What Came First Read Online Free

am.
    “You, too,” I say. “Taking the girls out?”
    “Yup.” He puts a hand on each blond head. “Movie date with Dad.”
    Roger is the other reason that I don’t hate Annalisa even though she looks like an unnaturally proportioned plastic doll (I mean that in a good way). Roger is a beast. That’s not to say that he’s not a nice man, because as far as I can tell, he lets Annalisa do pretty much anything she wants. But Annalisa is younger than me, in her early thirties, and Roger has got to be sixty. And not a youthful sixty. I don’t know what’s going on with his face, but the skin is all red and saggy, and he has pores the size of sesame seeds.
    “What are Darren and the twins doing tonight?” Annalisa asks.
    “Just, you know. Having a quiet evening at home.”
    When I left, Darren was at his computer, lost in a Sims trance, while Harrison and Sydney chomped on dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in front of the Cartoon Network. By now they’ll have finished eating and be engaged in hand-to-hand combat, but whoops! I’ve left my cell phone in the car, so if Darren tries to call me, I won’t even know.
    “That’s nice, ” Annalisa, says. “Sometimes we moms just need to get out of the way so the dads can have their one-on-one time.”
    In Sims, Darren is a childless sports agent with a knack for Cajun voodoo—his powers recently imbued by the Sims Makin’ Magic Expansion Pack, which his mother gave him for Christmas.
    She never did like me, and not just because she spent so many years blaming her lack of grandchildren on my faulty female plumbing. When Darren’s sluggish sperm were finally identified as a far bigger obstacle to pregnancy than my irregular ovulation, she hardened herself against me even more. Now she sends “the children” (never “Harrison and Sydney,” never “my grandchildren”) ten dollars each for their birthdays and Christmas. I’ve learned not to expect or want any more from her.
    The doorbell rings. Annalisa puts down her already-empty wineglass and opens the door to another frosty blonde, slightly shorter and not quite as pretty as herself (Scottsdale Skipper). Two more women arrive shortly after. Annalisa pours them wine and refills her own glass. We pull out our supplies: binders, papers, scissors, stickers, and photographs—so many, many photographs.
    We coo and giggle over the images: bath time, beach time, birthdays, and Christmas. Such adorable children. Such dashing husbands.
    Thank God they’re not here.

4
    Laura
    In the backyard, the screeching chickens rush to greet us, peering through the chicken wire like inmates in a prison yard longing for visitors. Oh, who am I kidding? They’re not happy to see us. They just want to see what we’ve brought to eat.
    “Check the gate,” I tell Ian, placing our steaming mugs on the teak patio table. Not surprisingly, it’s chilly outside, the grass drenched with dew. I push our chairs out of the shade of the house and into the sunshine.
    After running to the side yard to make sure the chickens can’t escape, Ian unlatches the coop and throws in leftovers from last night’s meal: peas and tomatoes, pasta and bread. Carmen makes dinner Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday we either eat out or order in. It’s not that I can’t cook, but my time with Ian is limited, and I don’t want to waste it in front of a stove.
    Okay, truth: I can’t cook. I make a mean hot chocolate, though. And I’m an ace with a can opener and a microwave.
    As the chickens peck at the leftovers, Ian checks for eggs. The henhouse has two levels, which we refer to, jokingly, as the Great Room and the Loft. The chickens sometimes sleep in the Loft, but all of the laying takes place in the lower left corner of the Great Room. The chickens take turns sitting on the pile of eggs.
    I can’t help wondering what it feels like, day after day, to force something that big out of your body. Does it hurt them? Does it sadden them to have their