You guys are going to have to forgive me if I get a little mushy in this chapter. The next one won't be so sentimental. :D
Also, if you haven't seen this, here is my summary of the rules to Pinstar's apocalypse challenge.Chapter 6: Growing Pains
Her family was grown—they had beaten all the odds and survived a nuclear holocaust.
Ansly still spent much of her time sewing clothes on the old machine that had served her so well. Adults now, her kids were no longer growing out of their clothes they way they had as children, but she liked sewing. George was still working as a chef, so she liked to stay busy during the days. Besides, at heart, she hoped that soon one of her children would meet someone, and Ansly would get some grandbabies. And she had a feeling as to which of her kids that might be.
Rosalind had grown into a young woman, as tough as she was pretty. Tougher than Ansly had been, but of course, she had had to be strong from birth if she was going to survive. And then she’d had to help tend to her younger siblings. And she was prettier than Ansly had been—or at least, Ansly thought so, but then she was a mother.
Rosie had softened up a bit since her bossy adolescence. Enough, anyway, to fall for exactly the wrong kind of man. Johnson was a systems operator with the military presence in Strangetown, and he was also interested only in sweet talk and romance. Rosalind was excited just to meet a good-looking, non-undead man, but Johnson didn’t exactly fit with her worldview. She had grown up in a world where the only people she saw day in and day out were her own family, so Casanova’s love-and-leave mentality was a mystery to her.
Anyway, she wasn’t about to get knocked up, so Johnson was and always would be a side interest.
Beckett was still a nerd, pursuing his architecture career (what little of it there could be in a region this devastated) while writing stories about space overlords and green-skinned hotties. But he’d also developed into quite the Don Juan, romancing all the good-looking women he met (of course, that was a limited number, what with the zombies, lack of sanitation, and infectious diseases). And, for obvious reasons, he didn't have to be quite so responsible about his romances as Rosalind did. His sisters envied him for it; his little brother admired him.
“How do you do that?” Sacha asked.
“Do what?”
“You know…” He blushed. “Get all those girls. I don’t even know how to talk to them.”
“That’s because you’re ‘cute.’”
“What?”
“You. You’re ‘cute.’ Look at you, you’re like, like a floppy-haired teddy bear in a sweater vest. And me? I’m kind of weird-looking.”
“No—“
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. But I can work with that. It gives me something to prove. Women like me because I’m not that great-looking and I try really hard to get their attention, so they think I must be crazy about them. With you,
they have to be outgoing. It’s not as flattering to their egos.”
“Teach me your ways.”
Sacha threw himself into exercise, spending more time out of the house. He knew that there was a big world out there, and that it was mostly crappy, and that he wanted to be part of it. He loved his family dearly, of course—after Ansly, he had the biggest heart and the nicest attitude of all of them, and he never grew tired of them. Mostly, really, he just wanted to meet some girls. Not the way Beckett did—no, Sacha wanted to meet one girl.
Portia was already working toward her future career in politics. She was always clean and particular about her appearance, and she was more aware of her beauty than Rosalind was of her own.
“Is that—is that a blemish? My career is ruined!”
As the youngest in the family, she was doted on and her somewhat fastidious nature was indulged, but she never became spoiled.
“I like your poodle skirt, Portia.”
“Why, thank you!”
“Did you—did you
iron that?”
“You know, I did! Rosalind said it couldn’t be done, what with the electricity shortage and all. But two hours, a fire pit, and a first-degree burn later, and I have a perfectly pressed outfit.”
“You’re—you’re scaring me a little. You’re sweet, but you’re scaring the crap out of me. You know that, right?”
She giggled. “Yeah, I know. I can’t help it.”
But as the kids grew into adults, the adults aged, too.
After George died, things stopped making sense—everything became jumbled, and time seemed to lurch and halt. Their home, their little place in the decimated world, had been really threatened for the first time.
“I’m worried about Mom.”
“I—I know. I am, too.” She paused. “And Rosie’s sleeping all the time, Sacha. I mean, she used to drive me nuts with all that meddling, but now, now she doesn’t even care about anything that’s going on.”
“And Beckett—“
“The drinking,” she sighed.
I lost my job. The one thing I've always wanted, and I lost it.
“Is she getting better, or worse?” Rosalind asked Sacha. He would never tell her how relieved he was by that simple question of hers; it showed that she herself was coming back. “It’s been two months. I know it’s hard on her, but…But she’s always staring off like that. I’m worried.”
“I know.” He’d been thinking about his mother a lot lately—more, he realized with some guilt, than he thought about his late father. But he knew that it fell on him, the sensitive Danger, to put himself in Ansly’s shoes. “It’s no wonder it’s so hard on her. She grew up before the fallout, and then she came back here to nothing. She had to survive through all that loneliness, had to keep it together for us, and now that Dad’s gone...Maybe it’s just too much.”
“I think you should talk to her.”
He wanted to argue, but he could see her point.
Rosie, you finally start acting like yourself again, and it’s already driving me nuts.
“Mom, how are you—how are you feeling?”
“Oh, just fine. I think I might have a cold, is all.”
“No, I mean, about…Dad.”
“Ah. I should have known I was worrying you kids.”
“No, it’s just me, Mom.”
“Sweetheart,” she said, with a knowing smile, “you think I don’t know by know that they always send you?”
“Sacha, I—I really am fine, in a way. I know I’ve been a bit flighty lately, but it’s nothing dangerous. It’s only that I miss your father. I see him all around, all the time, especially in you and your brother and sisters. I dream about him.” She paused. She had been dreaming about him, vivid dreams in which he came back for her, but that wasn’t all. What she couldn’t tell her son was that her dreams would be coming true very soon.
In a brilliant flash of memory, she thought of reading Jane’s journal, when she was young and stranded and alone—what was it Jane had written? That she would be with Howard, and that would be a relief. Ansly dearly loved her children, but they were grown now, and she had worked so hard for so long—she thought it would be nothing but a relief for her to be with George again.
“Sacha, I don’t want you to worry about me anymore. You have to live your own life. And from all the time you've spent daydreaming and off on your own lately, I'd say you've met a girl."
He blushed.
“Maybe. But Dad—“
“Dad would want you to be happy. And so do I. All right?”
“All right.”
“Good.” She smiled. “Now, I think I need to go have a little talk with Beckett about this drinking—if Rosie hasn’t beat me to it.”
“I thought she said she just had a cold.”
“Maybe she thought she did.”
“Maybe…”
“I think she just didn’t want to worry us.”
“She’s with Dad now.”
“I guess that means—“
“That means we’re on our own.”
