A/N So...hello there! Welcome to the new side-story for the Homestay universe. This started as a birthday present for the lovely peppermintyrose...but it's been horribly, horribly delayed. And now I think it'll be way too large to be a workable one-shot, so I'm thinking about four chapters...but don't quote me on that!
So this story is going back in time from where we left everyone in Home Truths - way, way, way back. It's March and Amelia is 12, Felicia 9, Sam 6, Tray 5 and Pam is just about to turn 3.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I just threw a few zombies into the mix.
SPOV
When I walked into the living room, I realised the worst had indeed happened. "Why didn't anyone tell me?" I asked, but it was pretty pointless. Sam and Tray were far too busy defending the fort they'd built out of blocks from the ruthless assault of Felicia. "Oops, didn't see it" she said, as she lobbed a tennis ball at their creation.
"You did!" Sam yelled. "You did see it, and you're lying!"
"No one saw Pam, though?" I asked, but, again, I didn't get an answer. I looked at Pam, who was lying stretched out in the middle of the family room, snoring loudly, and sighed.
Pam had given up naps, but some days she still really needed one. Especially today, when she was still coming down from the excitement of Amelia's 12th birthday party which had been held at the weekend. Following the big girls around had exhausted her, and today I'd been paying the price for that.
Our trip to the playground on the way home from walking the bigger kids to school had ended in a stand-off when Pam refused to climb up onto the slide herself and yelled "I too little for ladders! Go away!" When I wouldn't she'd dialled down to exasperation and admitted "I not happy!" That made two of us.
The afternoon hadn't been much better. Pam had repeatedly asked where Eric was and I'd been all but accused of hiding him from her. "Daddy not here! I want Daddy! You get Daddy, NOW!" Well, that wasn't happening and even my offer that we take the tea-set outside and play cooking games with a basin of water hadn't consoled her. Nothing was going to be as good as Daddy actually escaping from the dungeon I'd clearly locked him in and making it home.
There had been a brief respite when Pam had turned to crime and, with the aid of her little pink stool, had cleared most of Amelia's things from her bookcase. I'd found them, carefully wrapped in Pam's blanket, on her bed and guarded by her stuffed rabbit Mr Fluffy. I'd had a long, hard debate with myself about whether it was better to face the wrath of Amelia when she got home from school, or the possible tantrum from Pam that returning the pilfered things might set off. I realised I'd sunk pretty low on the scale of good mothering when I started calculating how much of Amelia's ire would be directed at Pam, rather than me, and, in the end, I returned what I could find.
But obviously all of that subterfuge had worn Pam out, and now I had a small child fast asleep on her stomach on the floor. I didn't really blame her. I found days like this exhausting too, and that was before the other kids had all arrived home and started clamouring for attention and food from me as though I was some kind of mum-shaped vending machine. I fondly remembered the days when Friday afternoon meant a weekend stretched out in front of you and the bliss of escaping from the responsibilities of work.
Now all my responsibilities lived in my house with me and the weekend just meant more fighting, moaning and demands for food.
"Pam" I said, patting her back. "Pam, wake up!"
"Don't touch our stuff!" Sam yelled.
"I'm not touching anything of yours; I'm just trying to get this ball into the corner of the room. Not my fault your stupid blocks are in the way" Felicia yelled back.
Pam didn't stir. "Pam," I tried again, but there wasn't even a pause in the snoring.
Felicia realised what was happening. "Pom-pom!" she yelled. "Wake up!" Nope. Nothing.
"Why's Pam asleep?" Tray asked.
"She's sleepy. I guess," I told him, while giving Pam a gentle shake. It didn't work.
"I'm not," Tray added, clearly worried I might arbitrarily declare that it was bedtime.
"Pa-am," I tried. "Pam, wake up!" I wondered how long I'd have to stay crouched here, trying to wake her up, but then Amelia came into the room.
"Pam's asleep," Amelia announced. "Why did you let her fall asleep? You know she won't sleep tonight now."
One of Amelia's most favourite things in the world was mothering Pam, and, if she could combine it with bossing me, all the better. "Yeah. I know." It was, after all, the reason why I was trying to wake her up and not just letting her continue her impromptu sleep session.
"We'll have to wake her up now!" Amelia declared.
"I was actually trying to do that," I said, feeling a bit defensive.
"But she isn't awake." Amelia crouched down too. "Pammy-wammy-woo," she cooed into her sister's ear. "Wake up!"
Pam made a small sighing noise and rubbed her face with her hand, but didn't open her eyes.
"She won't wake up until Daddy's home," Felicia yelled, managing to look at me and aim a swift kick at the block fort at the same time. Sam almost growled at her and I looked away before I had to see the inevitable fight erupt.
Some days, it was just tempting to leave them to it.
"I hate you!" Sam yelled.
"Yeah. So?" Felicia didn't seem all that bothered, which really bothered Sam.
"So! So…" I didn't think we really wanted to get to the end of that 'so'. Sam in a strop wasn't something any of us needed to witness. "Hey," I interrupted. "If you can't all get along, just go to your bedrooms and be alone for a bit."
"I can't be alone in my room; I have to share it with him!" Sam said, pointing to Tray.
"Oh, God! You're such a loser. Fine, I'll go to my room, which I don't have to share." Felicia started to stalk out of the room, but on her way past Pam she yelled "Look! Daddy's here!" and Pam managed to rouse herself a little.
"Daddy?" she whispered, as she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"No, he's not home," Amelia informed her. "Felicia's wrong. She gets confused about stuff; it was probably just Bob going through the cat-door."
"I'm not confused!" Felicia yelled from the hallway. Pam burst into tears, great noisy heart-wrenching sobs of distress. "Daaaaddddy!" she wailed.
"Look what you've done now, Leesh!" Amelia yelled into the hallway.
"I can't see through walls!" Felicia screamed back.
"You can hear her!" Amelia yelled in response.
"Not over you!"
I grabbed Amelia's arm, trying to stop the inevitable reply to that, and put the other arm around Pam, who squirmed a little. "I want Daddy!" she cried.
"I know. He'll be home soon." I hoped. I hoped very, very much. I was, in fact, quite tempted to text Eric and say something about there being an emergency at home and see if it would get him here earlier, but that was how I felt at this time of the afternoon most days. It was about now I started measuring the time not by what it said on the clock, but by how many hours until final bedtime.
Waiting for that point in the evening, when they all finally shut up and left me alone was like being an alcoholic and desperate for that first drink. I was just hanging out for the silence.
Amelia and I watched two big, fat tears slowly slide down Pam's cheeks. She did know how to turn it on if she had to. "What's her problem?" Tray asked.
"No Dad yet," Sam replied, trying to repair the fort Felicia had all but destroyed.
"That's not…I mean. I'm not sad." Tray picked up a block and threw it up in the air a few times, slightly higher each time. Eventually he missed it and it came down, clipping Sam on the ear.
"Ow!"
"You're not sad because Dad'll make you do your reading," Amelia said to Tray, adding "But maybe you're just not going to be very good at school." She shrugged.
"I'm good at school," Tray said, quite sullenly before he sat down on the couch in a great huff.
Tray had been at school for nearly two months' now, and, honestly, it was hard to tell if he was or wasn't good at school because he hadn't yet made much of an effort. I'd had to outsource his nightly reading to Eric because I didn't have the energy left at the end of the day to physically hold him to the chair and make him read the words. As for writing, well, he'd yet to produce anything of consequence, despite his teacher's best efforts. But he seemed happy enough at school, and the teacher didn't think it was anything to worry about yet, so I was leaving it for now.
"Playing isn't school, Tray," Amelia lectured. "It's not like pre-school." Tray stuck out his tongue at her. He did probably have a pretty good idea of what school was like, after spending his whole life going there to do parent-help or collect older siblings, and for most of the previous year he'd joined in with Sam's class every afternoon for the last mat-time of the day.
"Let's not pick on Tray, too much," I suggested to Amelia as Pam let out another wail of "Daddy!"
"Fine!" Amelia huffed. "I was just trying to help."
"Well, help with Pam, then," I suggested.
"OK. Pam…Pam! You can come and play in my room if you want."
"I want my daaaady!"
Amelia sighed. "I'll let you play with my wand."
Pam sniffed loudly, and then wiped her nose with the back of a tiny hand. "De lighting up one?" she asked.
"Yeah. Come on." Pam and Amelia left the room, and I stood up.
"OK, I'm leaving you guys in charge of cleaning up all the blocks," I said to Sam and Tray as I left the room, but I didn't get an answer. From down the hall I could hear Amelia attempting to lay down the law to Pam. "No, don't touch that!" In response, there was a great, anguished wail from Pam.
"Oh, look. Alright, Pam! But just that and nothing else."
Good luck to her.
I went back to trying to get dinner made, and, after a while Sam appeared in the kitchen with me. "Where's Pam?" he asked, looking around nervously.
"With Amelia." Sam visibly relaxed, and then came over to see what I was doing. "What's for dinner?" he asked.
"Steak."
"Really?" He completely failed to hide the astonishment from his voice. "Real steak?"
"Well, I resisted the temptation to glue beef mince back together," I said, but it kind of went over Sam's head. He was too busy trying to peer into the frypan to verify that what I said was actually correct.
"Does Dad know?"
"Well…no, not yet."
Sam looked thoughtful. "But Dad always does the steak."
"Mmm, but here's not here." And if I didn't feed the kids at a reasonable time, then they'd never go to bed and I was all about getting them bed.
Sam frowned. "But…does he know you're making it when he's not here?"
"I don't normally have to file the meal plans ahead of time, Sam." I turned away from the oven to see Sam not looking very impressed at that. "I mean, sometimes I just have to get on and do it."
Poor Sam, he was struggling with the idea of there being steak not cooked by Eric. "Look, you can help, if you want?"
"I can?"
"Yeah, just stand there and flip them over when I say." I handed Sam the spatula.
"OK," he said, happily, taking up his station next to the oven. "Maybe Dad'll be out tonight?" he said hopefully. "With clients?"
"Nope."
Sam was silent for a bit. "But there's a chance, right?" he asked.
"Well…I guess." That seemed to make him happy and he stopped asking me about Eric.
I carried on, getting Sam to flip the steak when it needed it, and then he spent a lot of time obsessively poking each piece until eventually I told him I could probably finish dinner by myself if he wanted to go and tell Tray to clean up. Sam left, and then Pam arrived, her hair now arranged into the two tiniest pigtails ever, and carrying Amelia's wand. "Abradababra!" she said dramatically.
"I think it's meant to be abracadabra," I suggested, while checking on the baby potatoes I had roasting.
"Yeah! I say dat!" Pam didn't take criticism well. "Abradababra! Mummy, you're a frog!"
"Am I? That's nice." Just once I'd like the magic around here to be used for something that was helpful to me, like a real underpants fairy. Or, at the very least, it might be nice to be turned into a princess.
"Yep. Be a frog, Mummy."
"Oh. Ribbit."
"No! Dat's not a frog. Be a frog!"
"I'm not jumping around, Pam."
"You're a frog!" I was slightly worried that Pam was never going to give that one up and I would, indeed, have to prove that I was now a frog, when we heard Eric announce his arrival at the front door and Pam sprinted off to be part of the welcoming committee.
I went back to being human, which was a relief.
EPOV
Sometimes coming home was great, and you'd almost feel like a conquering hero. At least, if I got greeted by Pam that's mostly how it went down.
Other days there was indifference. Or, like tonight, a rather disgruntled looking Sam on the other side of the door.
"You're home," he said, a little fucking accusingly.
"Yep."
"We're having steak."
"Are we?" That was surprising. Usually if we had steak, it was when I was here to cook it.
"Yeah. I made it." With that Sam started to walk off. Huh, I'd been replaced in my absence.
Pam ran into the hallway and screamed "Dadeee!" and then attached herself to my leg.
"Hi Pam." I picked her up and got jabbed with something sharp in the process. "Ow."
"Don't break de wand!" Pam yelled.
"I'm not breaking it. In fact, it's quite the opposite." Pam didn't seem to care that much about the fact there might be holes in me now. "Abradababra!" she yelled, really close to my ear and while waving the pointy end of that fucking plastic stick right next to my eye. "Sam's a frog!" she yelled.
"OK." I started to walk down the hallway to the kitchen, where, I presumed from the intel I'd so far gathered, there might be steak. Tray stuck his head out of his bedroom door and pulled it back in quickly as I passed. "We'll do reading later on," I said, but there was silence in reply. Apart from, that is, Sam saying rather loudly "He knows you're there, he saw you!"
"Shut up, Sam," Tray muttered.
"Abradababra!" Pam yelled, in my ear, again. "Tray! You're a frog!"
Tray didn't reply to that either. Pam and I carried on to the kitchen. "Oh. Hello," Sookie said, as I walked in. She was setting a bunch of plates out on the kitchen counter.
"Hello." I walked over to try to kiss Sookie, but it wasn't completely successful because I had to make sure that Pam didn't poke her mother in the back of the head with the plastic thing she was carrying.
"So, it's steak?" I asked.
"Yes," Sookie replied, sounding a little terse.
"I did not say a word." And I hadn't. Even though it was one of those kind of informal, but usually followed, rules that our family had that when it was steak, I cooked it.
"No, but I can tell by your breathing that you're a little annoyed." I didn't think that even deserved a reply. Sookie might think she knew me, but fuck; she was way off the mark.
I was simply surprised that we were having steak tonight. "But it's a pleasant surprise," I said to her.
"I'm sure. Just be thankful you're home in time to get your share. When Sam was in here before he was sizing up all the pieces and working out who was getting what."
"Well, I don't think we actually have to do it Sam's way." I was pretty sure we didn't.
"Yeah…you tell Sam that."
Pam was clearly bored and she decided to wave that fucking plastic weapon past my face again. "Abradababra!" she yelled.
"Abraca…" Sookie started to say, but Pam just yelled over her. Right in my fucking ear. "Daddy! You're a pwincess!"
"Am I? That's nice." I'd been worse things over the years.
Sookie looked over at Pam. "Really?" she asked.
"Yes!" Pam said emphatically, hitting me in the back of the head with the plastic stick she was holding as she turned to look at Sookie. "Daddy's a pwincess."
"And I'm a frog?"
"Yep." Pam turned to look at me and grazed my ear with the stick. Sookie didn't seem to like that answer though, and there was a loud sigh, following by a muttered "Why do I never get to be the freaking princess?"
Really, I couldn't answer that one and given that, as the princess, so far I was mostly being subjected to torture by plastic stick while my torturer squirmed in my arms, I didn't think it was a particularly great gig to start with. I would have said that to her, but she looked quite shitty and I began to wonder how that affected her ability to portion out dinner.
"You could make mom a princess, couldn't you Pam?"
Pam shook her head. "She's a frog."
"But if you can make her a frog, then you can make her a princess?" I thought it was worth a shot, but clearly, I'd misunderstood the rules of the game.
"No!" Pam yelled. "She's a frog!"
"How about a frog princess?" I thought that was a fairly reasonable suggestion but Sookie gave me a look that clearly stated what she thought of the idea, and Pam jabbed the pointy plastic stick into my lower back. And then she screamed "NO!" in my ear, and burst into tears. Fuck. Coming home was supposed to be the nice part of the day, but somehow I'd been replaced by Sam, Tray was hiding from me, Sookie was pissed at me when really she should be pissed at Pam and Pam had dissolved into a sobbing mess who was currently depositing snot all over the sleeve of my shirt.
Amelia walked into the kitchen then. "Oh my God!" she said. "Pam's crying her eyes out! What did you do, Dad?"
Some days it was very tempting to just turn around and leave again.
SPOV
Eric didn't seem particularly happy that steak had been cooked in his absence, and there really wasn't anything I could do about that. It wasn't my fault he wasn't here to do it, or that I'd forgotten to put the lamb casserole in to cook that morning, which had been my original plan for dinner.
OK, maybe that bit was my fault, but I couldn't help but feel that if I had fewer kids, I might have more of a chance of being organised. And their father, the person who liked to wander around with a coffee cup yelling "Where the fuck is my tie?" in the mornings, was not always a big help either.
All in all it was a miracle we ever got out the door to start the day, and that, when I did, I wasn't still wearing pyjamas. So the fact that we had steak for dinner was just one of those things Eric would have to deal with. Like I had had to deal with the fact one of my children kept trying to turn me into a frog.
Sam came back into the kitchen to check on the steak, which he did by poking each piece with his finger. "Is that a good idea?" Eric asked, as he tried to stop a still-sobbing Pam from throwing herself out of his arms and onto the floor. Amelia, who'd been trying to console Pam over Eric's shoulder, while muttering about how Pam was fine when she'd been playing with her, took her little sister out of Eric's arms with a glare.
"It's how they do it on MasterChef," Sam grumbled.
"What do they do?" Felicia demanded, now that she'd come into the kitchen as well. Somehow everyone always had a sixth sense about it getting close to dinner time. "Euw!" she said, leaning over to watch Sam. "I don't want a piece that Sam touched with his boogery finger. That's been up his nose!"
Eric pulled a face, and I shot him a look because I did not need him inciting the other kids to mutiny over dinner. "I'm sure it's OK, though," I said. "And that he's washed his hands." I glanced sideways at Sam who shot me a very guilty look. I tried to give him a look back which conveyed the varying messages of 'Euw!', 'Remember for next time!' and 'If anyone gets food poisoning I am making you clean the vomit off the bath mat this time!'
Not sure he got all of that.
I almost wanted to say 'Euw' myself, but I didn't want to start anything either. We were having steak, we were eating the steak that was there, and a few germs wouldn't kill us.
"OK. I am dishing up now," I announced to the assembled family. "Please go and wash up." I hoped that Eric might lead the kids off to do that, kind of like a pied piper, but instead he just stood there. He did say "Now!" very loudly, which made Felicia hustle out, although Amelia stayed put. "If you keep on shouting, she'll never cheer up!" she admonished Eric.
"I think she can handle it," Eric said, and Amelia walked out, still trying to soothe Pam. Eric then turned to Sam. "Go."
"Nah, I'm good because I, um…I've already washed my hands…" Sam seemed determined to brazen it out.
"You can wash them again. You too, Tray. Go now."
"I'm not…oh, poo…" Tray's voice came from just outside the door to the family room.
"OK, so they've gone now," Eric announced, as he walked over and wrapped himself around me and generally managed to hamper my progress in getting beans onto everyone's plates.
"Mmm-hmm," I agreed, trying to work my right arm free so I could get the spoon I was using back into the casserole dish that contained the beans.
"I should go and get changed, I guess," Eric murmured. He didn't seem to be in much of a hurry.
"Well, I'm nearly done." I wasn't, but I possibly wasn't ever going to be done if I didn't lose my limpet in a hurry. The kids would come back, dinner wouldn't be dished up and there'd be some kind of riot at which point I could bet that Eric would suddenly feel much more inclined to go and change and I'd be left throwing pieces of steak at hungry children in the hope they'd leave me in one piece.
Well, maybe I was exaggerating a little. But the reality wouldn't be far off.
"Eric," I said. "You're lovely."
"I'm a princess."
"Yes. And I love you, but please go and find someone else to annoy."
Eric sighed, but he released me. "Fine," he huffed, and he stalked off.
A few moments later, Tray crept in getting too close to Bob in the process, who hissed at him. Bob was terribly intolerant of the kids these days. I think he'd been stood on, or nearly stood on, so often that he'd decided that attack was the best form of defence.
"I didn't stand on Bob!" Tray said, pre-empting anything I might say. Unfortunately, he didn't realise that he also alerted Eric, who had just re-entered the kitchen, to his presence. "Tray," Eric said behind him. "After dinner, we're doing that reading."
Tray's shoulders fell. "I don't have to do it on a Friday," he muttered, but without much conviction.
"And then you'll have the same story about Saturday, and Sunday," Eric pointed out. "So, we'll do it tonight."
Tray sighed, but he stopped fighting. I handed Eric a couple of plates and hoped that we could all just sit down for a nice dinner.
EPOV
Dinner could be a little like feeding time at the zoo in our house. I was almost one hundred per cent certain that it was only the fact that they were worried about my reaction which stopped Tray and Sam actually fighting over who got the bigger piece of steak. Still, at least they fucking wanted steak.
"Mum!" Amelia said, trying to get Sookie's attention as she put the plates down in front of everyone. "Mum, I don't really like steak, remember?"
"Yes you do," I told her, looking at my own plate. I wondered if this was one of the pieces that Sam had stuck his finger in. Maybe he'd touched all of them?
"No. I don't!"
"I don't want steak!" Pam wailed, watching Amelia. Her little bottom lip wobbled dangerously.
"Pam. You love steak. I love steak." I hoped that would work.
Sure enough, Pam looked momentarily torn and snuck another glance at Amelia before starting to eat.
"I don't see why I have to eat what everyone else wants to eat?" Amelia complained. If she kept complaining like that, and not eating, she wouldn't have the problem of not liking steak anymore because Sam or Tray would steal her dinner out from under her nose.
"Well, you know, it's easier that way," Sookie said, sitting down in her own seat.
"Not for me!" Amelia replied.
"Oh, you moan so much!" Felicia told her. "Why don't you just build a bridge and get over it!"
"Why don't you just build a bridge and live under it?" Amelia sniped back.
"Where are we going to put a bridge?" Tray asked.
"It's not a real bridge," Sam told him.
"Dora goes over the troll bwidge," Pam threw in, desperately trying to keep up with the conversation.
Sookie looked over at Pam. "Eat some of the beans as well, Pam. Not just the steak and the chips."
Pam looked at Sookie in disbelief, and then her face crumpled. "I too little for beans!" she wailed.
Tray looked at her curiously. "I think…"
"Eat your beans, Tray," I said to him. He sighed, loudly. "You too, Pam."
"Nooo, Daddy! No!" Pam was really laying it on thick now. Amelia glared at me. "You've set her off, again!"
I wanted to point out that, actually, I was pretty sure that Sookie had set her off and if no one had ever mentioned the beans, Pam would have been fine.
"They're magic beans, Pam," I said to her.
"I too little for MAGIC BEANS!" she half-wailed, half-shouted.
"Are we getting a beanstalk instead of a bridge?" Tray asked.
"I just…I don't even know what planet you're from," Felicia said, looking at Tray.
"This one," Tray said, although he looked at Sam for confirmation. Sam shook his head in disbelief, a gesture Tray misunderstood. "Not this one?"
"School is wasted on you," Amelia said to him.
"I ate all my beans," I said to Pam, and she looked over at my plate, and sniffed loudly. "You magic now?" she asked.
"Possibly," I said. "Try one." Pam reluctantly put a bean in her mouth.
"So what happened at school today?" Sookie asked the kids.
"Stuff," Amelia replied, shrugging, and poking her food.
"Not your school, our school, you nitwit," Felicia said. "No one cares about what you've done."
"Felicia, that's not very nice," Sookie admonished.
"Nope," Felicia agreed.
"She's missing the nice gene…or something. Anyway, she's defective." Amelia was quite annoyed now.
"Yeah. 'Cos I'm the one who won't even eat steak." Felicia sighed, and then turned to the boys. "So did you tell about the cross country?"
Sam shrugged and looked a little sheepish. Tray kept shovelling food in. "What about the cross country practice?" I asked. Their school was holding its annual cross country race in a week or so which meant daily practice runs. Tray loved that it got him out of the classroom; I was not looking forward to a long hot morning watching three races.
Sam elbowed Tray, and he stopped eating. "Watch it!" Then he realised Sam expected him to say something. "What?"
"Cross country," Sam repeated.
"Oh. Yeah. I was on the field first," Tray said, going back for another mouthful of food.
"First?" Sookie asked. "In the race?"
"Uh-huh," Tray said, through a mouthful of steak. "I goft dere first."
"You're a fast little thing, aren't you?" Felicia said to him, almost fondly. I half-expected she might reach over and ruffle his hair. So something was up there because I was pretty sure Felicia hadn't been fond of Tray, ever.
"First five year old boy?" I asked him.
Tray looked thoughtful, and then he turned to Sam. "Nah, 'cos then you turned up." He pointed at Sam with his fork, nearly taking out Sam's eye in the process. Good to see Sam's reflexes worked OK. If he just learnt to duck all the sharp objects flying around, he'd be fine.
"First out of the five and six year olds," Sam said, sighing. "They made us run together to save time." And that would be the problem. Being beaten by your younger brother, who'd only been at school for a few weeks, had to suck quite badly.
"That's great," I said to Tray.
"Yeah. Gotta be fast if you want to outrun zombies," Tray said, happily.
"Zombies are slow, not fast," Sam said with a certain amount of disdain.
"So are you, apparently," Felicia threw in.
"Shut up, Leesh!" Sam yelled.
"Well…where did you come?" Sookie asked him, probably trying to smooth things over. I thought she was going to make them worse.
"I came ninth, OK?" Sam half-yelled at his mother, proving me right.
"That's still good," Sookie said. "Top ten." She looked at me, and I guessed that was my cue to say something. "Well done, Sam."
Sam just sighed and didn't say anything for a moment, he just poked his food. "Who cares about a stupid cross country, anyway?" Amelia asked the room at large.
"Well not you, because you can't run five steps without moaning," Felicia said. "And I came sixth in my group, in case anyone cares."
Sookie and I both congratulated Felicia and then there was silence for a moment, which would have been a relief, except that I'd finished my dinner and it was a little boring. "Hey!" Tray said suddenly, pointing at me. "Dad's finished!"
"And he had the biggest piece!" Sam added.
"Well, Dad has a strategy," Sookie said.
"What?" Tray asked.
"He doesn't talk very much when he's eating." She wasn't wrong. I could never see the point in spending time making fucking small talk about shit when you had food right in front of you.
"Oh," Tray said. "Oh, yeah." He thought about that.
"Concentrate on your dinner, Tray," I reminded him.
He did, for a few moments. "Hey, what's invisible and smells like carrots?" he asked. Everyone ignored him. "A bunny fart!" he shouted.
"That's gross," Amelia said, dismissively.
"It's really funny," Tray informed her.
"If you're five." Amelia wasn't at all impressed with the joke.
"But bunnies eat carrots…so…so…" Tray was laughing so much he couldn't talk that much. "So its farts smell like carrots!"
"We get it," Felicia told him.
"Mr Fluffy is a bunny. He my bunny," Pam said. "He eats carrots."
"He's a stuffed bunny," Sam told her.
"You're a stuffed bunny," Felicia said. Amelia turned to her. "That doesn't even make sense," she said.
"You don't make sense."
Sometimes I really fucking thought that it couldn't be worse in a cage at the zoo. At least the lions didn't bitch over who was the fastest runner and tell terrible jokes over whatever carcass got thrown over the fence for them. They just ate, and got the hell of there. It seemed like a much better way of doing it.
"Hey, what's invisible and smells like steak?" Tray asked.
"OH!" Sam grabbed his nose. "My nose is burning!" he complained. Tray laughed so hard he just about fell off his chair, which sent Bob, who had been hiding down Amelia's end of the table probably getting steak from her, running out of the room. "Daddy!" Pam said. "Daddy dat's smelly!"
"Yes, Pam. Yes it is smelly. Tray, eat your dinner."
"It's a Tray fart!" Tray said, oblivious to the distress of his siblings, and Sookie, who was desperately trying to maintain her composure while breathing through her mouth.
"Yeah. We got that one," Felicia deadpanned.
"It's funny!" Tray yelled.
"It's smelly," Felicia replied.
"It's so…childish," Amelia threw in, but I don't think Tray cared.
"It's like you ate something rotten," Sam said to his brother.
"It's not nice!" Pam wailed, and then a big fat tear rolled down her cheek again. "I too little for smells!"
"It's dinner guys," I said. "Just eat your dinner."
After dinner wasn't much better, because I had to hunt down Tray and get him to read to me, and he wasn't stupid enough to leave a scent trail for me to follow.
"Bathtime?" Pam asked me, as she trailed after me down the hallway.
"Uh…not yet. Soon, though." I stuck my head into the family room. "Sam, have you seen Tray?"
"No…" Sam said, looking shifty.
"If you hadn't seen him, where is that he wouldn't be?"
"Um…try the living room, maybe…?"
I walked back down to the living room, Pam still trailing after me. She was holding a Barbie; at least, I think it used to be a Barbie. Mostly it was a mess of blonde hair and some sticking out bits of plastic. "Bathtime?" Pam asked.
"Soon." I looked into the living room, and, sure enough, wedged into a very small space between the couch and the bookcase, was Tray. "Tray, reading. Now."
Tray tried to brazen it out and keep up the pretence of not really being there, but he couldn't manage it for long. "I don't want to!" he said, in the end.
"This isn't a negotiation."
"What?"
"You have to do what I say, Tray."
"But…" Tray emerged from his hiding spot. "I hate reading."
"It's not that bad."
Tray sighed, which indicated that he did think it was that bad. Pam poked me in the leg with her doll. "Bath!" she said, with a fair amount of authority for someone her size.
"In a while, Pam. Why don't you go and play?"
"Play wif me?" she asked her big, blue eyes hopeful.
"Um…Tray's going to read with me now."
Pam's eyes turned from hopeful to angry in a flash. It was actually kind of impressive, well, it might have been if it hadn't been directed at me. "You suck!" she said, sounding much older than not-quite-three and she stomped off.
"Come on, Tray. Get your book bag out. The quicker we do this, the quicker it's over." I don't think that Tray appreciated just how fucking boring this was for me. I really wished he would get better at this, and then Sookie could do it with him. Before I got home from work. Because really, if I had to listen to another fucking book about the circus or some kids finding a lost puppy, I might go insane.
Tray looked at me, like I was speaking another language. "Book bag," I repeated.
"I don't…did I bring it home?" he asked me.
"How the fuck should I know? Just go and look." Tray sighed and walked off, and I waited, and I waited, and listened to the sound of someone thudding to the floor, and then Sam said "Watch out, you jerk!" and Tray said something I couldn't catch, which suggested he was the one being pinned to the floor.
Well, that was probably to be expected after the cross country practice debacle earlier. But, fuck, I just wanted to get Tray's reading over with.
Sookie stuck her head into the living room. "Haven't you found Tray yet?"
"Yeah. He's just getting his book bag." I sat down on the couch and then realised Sookie was glaring at me.
"OK. Don't worry! I'll go and get him then!" she huffed, and then she walked off yelling "Tray! Dad's waiting for you!"
"I'm coming!" Tray yelled, and there was some more thudding as, presumably, he managed to move Sam, and then he appeared in the living room, looking a little breathless.
"Book bag?" I asked.
Tray ran off again. This was taking fucking forever.
"Aren't you supposed to be helping Tray read?" Felicia asked, as she walked past the door.
"He's getting his book bag."
"No, he's chasing Pam around." She walked off.
"Tray!" I yelled, but there was no response. I contemplated getting off the couch and going to find him, but then I heard Amelia yell "Leave Pam alone!" and, after a moment or two, Tray skidded into the room holding, thank fuck, his book bag.
The phone started ringing and I heard both Amelia and Sookie yell out that they'd get it, and I could guarantee that wouldn't end well. But it still didn't make me any the less fucked off I got this job.
"OK," I said. "Let's do this." Tray sighed and came and sat next to me on the couch. "Hey, Dad," he said.
"Yes, Tray?"
"You know…uh, Jared?" Tray asked.
"Nope." I hoped this was something to do with the fucking reading assignment.
"In my class," Tray said, like that would mean more to me.
"Still no clue who he is Tray." Really they all blended together as one big bunch of kids wearing the same uniform. Tray should be having this conversation with Sookie, she always knew who all of the kids were talking about whenever they mentioned a name.
Tray sighed. "You do know," he muttered, and I decided to let him keep that illusion. "What about Jared?" I asked.
"Oh. Well. He's got that game."
"What…oh." I didn't really want to have this conversation again.
"Yeah. He says it's really awesome and when you shoot the zombies, like, all this blood hits the screen…not real blood though, eh? Just like, pretend. And you can rip the arms off the zombies, and stuff, but if you do that then you have to make sure you can get away because that makes them really mad…"
"As you'd think it would." Tray ignored my interruption and carried on. "Yeah…so. Sounds good, eh?" Tray looked at me hopefully.
"We've said no already Tray. That game is just too violent." That was the official party line. I was prepared to perhaps be a little more tolerant, but Sookie had delivered a long and impassioned statement about why she didn't think the kids needed to get the idea that bloodshed was ever the answer and it was hard enough to stop them all beating each other to death on a regular basis without it being practically encouraged by the enthusiastic use of a violent video game. She'd gone on for a while, as she'd really warmed to the subject. Unfortunately she'd decided to warm to it right on bedtime when I really would have had her warm to something else, and I got a little bored and little inclined to just agree with her wholeheartedly so we could fucking move on.
And now we had a party line that I had to toe.
"It's not violent. It's funny. 'Cos, like, when you rip a zombies arm off, you can use it to hit other zombies with…and sometimes they just lose things, like ears and noses, and then they have a fight with each other over whose nose it is…so that's funny!" I had to admit, that sounded kind of funny.
"We've said no."
"Mum said no."
"So…that's the same thing."
"It's not."
"I'm not going to argue with you over it, anymore." Tray folded his arms, but at least he shut up. Saying that to some of the other kids, Amelia in particular, just incited them to keep going because you clearly hadn't seen their point yet.
Fuck. She so got that from Sookie.
"Read the book, Tray," I reminded him.
"Oh. Oh, alright then." He pulled a rather battered looking reader out of his book bag.
"What's this one called?" I asked him.
Tray looked at the cover, then back at me, then at the book again. "It's got cows…" he said in the end. I looked at the cover. "Katie and the Cow Show," I read out. So, fuck, yet another fucking story about the idyllic life of rural New Zealand.
Why were these books all so fucking boring?
And the process of reading them…well, of Tray haltingly reading them, was even more boring. You were supposed to let them try to work out the words themselves, by looking at the picture or by sounding it out, but, fuck, that took forever and none of it stuck in Tray's brain. By about page five I was rapidly losing patience.
"Cat-i-ee…" Tray read out, again.
"It's Katie, Tray! We've been over that one."
"Katie…wh…w…ee...nnn…tt…wanted…"
"No. It says 'went', you sounded it out then you just guessed a word."
Tray sighed. "Went and…sh…uh…shoot the gut and…"
"Hang on. What does that say?" I looked at the page. "It says 'shut the gate', Tray. Nothing about shooting."
"This book is so lame!" Tray said in disgust. I couldn't disagree with him.
"How about I just sign the journal to say you've done it?"
"Sweet." Tray pulled the journal out of his book bag and handed it to me.
"I'll need a pen. Come into the office with me." I walked to the office and Tray trotted along behind me. He'd gone back to his earlier topic of conversation.
"So, like, you have to escape the zombies and not get bitten by a zombie, and sometimes they bite someone and their whole jaw stays there and there's like blood and teeth and stuff EVERYWHERE and it's really gross and really, really, funny."
"Sounds it." I sat at my desk and wrote in the journal Tray tried. I thought about adding something else, but I couldn't see the point in lying. I signed the journal. Pam came in. "Bathtime?" she asked, hopefully.
"Soon," I said to her. "You can, uh, go and make a start." Pam disappeared off again.
"So…I did OK, huh Dad?" Tray asked.
"Well…" I wasn't sure what to say to him. And then I thought of something. I grabbed a pad and wrote something on that. "What's that say?" I asked Tray.
"Zombie."
I wrote something else. "And that?"
"Gun."
"And…that?"
"Um…kill?" Tray looked at me for confirmation.
"Yes. Yes, Tray. That's right. See you can fucking read."
Tray shrugged and didn't seem particularly impressed at his reading skills. "So did you write anything at school today?" While he might be able to read, selectively, he had yet to produce anything in writing himself. Sookie was getting more than a little frustrated with him even though, as she reported it to me, the teacher had said that it just took time with some kids.
"No," Tray said, looking at his feet. "But I drew a cool picture of a zombie."
"That's not actually the same thing."
Tray shrugged. "Yeah…but…Ms Yarnell said that it was OK."
Ms Yarnell was far too lenient, I thought, but probably she figured they didn't pay her enough to force Tray to write. Fuck knows I didn't like the idea of having to do it. "Well, try harder on Monday."
Tray made a non-committal noise and I put the journal and the reader back into his book bag and handed them to him, expecting he'd now leave. But he didn't. I hoped he wasn't going to start on about the zombie game again.
Instead he had other ideas. "Daaaad," he began, in the way that you knew was never going to end well. "Can we play zombies now?"
"What? Oh." Zombies was the favourite pre-bedtime game these days and made me fucking nostalgic for the days of pirates when mostly I'd had to just sit beside the bath tub and make sure that the floor didn't get too flooded. Now I was expected to be the zombie and withstand varying amounts of gunfire and sword attacks as I ambled through the house.
It was fucking exhausting.
"Pleeease?" Tray whined. "I was really good. And I did all my reading!"
I didn't have the heart to contradict him. "Fine. Zombies it is then."
SPOV
In the midst of all the after-dinner chaos, and me trying to get Eric to actually do Tray's reading with him, the phone rang. It wasn't really the best time to take a phone call, but Amelia trying to push me out of the way to get to it wasn't helpful either as I'd never get the phone back.
"No. I'll get it!" I said to her, which made her frown at me and stomp off. And it was a good thing I did, because on the other end of the phone was Judith and it was going to take me long enough to get rid of her, without Amelia having had a long conversation with her first.
"Oh, good. You're there," Judith said, after I greeted her. "It's all going to poo, and it's been shifted to our place, which just…freaking annoys me. As usual!"
"What? What has?" I felt like I'd missed a vital part of the conversation and I was tempted to call Amelia back and get her to interpret as she seemed to be pretty fluent in Compton Dramatics, or, at any rate, these weird conversations that started half-way through.
"Didn't Portia text you?" Judith demanded, and I felt like maybe I was one of a, probably growing, list of people who were on the wrong side of Judith at that moment. Not a place I ever wanted to be.
"No…" I said, slowly, and then I waited for the explosion.
"She just does it to piss me off, I swear!" Judith hissed into the phone. "She said she would organise it all and now she's pulled out at the last moment and I just bet that she didn't text you because she's got no money on her phone because Mum gave Sarah money for her phone last week, so Portia'll have her nose all out of joint about it. God, I freaking hate my family at times!"
There wasn't much I could say to that statement, not to my ex-sister in law, anyway. The remarkable thing was how much she sounded like Amelia when she said it.
Luckily a response didn't seem to be required, because Judith just kept going. "See, I knew you looked at me funny the other day when I said I'd have to go shopping after work with all the kids and what a drag that was going to be. I should have realised you didn't know you guys were invited! Bloody Caro, she leaves it all to the last minute to tell us she's coming over from Sydney, and bringing the fiance, so we get no time to organise, and then Portia throws a total spanner in the works. But you're coming, right? Because it's already a freaking disaster and I need someone on my side when it all turns to crappiness."
There was so much I wanted to contradict about what Judith was saying. For one thing, I thought I'd looked at her pretty happily when she'd mentioned in passing the shopping required for the family function I thought we'd been exempted from. And they weren't my family anyway. And I didn't want to take sides with any of them against any of the others because I was sure that when push came to shove, all of them, Judith included, would side with each other over me because after all, I was just their brother's widow.
And I'd married someone else.
So no, I didn't want to go. I wanted to say 'sorry, but it's a bit late and we have other plans that don't involve bitching, fighting, and Lorena making that face again when she realises you're only doing a barbecue for dinner'.
"Yeah. Of course we'll be there. What should I bring?" At times like these I really wished I was Eric and I could just pretend that the rules of a polite society didn't apply to me.
It must be nice to be American. Or maybe it was just Eric. Either way, he'd have got us out of this in a flash.
I'd just dug us deeper into the pit of despair that was a backyard filled with Bill's relatives and assorted barbecued meats.
"Well, we've kind of got stuck with getting all the meat…because no one else can afford it. And, uh, Portia's doing a pasta salad and some bread…probably enough for two people. And Sarah's doing a green salad…don't expect it to be fancy. I guess…um, well if you wanted to do a potato salad, that'd be helpful…" Judith trailed off.
"And maybe if we bring some extra meat?"
"Yeah. That'd be good too." I mentally kicked myself and wondered how the hell I had managed to not only agree to go, but had ended up providing a large portion of the food as well. Somehow that was the way it happened every time and I didn't know how I could stop it happening now.
Not when it was, what, nine years since Bill had died?
"OK. No problem," I said to Judith. "Well, I'd better go and see what's happening about bedtime." Pam had wandered into the kitchen and back out again, probably looking for Eric. I wouldn't have worried so much except that she was naked.
"Yeah. I'm pretending that's not happening in this house," she replied. "So, we'll see you tomorrow then. About two?"
"Yep. We'll be there." Well I would, because I'd promised. The kids would be there because I was charge of them, and Eric would…I hoped. I also hoped the level of grumpiness about the whole thing wasn't too bad.
I put the phone back in its cradle and started my search for Pam. She couldn't be too far away because just outside the kitchen door the Barbie she'd been clutching had been discarded. However, what was more disturbing than the sudden disappearance of a naked two year old, were the awful, terrible noises coming from further down the hallway. Something between a howl and a grunt and a wail…followed by Tray shouting "It's going to eat me!", and then Felicia yelling "You haven't got any brains, you're fine!", followed by Sam announcing he was going to kill it, Amelia yelling at everyone to shut up, and Pam shrieking wordlessly at the top of her lungs in pure excitement.
OK. So that would be a very large and very, very loud zombie stomping around our house then. I decided to perhaps stay where I was in the kitchen and try to avoid all zombie-related activities. Bob turned up and gave the abandoned Barbie doll an exploratory sniff. "They might be heading this way," I warned him. "If I was you, I'd head for the hills. Or, the cat door. Try to make it out the cat door." Bob looked at me, and then, I'm pretty sure he nodded before doing just as I'd suggested.
Bob really got me, but I didn't get where this current obsession with zombies which had overtaken our house had come from. Although I had my suspicions. Sure, Tray was a little obsessed with getting that really violent videogame which Eric and I had said we wouldn't buy him, but he probably wouldn't have even noticed it if he hadn't seen Eric looking at it while we were in the mall one Saturday. Buying Pam a swimsuit, and supposedly, not going near any of the shops that sold videogames in the first place.
But if you took your eye off Eric, he wandered off. And Tray followed him. And the next thing you knew you were having a discussion about why videogames that featured a bazillion ways to kill things weren't a great idea when Tray had already been told that day that it wasn't OK to teach Pam to wrestle by sitting on her while she screamed.
Luckily, Eric agreed with that. Or, at the very least, had the common decency to pretend that he did.
Sam rounded the corner and looked at me. "We have to kill the zombie!" he shouted, and he took off. I wondered if I needed to be worried that it looked like he was carrying a weapon.
Probably not. Eric had withstood a lot of plastic sword blows over the years. He'd survive a few more, I decided.
I went to the laundry and picked up the basket of clothes I'd folded earlier and then made the tactical error of venturing into the war-zone as I tried to get to the bedroom to put them away. I turned the corner of the hall and collided with the zombie, who promptly attempted to eat me. I think.
Mostly there was just a lot of slobbering on my neck. "That's really not helpful," I said to Eric, but in response all I got was "Eurrgh!"
"It's got Mum!" Sam shouted in the background, and Tray said "I'm going to take his leg off!" and I hoped that what he was carrying was actually plastic because I wasn't in the mood to get blood off the clean laundry.
Eric had now pinned me to him and showed no signs of letting up the slobbering. Also, there were now wandering hands. It was nice that he was using the game he was playing with the kids as an excuse to grope me, but it perhaps wasn't the most appropriate thing to do.
"Mum!" Sam said to me. "Mum, you have to fight the zombie!"
"I haven't got a free hand." My arms were basically trapped between Eric and the laundry basket.
"You could drop the laundry on his toe?" Tray suggested. "And then his foot might fall off and that'd be funny!"
"You guys know this is pretend, right?" I asked them as Eric said "Nrr…erugh" loudly, in my ear.
"Yes!" Sam said, sounding a little disgusted at my stupidity. It wasn't him I was worried about so much as Tray who tended to get a little bit carried away with trying to discover how best to actually dismantle Eric.
If he ever managed to do it he'd be gutted the first night he discovered I was the only parent left and I'm not the one who wants to pretend to be a zombie.
Although quite frankly, right at that moment, with the slobbering and the holding me in place and the fact that Eric was generally stopping me from completing my nightly round of chores, I was inclined to let Sam and Tray do their worst.
And then Felicia piped up in the background and said "If you try to tip him over, he'll be stuffed. Zombies are like turtles." Eric must have decided to turn his attention to her, because he released me and with another roar-grunt he set off, slowly, after Felicia with Tray still attached to one of his legs and Sam in pursuit.
"Do you realise that Pam hasn't had her bath?" Amelia asked me, as I'd just about made it my bedroom.
"Yes. But given she had that impromptu nap, she'll probably last for a bit longer." I hoped that was the case, and that she hadn't curled up somewhere, naked, and gone to sleep. I opened one of the dresser drawers and started putting clothes in.
"Well, she shouldn't have had that nap," Amelia said, clearly trying to get the last word in, and then she left. I put everything away and ventured back into the hallway where I discovered that Eric the zombie had picked up some speed because he jogged around a corner and knocked me over.
"What were you doing there?" he asked, having clearly also recovered his powers of speech.
"Walking. Through the house. Like a normal person." Eric held out his hand and hauled me up, but he didn't apologise, and then he turned and with another zombie-roar, took off after the kids.
I was going right off zombies. Pam ran out of her room, still naked, and now brandishing Amelia's toy wand again. "Pam!" I called. "Pam, bathtime!"
"Nooo!" she wailed, and she kept running.
Oh, fine then. She could be Eric's problem. She'd prefer that anyway.
I went back to trying to hide in the kitchen from them all, hoping that the roars and shouts meant that everyone was still far, far away from me. It lasted for a while, and then I heard the tell-tale sounds of Pam approaching and, from the sound of it, there was a large and annoying zombie stomping along behind her.
And then I heard a yell of anguish from Pam. "You standed on Barbie!" she yelled. "Say sowwy!"
I stuck my head out the door to see how Eric was going to get out of this one. "I think the problem, Pam, is that the doll was lying on the floor instead of put away in the toy box," he said. I wanted to point out that it was possible to simply walk down the hall and still run afoul of Eric and his big feet, so I didn't feel like his argument was completely water-tight.
Pam wasn't buying it either. She stamped her foot, which looked kind of funny given her complete lack of clothes, and she didn't seem to take too kindly to the fact Eric was smiling at her because of it. "You hafta say sowwy a'cos you hurted her!"
"Really, Pam?"
"Yes!"
Eric picked up the Barbie from where she lay sprawled on the ground and said "Dearest Barbie, vision of love and beauty, I am mortified that my foot has squashed your smooth and voluptuous body." I waited a moment or two for Eric to add something about how it was, however, clearly Barbie's fault for leaving her smooth and voluptuous body where Eric wanted to put his foot…but he didn't.
Huh. Well, that was nice for Barbie, I guessed.
"Dat's better Daddy." Pam took back the Barbie. "Come on, Dearwest. Is bathtime!"
Eric looked at me. "What?" he asked.
"Nothing." I didn't want to be all grumpy about ranking lower than the stupid doll. But I was. Just once I wanted to actually get an apology for being knocked about and trampled all over in the name of zombie eradication. Just once I wanted someone to notice that I was actually here and not just because it was fun to grab my bum when he was pretending to be a zombie. Just once I wanted to be the princess and not the frog.
"It just might be nice to get an apology occasionally," I muttered.
"For what?" Eric asked.
"Never mind." I turned and walked back into the kitchen. I didn't really know what I was expecting, anyway. Just…something. Something I hadn't quite gotten.
It probably didn't matter anyway.
Thanks for reading!
