1.09 In Love and War

Previously...

A little girl is born into the Sterling household and she is given the name Primrose. But not all is well. Mort is starting to feel his old age more acutely, and wondering how long he has left with his family. As Primrose gets older, both Tilly and Amelia's friend Laura starts to get anxious to have kids of their own. Amelia of course is the shoulder to cry on when it doesn't "happen", but she is also the first to know when Tilly finally comes with the good news that she is pregnant!

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In her first week of school, Primrose watched and listened and came to a realization. Most of the other children had sisters or brothers. A few of the girls in her class had yelled for their big brothers on the lunch breaks when the boys had pulled their hair or thrown sand at them. And she had overheard a tall, red haired boy tell his friends about his two little sisters, who would join the school the next year. All around her the other kids seemed to have playmates both at school and at home. And it made her feel terribly lonely.

Being taken care of at home by her nanny, she hadn't really spent any extended time in groups of children. At the playground she had never noticed that several children would leave together, with the same adult. So after a few days of deep pondering, the kind that only small children can do, she got out of the school bus and stepped inside the house with a determined look on her face.

Conveniently, Amelia was right there, about to go through to the study.

“Oh, hi sweetie. Did you have a fun day at school? Is Mrs. Colt still teaching you about Simdinavia?” Primrose ignored her questions.

“Mommy. When am I getting a brother or sister?” Amelia stared at her as if she'd just said a swear.

“Prim. What are you talking about?” She laughed uncomfortably. “Mommy's not having a baby. Who told you that?”

“No one.” Primrose answered indifferently, not really understanding what her mother was asking, of course no one had told her. “All the other kids have sisters and brothers. I want one too. To play with when I'm lonely.”

For a few seconds the two of them stared at each other. The daughter with hopeful anticipation in her eyes, the mother with bewilderment and annoyance in hers. Finally she spoke.

“Honey, I'm sorry, but you're not getting a sibling. Mommy and daddy love you so much we don't want any more children. But what about Deric, you know, aunt Laura's son? You haven't seen each other in a while, I can arrange a play date and you can see each other after school? Wouldn't that be fun?” But Primrose didn't seem to be warming up to the idea. In fact, her look had become darker and darker and she now appeared to be moments away from a temper tantrum.

“I can't play with him” she roared “he's just a little baby, I is a big girl now!”

“I am a big girl” her mother corrected her calmly, which naturally only made her more furious.

“You hate kids, you and dad just hate kids and you don want any more 'cause, 'cause, 'cause you hate me!” She ran up the stairs, bawling loudly and a moment later Amelia could hear a door slam shut upstairs.

She sighed and went to tell Mort what had happened. Maybe he could smooth things over.

Mort figured that Primrose would probably need some time to cool down before he went to talk to her. But as he fell asleep on the couch, the moment didn't present itself until way past Primrose's bedtime, when a dazed and yawning Mort sat up and looked around the gloomy living room.

He remembered immediately what he had promised his wife to do and he swiftly tiptoed up the stairs and into the pink explosion of a room. Primrose lay in her bed staring at the ceiling. He knew she was still awake because the room was quiet – lacking her loud snoring.

“Prim...” He began cautiously. “Want me to read you a bed time story? Come down and we'll go to mommy and daddy's bed, you know I can't climb up there.” Prim peered down at him.

“Okay” she said curtly, and climbed down the ladder and followed her father after picking a book from her bookcase. When she had made sure that her mother was deeply asleep, she crawled under the covers and looked up at her dad who was settling down on the bed and opening a worn and tattered book of The Brother's Simm fairy tales.

“Once upon a time-” he began, but Prim cut him off.

“Why don't you want any sisters or brothers?” Mort knew what she meant and looked down at her with a weary smile.

“You know, sweetie... you have a sister. Tilly is your sister, you haven't forgotten about her, have you?” Primrose frowned at him. If he was going to state the obvious then she would just go back to her own bed.

“It's not the same. You know. She's... big.” Mort nodded understandingly. Of course this wasn't a good argument, but he had wanted to remind her all the same.

“Well... to be honest, I never said I didn't want more children. It's really your mother who said she just wanted you.” The moment the words had slipped from him he realized his mistake. How could he say this to his six year old daughter, she wouldn't understand. He could already see the anger and hurt in her eyes.

“But we love you, so much! It's nothing to do with that. She’s just always wanted one child.” He knew that he was stretching the truth a bit, seeing how he had struggled to convince her not to get an abortion. But that would definitely be too big for Prim to understand. He continued more carefully.

“I understand that you want someone to play with. But you know, daddy's old and mommy's got a lot of work. We can't have another baby. But I can be your play mate, okay? Daddy's home a lot lately, right? I will play whatever you want.” They smiled at each other.

“Well, as long as it doesn't involve climbing or running.” He added with a little chuckle. Primrose didn't seem to want to talk about it anymore after this, so Mort continued reading and in a matter of minutes they had both fallen asleep on the bed.

Despite the late night talk, Primrose refused to even look at her mother for days. When they were watching TV she made sure to seat herself as far away from Amelia on the couch as possible and once at dinner, when Mort was napping and couldn't see, she demonstratively took her plate from the counter and sat down to eat at the breakfast table instead.

She even went so far as to refuse her mother's help with some particularly tricky homework, over which she would normally have begged for assistance.

In short, Primrose was in quiet war with her mother. Mort, on the other hand, had stayed in his daughter's good graces and just as promised, they had started spending more time together. Even when Primrose had friends over, she always made sure her dad was invited to play with them.

But when she asked him to join her slumber party, he drew the line and got away with the excuse that his old bones wouldn't agree with sleeping on the floor, which was true enough.

Eventually, as time wore on, Primrose started to acknowledge her mother's presence again and soon enough they were on talking terms. But it was clear to everyone that there was a schism between them and as much as Amelia tried to pretend like everything was peachy, she knew deep down that her little girl had lost both faith and trust in her. As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, she fully realized how much they had drifted apart. The breaking point was when Mort and Primrose, giggling and snickering, came home from the latter's very first ballet recital. An event that no one had even told Amelia about.

One particularly tough evening when Primrose was all tucked into bed, Amelia snuck downstairs and into the still unfurnished dining room, where she stood for a while staring out of the big windows. They were covered with pink roses. The ones that Primrose had helped her plant when she was still a happy, trusting toddler. Who loved her mother. The memories and the loss, which felt very real and adamant to Amelia, crowded her mind and tears started running down her cheeks.

She couldn't stop them, and she didn't want to. She started sobbing into her hands and barely registered the familiar sound of a cane on hard wood echoing into the room.

But she heard him stop in the doorway.

“Oh Mort.” She cried. “She hates me. I'm her mother, and she hates me!” In an instant he was by her side, turning her head with his gentle hands to look at him. Her body followed helplessly.

“She doesn't hate you. She just needs time.” Amelia felt his arms around her and she shook with the sobs.

How strong and secure he still felt to her. He seemed just as young and virile as the first time she had met him. Not old or frail at all. Maybe he was right. Maybe time could heal all wounds.

Even though Primrose was slow to forgive, she had to admit that her mother's idea of having Primrose and Deric become friends wasn't totally off putting. He was a few years younger than her, true, but she noticed with time that the older the both of them got, the smaller the age difference seemed to her. One day when they were playing hopscotch on the lunch break, she asked him if he wanted to come over after school, and he said yes!

Even though she had many other friends to hang out with, this made her little heart flutter for a moment. She didn't know why, and payed attention to it only for a moment before her thoughts shifted to the more pressing matter of how she was going to fit both jump roping and swinging into the few minutes that were left before the bell would ring.

Primrose spent the afternoon showing Deric all around her house and garden.

“Wow, it's so big!” she heard him say more than once. She had never been to the Kinleys' house but by the sound of it they didn't have more than three or four rooms. Primrose was a humble child so she ended the tour by asking if Deric wanted to play catch. Surely showing off her brand new gaming system wouldn't make him feel any better, she thought. So catch it was, for a good twenty minutes, before they both keeled over on the grass.

“Wow” Deric panted. It seemed to be his favorite word. “That was fun! I didn't know girls could run that fast.”

“Oh yeah? Well I can probably swim faster than you, too!” Primrose retorted quickly.

“You're on!” And the next hour and a half was spent swimming, splashing and laughing in the pool while Amelia watched anxiously from the kitchen window.

When Laura came to take Deric home, the two children begged to have a little more time to play.

And Laura, who was bursting with gossip, assented happily and took Amelia by the arm, whispering and mumbling excitedly as the kids ran back to the pool.

“Oh, and you have to hear this!” Laura exclaimed a bit later when Amelia thought there couldn't possibly be any more news to tell. They had retreated to the hot tub on the hill. From there they had a good view of the children but they could still talk undisturbed.

Laura went on telling Amelia of the latest office romance at Mineor Incorporated. The latter cringed uncomfortably, her fingers itching to pick up the phone and give the people in question a good lecture. But she had promised Laura to pretend that she didn't know, and besides, wouldn't it be a bit hypocritical of her? She had married her boss, the owner of the company, after all. As it got dark outside and Laura was getting ready to go home, the two mothers lingered in the study, talking in hushed voices as the kids were playing video games in the living room.

“Hey, I think Deric likes Prim quite a bit.” Laura whispered to her friend. “He's never played this well with anyone before.” Amelia smiled. How nice it would be if her best friend's kid was the best friend of hers.

“Well, if they want to they can have a sleepover. If it's okay with you? Prim has a ballet recital tomorrow, but that's not until the afternoon and we could drop Deric off on the way there. Do you think he'd like that?”

“Oh, I'm sure he would, let's go tell them!” Just as they had anticipated, the two youngsters were over the moon and immediately ran upstairs to dig out a sleeping bag and some of Primrose's old pajamas pants from the closet. They had a good, long pillow fight before going to bed, and then they lay talking in the dark for quite a while before they finally drifted off to sleep.

The next morning Deric happily acted audience as Prim rehearsed for her recital.

And even if she hadn't quite gotten the hang of it all yet, Deric cheered her on enthusiastically as if she'd been a professional.

If there was something that Primrose did have a knack for, it was painting. That had become more and more clear both by the paintings on the fridge and the quarterly parent-teacher-meetings at school. So for her eighth birthday, an easel and paints galore was the obvious present. Primrose, who by this age was used to the polite and friendly, but deep down emotionless relationship between her and her mother, hugged and thanked both of her parents profusely and immediately started looking for a good spot to put her new gift. At last she figured that it would be very nice to be painting outside. “The twittering of the birds and the play of the shadows and light will make me more creative” she thought contently and started painting.

Soon it became clear that no gift could have been better. The self-proclaimed little artist spent all of her free time in the garden, painting. Sometimes her motifs were real world things, like her father's face or the flowers in the garden.

Other times she would paint fantastical sights or big, pink fluffy monsters.

She liked variety and tried new techniques with great enthusiasm. But one day, the brush in her hand seemed to move on its own. It dipped into the different colors and swept across the canvas fiercely. When she finally stepped back and took a look at her work, she grit her teeth. In an instant the old anger and hurt bubbled up in her again. And just then she didn’t feel like playing along and acting like nothing was bothering her. Even though she didn't want to start a fight, mostly for her father's sake, she could surely use this painting to stir the pot of her mother's emotions. She hung the barely dried painting on the living room wall and looked at it with a last scrutinizing gaze.

A big family of smiling faces. All the kids being able to play with each other and never being lonely. Just what she had wanted. Just what her mother had kept her from having.

Later in the evening Primrose was rewarded with the sight of Amelia setting eyes on the painting for the first time. Primrose could see in her expression that the entire meaning was registering. The knowing that even though the battle might have been won, the war wasn't over. Of course, she wasn't an evil child, she didn't relish in the agony of others. But the wounds of her childhood and of the betrayal she had felt were so infected, still, that she couldn't look back on it with clear eyes. Any other eight-year-old might have been able to at least partially see things from her mother's perspective. As it was, though, Primrose was determined to blame her begrudging, unfeeling mother and all she yearned for was to rebel against her.

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I know, this chapter was aaall about Prim. But what can I say... She's the heir, so she's my main focus right now. Yeah, you probably figured out that there won't be any more kids in this generation, so no vote will be neccessary. I realize I skipped both Tilly and Laura's pregnancies, but there are some pictures on the “What You Didn't See”-page.

/Alexandra 

Psst! Can you guess what Prim's new trait is? The clearest hint is right at the end of the chapter...

Laura's baby Deric.

Amelia and a pregnant Tilly cooking together.

And here is Tilly's baby boy Donnel with his mother, Amelia and Primrose.

Primrose going around town on her bike.

A cute picture of Mort and Amelia in the hottub.

"Mr. Photographer, give us a moment, I think there's a little fight brewing here, and we wouldn't want a picture of that, now would we?"