The Best of Us

eight

OCTOBER. 2014.

THERE WAS SOMETHING sitting in my mom's chair. A dull shadow was hanging in her space and the patch of air where she should've been seemed heavier, like there was some invisible creature waiting for us to notice it. When I looked at her chair, I felt it looking back at me. Thomas and dad never seemed to notice it, the warning that lingered in the tight, thickening air. When my stomach was turning and my skin was starting to burn, a hot tingle across the back of my neck, I was still waiting for them to notice, but if they knew it was there then they were choosing to pretend it wasn't.

Dinner at our house was nothing like dinner at Bradley's or Heaven's or Layla's where they sat around the dining table every night with their families, talking about their days or discussing a news event or a movie they'd seen. Sometimes I joined Bradley and his family for dinner and, before he moved back in, I would join Thomas and his roommate at their apartment. If I was eating at home, I either ate silently or stiffly with dad at the kitchen table or ate alone. Some dinners with him were easier than others. There were times when he was in good spirits and I was able to laugh with him, but I knew better than to make that kind of evening the expectation.

Since Thomas had moved back in, eating alone became the new standard. Dad spent a lot of time at work, in his home office or socialising with his coworkers and Thomas spent a lot of time doing whatever he was always doing. Working, sleeping, working some more, sleeping some more and trying to maintain a social life. So, other than the rare times in the last five weeks that one of them might join me, I usually ate alone or didn't eat at all.

It was rare for us to eat in the dining room; the smaller, more casual kitchen table made more sense when there were only two of us living at home. Dad mostly used the dining room for when he invited over coworkers or family friends that I had apparently known very well in my formative years and, of course, we had used it every night when mom was around.

But apparently the kitchen was insufficient when he had something to discuss and I knew we were only using the dining room because of the way Thomas— not that I blamed him— had been acting. There was only one thing that unsettled me more than his anger and it was his lethargy. Apparently, dad was as bothered by his behaviour the last week as I was, but I was guessing for reasons that were much different.

So the dining room it was. Six plush, cream dining chairs with tall, dark wooden legs around a dark wooden table; mahogany floors and bookshelf; cream walls and a cream rug. The only other colors came from the paintings hung on the wall; copies of Monet's Woman with a Parasol and Sorolla's My Wife and Daughters in the Garden.

I had been prompt to show up because dad had called me to tell me that he wanted us to eat together when he was home. Thomas had shown up late because he'd been sleeping upstairs and had stumbled in a few minutes after we were already sitting down, his plate waiting. I shot him a look when he arrived but he either didn't see me or didn't feel like acknowledging me.

"Have you spoken to your roommate?" Dad asked curtly, breaking the silence that Thomas brought in with him. His eyebrows were raised and his dark blue eyes were dangerously vacant as he cut into his dinner. It was a question that he already knew the answer to and he asked it as such. It was no more a question than a trap. He was good at those. It was the whole reason we were even sitting together.

"No," Thomas muttered, pushing his food around like a stubborn child. Neither of them bothered to look at the other. I was looking at both of them; Thomas across from me, in front of the Monet painting, and dad at the head of the table, between us.