Alexander's Gift

The Soldier- 5

Dick's first dinner with his parents after being discharged from the army was an event that he knew must happen, but that in one part of his mind he didn't particularly want to happen. After having not seen his parents for so long, he knew that he should want to see them, but it seemed as if the opposite happened- it was like he had cut ties with that part of his life, and to come back to that part felt like moving backwards. 

He wasn't sure what to expect when he first walked through the familiar darkly-stained, double french doors leading into his parents' house, but it wasn't that he would feel more like an honored guest than their son. For some reason that seemed more innate than rational, it was like he was a stranger to them- and them to him- so that everyone treated each other delicately formally. 

As they sat around the table that seemed much longer than was really practical so that he was sitting five feet away from each of his parents, Dick took his time to neatly fold his napkin in his lap and take in what dishes were on the table. When he finally glanced up, briskly rubbing his hands together and ready to eat a meal that was bound to make up for the hundreds of crappy military ones, he found his parents gazing at him in consternation. Puzzled, Dick looked down at himself- he was dressed right, wasn't he? And he hadn't broken any unbroken rules- his elbows weren't on the table. "What's wrong?" He finally asked, and as if frightened, his parents both hurriedly shook their heads and began scooping out food onto their plates. 

With a strange anxiety building within him as he became increasingly unsure of what to expect, Dick loosened his tie slightly before dishing out some green beans onto the corner of his plate to serve as a barrier for the oily juices of the chicken.

The first two minutes of eating were wordless, the cavernous room filled with just muted chewing and the scrape of a fork against a plate- it seemed to Dick that both he and his parents had many things they wanted to say, only they weren't sure if it was the right time or the right thing to say. Besides, the first comment was always the setter of the pace and direction of a conversation. No one wanted to blemish the record.

Finally Dick's dad set down his fork and cleared his throat deeply before turning to Dick with thickly furrowed brows set above dark, guarded eyes. "How do you feel, my boy?" 

Dick paused in his chewing, taken aback. When had his dad last posed a question about the way he felt? Never was the answer. "Peachy." 

Exchanging a dismayed glance with Dick's mother, his dad cleared his throat again as if mustering the voice to speak. "I mean, how are you . . . adjusting to being out of the army, Dick?" 

"Just fine, really. I wake up too early in the morning and oddly enough sort of miss wearing my uniform, but other than that I'm glad I'm back." Dick tried to smile at his parents reassuringly, but confusion was written over both of their faces. They must have been told how to deal with a son who came back traumatized from the war, not a son who was perfectly alright. 

It wasn't until the very end of dessert, when Dick had just scraped the last smidgeon of apple pie off of his plate, that the veil of things to be left unspoken and essentially pretended to not exist in the conversation was torn down brutally and with one abrupt swipe from his mom's tongue. "How well did you know that Hunter boy?"

Both Dick and his dad froze in their seats, all feelings of security gone as to where the conversation could and could not go, and illusions shattered as to events that would be left mentionless and that one could pretend never happened in the first place. Finally Dick snapped from his trance and carefully wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin and set the napkin carefully down on his plate before looking up and saying coolly, "Not very well, mom. Now I thank you both for the dinner- it was delicious- and if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go to bed. I'm very tired from my travels."