Poached Pear 8, Cola 29: Vacation
Title: Vacation
Main Story: In the Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Poached pear 8 (odds & ends), cola 29 (gotta catch ‘em all), My Treat (Lars's mother is having difficulty getting all of the children together and behaving), malt (Summer Challenge 2010: 3: "Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing." --Oscar Wilde), brownie, whipped cream (Lars is eleven).
Word Count: 5251
Rating: PG-13 for cussing.
Summary: The Warmind family attempts a vacation.
Notes: LAST SUMMER CHALLENGE BROWNIE. Go me. Background: Thea has just gone into remission from seven years of battling lung cancer. Also, Teddy's opinions on Mount Rushmore may or may not be shared by the author. *cough*
In theory, this had been a good idea.
Vacation! Who didn't love a vacation? The world abounded in pictures of families relaxing under an umbrella on the beach, posing in front of landmarks, or arm-in-arm with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. They always looked so happy in those photographs, beaming out at the viewer as if to say "Look what a good time we're having. Look how wonderful and calming vacation is."
"Are we there yet?" demanded a whining voice from the very back seat.
Those photographs, Thea Warmind decided, as her husband's knuckles tightened on the steering wheel until they went white, were filthy lies.
"No, Lars," Henrik growled. "We are not there yet. Now be quiet."
Of course, the families in those photos never had more than two children. She and Henrik had (foolishly, it seemed) produced seven. Seven wonderful, brilliant, gorgeous, irritating children, all of whom were infuriating in their very own special ways.
"You don't have to yell," Lars said, sounding offended. "Mom, tell him he doesn't have to yell!"
"I'm not yelling!" Henrik said. To his credit, and somewhat against cliché, he wasn't, in fact, yelling. "And you leave your mother alone."
Thea sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's fine, Henrik," she told him, laying her free hand on the rigid muscles of his forearm. "As for you, Lars, your father isn't yelling and you know it, and you also know that 'are we there yet' routine isn't funny or interesting."
She glanced up at the rearview mirror to gauge reaction to this, and was treated to her son scowling, slouching, and folding his arms grumpily over his chest. "It's not a routine," he muttered. "I want to know if we're there yet."
"You will know," Henrik growled, "when we get there. It will be blindingly obvious."
"But what if it isn't?" Lars persisted.
Thea sighed again, letting her hands drop to her lap, and was about to speak up when Chrissy did. "Lars," she said, in a too-patient kind of tone with 'elder sister' harmonics all through it, "it will be. Please calm down."
Lars scowled again. "Oh, shut up, Chrissy, you're not Mom."
"Yeah!" Mort spoke up, loyally, from his seat by his brother.
"Yeah!" the twins said, gleefully in unison. Thea would be so grateful when that particular phase of theirs was over.
"That doesn't mean you don't have to listen to me," Chrissy snapped. Beside her, Anna snorted, without ever looking up from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Teddy, who a minute ago had been staring out the window in his best bored and uninterested attitude, said, "Actually, Chrissy, it kind of does."
"Yeah!" cheered the twins again. They were just making trouble this time. It would be really nice if, some day, two members of her family could have an argument without all the rest of them getting involved.
"All three of you can just..." Chrissy began, a warning snarl in her voice.
"Children," Thea said, stepping in. To her gratification and mild relief, all of them obediently stopped talking. "Please don't argue," she said, into the sudden quiet. "This is supposed to be a celebration."
Mort and Teddy, at least, looked suitably cast down. Lars, and to her surprise, Chrissy, looked mutinous, the twins just disappointed, and Anna seemed to have stopped paying attention again in favor of C.S. Lewis. Well, fine, then, all to the good. Individuals now.
"Lars," she said, as patiently as she could manage. "I promise you, I will tell you when we get there. You don't need to ask every two minutes."
"Fine, Mom," he muttered, but the mutinous look didn't ease. "I just really want to see Mount Rushmore. Is that a crime?"
He'd managed to say that mostly under his breath, so Thea let it go. "Mort, sweetie, you do not always need to defend your brother. He is perfectly capable of doing that himself."
Her second-youngest son nodded, contritely. "Yes, Mom," he said. "I'm sorry."
"You two..." She turned around this time, bracing herself on Henrik's seat to bend a stern look on the twins in the farthest back seat. "Do not encourage your siblings to fight. That goes for you too, Theodore."
"Seemed to me they were doing fine on their own," Teddy said. Thea narrowed her eyes at him, and he sighed, and said, "But I really shouldn't have helped. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Chrissy."
Chrissy looked as if she very much wanted to snap something at him, but all she said was, "Fine. Apology accepted."
"Christine," Thea said, quietly, and got a look mixed between contrition and anger, of all things. "I appreciate your impulse to intervene, but it is not necessary."
Her oldest nodded, not very graciously. "If you say so," she said, and subsided into a sullen silence.
Hmm. Thea swept her gaze over her children one more time, just to reemphasize that further shenanigans were unacceptable, then settled back in her seat and stared out at the endless South Dakota highway and the forest of evergreens that surrounded the road. It made for strangely hypnotic viewing-- she had no idea how Henrik could concentrate. Maybe it was a good thing she wasn't driving.
Anyway, the point. The rest of her children were sadly just behaving as they were wont to, magnified by several hours enclosed in a car with each other, but sullenness from Chrissy was unusual. When combined with that anger... was it just that she was seventeen and resented family vacations at her age, or was it something a little more?
"Well done," Henrik said, quietly, jolting her out of her thoughts. She blinked, and then smiled at him.
"Thank you," she said. "It isn't hard."
"Now that you're better, no." He took one hand off the wheel, reached over without looking and closed his hand over hers. "I'm so glad you're better."
Thea smiled wider, worries about Chrissy receding before the memory of how she'd felt, when they'd told her the news. Remission-- was there a more beautiful word in the English language? "Me too," she said, picked his hand up, and kissed his knuckles and palm. "Me too."
"Ew!" chorused the backseat.
Thea ignored them.
--
"Who chose these presidents?" Teddy demanded.
He was probably asking rhetorically, but Thea answered anyway, bending down to a nearby plaque. "Calvin Coolidge," she said. "Why?"
"I mean, Washington I get," Teddy went on, totally ignoring his mother. "Father of his country, although you could probably make a pretty good argument for John Adams or James Madison or somebody. But hey, Washington's the legend, he can have it. Lincoln, sure, kept the country together, freed the slaves, all that good stuff. Jefferson-- trickier."
"How is Jefferson tricky?" Chrissy demanded.
Teddy shrugged, and stuck his hands deep into his pockets. "Well, think about it. He was instrumental in the founding of our country, sure, but Washington's got that docket covered on the mountain. He wasn't the only one involved in the Declaration of Independence. He wasn't even there for the Constitutional Convention. When you get right down to it, what did he really do to deserve a spot?"
"Hmm," Chrissy said, sarcasm soaking her words. "He only negotiated the French entry into the war."
He shook his head. "Ben Franklin was responsible for that. Jefferson was just sort of there. Try again."
"What about the Louisiana Purchase?" Thea asked, genuinely interested.
"Napoleon didn't want his stake in the New World anymore." Her oldest son shrugged again, dismissing a large swathe of territory and everything Napoleon had done in one gesture, and turned back to Mount Rushmore. "Jefferson just got lucky. I don't think getting lucky should qualify you for monumental status."
"If you ever take AP US," Chrissy told her brother, "I'm probably going to murder you before the semester is over."
He rolled his eyes. "Can I help it if I like history?"
Thea, sensing another impending argument, intervened. "What about Theodore Roosevelt?"
The wrong question-- Teddy merely redirected the dramatics. "Oh, don't even get me started!" He removed his hands from his pockets specifically to throw them in the air. "To equate Washington and Lincoln, and okay, I guess even Jefferson, with a man who's largely famous for giving his name to the teddy bear is insulting as hell."
"You know you were named after him, right?" Anna murmured, without putting down Prince Caspian.
"Shut up," Teddy said.
Thea intervened again. "As it happens," she said, directing a repressive glare at her daughter that went entirely unnoticed, "you were not named after Theodore Roosevelt. You were named after my uncle Theodore."
Teddy shot his younger sister a glare and said, "Much better, thank you, Mom. Seriously, to hell with Theodore Roosevelt."
"Theodore!" Thea exclaimed, at the same time as Chrissy. She stopped, frowning, and turned a thoughtful gaze on her oldest.
Chrissy, oblivious, snapped, "Watch your language! What if the twins had been here?"
Teddy rolled his eyes again. "You do know that the twins know five times the cusswords I do? And they definitely didn't learn them from me."
"Still," she said, emphatically.
"Whatever, Chrissy." Teddy turned away from her and stared up at the mountain, shaking his head. "Theodore Roosevelt. Man. John Adams, maybe, and you could probably even argue Andrew Jackson or Ben Franklin, but freaking Theodore Roosevelt?"
Chrissy sighed emphatically, and sat down beside her sister. "Can you believe him?"
Anna mumbled something noncommittal and turned the page.
At last. Silence, if an uneasy one. Chrissy looked very annoyed, yes, and Anna wasn't engaging; Teddy wouldn't talk unless it would start a fight, and Lars seemed to be sulking, but at least they were quiet.
Thea checked once more on her four oldest, then turned to look up at the mountain. Teddy's critiques aside, it really was an impressive achievement. Four faces carved so high above the surrounding trees, staring implacably or benevolently out at the world, and all for no purpose but memorialization. Birds built their nests in the presidents' eyebrows, people rappelled off their noses, plants grew on their faces and still they stood, the stone of their eyes as hard and white as the day they were carved. It probably said something about America that this was one of the symbols they chose for their country, but she wasn't quite sure what.
She was never any good at symbols. The literal reality of four giant heads carved from a mountain just because someone could was quite astonishing enough.
The universe must have decided that she'd had enough contemplative time, because Lars chose then to declare in a whining tone, "I'm bored!"
"Suck it up," Teddy informed him.
Tactless, but succinct.
Thea decided to let it stand.
--
Henrik dragged the youngest three back a few moments later, a twin in each hand and Mort trailing disconsolately after. "They were out of ice cream," he told Thea, harassment clear in his features.
"Daddy promised ice cream!" Eliot complained.
"Yeah," Elisa said, sullenly.
"Quiet a moment, both of you," Thea told them, and looked back at her husband. "Seriously? Isn't this one of the most major tourist destinations in the United States?"
Henrik rolled his eyes, showing quite clearly where Teddy had gotten it from. "You'd think," he said, responding more to what she hadn't said. "But no. I got them cookies, but..."
"Ice cream!" Elisa demanded.
"Ice cream!" Eliot wailed, and began to cry, artistically.
"Oh, for..." Henrik looked down at their youngest, his eyes acquiring a touch of wildness as he did. "I told you. There is no ice cream. Calm down."
Eliot stopped crying immediately, to Thea's amusement, and said, in accusing tones, "But you promised!"
"Sometimes Daddy can't keep his promises," Henrik said. "Sometimes other people are incompetent and don't know how to do their jobs. Sometimes you just have to settle for cookies."
"I don't want to settle," Elisa said, thrusting out her lower lip. "Chrissy says you shouldn't ever settle for less than what you want."
Thea arched her eyebrows. "Well, in the general way of things she's right," she told Elisa. "Settling for the big things doesn't do anyone any good."
"Ice cream is a big thing," Elisa said.
Maybe when you were seven, Thea thought, amused. "I think you'll find that in the grand scheme of the universe, worse things could happen to you than getting cookies instead of ice cream."
"I like my cookie," Mort volunteered, bless his amiable little heart.
Thea smiled at him, and arched an eyebrow at the twins. "Well? Are you going to be grown-up like your brother and accept what you cannot change, or are you going to behave like children."
Eliot and Elisa exchanged looks, and for a moment she thought she'd actually reached them. Then they shook their heads and said, in unnerving unison, "Children."
Thea sighed.
--
Somehow, in the end, they got a picture out of it. The nine of them stood in front of Mount Rushmore, and Thea and Henrik and Mort were smiling at least, but apart from that it bore no more resemblance to those happy, smiling photographic records of familial togetherness then Thea did to an elephant.
Chrissy, still sulking, stared out at the viewer with a wooden expression on her face. Teddy wasn't even facing the camera-- he'd turned away and was gazing up at the carved stone presidents, looking annoyed. Anna's face was only visible in slices between her hair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lars just looked tired and cranky, the twins mischievous as hell, and even Mort's smile had a worried little edge to it.
At least Thea and Henrik looked happy, arms around each other, their children surrounding them. Happy and healthy and together, as they hadn't been for nearly seven years.
The mood didn't last. But, Thea thought, at least there was a record of that one moment.
--
Dinner was an ordeal.
It began with the attempt to herd all the children back to the car. Teddy and Anna, surprisingly, didn't want to go: Teddy was having too much fun accosting strangers and haranguing them about the evils of Theodore Roosevelt, and Anna seemed to appreciate the chance to just sit down and read for once, without having to deal with a moving car. It took Thea two tries and, eventually, Henrik to drag the pair of them away from the viewing area.
Lars she thought had disappeared, but with some help from Mort she eventually tracked him down in the gift shop, browsing through the souvenir selection and looking painfully bored. He greeted her announcement that they were leaving with a "Finally," and a beeline toward the car, trailed by Mort.
Chrissy followed them, head down and arms tight across her midsection. Thea paused, arrested in her pursuit of the twins, to frown after her oldest. This was not like the cheerfully helpful girl she remembered. Something had changed in her little girl, and recently, too, and she was damned if she'd let it go without comment.
But she didn't have time to worry about it now.
The twins 'got lost' somewhere on the way to the car-- they claimed by accident but Thea wasn't buying it. it was pure luck that Teddy found them before they had actually succeeded in attempting to climb Mount Rushmore by themselves.
Someday they would get over this tendency to dare each other into ridiculous feats of stupidity. Thea wasn't counting on it being any time soon.
Henrik handled the wiggling twins, strapping them into the backseat with no mercy. She shooed the older children into their seats, ensured that everyone had their seatbelts on, and distributed water bottles. By the time she got herself strapped in next to Henrik, she felt as if she'd been supplying an army.
"Why did we have seven?" she asked him, as he backed out.
He shrugged, and shouted, "Lars, duck down, I can't see! I don't know. I wanted six. Six seemed like a nice round number."
"Yes, well." She glanced ruefully back at the twins. "I didn't do the twins on purpose. They just sort of happened."
"We can hear you, you know," Chrissy said, acidly.
Henrik snorted. "Perhaps you were meant to," he said. "Perhaps if the lot of you hadn't been such a pain we wouldn't be discussing what pains you all are."
"We're the biggest pain!" Eliot chirped, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. "Two for the price of one."
Unfortunately, Thea couldn't argue with him. Not that she wasn't going to try. "I don't know," she said, pretending a thoughtfulness. "Teddy has a head start on you."
"That's right," Teddy informed the twins, loftily. "Seven years on you twerps. I'm definitely the biggest pain."
"Nuh-uh." Eliot shook his head. "Effort counts. Elisa and me try harder."
That even got a grin out of Lars, who said, "It's not fair. The twins have an advantage 'cause there's two of them. If me and Mort team up, where do we fall on the list?"
"Mort and I," Thea corrected, automatically. "You probably beat out Teddy."
"Awesome!" Lars exclaimed, and high-fived Mort.
Chrissy sniffed, rather haughtily. "I'm glad you all find this so funny," she said, acid still dripping off every word. "You realize our parents just insulted us."
"Seems fair," Teddy said, and shrugged. "Considering I insult them all the time."
"Come on, Chrissy," Lars said, from the backseat. "Quit being such a stick-in-the-mud."
Which was rich, coming from Lars, King of Being Bored on Vacations.
Chrissy evidently felt the same way, because she didn't respond, merely gave her brother a deeply unimpressed look and turned away to stare out her window.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, more or less. Certainly nothing like the ride in. Anna kept to herself and The Silver Chair, Chrissy never looked away from her window, Teddy and the younger ones kept up a running mock argument over who was the biggest annoyance that morphed quickly into a running mock argument over absolutely anything at all.
Thea let them be. As long as there was no screaming, larceny, or actions likely to cause an affray, she had learned that it was far wiser to let busy children remain busy.
Instead, she tried to force herself to relax. Dinner was going to be a pain, as it always was when taking seven children with very different tastes to a restaurant. She just hoped she could get them all to cooperate.
This turned out not to be the case.
The trouble began-- or rather, she supposed, it continued-- with the hotel restaurant. They seemed to be totally unable to reconcile her nine-member family with their four-person tables. Yet another bias towards those families with only two children. Thea was beginning to hate them.
At any rate, there was no help for it but to split up, three children with her and four with Henrik in a booth. The youngest four quickly bagged the booth seats, leaving her poor husband to squeeze himself and his long legs into an extra chair pushed under the end of the table. At least that way he could keep an eagle eye on his four.
Thea's situation was a little more problematic. The servers, heroically attempting to accommodate the Warminds, had dragged a four-person table over to the booth and positioned as close as they could without impeding foot traffic. A conversation could actually be carried on between the tables without too much bother, although Thea and Henrik were the only ones actually attempting it. The twins were muttering to each other, Lars seemed to be telling Mort a story. Anna, seated beside her mother, was absorbed in The Horse and His Boy -- and how did she go through those books so fast? Teddy and Chrissy were fully occupied ignoring each other.
In Chrissy's case, she was also occupying herself by giving Thea little half-frightened, half-angry looks. Thea bumped her projected talk with her eldest up a few days.
Then the problem arose, and Thea thought that maybe it would have been better to have separate tables after all.
She caught a mention of 'Mom' from the other table, and turned just in time to hear Elisa agree with whatever Eliot had been saying. "Yeah," she said. "Me too. I mean, Chrissy's nice and all but she's so bossy."
"And she's not Mom," Eliot agreed. "Mom is way better than Chrissy."
"I heard that," Chrissy said, her voice soft but deadly.
There was a brief, guilty silence from the other table, before Eliot decided to push his lucky. "So?" he asked. "It's not like it's not true. Mom is way better than you."
"Yeah," Elisa added, loyally, though she looked deeply worried.
"Eliot," Henrik said, sharply. "Elisa. Don't be mean to your sister."
"Dad!" Eliot looked honestly offended at that. "It's not being mean if it's true."
"Guys," Lars hissed, from across the table. "Shut up."
Elisa was shaking her head. "No, he's right," she said. "It's only mean if it isn't true."
"It is perfectly possible," Henrik said, "to be nasty without telling a lie. Don't be nasty."
"Oh, whatever," Eliot said, displaying a wish to be spanked. "If Chrissy can't take it, too bad for her."
Chrissy whirled on him, murder in her face. "Oh, really?" she shouted. "It's all my fault, is it? Why don't you just shut the hell up, Eliot?"
The restaurant's other patrons were starting to stare. "Christine," Thea snapped, only to be overridden.
"Oh, that's just rich," Teddy snarled, his hand suddenly clenching on the tablecloth. "You bitch at me for one little cussword but it's totally okay when you do it? Way to be a hypocrite, Chrissy."
Chrissy turned again, her expression suddenly hunted. "I don't make a habit of it, okay, Teddy? I only swear under extreme provocation." She spat the last two words, glaring at Eliot, who stared defiantly back.
Teddy rolled his eyes. "Like that makes it okay?" he demanded. "You make me sick sometimes, Chrissy."
Thea hissed, "Theodore," and was once again ignored, although in fairness, Lars had just yelped loudly enough that it was possible he simply hadn't heard her.
Everyone in the restaurant was staring now. Including the servers.
All eyes went to Lars, who was clutching his shin and staring wide-eyed at Elisa, across the table from him. "Did you just kick me?"
"No," she said, lying. It was fairly obvious. Elisa did not lie well.
"Why the hell did you kick me?" Lars demanded.
Mort winced, and tugged at his brother's sleeve, just as Henrik growled, "Lars. Don't swear."
"Tell Chrissy not to swear!" Lars cried, in the tones of one who had been immeasurably wronged. "Tell Teddy not to swear! Why is it always me who gets in trouble?"
"Will you all shut up!" Chrissy howled, her tone one of pure anger.
"That is enough," Thea said. Her voice was very quiet, and she didn't emphasize anything in particular, but her children knew that deadly tone-- they shut up immediately. Anna even closed The Horse and His Boy and hugged it against her chest.
Henrik, on the other hand, looked sharply at her, his expression a cross between awe and lust.
Sometimes it was good to be a mother.
Regardless. Thea met the eyes of each of her children in turn, letting the silence stretch out until it nearly snapped, then said, "You will all stop fighting this instant. One more antagonistic word out of any of you for the rest of the night, and you are all grounded when we get home. For at least a week."
A mumbled chorus of "yes, Mom," arose from her children. She eyed them another moment, decided they meant it, and went on.
"When we finish dinner, you will go to your respective rooms, you will sort out who's sleeping where, and you will get yourselves into bed without fighting. Do not bother me or your father once you're in your rooms unless someone is bleeding or the hotel is burning down."
Another chorus, quieter than the first time. She nodded, pleased. "We'll talk about showing respect for your family in the morning. For now, please keep your thoughts to yourself. Am I clear?"
The chorus this time was damned near silent. Thea repressed a smile and bent a stern look on all seven of them. "Good. Finish your dinners."
The rest of dinner passed in eerie silence.
--
"Chrissy," Thea said, as her children split into boys and girls and headed for their rooms. "A word, please."
Chrissy froze on her way to the girls' room. "I have to get Elisa in bed," she said, voice wavering a little.
"Anna can do that," Thea said, in her best no-arguments tone. "I need to have a word with you."
"Do I have--" Anna started, and caught her mother's eye. "Oh," she said. "Um. Okay. Come on, Elisa."
Henrik paused on his way past, and touched her elbow. "Want me along?"
Thea shook her head, still looking at Chrissy, who wouldn't meet her eyes. "I think this is best between the two of us," she answered. "You go on up with the boys."
"All right." He leaned down and kissed her, quickly, then reached down and shoved Eliot gently past Chrissy. "Move," he said.
Thea waited until the others had all gone up, then asked, gently, "Do you want to stay here, or shall we go up to my room?"
Chrissy shrugged, her eyes on her foot as it slowly dragged circles in the hotel carpet. "Here's fine," she said.
"All right." Thea led her over to a seating area in the hotel lobby, and sat down on a couch. Chrissy chose the seat opposite, and transferred her gaze to the coffee table between them.
For a long moment there was silence-- blessed, blessed silence. Then Thea asked, "Chrissy, why are you so angry at me?"
"I'm not angry at you," Chrissy said. Unfortunately for her, it was thoroughly unconvincing.
"Yes, you are," Thea said, still as gently as she could. "I can tell. I'm not mad at you, Chrissy. I just want to understand. Why are you so angry?"
Chrissy didn't answer.
Thea let the silence stretch out for a minute, two, five. Finally, she sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I don't want to be angry at you, Chrissy," she said. "I wish that you would just..."
"Why did you have to get better?" Chrissy blurted.
Thea's stomach dropped.
Chrissy covered her mouth immediately after, horror-stricken eyes meeting Thea's. "I didn't mean that," she said, from behind her hand. "Not like that. I mean... I mean why did you have to get sick at all? Why couldn't you just always have been well? Why did..." She swallowed, let her hand and her eyes drop to her lap. "Why did it have to be me, Mom?"
"I don't understand," Thea said. Her lips felt numb.
"It was me," Chrissy said. She pressed a hand against her stomach. "When you were sick, it was me taking care of Teddy and Anna and the rest. I made them dinner, I made them do their homework, I cleaned up and did their laundry and everything. I didn't mind that. I didn't want you and Dad to worry because you were so sick." She swallowed again, visibly, her eyes glazing with water. "Then you got better and... and I still was doing everything but it was like it didn't matter. It was like it was my fault."
Thea had absolutely no idea what Chrissy meant by that last, but it hardly mattered, given the rest of her speech. "Oh, sweetheart." She reached forward and touched Chrissy's knee, then drew back, hurt, when her daughter flinched. "Chrissy, I had no idea you were feeling like this."
"Nobody did," Chrissy said, quietly, but bitterly. "I'm not a kid anymore, Mom. You and Dad treat me like one, but I'm not."
Not that her behavior on this trip had borne that out, but Thea was not about to bring that up. "I know you aren't," she said, instead, and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I really am. I just... there was nothing else we could do, at the time."
Chrissy shrugged. "I know," she said. "You were sick. It's not like you could think yourself better. I just want..." She paused.
"You want what?" Thea prompted.
"I'm not a kid," Chrissy said. "I don't want to be treated like one. And I wish... I wish you and the others would respect what I did. I don't mind that I had to do it," she added. "I don't. Somebody had to and I could. But I wish you'd appreciate it."
"I did," Thea said. "Every day. Every day I was in the hospital I knew you'd be at home making sure your siblings were all right." She paused, watching her daughter. "I thought you'd be glad that you don't have those responsibilities anymore. I was trying to lighten your load a little."
For the first time in the conversation, Chrissy met Thea's eyes and held it. "Really? I thought... I thought it was because you didn't trust me."
"Not at all." Thea shook her head to emphasize it. "If I didn't trust you, Chrissy, I don't know what I would have done for all those years. I just thought that maybe you wanted some time to be... to be a kid, instead of a miniature adult."
"Too late for that." Another first-- Chrissy was smiling. Wryly, but still a smile. "Mom, I'm an adult now. I can't be a kid anymore. I don't think I remember how."
And that.... that hurt.
But what else could she have done?
"All right," Thea said, quietly. "Chrissy, I do trust you, and I do respect everything that you did while I was sick. I am so grateful to you for that. But your siblings are your siblings, not your children. Let me and your father be responsible for them now."
Chrissy blinked rapidly for a moment. "Then what am I responsible for?"
"Yourself," Thea answered, simply. "Nothing more."
Her daughter sat very still for a moment, then said, "All right. I don't... I need to think about it. But okay."
"Good," Thea said. She rose and kissed her daughter's forehead, then stretched. "I need to sleep, love. We'll talk more about this in the morning."
"If we have to," Chrissy said, and got up. "I'll go make sure Elisa is in bed."
Thea arched an eyebrow at her. "No, you won't. You'll go to bed and let Elisa deal with the consequences if she doesn't sleep. She's more than old enough for it."
Chrissy stopped for a moment, then laughed. "All right," she agreed. "I'll go to bed then. Good night, Mom."
"Good night, sweetheart."
Thea went up to her room and was gratified to find Henrik waiting for her. His worried expression lightened a little, looking at her. "You look satisfied."
"Mm." She stretched again. "I am. It went well, I think. We'll have to talk about Chrissy sometime soon, but I think she'll be all right for now."
"Okay." He hesitated then, so obviously that Thea couldn't help but groan.
"What is it?" When he didn't respond, she added, "Out with it, Henrik."
Henrik smiled a rather sickly smile. "You look so happy."
"Henrik," she said.
He sighed. "Mort has a fever."
Thea closed her eyes. "Oh, Jesus Christ."
Main Story: In the Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Poached pear 8 (odds & ends), cola 29 (gotta catch ‘em all), My Treat (Lars's mother is having difficulty getting all of the children together and behaving), malt (Summer Challenge 2010: 3: "Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing." --Oscar Wilde), brownie, whipped cream (Lars is eleven).
Word Count: 5251
Rating: PG-13 for cussing.
Summary: The Warmind family attempts a vacation.
Notes: LAST SUMMER CHALLENGE BROWNIE. Go me. Background: Thea has just gone into remission from seven years of battling lung cancer. Also, Teddy's opinions on Mount Rushmore may or may not be shared by the author. *cough*
In theory, this had been a good idea.
Vacation! Who didn't love a vacation? The world abounded in pictures of families relaxing under an umbrella on the beach, posing in front of landmarks, or arm-in-arm with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. They always looked so happy in those photographs, beaming out at the viewer as if to say "Look what a good time we're having. Look how wonderful and calming vacation is."
"Are we there yet?" demanded a whining voice from the very back seat.
Those photographs, Thea Warmind decided, as her husband's knuckles tightened on the steering wheel until they went white, were filthy lies.
"No, Lars," Henrik growled. "We are not there yet. Now be quiet."
Of course, the families in those photos never had more than two children. She and Henrik had (foolishly, it seemed) produced seven. Seven wonderful, brilliant, gorgeous, irritating children, all of whom were infuriating in their very own special ways.
"You don't have to yell," Lars said, sounding offended. "Mom, tell him he doesn't have to yell!"
"I'm not yelling!" Henrik said. To his credit, and somewhat against cliché, he wasn't, in fact, yelling. "And you leave your mother alone."
Thea sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's fine, Henrik," she told him, laying her free hand on the rigid muscles of his forearm. "As for you, Lars, your father isn't yelling and you know it, and you also know that 'are we there yet' routine isn't funny or interesting."
She glanced up at the rearview mirror to gauge reaction to this, and was treated to her son scowling, slouching, and folding his arms grumpily over his chest. "It's not a routine," he muttered. "I want to know if we're there yet."
"You will know," Henrik growled, "when we get there. It will be blindingly obvious."
"But what if it isn't?" Lars persisted.
Thea sighed again, letting her hands drop to her lap, and was about to speak up when Chrissy did. "Lars," she said, in a too-patient kind of tone with 'elder sister' harmonics all through it, "it will be. Please calm down."
Lars scowled again. "Oh, shut up, Chrissy, you're not Mom."
"Yeah!" Mort spoke up, loyally, from his seat by his brother.
"Yeah!" the twins said, gleefully in unison. Thea would be so grateful when that particular phase of theirs was over.
"That doesn't mean you don't have to listen to me," Chrissy snapped. Beside her, Anna snorted, without ever looking up from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Teddy, who a minute ago had been staring out the window in his best bored and uninterested attitude, said, "Actually, Chrissy, it kind of does."
"Yeah!" cheered the twins again. They were just making trouble this time. It would be really nice if, some day, two members of her family could have an argument without all the rest of them getting involved.
"All three of you can just..." Chrissy began, a warning snarl in her voice.
"Children," Thea said, stepping in. To her gratification and mild relief, all of them obediently stopped talking. "Please don't argue," she said, into the sudden quiet. "This is supposed to be a celebration."
Mort and Teddy, at least, looked suitably cast down. Lars, and to her surprise, Chrissy, looked mutinous, the twins just disappointed, and Anna seemed to have stopped paying attention again in favor of C.S. Lewis. Well, fine, then, all to the good. Individuals now.
"Lars," she said, as patiently as she could manage. "I promise you, I will tell you when we get there. You don't need to ask every two minutes."
"Fine, Mom," he muttered, but the mutinous look didn't ease. "I just really want to see Mount Rushmore. Is that a crime?"
He'd managed to say that mostly under his breath, so Thea let it go. "Mort, sweetie, you do not always need to defend your brother. He is perfectly capable of doing that himself."
Her second-youngest son nodded, contritely. "Yes, Mom," he said. "I'm sorry."
"You two..." She turned around this time, bracing herself on Henrik's seat to bend a stern look on the twins in the farthest back seat. "Do not encourage your siblings to fight. That goes for you too, Theodore."
"Seemed to me they were doing fine on their own," Teddy said. Thea narrowed her eyes at him, and he sighed, and said, "But I really shouldn't have helped. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Chrissy."
Chrissy looked as if she very much wanted to snap something at him, but all she said was, "Fine. Apology accepted."
"Christine," Thea said, quietly, and got a look mixed between contrition and anger, of all things. "I appreciate your impulse to intervene, but it is not necessary."
Her oldest nodded, not very graciously. "If you say so," she said, and subsided into a sullen silence.
Hmm. Thea swept her gaze over her children one more time, just to reemphasize that further shenanigans were unacceptable, then settled back in her seat and stared out at the endless South Dakota highway and the forest of evergreens that surrounded the road. It made for strangely hypnotic viewing-- she had no idea how Henrik could concentrate. Maybe it was a good thing she wasn't driving.
Anyway, the point. The rest of her children were sadly just behaving as they were wont to, magnified by several hours enclosed in a car with each other, but sullenness from Chrissy was unusual. When combined with that anger... was it just that she was seventeen and resented family vacations at her age, or was it something a little more?
"Well done," Henrik said, quietly, jolting her out of her thoughts. She blinked, and then smiled at him.
"Thank you," she said. "It isn't hard."
"Now that you're better, no." He took one hand off the wheel, reached over without looking and closed his hand over hers. "I'm so glad you're better."
Thea smiled wider, worries about Chrissy receding before the memory of how she'd felt, when they'd told her the news. Remission-- was there a more beautiful word in the English language? "Me too," she said, picked his hand up, and kissed his knuckles and palm. "Me too."
"Ew!" chorused the backseat.
Thea ignored them.
--
"Who chose these presidents?" Teddy demanded.
He was probably asking rhetorically, but Thea answered anyway, bending down to a nearby plaque. "Calvin Coolidge," she said. "Why?"
"I mean, Washington I get," Teddy went on, totally ignoring his mother. "Father of his country, although you could probably make a pretty good argument for John Adams or James Madison or somebody. But hey, Washington's the legend, he can have it. Lincoln, sure, kept the country together, freed the slaves, all that good stuff. Jefferson-- trickier."
"How is Jefferson tricky?" Chrissy demanded.
Teddy shrugged, and stuck his hands deep into his pockets. "Well, think about it. He was instrumental in the founding of our country, sure, but Washington's got that docket covered on the mountain. He wasn't the only one involved in the Declaration of Independence. He wasn't even there for the Constitutional Convention. When you get right down to it, what did he really do to deserve a spot?"
"Hmm," Chrissy said, sarcasm soaking her words. "He only negotiated the French entry into the war."
He shook his head. "Ben Franklin was responsible for that. Jefferson was just sort of there. Try again."
"What about the Louisiana Purchase?" Thea asked, genuinely interested.
"Napoleon didn't want his stake in the New World anymore." Her oldest son shrugged again, dismissing a large swathe of territory and everything Napoleon had done in one gesture, and turned back to Mount Rushmore. "Jefferson just got lucky. I don't think getting lucky should qualify you for monumental status."
"If you ever take AP US," Chrissy told her brother, "I'm probably going to murder you before the semester is over."
He rolled his eyes. "Can I help it if I like history?"
Thea, sensing another impending argument, intervened. "What about Theodore Roosevelt?"
The wrong question-- Teddy merely redirected the dramatics. "Oh, don't even get me started!" He removed his hands from his pockets specifically to throw them in the air. "To equate Washington and Lincoln, and okay, I guess even Jefferson, with a man who's largely famous for giving his name to the teddy bear is insulting as hell."
"You know you were named after him, right?" Anna murmured, without putting down Prince Caspian.
"Shut up," Teddy said.
Thea intervened again. "As it happens," she said, directing a repressive glare at her daughter that went entirely unnoticed, "you were not named after Theodore Roosevelt. You were named after my uncle Theodore."
Teddy shot his younger sister a glare and said, "Much better, thank you, Mom. Seriously, to hell with Theodore Roosevelt."
"Theodore!" Thea exclaimed, at the same time as Chrissy. She stopped, frowning, and turned a thoughtful gaze on her oldest.
Chrissy, oblivious, snapped, "Watch your language! What if the twins had been here?"
Teddy rolled his eyes again. "You do know that the twins know five times the cusswords I do? And they definitely didn't learn them from me."
"Still," she said, emphatically.
"Whatever, Chrissy." Teddy turned away from her and stared up at the mountain, shaking his head. "Theodore Roosevelt. Man. John Adams, maybe, and you could probably even argue Andrew Jackson or Ben Franklin, but freaking Theodore Roosevelt?"
Chrissy sighed emphatically, and sat down beside her sister. "Can you believe him?"
Anna mumbled something noncommittal and turned the page.
At last. Silence, if an uneasy one. Chrissy looked very annoyed, yes, and Anna wasn't engaging; Teddy wouldn't talk unless it would start a fight, and Lars seemed to be sulking, but at least they were quiet.
Thea checked once more on her four oldest, then turned to look up at the mountain. Teddy's critiques aside, it really was an impressive achievement. Four faces carved so high above the surrounding trees, staring implacably or benevolently out at the world, and all for no purpose but memorialization. Birds built their nests in the presidents' eyebrows, people rappelled off their noses, plants grew on their faces and still they stood, the stone of their eyes as hard and white as the day they were carved. It probably said something about America that this was one of the symbols they chose for their country, but she wasn't quite sure what.
She was never any good at symbols. The literal reality of four giant heads carved from a mountain just because someone could was quite astonishing enough.
The universe must have decided that she'd had enough contemplative time, because Lars chose then to declare in a whining tone, "I'm bored!"
"Suck it up," Teddy informed him.
Tactless, but succinct.
Thea decided to let it stand.
--
Henrik dragged the youngest three back a few moments later, a twin in each hand and Mort trailing disconsolately after. "They were out of ice cream," he told Thea, harassment clear in his features.
"Daddy promised ice cream!" Eliot complained.
"Yeah," Elisa said, sullenly.
"Quiet a moment, both of you," Thea told them, and looked back at her husband. "Seriously? Isn't this one of the most major tourist destinations in the United States?"
Henrik rolled his eyes, showing quite clearly where Teddy had gotten it from. "You'd think," he said, responding more to what she hadn't said. "But no. I got them cookies, but..."
"Ice cream!" Elisa demanded.
"Ice cream!" Eliot wailed, and began to cry, artistically.
"Oh, for..." Henrik looked down at their youngest, his eyes acquiring a touch of wildness as he did. "I told you. There is no ice cream. Calm down."
Eliot stopped crying immediately, to Thea's amusement, and said, in accusing tones, "But you promised!"
"Sometimes Daddy can't keep his promises," Henrik said. "Sometimes other people are incompetent and don't know how to do their jobs. Sometimes you just have to settle for cookies."
"I don't want to settle," Elisa said, thrusting out her lower lip. "Chrissy says you shouldn't ever settle for less than what you want."
Thea arched her eyebrows. "Well, in the general way of things she's right," she told Elisa. "Settling for the big things doesn't do anyone any good."
"Ice cream is a big thing," Elisa said.
Maybe when you were seven, Thea thought, amused. "I think you'll find that in the grand scheme of the universe, worse things could happen to you than getting cookies instead of ice cream."
"I like my cookie," Mort volunteered, bless his amiable little heart.
Thea smiled at him, and arched an eyebrow at the twins. "Well? Are you going to be grown-up like your brother and accept what you cannot change, or are you going to behave like children."
Eliot and Elisa exchanged looks, and for a moment she thought she'd actually reached them. Then they shook their heads and said, in unnerving unison, "Children."
Thea sighed.
--
Somehow, in the end, they got a picture out of it. The nine of them stood in front of Mount Rushmore, and Thea and Henrik and Mort were smiling at least, but apart from that it bore no more resemblance to those happy, smiling photographic records of familial togetherness then Thea did to an elephant.
Chrissy, still sulking, stared out at the viewer with a wooden expression on her face. Teddy wasn't even facing the camera-- he'd turned away and was gazing up at the carved stone presidents, looking annoyed. Anna's face was only visible in slices between her hair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lars just looked tired and cranky, the twins mischievous as hell, and even Mort's smile had a worried little edge to it.
At least Thea and Henrik looked happy, arms around each other, their children surrounding them. Happy and healthy and together, as they hadn't been for nearly seven years.
The mood didn't last. But, Thea thought, at least there was a record of that one moment.
--
Dinner was an ordeal.
It began with the attempt to herd all the children back to the car. Teddy and Anna, surprisingly, didn't want to go: Teddy was having too much fun accosting strangers and haranguing them about the evils of Theodore Roosevelt, and Anna seemed to appreciate the chance to just sit down and read for once, without having to deal with a moving car. It took Thea two tries and, eventually, Henrik to drag the pair of them away from the viewing area.
Lars she thought had disappeared, but with some help from Mort she eventually tracked him down in the gift shop, browsing through the souvenir selection and looking painfully bored. He greeted her announcement that they were leaving with a "Finally," and a beeline toward the car, trailed by Mort.
Chrissy followed them, head down and arms tight across her midsection. Thea paused, arrested in her pursuit of the twins, to frown after her oldest. This was not like the cheerfully helpful girl she remembered. Something had changed in her little girl, and recently, too, and she was damned if she'd let it go without comment.
But she didn't have time to worry about it now.
The twins 'got lost' somewhere on the way to the car-- they claimed by accident but Thea wasn't buying it. it was pure luck that Teddy found them before they had actually succeeded in attempting to climb Mount Rushmore by themselves.
Someday they would get over this tendency to dare each other into ridiculous feats of stupidity. Thea wasn't counting on it being any time soon.
Henrik handled the wiggling twins, strapping them into the backseat with no mercy. She shooed the older children into their seats, ensured that everyone had their seatbelts on, and distributed water bottles. By the time she got herself strapped in next to Henrik, she felt as if she'd been supplying an army.
"Why did we have seven?" she asked him, as he backed out.
He shrugged, and shouted, "Lars, duck down, I can't see! I don't know. I wanted six. Six seemed like a nice round number."
"Yes, well." She glanced ruefully back at the twins. "I didn't do the twins on purpose. They just sort of happened."
"We can hear you, you know," Chrissy said, acidly.
Henrik snorted. "Perhaps you were meant to," he said. "Perhaps if the lot of you hadn't been such a pain we wouldn't be discussing what pains you all are."
"We're the biggest pain!" Eliot chirped, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. "Two for the price of one."
Unfortunately, Thea couldn't argue with him. Not that she wasn't going to try. "I don't know," she said, pretending a thoughtfulness. "Teddy has a head start on you."
"That's right," Teddy informed the twins, loftily. "Seven years on you twerps. I'm definitely the biggest pain."
"Nuh-uh." Eliot shook his head. "Effort counts. Elisa and me try harder."
That even got a grin out of Lars, who said, "It's not fair. The twins have an advantage 'cause there's two of them. If me and Mort team up, where do we fall on the list?"
"Mort and I," Thea corrected, automatically. "You probably beat out Teddy."
"Awesome!" Lars exclaimed, and high-fived Mort.
Chrissy sniffed, rather haughtily. "I'm glad you all find this so funny," she said, acid still dripping off every word. "You realize our parents just insulted us."
"Seems fair," Teddy said, and shrugged. "Considering I insult them all the time."
"Come on, Chrissy," Lars said, from the backseat. "Quit being such a stick-in-the-mud."
Which was rich, coming from Lars, King of Being Bored on Vacations.
Chrissy evidently felt the same way, because she didn't respond, merely gave her brother a deeply unimpressed look and turned away to stare out her window.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, more or less. Certainly nothing like the ride in. Anna kept to herself and The Silver Chair, Chrissy never looked away from her window, Teddy and the younger ones kept up a running mock argument over who was the biggest annoyance that morphed quickly into a running mock argument over absolutely anything at all.
Thea let them be. As long as there was no screaming, larceny, or actions likely to cause an affray, she had learned that it was far wiser to let busy children remain busy.
Instead, she tried to force herself to relax. Dinner was going to be a pain, as it always was when taking seven children with very different tastes to a restaurant. She just hoped she could get them all to cooperate.
This turned out not to be the case.
The trouble began-- or rather, she supposed, it continued-- with the hotel restaurant. They seemed to be totally unable to reconcile her nine-member family with their four-person tables. Yet another bias towards those families with only two children. Thea was beginning to hate them.
At any rate, there was no help for it but to split up, three children with her and four with Henrik in a booth. The youngest four quickly bagged the booth seats, leaving her poor husband to squeeze himself and his long legs into an extra chair pushed under the end of the table. At least that way he could keep an eagle eye on his four.
Thea's situation was a little more problematic. The servers, heroically attempting to accommodate the Warminds, had dragged a four-person table over to the booth and positioned as close as they could without impeding foot traffic. A conversation could actually be carried on between the tables without too much bother, although Thea and Henrik were the only ones actually attempting it. The twins were muttering to each other, Lars seemed to be telling Mort a story. Anna, seated beside her mother, was absorbed in The Horse and His Boy -- and how did she go through those books so fast? Teddy and Chrissy were fully occupied ignoring each other.
In Chrissy's case, she was also occupying herself by giving Thea little half-frightened, half-angry looks. Thea bumped her projected talk with her eldest up a few days.
Then the problem arose, and Thea thought that maybe it would have been better to have separate tables after all.
She caught a mention of 'Mom' from the other table, and turned just in time to hear Elisa agree with whatever Eliot had been saying. "Yeah," she said. "Me too. I mean, Chrissy's nice and all but she's so bossy."
"And she's not Mom," Eliot agreed. "Mom is way better than Chrissy."
"I heard that," Chrissy said, her voice soft but deadly.
There was a brief, guilty silence from the other table, before Eliot decided to push his lucky. "So?" he asked. "It's not like it's not true. Mom is way better than you."
"Yeah," Elisa added, loyally, though she looked deeply worried.
"Eliot," Henrik said, sharply. "Elisa. Don't be mean to your sister."
"Dad!" Eliot looked honestly offended at that. "It's not being mean if it's true."
"Guys," Lars hissed, from across the table. "Shut up."
Elisa was shaking her head. "No, he's right," she said. "It's only mean if it isn't true."
"It is perfectly possible," Henrik said, "to be nasty without telling a lie. Don't be nasty."
"Oh, whatever," Eliot said, displaying a wish to be spanked. "If Chrissy can't take it, too bad for her."
Chrissy whirled on him, murder in her face. "Oh, really?" she shouted. "It's all my fault, is it? Why don't you just shut the hell up, Eliot?"
The restaurant's other patrons were starting to stare. "Christine," Thea snapped, only to be overridden.
"Oh, that's just rich," Teddy snarled, his hand suddenly clenching on the tablecloth. "You bitch at me for one little cussword but it's totally okay when you do it? Way to be a hypocrite, Chrissy."
Chrissy turned again, her expression suddenly hunted. "I don't make a habit of it, okay, Teddy? I only swear under extreme provocation." She spat the last two words, glaring at Eliot, who stared defiantly back.
Teddy rolled his eyes. "Like that makes it okay?" he demanded. "You make me sick sometimes, Chrissy."
Thea hissed, "Theodore," and was once again ignored, although in fairness, Lars had just yelped loudly enough that it was possible he simply hadn't heard her.
Everyone in the restaurant was staring now. Including the servers.
All eyes went to Lars, who was clutching his shin and staring wide-eyed at Elisa, across the table from him. "Did you just kick me?"
"No," she said, lying. It was fairly obvious. Elisa did not lie well.
"Why the hell did you kick me?" Lars demanded.
Mort winced, and tugged at his brother's sleeve, just as Henrik growled, "Lars. Don't swear."
"Tell Chrissy not to swear!" Lars cried, in the tones of one who had been immeasurably wronged. "Tell Teddy not to swear! Why is it always me who gets in trouble?"
"Will you all shut up!" Chrissy howled, her tone one of pure anger.
"That is enough," Thea said. Her voice was very quiet, and she didn't emphasize anything in particular, but her children knew that deadly tone-- they shut up immediately. Anna even closed The Horse and His Boy and hugged it against her chest.
Henrik, on the other hand, looked sharply at her, his expression a cross between awe and lust.
Sometimes it was good to be a mother.
Regardless. Thea met the eyes of each of her children in turn, letting the silence stretch out until it nearly snapped, then said, "You will all stop fighting this instant. One more antagonistic word out of any of you for the rest of the night, and you are all grounded when we get home. For at least a week."
A mumbled chorus of "yes, Mom," arose from her children. She eyed them another moment, decided they meant it, and went on.
"When we finish dinner, you will go to your respective rooms, you will sort out who's sleeping where, and you will get yourselves into bed without fighting. Do not bother me or your father once you're in your rooms unless someone is bleeding or the hotel is burning down."
Another chorus, quieter than the first time. She nodded, pleased. "We'll talk about showing respect for your family in the morning. For now, please keep your thoughts to yourself. Am I clear?"
The chorus this time was damned near silent. Thea repressed a smile and bent a stern look on all seven of them. "Good. Finish your dinners."
The rest of dinner passed in eerie silence.
--
"Chrissy," Thea said, as her children split into boys and girls and headed for their rooms. "A word, please."
Chrissy froze on her way to the girls' room. "I have to get Elisa in bed," she said, voice wavering a little.
"Anna can do that," Thea said, in her best no-arguments tone. "I need to have a word with you."
"Do I have--" Anna started, and caught her mother's eye. "Oh," she said. "Um. Okay. Come on, Elisa."
Henrik paused on his way past, and touched her elbow. "Want me along?"
Thea shook her head, still looking at Chrissy, who wouldn't meet her eyes. "I think this is best between the two of us," she answered. "You go on up with the boys."
"All right." He leaned down and kissed her, quickly, then reached down and shoved Eliot gently past Chrissy. "Move," he said.
Thea waited until the others had all gone up, then asked, gently, "Do you want to stay here, or shall we go up to my room?"
Chrissy shrugged, her eyes on her foot as it slowly dragged circles in the hotel carpet. "Here's fine," she said.
"All right." Thea led her over to a seating area in the hotel lobby, and sat down on a couch. Chrissy chose the seat opposite, and transferred her gaze to the coffee table between them.
For a long moment there was silence-- blessed, blessed silence. Then Thea asked, "Chrissy, why are you so angry at me?"
"I'm not angry at you," Chrissy said. Unfortunately for her, it was thoroughly unconvincing.
"Yes, you are," Thea said, still as gently as she could. "I can tell. I'm not mad at you, Chrissy. I just want to understand. Why are you so angry?"
Chrissy didn't answer.
Thea let the silence stretch out for a minute, two, five. Finally, she sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I don't want to be angry at you, Chrissy," she said. "I wish that you would just..."
"Why did you have to get better?" Chrissy blurted.
Thea's stomach dropped.
Chrissy covered her mouth immediately after, horror-stricken eyes meeting Thea's. "I didn't mean that," she said, from behind her hand. "Not like that. I mean... I mean why did you have to get sick at all? Why couldn't you just always have been well? Why did..." She swallowed, let her hand and her eyes drop to her lap. "Why did it have to be me, Mom?"
"I don't understand," Thea said. Her lips felt numb.
"It was me," Chrissy said. She pressed a hand against her stomach. "When you were sick, it was me taking care of Teddy and Anna and the rest. I made them dinner, I made them do their homework, I cleaned up and did their laundry and everything. I didn't mind that. I didn't want you and Dad to worry because you were so sick." She swallowed again, visibly, her eyes glazing with water. "Then you got better and... and I still was doing everything but it was like it didn't matter. It was like it was my fault."
Thea had absolutely no idea what Chrissy meant by that last, but it hardly mattered, given the rest of her speech. "Oh, sweetheart." She reached forward and touched Chrissy's knee, then drew back, hurt, when her daughter flinched. "Chrissy, I had no idea you were feeling like this."
"Nobody did," Chrissy said, quietly, but bitterly. "I'm not a kid anymore, Mom. You and Dad treat me like one, but I'm not."
Not that her behavior on this trip had borne that out, but Thea was not about to bring that up. "I know you aren't," she said, instead, and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I really am. I just... there was nothing else we could do, at the time."
Chrissy shrugged. "I know," she said. "You were sick. It's not like you could think yourself better. I just want..." She paused.
"You want what?" Thea prompted.
"I'm not a kid," Chrissy said. "I don't want to be treated like one. And I wish... I wish you and the others would respect what I did. I don't mind that I had to do it," she added. "I don't. Somebody had to and I could. But I wish you'd appreciate it."
"I did," Thea said. "Every day. Every day I was in the hospital I knew you'd be at home making sure your siblings were all right." She paused, watching her daughter. "I thought you'd be glad that you don't have those responsibilities anymore. I was trying to lighten your load a little."
For the first time in the conversation, Chrissy met Thea's eyes and held it. "Really? I thought... I thought it was because you didn't trust me."
"Not at all." Thea shook her head to emphasize it. "If I didn't trust you, Chrissy, I don't know what I would have done for all those years. I just thought that maybe you wanted some time to be... to be a kid, instead of a miniature adult."
"Too late for that." Another first-- Chrissy was smiling. Wryly, but still a smile. "Mom, I'm an adult now. I can't be a kid anymore. I don't think I remember how."
And that.... that hurt.
But what else could she have done?
"All right," Thea said, quietly. "Chrissy, I do trust you, and I do respect everything that you did while I was sick. I am so grateful to you for that. But your siblings are your siblings, not your children. Let me and your father be responsible for them now."
Chrissy blinked rapidly for a moment. "Then what am I responsible for?"
"Yourself," Thea answered, simply. "Nothing more."
Her daughter sat very still for a moment, then said, "All right. I don't... I need to think about it. But okay."
"Good," Thea said. She rose and kissed her daughter's forehead, then stretched. "I need to sleep, love. We'll talk more about this in the morning."
"If we have to," Chrissy said, and got up. "I'll go make sure Elisa is in bed."
Thea arched an eyebrow at her. "No, you won't. You'll go to bed and let Elisa deal with the consequences if she doesn't sleep. She's more than old enough for it."
Chrissy stopped for a moment, then laughed. "All right," she agreed. "I'll go to bed then. Good night, Mom."
"Good night, sweetheart."
Thea went up to her room and was gratified to find Henrik waiting for her. His worried expression lightened a little, looking at her. "You look satisfied."
"Mm." She stretched again. "I am. It went well, I think. We'll have to talk about Chrissy sometime soon, but I think she'll be all right for now."
"Okay." He hesitated then, so obviously that Thea couldn't help but groan.
"What is it?" When he didn't respond, she added, "Out with it, Henrik."
Henrik smiled a rather sickly smile. "You look so happy."
"Henrik," she said.
He sighed. "Mort has a fever."
Thea closed her eyes. "Oh, Jesus Christ."