3. Brooke
3
***Brooke***
M y mom had always loved to live up to her name. Crazy Daisy. To be fair, her mother hadn’t given her the Crazy part, but it stuck so hard that she might as well have. Crazy Daisy and her sister Nutty Karlene were infamous around Beaumont and the surrounding communities. Aunt Karlene because of her insistence that she was psychic and Mom because she was never far behind her sister with a swift kick to anyone who made Karlene feel bad. Not that Mom wasn’t nuts in her own right. She’d dressed like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith since the early nineties and she’d never met a man, or a tree, that she couldn’t climb. When I was a kid the mayor of Beaumont at the time had tried to get a law passed about Mom climbing trees around town because she liked to jump down and scare the shit out of people.
Despite Mom being absolutely bananas, she was a good mom and always had been. She and Aunt Karlene had parented me together since my dad walked out when I was just a baby. Asshole that he was. It was only once I was older that I realized why Mom and Aunt Karlene passed me back and forth so much. Both women had wildly active sex lives. I’d never known anyone my own age who had sex like they did. It was mindboggling and, as an adult, exhausting. My thighs burned just thinking about the amount of cowgirl and reverse cowgirl they talked about.
Knowing all of that, I shouldn’t have just let myself into Mom’s house. The ranch style yellow house with the rope fence and single palm tree out front was deceptively quiet and calm from the outside. As soon as I opened the front door, however, it was pure chaos. For the second time that day I walked in on someone getting screwed, only it was my mother the second time.
I screamed, unable to contain my horror, and spun around as I tried to forget everything I’d just witnessed. The bare ass of an older man, my mom’s naked legs, hands gripping things that I couldn’t think about, it was too much. “Why on the coffee table?!”
“Brooklyn Diane Monroe! Where Jimmy and I have sex is none of your business! What are you doing here? And-oh, god, what are you wearing? Did you do it? Did you marry that donkey’s dick?” Mom’s voice rose higher and higher until I was pretty sure everyone at the marina down the street could hear her.
“I didn’t marry him. I came here to stay for a while but we’re going to have to burn that coffee table.” I shuddered. I wanted to close the door to stop all the neighbors from hearing our conversation but I couldn’t force myself to close myself in with the two naked oldies.
“No, no, no. Jimmy and I are just starting our relationship and we can’t do it at his house because he’s got dogs that like to watch and a cat that wants to slap dangling things.” She didn’t give me time to digest that, thank god. “I told you about that monkey’s swollen anus, Brooke. I told you he was a piece of scum, did I not? What’d he do? Or did you just decide to listen to your Aunt Karlene for a change? She told you you weren’t supposed to marry that swollen testicle. She told you and I told you.”
I stared up at the sky and frowned. “Why did you give me this burden to bear, God? Why?”
“Brooklyn Diane! I know you’re not really talking to God! You’re a heathen!”
“You don’t know! Maybe I got religious while I was away!” I swore as I realized I’d been sucked into a typical Monroe woman crazy-off. “Dammit. Are you seriously not going to let me stay here?”
“I’m serious! Jimmy and I have needs, Brooke. Go stay with your Aunt Karlene. She’s been missing you. You can help her with the business while you’re there, too. She’s been so busy since she started her ClikTok. The kids just love her!”
The hell I was staying with Aunt Karlene. “I’m going to remember this moment when you’re old and need changing your adult diaper.”
“You’re going to change my diaper just like I changed yours and you’re not going to bitch about it, either! No daughter of mine is going to be a shitty caretaker for her own mother. Do you know what I had to do when your gramma got old? Do you? I had to spread her cheeks and-”
“Bye! See you later!” I hurriedly slammed the door shut and leaned against it. What the hell was I going to do?
Rolling my head to the side, I stared down Front Beach Road and sighed. I could see the flashing Vacancy sign in front of The Snazzy Motel from where I stood. It was a hippies haven when it was first built in the late sixties, I was sure, but no one had touched it since. A free love movement had gone through that motel and it smelled like it had. Between staying at the motel and with Aunt Karlene, who would inevitably upload a video of my bare ass to her TikTok, I chose the free love dumpster fire.
One floor of rooms, The Snazzy Motel was painted bright orange and had paintings of things like smiley faces, peace signs, and even a few flowers spread out randomly around the front of the building. The front office was an affront to every sense I had when I opened the door. The strong odor of skunk weed, the blinding neon colors on the walls, and the thick shag carpeting underfoot made me want to cry a little. It was just…a lot.
My feet sank into the carpet as I walked over to the desk but the man behind it still heard me coming. He was an older man with a handlebar mustache wider than his entire body and his grin stretched almost as wide when he looked me over. “I believe you might be having a worse day than I was when the government took my driver’s license away. You need a room or an exorcism, girlie?”
I huffed. “Which one’s cheaper?”
He twirled one side of his mustache and picked up a joint with his other hand. Nodding to it, he raised his brows. “You mind?”
“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” I shook my head when he offered me the joint. “The day I’m having? That’d be laced with poison and I’d fall dead right here and now.”
“What dumb fuck let you slip away? You’re a peach.” He held up a room key. “For you? Fifty a night, no tax. Friends and family discount.”
“If I didn’t think there was a possibility you’d already slept with my mother, I’d kiss you.” I slipped him a fifty and took the key.
“Who’s your momma?”
I smirked. “Crazy Daisy.”
He had the decency to blush. “Best two weeks of my life.”
“I believe you. She’s the real peach. Right now, I’m pretty sure I’m just the pit.” I shook the key and backed away. “Thank you.”
As I walked out, he shouted at me. “You’re more than the pit, baby! You’re a whole peach! You’re going to be the whole goddamn tree for some lucky guy! Not me, on account of I slept with your momma, but someone!”
A passing family glared at me like I’d been the one screaming it. Ignoring them, I made my way to room three and let myself in. It took me a second to find the light switch and when I did, I nearly crawled out of my skin. A roach skittered past me on the floor and I nearly killed myself trying to get back outside.
“Not a chance in hell.” I shuddered and rubbed my hands up and down my arms, trying to get the sensation that bugs were crawling over my skin to go away. I was considering Aunt Karlene’s place when I thought about Logan’s card. I couldn’t. That would be crazy.
I closed my eyes and blew out a deep breath. The crazy didn’t fall far from the tree, that was for sure.