All the Little Things

When the moments come, they do so quietly, as though they never meant to stop by at all.

From the car trunk come the groceries, paper bags overflowing with meat and fruit and wine, store-fresh flowers for the table, perhaps a watermelon. To enter the house is to descend the driveway and pass through an old gate, its shuttering belabored by the crowding weeds, then to cross the open patio. The bird-baths murmur gentle greetings. Wind spins music from the over-arching trees. Place your paper bags down on the doormat and turn the knob — this door is always open — and hold still for the embrace that is coming whether you want it or not.

The kitchen is shelves of golden wood over a floor made to match, and the laminate tops are too yellow to be white, and the island is bumps of brown tile. The stovetop and the rack above it are a brown kind of black. If you open the cabinets, you will find stacks of yellow plates, rows of eggshell cups, aisles of textured glasses. The lights above are yellow, and the yellow-white ceiling is crossed by golden-wood beams.

It is, all of it, warm by design, so that when you walk on the warm floors and place your paper bags on the warm counters, you feel it is your duty to keep from quivering of the cold.

Your father greets your mother with an arm around the back and a kiss on the cheek. Your mother smiles. They have been bitterly divorced for over a decade. Every time they dance this way, you think yourself a child again, and you wonder what you would pay for this to no longer feel a game.

The butcher knife is heavy in your hands. It slides through vegetables, clean as anything, and their juices stain the light wooden board. Oil skitters on the pan beside you. Of course, some of it spatters on your clothes, and some of it stings your bare arms, but the skit of it is music to your ears when the speakers, armed with Alexa and the infinite libraries within, are silent.

Your mother laughs. Your father ducks his head and smiles. You snap the last cucumber in half, brush your work into the mixing bowl, and search for forks with which to whisk the salad.

“Hey boys,” you call, over the sound of oil and laughter and the absence of warmth, “could you set the table?”

“Five more minutes, I’m almost done.”

“You’ve been playing for hours.”

“I know. I’m almost done. Look, all I have to do is—” He pauses, his eyes alight and his tongue sticking out, as an explosion echoes tinnily from the screen— “Okay, I’m dead.”

“It’s ‘cause you suck,” his brother says.

“I mean, you’re kind of supposed to die on that level, it’s actually designed—”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause you suck,” the brother hoots again, pitching his voice low to resonate as he reaches for the dishes. “How many?”

“What, did you forget how to count—”

“Oh! Oh! Oh my arm, I broke it, I can’t count ‘cause my arm hurts so bad—”

“He’s just being stupid,” he says, and his brother swats him with a spatula.

“No fighting in my kitchen,” you say.

“It’s mom’s kitchen,” the brother says. “You don’t even live here anymore.”

The ceiling of the dining room is another floor up, tucked into the angles of the roof. White beams cross where a proper ground floor ceiling would be. From them hang dining lights, five cones of glass and steel, and the boys swing the cones back and forth like they hope to hit something.

“Stop that,” your mother says, sat where she is at the head of the table and armed with her first glass of wine. “You’re going to break something.”

“Yeah, Brother. You’re going to break something,” the brother says.

He makes a face. “You were doing it first.”

“So?”

“So, you’re going to break something too.”

“No, I’m not. You’re just stupid.”

“Hey!” your mother says.

“Boys, please. Let’s try to be nice,” your father says, sat where he is to the left of your mother, in the seat meant for your mother’s right hand. It had once been your seat. Lately, you have taken to placing the meat platters there, and relegated yourself to hiding behind the farther salad bowl.

“Yeah, Brother. Be nice,” the brother says.

“You’re the one not being nice!”

Your father holds the platter aloft. “Boys, please. Any meat for you?”

“Yes, please,” he says, while his brother simply reaches over to stab with his fork. Your father allows it, even angles the platter to make it easier. You spoon salad onto your yellow plate and watch the dressing puddle up beneath your greens.

“Salad, anyone?” you say, and the brother says, “Ew, gross.”

“You have to eat your vegetables.”

“Oh! Oh! My arm!” The brother slides beneath the table. “I’m slipping!”

You smile. “Vegetables are good for you.”

“I can’t hear you! I’m slipping!”

“Guys, come on.” Your mother pours more wine. Her lip has curled. She sounds upset, and the boys hasten to sit up. “I worked so hard to get us all together today. Can we just have a nice dinner, please?”

“Do we have orange juice?” he says.

“In the fridge.”

He grins and paws at the air. Your mother rolls her eyes. Everyone knows what he’s about to say.

“But that’s so far.”

“Oh, wow, Brother. You’re so bad, you can’t even get the orange juice,” his brother says.

“Can you get it?” you ask the brother, already smiling for the complain sure to come your way.

“Ah, actually, I broke my leg today,” the brother says, smiling at your smile like he can’t help himself. “See, it’s so broken, I can’t do anything.”

“Not even video games?”

The brother hesitates.

He picks up the slack. “Not even video games,” he says, mock-serious, and his brother reaches over to push him.

“Stop it,” your mother says. “I don’t have the energy to deal with this today.”

A piece of meat is placed carefully beside your pile of dripping greens. You smile at your father in silent gratitude; he returns the gesture carelessly, like it is a nothing of a price to pay. Your brothers squawk at each other. Your mother watches you, sat as you are on the other side of your father, as far away from her as it is possible to be while still devoted to a slab of dark wood, and the set of her face conveys a bitter sort of jealousy. You think about the embrace she had given you on the patio and how reluctant you have been to accept it, how she had said, “I know you don’t want to, but come on, I'm your mother.”

Now, your mother swirls her wine and says, “So, Child. How has your day been?”

“Good.”

“Did you do anything exciting?”

You had made plans to go hiking with your father. You had planned for it to be a picnic, sharing Cliff bars and orange slices while one of many deaths spread at your feet. There would be soaring birds, if you were lucky. Perhaps you would even catch a frog this time, just to show your father that you could. Then, the next day, you and your father were supposed to travel for your brother’s soccer tournament, and your mother was not planned to come with. She did not travel for the brother. She had only travelled for you, once, and now she only travelled for him.

“No,” you say, because your mother had once told you, “You only ask to leave, and never to take me with you.”

“What about you?” your father asks of your mother. “And this meat is amazing, by the way. Thank you.”

Your mother glows from the praise. Then, she tells you everything, more than you wish to know, and becomes upset when your body language betrays that you do not really care to hear.

Afterwards, your mother steps out for a nap. She had not liked hearing about the soccer trip, and she had liked hearing about the hike even less, and disagreement can wear a person out. Your father helps you with the dishes.

“Mom never does the dishes,” the brother says.

“She’s tired,” your father says.

“So? I’m tired, too. Look, I’m so tired,” the brother says, and collapses onto the warm-white couch to prove it.

You turn the water hot and feel the blistering of your hands. Soap suds run from plates and glasses to pool, thick with food and grime, at the mouth of the disposal. Your father flicks the switch and you watch the grime swirl, splutter, and disappear. The growl of it resonates between your ears.

“Are we making tea?” you say.

“Do you want tea?”

“Sure. Only if we have green, though.”

“Where does Mom keep the tea?”

You load the dishwasher. Your father finds the last packet of green and starts the kettle. Behind you, on the other end of the room, your brothers have started up GTA 5, and you listen for the shattering of car glass. The last time you had taken your mother to the movies, years ago, she had brought a reusable of alcohol with her, and had gotten upset at the your mention of discomfort with her behavior. Then, in that upset, she had driven drunk on the way back and you had wondered if this was how you were to die.

“Thank you for making the salad,” your father says, your father who does not know about the movies because you had never dared to tell him. “It was very good.”

“I’m happy,” you say.

"I really appreciate you coming with us today," he says.

"It was alright," you say.

Tea burns your tongue, your lips. You drink it black after one too many conversations about diet, about weight and figure. Maybe there is honey in this wood-warm house, but you do not live here, and even if you knew where it was, you would not ask for it.

“Let me talk to her about the trip,” your father says, “then we will go home.”

Later, when you have returned to your room in a different house, your mother calls you.

“Your father says you don’t want to share a hotel room with me,” she says.

“I don’t.”

“Can we talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not ready to talk about it with you.”

“It sounds like you’re upset, and you’re taking it out on me,” your mother says. “It feels like you’re targeting me.”

“I just have a lot of bad memories about sharing hotel rooms with you, and I don’t really want to revisit those memories by sharing another hotel room with you.”

“That’s not fair,” your mother says.

“Maybe. But that’s what’s best for me right now.”

Her voice changes, then. You have lived with her for nearly twenty years, and only these last two you have lived with your father, and yet you can no longer visualize how her face changes to match her voice.

“You’re setting these expectations for me, but I can’t be that person all the time,” your mother says, in a tone that weaves nothing but expectation. “I can’t meet your expectations.”

There are stories you could tell of a childhood spent in shadow, vying to please a shell of a woman who had forgotten the taste of pleasure, giving child-made gifts with the rock of knowledge that they might be returned should your behavior prove unworthy. There are accusations you could sling at a mother incapable of unconditional love, a mother that turned her broken marriage into a weapon and the betrayal she felt into a holy relic, to be used as necessary to pry love out of her kids. There are letters you can remind her of, even as you are unsure that she had bothered to read them, because in those letters you had tried to save a relationship you no longer knew how to have and if she would just read them, really read them, she might understand how hard it is for you to look her in the eye, let her hold you close, and still choose to sit far away.

“Then don’t,” you say, and you hear the dial tone ring.

“At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you can hang up, or press 1 for more options.”