouth Ike!" Dad snapped angrily.

Why would my eighteen year old brother be jealous of me? I thought fast. What did I have that he didn't? He was smart, maybe smarter than me. He was five years older than me and would be going of to college to play football next year. He had friends, girlfriends, his own car, cool clothes.

He was shorter then me. Could that be it?

Shit! I suddenly remembered that in all the years Ivan and my Dad and Granddad had been going out hunting, Dad and Ivan had never gotten a deer. And I went out once, got a big buck with my very first shot and then went all pacifist about it.