Staccato

The Gift of Love

We're done with dinner, and sit around in the family room.

Dad has just returned from Japan; he brought nunchucks and katanas and Leon and Louie are having a field day as they jump around all over the sofas and make an utter racket.

They're pretty noisy; actually, they're the worst behaved kids in the current batch of seventh grade.

"Hey watch me do the uzura-gakure!" Leon comes flying from somewhere to my right and lands on his ass in front of me on the floor.

"And the hiiitsuke!" Louie falls over Leon and tries to choke him with the nunchucks.

"Hey, hey, now," our dad says as he sits there on the sofa with mom. They were quietly talking to each other until that point. "Ninjas are supposed to be silent, c'mon." he says, shaking his head at them.

It falls on deaf ears. They scramble up and move on to the next manoeuvre.

Lilly sits next to me, playing something on her Nintendo DS. I look at her, making a disgusted face; Leon and Louie are an indistinguishable, rolling heap on the floor. Lilly shakes her head with an exaggeratedly disgusted expression. She is in sixth grade. She is the most sensible one among us kids. Well, I like to think she is. Mom says I am the most sensible. Or maybe it's just her taking extra care to not make me feel left out.

"Daddy," Laurie says. "What's the meaning of astral? Les says it means an ass on fire." And Les is a sassy fourth grader.

Mom admonishes with a "Leslie!" and dad makes a disapproving expression, bringing a hand to his mouth in astonishment but I think it's only to hide a laugh.

"Why did you blab it? Ugh." Les blows curly hair from her eyes and leans back angrily, folding her arms.

"It means something that's related to the stars, Laurie."

I see the logo everywhere. A tiny six pointed star and 'Astral Corp' written elegantly under it. It's on our computers, and on that tv commercial with green fields and the Earth and a woman's voice saying something about 'clean energy', and on another tv commercial which has handsome men wearing suits busily walking on the streets of New York and going to offices and doing something important in their glass cubicles and a lot of other cool important things grown-ups do and then when it ends the logo quickly appears with a short techy music.

It's my dad's company.

And something related to stars reminds me-

"Is it okay if Efrim comes over? I asked him to."

Mom has stopped talking to dad mid-sentence and dad looks at me with renewed interest.

I wonder if I said something wrong because dad frowns in mild surprise, and mom looks a little uncomfortable and looks away from him.

"Efrim is in the same class as Noah?" dad asks her, a little apologetically.

Mom looks at him, that ever-present jovial air about her a little diminished. "Yeah." she lets him know.

And I frown.

"What?" I say in a small voice.

"Oh, but isn't he a year older?" dad asks mom.

"Well maybe they put him a year late I guess, I don't know." mom says, avoiding looking at dad and instead observing her fingernails.

"Well," dad heaves a sigh, as though clearing things in his head. "Ask your mom." he says, handing it over to her.

Mom shrugs and upturns her hands slightly, gesturing a why-is-this-on-me look. But then she says "Yep!", shrugging. "I'm okay with it." she nods casually.

When she looks at me, though, her face clears, and she only smiles lovingly. "When d'you plan to invite him over?"

"Um." And just like that, my thoughts race noisily like a bunch of racing cars! I am already thinking of all the things me and Efrim can do together! "Tomorrow?"

Mom inclines her head and waves a hand down in an elegant salute, like she is bowing to a royalty. "However you wish, my prince."

And I laugh.

I slip down the sofa, run over to her, climb up on the sofa and circle my arms around her neck; she lets out a peep, I'm yelling 'yay', her silky black hair gets all mussed but she tilts her head and presses a sound smack to my cheek.

Dad looks infinitely pleased, like he just received a horde of Christmas presents.

~*~

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