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As for our gender difference? I am not blind. Nor stupid. Maybe if I had been another son, our parents would have put all of their natural hope onto me. Instead, I was a girl. One they assumed would be married off to some other well-to-do family like a goddamn cow bartered at the fair. Oh, but what is that? Do I hear the sounds of me discovering how much I also like my fellow sex one night at a party when a butch much too old for me offered to eat me out on a kitchen counter while my friends watched?

Hmph!

As I’ve mentioned before, my ideal situation would be finding a socially acceptable woman with a decent head on her shoulders and her money willing to have an arrangement with me. One that is beneficial, of course.

“Again, I’m sorry. For some reason, I thought you already knew.”

Alessa shakes her head. “It didn’t show up when I Googled his name.”

Of course it hadn’t. My mother pays SEO experts good money to keep that stuff off the front pages. Not that I think Ted knows that…

“My brother is in a homosexual relationship. They’re having the biggest gay wedding of the year. That’s all you need to know.”

“Does not help that Jordan is a unisex name these days.”

“Is it?”

Alessa rolls her eyes. “Now, here I am. Thinking that it was bad enough thatyouwere gay and that was a big source of the animosity between you and your mother. Now I see that it’s even worse. Your big, manly brother is also hot for guys so I’ve become embroiled in the messy queer politics of theMarcon family. Crap. They didn’t cover this in my Baby Bisexual pamphlet I got a few years ago!”

“Don’t let Ted hear you’re bisexual, sweetheart. He still waggles his eyebrows at women when he’s in the mood. He’ll tell you you’re in good company around him.”

“Sounds like I’d fit right in with your family.”

Alessa doesn’t know it, but she’s spoken of the devil. My mother saw us conversing and can’t take it anymore.

“Julianna.” She’s on my other side before I know she’s there. “Introduce me.”

I bristle. My mother is one of the only people in the world who can make me bristle, but it’s not because I’m afraid of her or anything she might do. It’s because the jokes about her being a specter, a wraith, a damned demon are sometimes too true to make fun of. She’ll magically appear in a wisp of smoke, her long, wrinkled fingers threatening to poke your eyes out if you don’t choke on her perfume first. Serena Marcon is notmaternal.

On the other hand, if I ever stay someplace genuinely haunted, I would be difficult to scare out of the house. I’d probably assume it was my mother come to annoy me.

“Mother.” I put a protective hand on my girlfriend’s back as I turn her around for presentation. I’m gladder than ever to ask her to wear something as conservative as this simple dress. The last thing I need my mother thinking is that Alessa is a floozy, although I don’t doubt she’ll call her that. “This is my girlfriend, Alessa Penrose.”

She looks Alessa up and down with her beady blue eyes. The only reason I know Ted and I are related to her and not one of my father’s mistresses is because we all have the same eye color.“I don’t know how you had two kids with her,”I once said to my father. To that, he replied,“She used to be that chilling kind of beautiful, you know? Element of danger that she’d stab yourchest with an ice pick halfway through making love to you. Now she’s chilling.”

She must be, for Alessa shivers beneath my touch. I know it’s not because of my fingertips stroking her soft skin beneath her dress.

“Alessa, this is my mother, Serena Marcon.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Marcon.” Alessa extends her hand. My mother keeps one of hers beneath the crook of her arm and the other holding her most recent mimosa, which she continues to drink while her eyes drill holes.

At least Alessa is smart enough to keep her introduction short and sweet. Even if she did use the word “pleasure,” and that’s one of my mother’s least favorite words.

“All mine, I’m sure,” my mother spits into her mimosa glass. “What was your name? Alice? Alyssa? Melissa…?”

“Alessa,” I supplement. Trust me. My mother doesn’t want to hear my girlfriend speak.

“Right. How 1995.”

Alessa keeps her lips pursed but otherwise locked into a polite smile. “You have a beautiful family, Mrs. Marcon.”

“Yes. Beautiful and rich. Enjoy it while my daughter fancies you, girl.” My mother doesn’t say anything as she floats away in her long skirt. She has nothing else to say to us.

“Jeez,” Alessa mutters once we’re alone again. “This is a stressful party.”

Suppose I should tell her that this is one of the easiest I’ve been to with my family. Last time I took a girlfriend to a function like this, she ran to my car crying because my mother asked how many abortions she’d had. The truly cruel thing? My mother doesn’t usually say that sort of thing to people she’s met unless she’s done a lot of background research. My girlfriend at the time had a miscarriage before meeting me, so I do not doubt my mother preyed upon that.

I don’t want to know what she’ll pick apart regarding Alessa. For the most part, Serena Marcon is harmless. Verbally cruel but…