Uncle Chris
"Chris? Stay back a sec, I need to talk to you about something," Mrs. Chambers called to her son one day before he was about to race off to join his friends at the river.
"What, mom?" he demanded impatiently. It was summer, and all he wanted to do was meet up with his friends and swim around in the sun.
"You know that your Aunt Marge and her three girls are visiting tomorrow, right?" Mrs. Chambers asked. Chris nodded. "Well, there's been a change of plans. Marge isn't coming."
Chris nodded. "Good," he confided to her, "I wasn't too thrilled about the prospect of spending my whole summer with three little kids anyway."
Mrs. Chambers furrowed her brow. "You misunderstand, Chris," she said slowly. "I didn't say that the girls weren't coming in. I merely said that Marge wasn't coming in."
"Oh. Oops. I'm really looking forward to it," he said, reddening. Suddenly another thought occurred to him. "They're not coming in alone, are they?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes. And as you know, they'll be the first members of the family to visit since your dad went away. I want you to make a good impression." Mr. Chambers had left his family the previous year for a woman in Des Moines. No one had missed him a bit. Mrs. Chambers had been worried at first that she wouldn't be able to support her family without him, but they had managed fine, now that there was no one spending all their money on beer.
Ever since he'd left, the stigma that had been attached to Chris's immediate family was slowly getting erased in the eyes of the rest of the family. Chris's grandmother had actually called them several times. Aunt Marge's visit was the final step- no one from the family had visited the Chambers in years.
"That's not all," Mrs. Chambers continued. "Thinking that Marge would be here, I made plans to take a vacation next week. And I'm sure as hell not giving it up. So since Eyeball's away at camp-"
Chris snickered.
"Oh, shut up, Chris. I'll send you to camp next year if you find it so funny." Chris stopped laughing immediately. "Anyway, since Eyeball's gone, you'll be in charge of the girls for the week I'm on vacation."
Any traces of the smile that had stayed on Chris's face after he was told to stop laughing disappeared now. "What?! What the hell?" Chris demanded.
"Don't say that."
"Hell! Hell hell hell! That's what it's going to be, Mom! Me, watching three girls for a week- how can you not thing it's going to be a living hell?"
"I don't care how hellish it is for you, Christopher Chambers," Mrs. Chambers snapped, "you're going to make it heaven on earth for these girls!"
"Meh," Chris mumbled. "Mom, can I go now?"
"Yes, go," Mrs. Chambers said distractedly. "I'm late for a massage at the Deer Lake Inn anyway. Have fun." She blew him a small kiss that she somehow managed to make appear spiteful and left, climbing into her car and pulling away from the house.
His mother had changed a lot, Chris thought, since his father left. She'd become more independent and took a lot less crap from everyone. Chris liked it, most of the time, liked that his mother was finally beginning to get a life of her own.
But sometimes it sucked ass.
"Ha! You're going to be watching giiiiiirls," Teddy laughed, swinging from the branches of a tree.
"Ha! You look like a fucking mooonkey!" Chris grumbled mean spiritedly. Teddy frowned.
"You're just mad because if they're hot, you're not going to be able to date them!"
"Teddy, they're three, eight, and ten."
"I can live with that if they're hot."
"Teddy!" Gordie and Chris reprimanded at the same time.
"I'm assuming my duties will include making sure that the girls' stay in Castle Rock does not include lifelong psychological scarring," Chris said disdainfully, "so I think I might just steer clear of you the whole week, Ted."
"You promise to let me know if they're hot?"
Chris scoffed. "I promise to let you know if my toddler cousin or her sisters are hot."
Teddy smiled contentedly.
"How long are they staying?" Gordie asked, hardly looking up from his book.
"A month," Chris grumbled. "And I have to be home alone with them for a week."
"A whole week?!" Vern exclaimed, the cookie he had been slowly chewing falling out of his mouth.
"A whole week," Chris repeated, sounding very dejected.
"Hey, this might not be so bad," Teddy said, in that stand-back-and- hide-the-matches tone that only Teddy had.
Chris looked up, scowling.
"Oh really?"
"Really," Teddy assured him. "Think about it, Chambers. If your mom's going to have you watch three girls all week, she's going to leave you money, right?"
A slow grin spread across Chris's features.
"No," Gordie said instantly, at the same time that Vern said "You can't spend that!"
Teddy looked at Gordie and Vern each in turn. "Why the hell not?"
"Because," Gordie said, as if explaining the painfully obvious to someone who's already been lectured a hundred times, "you can't steal from the children's fund!"
"It's not stealing, and it's not a fund," Teddy argued.
But even as he watched Teddy make the pitiful argument, Chris knew Gordie was right. There was no way he was going to steal money his mom left him for the girls. He sighed. It was going to be a long week.
Chris woke up the next morning to a spotless room. He'd been up until one in the morning the previous night cleaning his room for the girls, because this morning, he and his mother were going to the train station to pick them up. His sleep the last night had been plagued with dreams of spoiled rotten children; he had never met any of Marge's children, and for all he knew, they could be the most terrible little brats ever.
"Come on!" his mother screeched from downstairs. "We have to be there in half an hour!"
Chris sighed, pulled a dirty shirt from his clothes basket over his head, yanked a semi-clean pair of jeans on, and ruffled his hair with his fingers, glancing in the mirror on the way out.
His mother stood at the foot of the stairs wearing a white skirt and a light blue blouse. Her long blonde hair was pulled off her face and gathered at the top of her head.
"You look nice, mom," he muttered absently, pulling one of his shoes toward him and beginning to tie it.
"Thanks," she said. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," he answered, standing up. The two left the house and climbed into the truck.
"What time are you leaving again?" Chris asked, looking at his watch.
"I'm leaving at around quarter after five," she answered. "Christopher, please be good."
"What?"
"These kids are little. I want you to keep in mind that you have to put them first. Don't let your plans with your friends keep you from being a responsible young man."
"I won't," Chris said confidently.
She smiled. "I know. I just wanted to remind you. Promise me you'll be good? Even if the kids are terrors from hell?"
"I promise."
"They should be getting off any second now," his mother said anxiously, watching people pour off the train. "Oh, goodness, where are they?"
Chris just stood there silently, half of him hoping that they wouldn't show up at all. He felt bad, but at the same time, he didn't know how to take care of little girls! What the hell were Aunt Marge and his mother thinking?
Three little girls stepped off the train then, looking rather scared. They were the last ones off, accompanied by a train attendant. She pointed at Chris and his mother, and asked the oldest one something. She nodded, and the attendant smiled and left.
The three girls went up to them. "Hi, Mrs. Chambers," the oldest one said.
"Hello," his mother replied, sweeping the girls into hugs one by one. "You must be Charlotte," she said to the oldest one.
Charlotte nodded. She looked a little older than she supposedly, about twelve. She had red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. One arm was wrapped protectively around the youngest girl's shoulders.
"Hi," the youngest one chirped. "I'm Andy. Who are you?" She looked at Chris for a few seconds before she hugged his leg. In spite of himself, Chris smiled.
"I'm Chris," he said, grinning down at her. "Andy, huh? That's an unusual name."
"Her name's Andrea," the middle one said, "but we all call her Andy."
"Well, Andy," Chris said, stooping down to look at his young cousin, "what do you like to do?"
"Eat!" the little one shouted enthusiastically.
He grinned. "We're going to get along great," he said, and she launched herself at him and hugged him tightly.
"So if that's Charlotte, and that's Andrea," his mother said, looking at the middle one as if trying to remember something, "you must be. . . ?"
"Vanessa," she provided.
"Well, Vanessa, Andrea, and Charlotte, why don't we head home?"
"Yay!" Andy shrieked, jumping up and down. "Home home home!"
Mrs. Chambers looked down. "By home, honey, I meant my house."
Andy's face fell.
"We can eat there," Chris whispered. His mother shot him a dirty look, but Andy giggled and grinned cherubically.
"Carry me," she said, holding her arms out to Chris.
"Well. . . uh. . . I. . . "
"Please?" She looked at him with doe eyes designed to get herself whatever she wanted. He made a mental note to learn to resist those as he picked her up and balanced her on a hip.
Mrs. Chambers watched her son carrying Andy around the train station and smiled to herself. Her smile got wider as she watched him make sure all three girls were safe and comfortable in the backseat before he climbed up front.
"Here we are," she announced, stopping the car in front of the modest, two-story white house. They'd done a lot of work to it since Mr. Chambers had left, and it now looked almost perfectly acceptable for a suburban home.
"Where do you live?" Andy asked Chris as he lifted her out of the car.
"I live here."
"You don't live here! She lives here!"
"Andy," Charlotte said, coming over to join her sister, "Mrs. Chambers is Chris's mom."
"Really?" Andy asked in wonder, staring at Chris, who had to laugh.
"Really."
"Can we eat?" Andy asked, tugging at Chris's ear and giggling.
"Of course."
Mrs. Chambers left that day at exactly 5:15, as she'd said. The very first thing Chris did was call Gordie up and tell him to come over.
"Who's coming over?" Charlotte asked, from her perch in the corner of the living room.
"My best friend, Gordie. Charlotte, do you want to come over and sit closer?"
"No, I'm okay."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." She smiled at him, and he shrugged.
"I don't know much about taking care of kids," he said, looking around the room at the three redheads staring at him. "So if I'm doing something wrong, Charlotte and Vanessa, you have to tell me."
"I will," Vanessa said earnestly. "I promise. I swear."
"Pinky swear?" Chris asked.
"What's pinky swear?" Vanessa and Andy asked at the same time, Andy spraying Oreo crumbs all over Chris as she did.
"What's pinky swear?" Chris repeated, in mock shock. "Are you kids telling me you don't know how to pinky swear?"
All three girls stared at him blankly.
"Here. Hold up your pinkies. Andy, that's your thumb." He looked around to make sure they all had it right. "Okay, now cross your hearts." They all did. "Now kiss your pinky and blow on it."
"This is weird," Andy commented, pinky swearing eight times in a row to no on in particular.
"It's cool," Charlotte said shyly.
Chris beamed at her. "Now, Vanessa, you promise to tell me if I do anything wrong?"
She pinky swore.
End of Chapter 1
Okay, this chapter was a little slow. But with a story like this, you need a little background information, so thanks for sticking with me. Heart!
"Chris? Stay back a sec, I need to talk to you about something," Mrs. Chambers called to her son one day before he was about to race off to join his friends at the river.
"What, mom?" he demanded impatiently. It was summer, and all he wanted to do was meet up with his friends and swim around in the sun.
"You know that your Aunt Marge and her three girls are visiting tomorrow, right?" Mrs. Chambers asked. Chris nodded. "Well, there's been a change of plans. Marge isn't coming."
Chris nodded. "Good," he confided to her, "I wasn't too thrilled about the prospect of spending my whole summer with three little kids anyway."
Mrs. Chambers furrowed her brow. "You misunderstand, Chris," she said slowly. "I didn't say that the girls weren't coming in. I merely said that Marge wasn't coming in."
"Oh. Oops. I'm really looking forward to it," he said, reddening. Suddenly another thought occurred to him. "They're not coming in alone, are they?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes. And as you know, they'll be the first members of the family to visit since your dad went away. I want you to make a good impression." Mr. Chambers had left his family the previous year for a woman in Des Moines. No one had missed him a bit. Mrs. Chambers had been worried at first that she wouldn't be able to support her family without him, but they had managed fine, now that there was no one spending all their money on beer.
Ever since he'd left, the stigma that had been attached to Chris's immediate family was slowly getting erased in the eyes of the rest of the family. Chris's grandmother had actually called them several times. Aunt Marge's visit was the final step- no one from the family had visited the Chambers in years.
"That's not all," Mrs. Chambers continued. "Thinking that Marge would be here, I made plans to take a vacation next week. And I'm sure as hell not giving it up. So since Eyeball's away at camp-"
Chris snickered.
"Oh, shut up, Chris. I'll send you to camp next year if you find it so funny." Chris stopped laughing immediately. "Anyway, since Eyeball's gone, you'll be in charge of the girls for the week I'm on vacation."
Any traces of the smile that had stayed on Chris's face after he was told to stop laughing disappeared now. "What?! What the hell?" Chris demanded.
"Don't say that."
"Hell! Hell hell hell! That's what it's going to be, Mom! Me, watching three girls for a week- how can you not thing it's going to be a living hell?"
"I don't care how hellish it is for you, Christopher Chambers," Mrs. Chambers snapped, "you're going to make it heaven on earth for these girls!"
"Meh," Chris mumbled. "Mom, can I go now?"
"Yes, go," Mrs. Chambers said distractedly. "I'm late for a massage at the Deer Lake Inn anyway. Have fun." She blew him a small kiss that she somehow managed to make appear spiteful and left, climbing into her car and pulling away from the house.
His mother had changed a lot, Chris thought, since his father left. She'd become more independent and took a lot less crap from everyone. Chris liked it, most of the time, liked that his mother was finally beginning to get a life of her own.
But sometimes it sucked ass.
"Ha! You're going to be watching giiiiiirls," Teddy laughed, swinging from the branches of a tree.
"Ha! You look like a fucking mooonkey!" Chris grumbled mean spiritedly. Teddy frowned.
"You're just mad because if they're hot, you're not going to be able to date them!"
"Teddy, they're three, eight, and ten."
"I can live with that if they're hot."
"Teddy!" Gordie and Chris reprimanded at the same time.
"I'm assuming my duties will include making sure that the girls' stay in Castle Rock does not include lifelong psychological scarring," Chris said disdainfully, "so I think I might just steer clear of you the whole week, Ted."
"You promise to let me know if they're hot?"
Chris scoffed. "I promise to let you know if my toddler cousin or her sisters are hot."
Teddy smiled contentedly.
"How long are they staying?" Gordie asked, hardly looking up from his book.
"A month," Chris grumbled. "And I have to be home alone with them for a week."
"A whole week?!" Vern exclaimed, the cookie he had been slowly chewing falling out of his mouth.
"A whole week," Chris repeated, sounding very dejected.
"Hey, this might not be so bad," Teddy said, in that stand-back-and- hide-the-matches tone that only Teddy had.
Chris looked up, scowling.
"Oh really?"
"Really," Teddy assured him. "Think about it, Chambers. If your mom's going to have you watch three girls all week, she's going to leave you money, right?"
A slow grin spread across Chris's features.
"No," Gordie said instantly, at the same time that Vern said "You can't spend that!"
Teddy looked at Gordie and Vern each in turn. "Why the hell not?"
"Because," Gordie said, as if explaining the painfully obvious to someone who's already been lectured a hundred times, "you can't steal from the children's fund!"
"It's not stealing, and it's not a fund," Teddy argued.
But even as he watched Teddy make the pitiful argument, Chris knew Gordie was right. There was no way he was going to steal money his mom left him for the girls. He sighed. It was going to be a long week.
Chris woke up the next morning to a spotless room. He'd been up until one in the morning the previous night cleaning his room for the girls, because this morning, he and his mother were going to the train station to pick them up. His sleep the last night had been plagued with dreams of spoiled rotten children; he had never met any of Marge's children, and for all he knew, they could be the most terrible little brats ever.
"Come on!" his mother screeched from downstairs. "We have to be there in half an hour!"
Chris sighed, pulled a dirty shirt from his clothes basket over his head, yanked a semi-clean pair of jeans on, and ruffled his hair with his fingers, glancing in the mirror on the way out.
His mother stood at the foot of the stairs wearing a white skirt and a light blue blouse. Her long blonde hair was pulled off her face and gathered at the top of her head.
"You look nice, mom," he muttered absently, pulling one of his shoes toward him and beginning to tie it.
"Thanks," she said. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," he answered, standing up. The two left the house and climbed into the truck.
"What time are you leaving again?" Chris asked, looking at his watch.
"I'm leaving at around quarter after five," she answered. "Christopher, please be good."
"What?"
"These kids are little. I want you to keep in mind that you have to put them first. Don't let your plans with your friends keep you from being a responsible young man."
"I won't," Chris said confidently.
She smiled. "I know. I just wanted to remind you. Promise me you'll be good? Even if the kids are terrors from hell?"
"I promise."
"They should be getting off any second now," his mother said anxiously, watching people pour off the train. "Oh, goodness, where are they?"
Chris just stood there silently, half of him hoping that they wouldn't show up at all. He felt bad, but at the same time, he didn't know how to take care of little girls! What the hell were Aunt Marge and his mother thinking?
Three little girls stepped off the train then, looking rather scared. They were the last ones off, accompanied by a train attendant. She pointed at Chris and his mother, and asked the oldest one something. She nodded, and the attendant smiled and left.
The three girls went up to them. "Hi, Mrs. Chambers," the oldest one said.
"Hello," his mother replied, sweeping the girls into hugs one by one. "You must be Charlotte," she said to the oldest one.
Charlotte nodded. She looked a little older than she supposedly, about twelve. She had red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. One arm was wrapped protectively around the youngest girl's shoulders.
"Hi," the youngest one chirped. "I'm Andy. Who are you?" She looked at Chris for a few seconds before she hugged his leg. In spite of himself, Chris smiled.
"I'm Chris," he said, grinning down at her. "Andy, huh? That's an unusual name."
"Her name's Andrea," the middle one said, "but we all call her Andy."
"Well, Andy," Chris said, stooping down to look at his young cousin, "what do you like to do?"
"Eat!" the little one shouted enthusiastically.
He grinned. "We're going to get along great," he said, and she launched herself at him and hugged him tightly.
"So if that's Charlotte, and that's Andrea," his mother said, looking at the middle one as if trying to remember something, "you must be. . . ?"
"Vanessa," she provided.
"Well, Vanessa, Andrea, and Charlotte, why don't we head home?"
"Yay!" Andy shrieked, jumping up and down. "Home home home!"
Mrs. Chambers looked down. "By home, honey, I meant my house."
Andy's face fell.
"We can eat there," Chris whispered. His mother shot him a dirty look, but Andy giggled and grinned cherubically.
"Carry me," she said, holding her arms out to Chris.
"Well. . . uh. . . I. . . "
"Please?" She looked at him with doe eyes designed to get herself whatever she wanted. He made a mental note to learn to resist those as he picked her up and balanced her on a hip.
Mrs. Chambers watched her son carrying Andy around the train station and smiled to herself. Her smile got wider as she watched him make sure all three girls were safe and comfortable in the backseat before he climbed up front.
"Here we are," she announced, stopping the car in front of the modest, two-story white house. They'd done a lot of work to it since Mr. Chambers had left, and it now looked almost perfectly acceptable for a suburban home.
"Where do you live?" Andy asked Chris as he lifted her out of the car.
"I live here."
"You don't live here! She lives here!"
"Andy," Charlotte said, coming over to join her sister, "Mrs. Chambers is Chris's mom."
"Really?" Andy asked in wonder, staring at Chris, who had to laugh.
"Really."
"Can we eat?" Andy asked, tugging at Chris's ear and giggling.
"Of course."
Mrs. Chambers left that day at exactly 5:15, as she'd said. The very first thing Chris did was call Gordie up and tell him to come over.
"Who's coming over?" Charlotte asked, from her perch in the corner of the living room.
"My best friend, Gordie. Charlotte, do you want to come over and sit closer?"
"No, I'm okay."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." She smiled at him, and he shrugged.
"I don't know much about taking care of kids," he said, looking around the room at the three redheads staring at him. "So if I'm doing something wrong, Charlotte and Vanessa, you have to tell me."
"I will," Vanessa said earnestly. "I promise. I swear."
"Pinky swear?" Chris asked.
"What's pinky swear?" Vanessa and Andy asked at the same time, Andy spraying Oreo crumbs all over Chris as she did.
"What's pinky swear?" Chris repeated, in mock shock. "Are you kids telling me you don't know how to pinky swear?"
All three girls stared at him blankly.
"Here. Hold up your pinkies. Andy, that's your thumb." He looked around to make sure they all had it right. "Okay, now cross your hearts." They all did. "Now kiss your pinky and blow on it."
"This is weird," Andy commented, pinky swearing eight times in a row to no on in particular.
"It's cool," Charlotte said shyly.
Chris beamed at her. "Now, Vanessa, you promise to tell me if I do anything wrong?"
She pinky swore.
End of Chapter 1
Okay, this chapter was a little slow. But with a story like this, you need a little background information, so thanks for sticking with me. Heart!