Chapter 3

The kitchen had emptied some time later and only Amy sat still eating, working at her third serving. She was chewing slowly a sign that she was growing tired.

She sighed, knowing that the rule was: to take extra food was to eat extra food. She reluctantly shoved the last bit of lettuce into her mouth and watched Bryan and Silver at the other island, gathering up their dishes. She watched them as they carried them to the sink and began doing the dishes by hand.

Dish washing was a ritual that had been a part of the couple's evening since its inception. Every night they would stand at the sink, laughing and joking, one would wash, one would dry.

Amy watched them silently, chewing slowly. Bryan turned on a nearby radio and they hummed along with the music, washing the dishes. Presently Silver bumped her hip into Bryan on purpose, who turned and wiped soap suds on her nose. She laughed, then lashed out at his arm grasping a pinch of arm hair and twisting. He howled then pulled himself in closer, one hand lovingly on her cheek, the other full of soap bubbles.

Seeing that she was outgunned Silver began back-pedaling, attempting to form a truce before the battle went nuclear. She smiled sweetly and in on swift motion locked lips with him.

The maneuver had the prescribed effect. Silver averted a face full of dish soap. However, still not quite distracted, Bryan brought the hand around and splattered the soap between her shoulder blades. She squealed, in a mix of mock anger and frustration, mixed with a hint of humor and pleasure, the latter because of the kiss.

The songs changed and a slow song that they seemed to recognize came on. Hardly changing position the pair began to sway to the rhythm and very soon they were actively dancing in the kitchen. Bodies close, his hand on her cheek, looking into the eyes, looking into their souls. Lips parted only by a fraction of an inch.

It was at that time that Silver turned in time to the music and the splotch of soap bubbles came into Amy's view. The little girl, watching like a fly on the wall, giggled.

As two sets of eyes fell on her, Amy became suddenly aware that her presence hadn't been noticed. She swallowed the contents of her mouth, hopped down off her barstool, and carried her plate, cup, and fork over to the sink. Silver and Bryan watched her as she walked by, seemingly ignoring them as if she hadn't witnessed their antics. She then walked calmly to the door. When she got to about three feet from the door, her nerves overcame her and she scurried out like she had been scolded.

Behind her she could hear Bryan and Silver laughing to themselves at having been caught playing around and at the reaction of their youngest. "Busted!" she heard Bryan say as she rounded huge central fireplace and made a beeline down the hallway toward her room.

The children's rooms were separate from the rest of the house. They resided in a wing that sat uphill from the rest of the house to the Northwest. Down a long hallway, lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling she rounded the corner at the end and climbed the short flight of steps up into the common area.

The commons, as the room was known, was the first room that anyone came to when they visited the children's area. It encompassed the entire front of the wing, followed by two restrooms, one on each side of a hallway leading away toward the west side of the house. On either side of the hallway were three doors, containing the six bedrooms for the kids.

The commons itself was actually made up of two rooms. The first was at the first floor level, and it contained most of the furniture. Areas had been set up for specific purposes, such as the reading area where most of the kids' books were housed and served as a nook off of the rest of the room. A daybed sat there, covered in fluffy pillows and comfortable mattress. On cold winter days there would usually be at least one child lying back enjoying a good book.

Another area was a table with chairs around it. Normally any crafts or games that were attempted in the house were done so at that table. Sometimes the kids played among themselves, sometimes the parents joined as well.

In one corner of the commons was the laundry room. As the children got older, there was a push by Bryan and Silver to get them to take care of themselves. As such they had their own laundry facilities and everyone down to Amy had the procedure of how to do their laundry ingrained. Self-sufficiency was built into the kids because without it, such a busy household would be in a constant state of chaos.

Since the commons was two stories tall, with wide clerestory windows in the high gables above, there was space above the children's rooms and the two bathrooms. This loft, to which there was a staircase, served as the area for the television and any other entertainment equipment. Several bits of soft, threadbare, secondhand furniture clustered around the television in a semicircle. Dark curtains adorned the windows in that end, an attempt to minimize the glare.

The children each had their own room, but they were small and compacted, arranged to be highly space efficient. Each room was little more than a cubicle. Each room had a built in bunk bed (with an extra bunk for sleepovers), a built in desk, a window seat, and built-in storage. The amount of floor space was minimal, but the rooms were designed for sleeping, quiet study, and privacy, not for playing and exercising.

To alleviate the claustrophobic feel that such a small space could elicit, the ceilings were high and there were mirrors in nearly any open wall space, creating the illusion that the room was larger than it actually was. For activities which required extended space, the children had the commons.

Bryan had kept the rooms small to be utilitarian and Spartan and promote the children's interaction and playing together. Only Maggie, who was well into her teenage years, was reclusive enough to stay in her room for anything except dressing and sleeping.

Amy found the room a bustle of activity. Camie came out of the girl's bathroom wrapped in a towel and, smiling to herself, skipped down the hall, her bare feet leaving wet footprints behind her on the tile floor. She turned at her room, second on the left and closed the door behind her.

Jake and David were sitting at the game table, their hair wet, wearing pajama pants and no shirts, assembling something from Legos. It was clear that they had taken showers earlier and were waiting for the rest to finish. Maggie was sitting on one of the nearby sofas, her laptop unfolded in her lap, likely chatting with friends. From within the boys' bathroom the sound of running water could be heard.

Amy stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her and peeled her clothes off, putting them into the hamper nearby with her name on it. She touched the black lettering on the lid, knowing it was her name, though reading it was well beyond her abilities. She looked at the dial outside the shower and turned it to the indicator with her name on it. The correct temperature of water fell, automatically adjusted to meet her wishes set when Bryan had programmed it.

She climbed in, rubbed the body wash from a dispenser onto her skin, and held her head back so that the water would not splatter onto her face. A similar dispenser gave her shampoo and she washed it out of her hair, squishing her eyes closed to keep the soap out.

Stepping out she took her towel down from the hanger by the door and wiped her face, careful not to tangle her hair. She wrapped the towel around her the best she could, tucking it under her arms and opened the door.

She found that Alexander had dressed in pajamas and joined the other two boys in assembling whatever it was that they were creating. She turned and walked down the hall, the cold tile feeling slightly gritty beneath her bare feet.

Her door was the first on the left, the closest to the bathroom. She pushed it open and stepped inside her room. Sitting down across from her bed on the chair at her desk, she focused herself in front of her mirror, making faces.

She used the towel to try and draw some of the water out of her hair. She frowned at the thought of how Bryan would fluff it up with the towel and make it all ratty when he helped her dry off. She would spend hours with a comb tearfully picking the rats out of her baby-fine hair.

At least Bryan tried to take care of it, she thought. She looked in the mirror as she brushed the hair out long and straight. Her mother, though a former beautician, had never paid much attention to Amy's hair unless it came time to transfer custody to her father. It was only in those times that she would try and straighten the tiny wisps of strawberry blonde hair. Typically when that occurred Amy's mother would spend half an hour with a comb forcefully removing knots, despite the apparent pain.

As such, Amy at age four, was obsessed with keeping her appearance and especially her hair neat and tidy. She finished brushing the hair straight to the best of her four-year-old ability.

Behind Amy on a nearby wall was a picture of her mother which she could see in the mirror.

Satisfied that she had done all that she was able for her hair, she put on her pajamas. Dressed for bed, she left the solitary confines of her room. She found Maggie still reading and sat down silently by her initiating their night-time ritual. Maggie sat up, took the comb and pony-tail holders from Amy and set her hair into two pigtails. Amy sat stoically, her normally cheery personality subdued by the somber thought of her mother and her tired little body's cries for sleep.

In a way Amy missed her mom, but in ways her four year-old mind couldn't understand or define she was relieved to live with her dad. Something about him always seemed to define stability and safety in her mind. He was so real, so sincere, so completely totally genuine, all concepts that she understood, even if the words were foreign. Something about Dad just brought about a warm cheery feeling inside, something that wasn't there when she was with her mom.

She didn't hate her mom, also something that was not within her ability to describe, but she did have a certain unease when it came to the woman, never trusting her completely, always exasperated by the inattentiveness and indifference that she displayed.

Sometime later the family found themselves sprawled out around the hearth of the fireplace. The fireplace was a large stone and concrete column in the center of the house, its firebox facing toward the western wall of the family room. The fireplace was eight feet across and rose to over twenty feet into the air, supporting the heavy oak beams which came from every direction to rest their heavy loads.

The fireplace technically was a masonry stove, meaning that the fire was contained, if still visible, and that the heat was distributed through the large mass of stonework and radiated heat long after the fire had extinguished. Typically a four hour fire would heat most of the structure for at least a day, maybe more depending on the outside ambient temperature. Fanning out from the fire box in an enclosed circle were long low benches constructed of stone. With pillows these benches were the optimum place to lay and watch the flames, letting the warmth radiate from the benches and the stone floor while watching the flames and talking.

As a night time ritual, to promote the relaxation before bed, the family would gather there and let the fire burn, listening to either Bryan or Silver read a book aloud. On this night Silver was reading one of the "Little House on the Prairie" books. Her voice recited the words, sounding to Bryan like the most beautiful music, while the firelight danced off her face. Between the ambiance and the silky words of his beloved unfolded the pioneer world of over a century before as though he was there. Childrens faces, smooth as glass, their bodies sprawled out before him seemed as if in a trance.

The quiet crackle of the fire emanated from the fire box, the radiation of the warmth from the stone itself and the spilling of words from the pages lulled them all into a semi-daze, the moment morphing into something beyond time. Bodies and minds eased. The senses dulled and before long Silver was saying : "And that is the end of the chapter. Time for bed kiddos."

They pulled themselves up, stretching, yawning, and in stumbling rambling steps made their separate ways to their beds.