Dancing with Shadows

Addy

The night before my brother leaves for college (also known as the day before I start my senior year of high school), we sit down to a hearty dinner, courtesy of my mother's newly acquired passion for all things food. Mom obsesses over things until she doesn't anymore. Last month it was sewing and weeks before that she had taken up painting only to end up stacking half-finished faces on canvases in the attic.

"Is that all she does?" Brick leans in from his side of the much too small two-seater. It squeaks from the weight of his body shifting.

"No," I look back at the kitchen where she's no longer in sight. "She just likes that you're home." I say this partly because it is true, but mostly because he's giving me that look that makes me want to tell him all of my secrets and I really wish he wouldn't. "Besides, let's be honest. You could use the extra bulk." 

He considers this and I suppose it pleases him because he turns his attention back to the men huddling around a football on the television. A whistle is blown and they all scramble for the ball like a pack of ruffians.

The dinner features copious amounts of roast chicken and stuffed potatoes. Cheese oozes from the potatoes and sticks to the roof of my mouth. It's hard to speak with hot cheese melting in your mouth but that is not the sole reason for the deafening silence that has overtaken the table.

Mom drinks more than she eats and dad judges her. I think Brick does too. It's hard to tell when no one is actually speaking. She decides after her fourth glass that she is extremely sad that Brick is leaving.

"I'm sad son," she starts, her voice laced with intoxication.

Dad says: Lay off the wine Carol.

Then mom says: But I'm sad. She says it matter-of-factly, like its the most natural feeling in the world. To be sad, I mean. And in more ways than one, I think it is.

Dad says: You won't get any less sad from drinking all of the wine in the state. Hell you might just run out of alcohol.

He says it to his plate and screws his lips disapprovingly.

Then mom says: Yeah well until then.

She toasts an imaginary audience and lazily lowers the bottle to her lips, disregarding all together the need for a glass.

Eggshells. We walk around eggshells in this house. It's been that way for a while now.

"She just needs to rest," Brick interjects wearily.

That's when dad pushes his chair back. His frame towers over the table. My father is a colossally big man. His shoulders are broad and rounded like he spends all his days carrying so much of the world. He stares down at us and I imagine us all getting engulfed by the tempest that is himself. For a moment, it looks like he might say something but he just murmurs to himself and walks out the door, slamming it shut behind him. The house shakes in his wake. It's his turn to run the bar downtown out of business. Or at least, he's going to try.

A somber Brick helps mom to her room and I'm left with the remnants of the failed attempt at a normal family dinner.  I clear out the table and retire to my room long after everyone has left.

From my room, I can hear mom's sobs through the thin walls. Brick is with her in the next room, making hushing sounds. I start to think about how he shouldn't have to be home comforting his mother on his last night in town. I think about dad and how he's ironically sitting at a bar somewhere lining one cigarette after another and washing down his acrimony with ill tasting beer. I wonder if he stays there until morning when they have to tell him to leave, and I think about how lonely that must be. And once I start, I cannot not worry about my mother. I think about how she's getting bad again. When she gets bad she has to go away. The last time she was gone for weeks on end. Her sister, Gia, had to come stay with us. I don't like staying with my Aunty Gia. She smells like Earl Grey and mildew. But worst worst of all, is her unduly fixation with deep frying every single article of food, which admittedly, is fine- until it's the second week and I start to feel my heart begging me for food that isn't dunked in oil.