A Rock and Family Vacation

[2]

On the cusp of morning, Brooke woke up feeling kind of gross. Not the suddenly sick variety, but like she just drooled all over her top and sneezed in the middle of the night with the leftovers on her arm. Things certainly didn’t feel sexy last night, and they weren’t starting off well.

A minute after using up several tissues, the big thing she knew drifted into her consciousness. Her youngest, six-year-old Clare, had to go to the bathroom and didn’t have a pee-pee anymore. He was a girl with long hair. That couldn’t be real though.

She once had a dream that bordered on the stressful nightmares Clare had for too many sleepless nights. In it, a small asteroid had broken through the attic, tearing through insulation and the HVAC space above them. It was so real, from her debating with Eliot about the actual terminology of the rock to the sense of space in the house.

But the one element that utterly convinced her it was real was choosing to wake up from the dream only to walk over to that same spot and see that the gash in the roof was still there. She woke herself up and the hole was still there. Then she woke herself up and the hole was still there. So, she woke herself up and the hole was still there. She woke herself up and the hole was still there…

Emotionally, she felt more than a half dozen instances of trying to wake up. Finally being awake felt like the most untrustworthy  foundation she could attempt to rely upon. Cautiously, she ran through everyone’s birthdates. Gradually, reality made sense, and everything was in its proper order.

She got up from the bed, stretched her legs, and glared at an ingrown hair right above her knee which felt like it wanted to make her day miserable. Brooke crept over to the adjoining room to check on her youngest son.

He was up. Sort of. His blankets were all bunched up into a disorganized mound. She could see his head barely poking out towards the Nintendo Switch as his little hands fiddled with the Joy-Con. A mangled crown of long blonde hair puffed around his head, mostly hidden by his blankets. She could hear him sniffling while he played.

“Sweetie?”

No answer.

“You okay?”

Another silence only punctuated by plastic mechanical clicking. The bundle of blankets shifted.

“….no.” Another sniffle.

Brooke settled on the edge of her son’s bed and the blankets curled back like a caterpillar twisting from the assault of a malicious bird. “Can I see you…?”

The game console gave the familiar chime that meant things had been paused. Slowly, the child beneath peeled back the insulating layers until just the protective fitted sheet remained. And then even that slipped away as Clare pouted and gazed towards the nearest wall. His clothes barely clung to his tiny body. Clare had always been rather small. He was barely six pounds when born.

The presence stretched out on the bed had such slight shoulders, but they still appeared delicately soft and plush instead of bony. All his skin seemed especially tender, as though it might bruise if she simply grabbed it the wrong way. Otherwise, aside from a slightly higher forehead and obvious long hair, this was clearly Clare. He reached for a section of the discarded blanket, ready to restore his cocoon. But Brooke bent over and wrapped him in her arms.

Lifting him up in her embrace felt slightly easier than wielding a listless, land-trapped fish. Slowly, he started to quiver and laced his arms around her back. He was never a loud crier, as hot tears landed on her shoulder with a faint squeak. She eased him back to look at him. His eyes were puffy and evasive as he mouthed sobs.

“Did I fail?”

She frowned and asked him what he meant. Lacy apparently conjured up some boyish mythology that stuck in Clare’s brain for some time. If boys weren’t careful then they could fail at being boys and turn into girls instead. Brooke scoffed and assured him that wasn’t the case.

“But I’m a girl now… right? I kinda saw…may have seen, stuff. Somewhere. Am I gonna grow boobies now…?”

Brooke had a lot to unpack with that string of thoughts. She knew that Lacy had stuff that she was never supposed to poke around in, but Blair was basically a ninja when it came to that department. She was just desperately glad that they kept things clean, or at least as clean as boys of 12 and 16 could manage things. As far as the rest, Brooke didn’t want to commit to any particular conclusion yet.

She helped Clare to his feet. He had a slightly different smell too. Maybe it was just her imagination, but his usual scent had a subtler presence. He still smelled like slightly-sweaty child recently wrapped in too many blankets, but it wasn’t quite in the range she expected.

In the bathroom, she had him undress completely. They also plucked the hair ties from his long, disheveled locks. Clare readily tossed his top but hesitated with letting his pants go until the last reasonable moment. The undeniable sight of an undressed little girl in front of her set off screeching alarm bells. This couldn’t possibly be her child! This had to be one of the neighbor's kids or some changeling standing in for one of hers!

But Clare’s nervous little features looked up at her expectantly as though she had all the answers to this impossibility. She could only offer up a few tidbits as she led Clare over to the bathroom and laid a towel on his shoulders… Her shoulders to keep her warm.

“Yes, while I’m not a doctor and I don’t know if we can find one around here, you are a girl. Just like me. And that’s perfectly fine. There are lots of girls in the world. And it’s perfectly normal to be one. So far as how things might be when you grow up…We don’t have to worry about that right now. Let’s just figure out things for today.”

When she was done using the toilet, after processing all this from her mom, Clare had to ask, “Do I have to change my name? Do I have to wear dresses and skirts and use the girls' restroom now?”

She was impressed at the scope of forethought and anxiety spilling out of her son, but she, unfortunately, presented about that much on any given day after work. It was easy to gloss over the name part since it was already a big to-do. But she just assured her that no, she wouldn’t have to change her name for anything. As far as restrooms, Brooke relayed that girls' restrooms were made with girls' needs in mind (she resisted all the complaints floating through her brain and stuck to this simplification).

Clare wasn’t very happy when it came to those “needs”, but she understood that. On the last point, Brooke vehemently defended that no matter what happened to Clare physically, she would never force her to wear skirts and dresses or anything that made her uncomfortable. But she did make sure she knew that being without a top wasn’t appropriate for girls. Every point she worked her way through felt like dodging lasers that might slice off a limb. These were the sorts of questions she thought would never come up. She just wasn’t prepared for them, even though she should’ve been.

Chewing on her lips back and forth, Clare didn’t immediately denounce the thought of wearing girls' clothes if she was a girl. She didn’t want to wear anything with clowns though but that was given. Before Brooke prepared Clare’s usual bath, she asked her mom if she could try a shower. She knew it was a more grown-up thing to shower, even though she had one or two with dad washing her hair. Could mom help her shower?

Brooke had to think that over. In her family, familial intimacy didn’t exist. You shut the damn door and were nowhere around anyone else when they were naked. Eliot’s family weren’t quite hippies, but they definitely liked to save water by having multiple people bathe and shower at once. It was never a mixed situation. Brooke freaked out when she was joined by Eliot washing baby Blair. She had no idea if this would give the kid some sort of precocious feeling or Oedipus complex. But the world didn’t blow up just because their family took a shower or bath together sometimes. Eventually, Blair didn’t think it was cool anymore and preferred to take his own baths and showers. And so, the trajectory continued.

Clare was clearly slipping away from that notion next. So, this was a rare and completely bizarre opportunity. More than anything though, Brooke imagined and hoped that she could show her concerned daughter that there wasn’t anything wrong or broken about being a girl and that while some things would be different, it didn’t have to be scary.

She prefaced as much of this as she could and got the walk-in shower ready. Fortunately, they packed some of Clare’s older clothes which were getting snug, but he could still comfortably wear them, because it was a truth of every vacation that clothes somehow vanish into the ether, and losing these would not be a big deal. Eliot was still asleep in their bed, and she let him enjoy all that restful ignorance.

Being naked before her child still brought back the old anxieties. She had to lock the bathroom door. Clare marveled at her mother and then glanced down at herself a few times back-and-forth.

“… I’m going to be like you… someday?”

Brooke thought she looked pretty good for forty. Her hair was closest now to its natural ash blonde while retaining some fair highlights around her shoulders. Whether it was turning gray or not at the roots was not a matter she needed to know yet. She was never going to escape the lines around her brown eyes, and she’d long ago come to terms with the freckles spread around her face. A lip reduction was something she considered around 30 but eventually decided that it was fine and didn’t make her look like a hooker.

Her arms and legs were still lean, but a sense of flab sometimes caught her, like a phantasm in the shadows. Her boobs slammed into her quiet life way early and forged a modest love-hate relationship with her as they swelled through puberty and found new peaks through three bouts of nursing and never looked back. Was her daughter going to take after her? Too big of a question.

“I don’t know, sweetie. You’re not going to be exactly like me, not like in those… Not in certain movies. But think about all your relatives, from your grandmas to aunt… To your aunts and cousins and everyone. But I know with absolute certainty you’ll be beautiful no matter what happened to you with all this or whatever will happen.”

“But I’m not gonna be a daddy someday?”

She’s stressed that was something Clare didn’t need to even begin thinking about for a long long time. Before they got in, Brooke tested the shower. The water pressure was absurdly high and set the way Eliot liked it instead of her.

At this point, Clare fretted that she had lost, literally lost, her birdy. Before she woke up her parents, she dug all around her bed to see where it could’ve fallen off, because she didn’t want to go to the bathroom without it. Brooke had no idea what to say but mostly wanted to get in the shower.

A lot of the worries washed away in there. Clare was not prepared for the water blasting her on the side and in the face. She giggled with delight and said it was like a slide, but it was moving instead of her. She had plenty of room to prance around like she usually did as Brooke sudsed up her hair and tried not to be too rough with her gentle skin. Clare wanted to and was able to scrub herself with a little hand towel wrapped around soap and a few handfuls of the liquid stuff Brooke typically used.

As she let Brooke blow dry her hair while on the little window seat and wrapped in a big warm towel, Clare fostered a new concern, “Will Ace and Big B be mad at me?”

It took her a moment to realize Clare meant Lacy and Blair. They probably came up with those over the long trip but then it felt like they adopted and shed all sorts of nicknames daily. “Why would they be mad at you?”

“Because we’re brothers. What are we now?”

These were far too many and way too existential questions for an hour when the sun hadn’t even breached the water yet. “Family. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She knew that was total bullshit but kept firm with it till Clare at least nodded.

They dressed, with Clare recognizing her older clothes but feeling comfy in them and Brooke putting on a light blue top and shorts. Brooke picked up one of the nail polishes over by the sink and asked if Clare wanted to try it. She remembered when mommy sometimes wore it and agreed with her suggestion that it made her fingers look like pretty stones. But she wasn’t quite ready to go there. She was still nervous about her brothers seeing her.

Eliot shifted in bed but didn’t perk up. In the side room, Brooke lingered with her kid and considered how this might’ve happened. She did her best not to hate herself too much for putting off this notion. She genuinely wanted Clare to be restored to his normal self. She’d just never had a daughter before and, amongst her family, the notion wasn’t the biggest celebration. She wanted to make sure Clare felt like she was fully valid and not a half person, subtraction, or loss to be resolved or repaired.

She had Clare work backwards from before she woke up and had to use the bathroom. A lot of those memories were fragmented because of how drowsy he had been. Brooke noted there were already signs of something about her son changing before he hit the bed, she had just overlooked them.

The places and the things they had already revisited this early morning were easily ruled out. Clare shuffled around a few of her things and pulled out her books and the rocks that she picked up. Nothing especially stood out but the rainbow obsidian one still seemed strikingly pretty. From there, they would have to return to the movie from last night and the crab shack.

Otherwise, all Brooke could imagine was some sort of random venomous insect biting her son and causing the weirdest adverse reaction. Same could be speculated for eating sea urchin and lobster. But, despite that creepy-looking dish, several other people at the restaurant had ordered the same without any apparent ill effects.

She considered touching and exploring a bunch of the nooks and crannies of the small room but also understood that it could’ve been anything Clare came in contact with, not only on their trip but beforehand depending on the “incubation period”. If it was something in this room then she was oddly ambivalent about coming into contact with it, if it worked on her too. Her dad would lose his shit. But she would also possibly fall asleep like her son did and lose quite a few productive hours getting the work she needed done. She led Clare out of the room for now.

Eliot was finally up but moving like a reptile deprived of a sun lamp until he noticed the length of his son’s hair. His spastic jolt to get out of bed led to groaning and a sore foot. “Oh my gosh. So… That happened?” He coughed and had some lingering drool around his face. Clare slipped free of her mom and went over to her dad‘s side. She hugged him and said, “Daddy, I’m sorry but I’m not a boy anymore. I have to be a girl now.”

Brooke sighed, as that was entirely not what she wanted her son to take away from all she said. She corrected that she had no idea quite what was going on, but it seemed like Clare was now a girl. Additionally, she noted that “she” had “her” shower and they should probably think about getting breakfast started and catching up the rest of the family on the current strangeness.

Eliot looked Clare over. Their youngest took a deep breath. ”I still love you daddy. Even though I am a girl now. I hope you’re still okay with me.” It was like a light flipped on. Eliot flashed with determination and securely held his daughter close as he explained to her no matter what happened to her physically, emotionally, or wherever else in her life… He would love her without condition. Brooke reiterated the same.

“Then, I guess… Nothing really changed? I have the pee butt like mom, and I guess I have to learn stuff and I can wear different clothes. But the big difference is I have a lot more hair and grow up different… To be more like mommy. Right?” Clare wanted to make sure of a few things though.

Firstly, could she still play video games and read books and not have to play with dolls or ponies, right? Her parents vehemently confirmed that she could still do all the stuff she wanted to do but, if there was anything new, then she had their support for that. Clare just shrugged and went on to the next point. Secondly, would she still go to the same school and have the same friends? This one was a little bit more difficult because grandpa paid for the boy’s private school since he took a special shine to Clare (who he preferred to call ‘Clark’). They simply said they would figure it out when they got home. For the third point, she understood that her parents were fine and still loved her, but she worried about her brothers and her extended family. Brooke clenched her jaw over thoughts of her father but returned to the point of family and felt confident that they would be able to work things out.

That was everything that occurred to Clare right. Lacy and Blair tended to get a late start waking up, especially during the last vacation. But Brooke felt it was well after time to make sure they knew what was going on. Holding Clare by the hand as she leaned into her, Brooke walked over to the guest bedroom.

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm a couple chapters ahead but I love seeding ideas from people as much as possible. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Thank you for reading!]