A Rock and Family Vacation

[5]

Brooke wanted to stay there and watch Lacy while she slept. She wanted to only focus on her middle son turned daughter and attentively be there for her when she woke to a new, scary reality. Really, she did. At the same time, it was creeping ever closer to noon, and she knew that the final draft of that project was waiting for her to finish and send to her father. She could do more than one thing at once.

Making sure Lacy was still asleep, Brooke stretched her way off of the bed with her tired muscles aching but flexing to not let a single peep or spring creek out as she got to her feet. She imagined it as a practiced tiger sneak, fostered by all those early morning Christmas close calls slipping around to leave traces of Santa with half-bitten cookies, finished milk, and differently wrapped gifts nestled just out of sight beneath the tree to be discovered at the right moment. She knew presentation.

The laminate was precisely fitted, which helped her avoid shifts and creeks as she stepped away. Unfortunately, the scattered land mines of Lacy and Blair’s evening of snacking and normal chaos had to be avoided.

Once carefully out of the room, she judged about where she heard her sons earlier in the hallway and waited still just past that point to break into a sprint or at least as much of one as her body would permit. She retrieved her laptop bag from the dresser and managed to haul it all the way back.

At the finish, she eased back against the pillow and the traitorous guest queen gave a vicious squeak of protest. Nervously, she watched her middle child for signs of rousing. Fortunately, still good.

Working through all the feedback Clare provided with input from her team, Brooke compiled the definitive iteration of the classy-but-clever, weed-inspired-but-family-friendly final version of product naming to pass legal and hopefully push numbers better than their competitors. If the damn stuff actually worked beyond a placebo level, then she would be burying her eyes in it.

The longest section was her summation and recommendations with a few snipping comments, professionally-framed about how Arthur, her dad’s favorite supervisor, could easily be replaced by a blow-up doll and provide the same level of productive assistance to the team. She had to type gently to avoid clacking.

Soon though, the entire text was checked and proofed and sent across the ether to be harshly scrutinized. Letting go of her breath, she closed the laptop firmly. Too firmly, with a sound like a metallic smack.

“Mom?..Ma..mhmmmaa.” Lacy’s eyes were half open as she struggled with her words. The sound of them wasn’t too different but the weight was. Though Lacy had only lightly been dipped by boyish puberty, a manly buzz had already slipped into his tone despite how often he shrieked and yowled. The weight and buzz were gone, and Lacy was hunting for that vocal strength around his normal range. Lacy didn’t seem to yet realize how much she’d changed.

Brooke slid her laptop back inside its case and then shoved it onto the dresser right next to the bed. She had to push over a few Takis bags the boys had been munching from. “Hey, sweetie. I’m right here. It’s gonna be okay.”

She could see the synapses starting to connect in her middle child’s expression. But the moment came when she glanced down. Lacy’s outfit dangled loosely on her body but not loosely enough to obscure her features. The screaming started first, although it didn’t sound so much like a scream as an effort to gargle when brushing your teeth without using water.

Lacy’s arms batted away the blankets as they sought out strange new places to touch. The whimpering wail dipped slightly as she re-discovered her shape. Before Brooke could transfer over to the double, Lacy sprung from her mattress with twisting, bright embarrassment.

Her shorts launched to her feet, but the top held on. Like she was marching down a football field while being restrained by herself, Lacy scrambled, wobbled, and staggered across the room until she had a clear shot to the bathroom.

Fortunately, Brooke had a hunch of where she was headed and snuck over there first. Lacy‘s face showed huffing indignity. “Get ouuuwwwt!”

No matter what Brooke tried to say and what comfort she could squeeze between Lacy’s flaring emotions, she had to concede the bathroom to her. For emphasis, Lacy slammed the bathroom door a few times before finally locking it.

It sucked. Her youngest came to her in the middle of the night for understanding and help. She wanted to help Lacy too. Make sure she didn’t fall over. Make sure she knew she wasn’t alone. Temper and mollify a dozen different crazy things. But all she could do was look at the locked door and listen.

The door felt desperately thick, cutting out the precious sounds. Traces of continued whimpering filtered through. She could hear her middle child moving about, but it wasn’t enough to piece together the details.

“Lacy? I just want to help.”

She could hear Lacy‘s arm scraping along the counter and shifting back over towards the door. “Please please please, just leave me alone now. And I have to pee. But I can figure it out by myself!” The last sentence had a plaintive, goose-like honk to it squeezed through a high-pitched filter.

As much as Brooke desperately just wanted to break down the damn door, she responded softly, “All right, sweetie. But if you need anything at all…”

“I will tell you!” Lacy screamed.

Letting it go was difficult. Lacy didn’t hold much back but also nervously retreated when outside of their comfort zone. Brooke's parents regarded every uncomfortable trace of her growing up like some nuisance to receive an empty platitude and then be vigorously ignored.

Her magnificent friend, Charlotte, did infinitely more than her mother in helping her understand tampons and pads. She shared her knowledge but also snagged the right adults for assistance, adults that didn’t just assume and shuffle off their responsibility as something her parents would surely tell her. Her parents left her to shelter in the bathroom and cry until the bleakest emotions were deadened. Desperately, she didn’t want Lacy to feel alone.

But all she could really do was sit beside the door and wait till her middle child came to her. The commotion naturally brought others over, with Clare the most curious. Eliot soon followed with Blair at the back. Brooke wanted to shoo them away and reassure everyone that she had control of the situation. But that wasn’t true. She hustled over to the doorway and hunted her thoughts for the best way to explain.

“Lacy just needs a moment for collecting their thoughts.”

That clearly wasn’t it, as Blair immediately read between the lines. “Holy shit. She caught it too! I gotta see this.” He started to slip towards and around the doorway, but Brooke headed him off with a raised palm. “Lacy doesn’t want to be seen right now. We need to respect that.”

Clare’s eyes widened as it dawned on her, “She’s gonna punch me!”

Before Brooke could stamp out that fire with reassurance that no one was going to punch anyone, Clare was off and jetted up the stairs to the den above. Blair appeared torn between egging on one sister‘s flight and peering over his mom to catch a glimpse of the new one. Eliot stepped in and ordered, “Blair, you wait in the living room. This is a personal moment for Lacy. We would give you the same respect, if it was you instead.”

Blair took a deep breath and proclaimed, “Could still be me. You don't know. Not gonna be any dudes left in this family soon. Grandpa will throw a fit.”

Brooke clamped down on that last bit. “There are more important things. And no matter what happens to Lacy, we will always love them. That’s important. Just…be careful.” She could psychologically feel her hair blooming with grays. Her right eye was already twitching. Blair read the signs and Eliot calmly reinforced them. He backed away with his hands up and then clasped them behind himself like he resolved to never touch anything in this house again.

Cautiously, Brooke and Eliot approached the locked bathroom door. With a slight but steady knock, Eliot asked through the wall, “Lacy? You all right in there?”

The quick and frail answer, muddled by recent tears, was, “No. I’m not….”

Despite the lighter, lessened buzz to the words, they could each still recognize Lacy. Fervently, they pressed the next questions. Could they get Lacy anything? They weren't hurt, right?

That was a painful question to even speak but flashing nightmares of the darkest moments from her own life kept swirling in Brooke’s blazing thoughts. To their relief, some of the harsh emotion pulled away as their middle child expressed that she was fine, she wasn’t physically hurt, and what she really wanted was a big whatever that could hide her from the world.

Eliot rushed off to the master bedroom while Brooke did her best to reassure her child. It felt like Lacy wasn’t even listening to her, but she still stretched her words through the wall with love. She wanted to hold Lacy and brush their hair as she did so many years ago. Being so close and yet distant twisted an ache through her body. Just offering those words was all she could do as she waited.

Before too long, Eliot returned with a large, silver bathrobe from his clothes. He explained through the door what he brought. Cautiously, Lacy accepted the offer but only if no one came in. Just leave the robe next to the door, she instructed.

Her father did exactly that, patiently waiting for the door to unlock and then opened it just a crack to allow the robe to slip and settle to the other side. Once that was done, Lacy re-locked the door, and they could hear her fumbling with the robe. Things went quiet for a bit longer before Lacy seemed to sigh and told them through the door simply, “Okay…”

After that, the latch unlocked, and the door gradually cracked inwards. Still eyeing around and lingering a hand so that she could reach for the door and shut it again in an instant, Lacy emerged with the gray robe wrapped around her body like a cloudy fabric bell, blotting out so much of her shape. Her hair had Brooke’s same, soft shade and all of its length. Strikingly, she was the uncanny resurrection of junior high Brooke.

Though masked by the fluffy robe, they could tell she was a slight girl with skinny arms and frail legs. Her eyebrows traced the same tone and shape as Brooke’s. The older boys had boxy faces like their dad. Lacy gained trim, oval contours, and robust, full lips. They were naturally brighter than Brooke’s and looked like she applied gloss to them. Her eyes appeared wide but pink and puffy with a sheen to her skin.

She stared downwards nervously, and muttered, “I feel like a gross cow…” Her arms twisted around her stomach. Brooke cautiously led her back to the queen bed, where she slowly eased herself down to sit.

Lacy bent away from her mom trying to brush her hair. Instead, Brooke fashioned words of comfort. She resolved that they were going to fix this, and everything was going to be okay. Lacy squeezed herself tighter and hunched over as though she had a tummy ache. Brooke wanted to tell her child that she was not gross, and she certainly wasn’t a cow, but all the familiar words led in unhelpful directions. She wasn’t a cow, she was a young lady. She wasn’t gross, she was just growing up early. All the things she wished more people told her at the same age.

What could she say? Words felt so easy with Clare but so difficult here. All she could think to do was sit with her and return what was practically becoming her mantra, that everything would be okay.

“Holy shit, bro. Is that you? You look amazing.”

Blair stood in the doorway leaning halfway through. He approached slowly with his hands still behind him and his eyes wide. Lacy straightened up with her hands shifting and twisting, as though lost. She slipped on half of a scowl mixed with nervous surprise.

“You look freaking beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. You can totally rule Lakethorn or Pioneer. Now you absolutely have to do modeling, or it would be a crime. I always knew hiding beneath your Gollum toad face and swamp farts was something magnificent.”

A blazing red flare of stunned embarrassment settled like a bloom across Lacy’s face until she narrowed her eyes at the last part. Grunting and fuming, she rolled to her side and snatched the nearest pillow from the head of the bed. Puffing loud indignation, she heaved it right at her eldest brother. Unfortunately, her skinny arms just spun it in a lazy arc for Blair to effortlessly catch.

Shooting up from the bed, she stomped over while fussing with the robe to keep it from dragging around her feet and revealing too many of her secrets. She attempted to yank the pillow from his hands, but his hands were too quick as he snuck an arm in around her pit. Only by reflex did Lacy unleash a sudden giggle which turned into furious fuming. Blair withdrew his hand but caught the side of something unexpected.

Lacy flinched, as though struck. Blair added, “Damn, princess. You’re more grown up than the girls in my classes. Now if only your turkey brain would catch up.”

The blush returned, but it seemed more like an outflow of lava as she flailed to pummel Blair. He was too quick and swiftly out of the room. Lacy resisted stomping her feet and instead clenched a fist and asked, with as much roughness as she could imbue in her words, “Screw you, fart face! And where’s the little twerp? I know her rocks did this. I’m gonna get her!”

Eliot stepped in to adamantly urge that no one was going to beat up anyone else and to just settle down, but Lacy was running hot and already slipping out of the room. Brooke echoed the same and prepared to rush after her kids. Unfortunately, the laptop gave a message alert, and she could tell by the sound that it was important. Eliot went on ahead as Brooke squeezed her forehead and tried to deal with this on top of everything else.

It was a Zoom connection from her dad. She swiveled the screen so that as little of the mess in the room showed as possible.

“Hi, dad. What’s up?”

Brooke’s father pushed his black-framed glasses up. His natural blonde hair was still thick and full of color deep into his 60s. A kingly scruff of a beard rounded his face like a perfect prop. He always kept it impeccable. She casually adjusted her hair and tried to think of how she looked through the laptop camera. Probably rough, but she was on vacation.

“Hello. I finally received the amended paperwork I expected previously. If there are no other additions, then we can proceed.” He pointed out a revised pairing that he found quite clever. Brooke desperately wanted to take that praise but admitted that Clare did some brainstorming with her for that.

“Oh”, her father coldly remarked. “Good to see there is some cleverness in the family. I should take young Clark around my office again. I like his energy. Tell him he did good and buy him one of those games he likes, on me.”

Brooke thanked him for that and tried to speak over incoherent yelling that wafted in from Lacy exercising her lungs about something. Her father caught it and inquired. She dismissed it casually as something the boys were watching.

“Hmm. I see. Speaking of the boys, I have one last requirement of you before you go ahead and do whatever you're doing on this trip. On Broad Street, about two miles north, is the Arcadian Fellows Country Club. I have several important business contacts who frequent that one. I want you to take the boys to a formal brunch tomorrow. I’ll send along all the information. You know how to dress appropriately.”

”Oh. Of course, but there are some complications. Family emergency stuff.”

Sharply, he retorted, “No, there aren’t. Be there tomorrow morning or there will be consequences and complications you don’t want. Goodbye."

[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!]

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