“I’m sorry, Mom,” Ralph says, twisting blue shreds from his ratty shirt sleeve around one thumb. Ten years old, in fifth grade, he worries the ends of all his clothes.
Mary takes in the blender, the spatters of chocolate ice cream, milk, gobs of Nestle’s Quick powder, and ...egg? On a different day would probably have grimaced, then set to work helping him clean it up. She would probably have laughed, later. Mary hears Karen practicing her trumpet from the den, blaat-buh-blaat-burraaaat, and hears her doctor, earlier that day:
“Yes, well, Mary, you were right. I’m sure you’re out of remission. Don’t worry, of course. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
She imagines Carl’s face, hearing her MS has returned. Sees the mucousy egg, breaded in Nestle’s powder, as it drips in gobbets from counter to floor, ceiling and all appliances buckshot with chocolate, the kitchen a disaster requiring too much energy for her to clean, and won’t be scrubbed nearly well enough if she makes Ralph do it all himself. But... she can’t. She isn’t strong enough anymore. Again.
Hears from a tremendous distance these words explode from her mouth, too loud: “You stupid, stupid boy! How could you leave the top off? How? Oh, God, where was your brain, Ralph? What the Hell am I supposed to do about this? Tell me! Tell me!” Glares at him. Wants to stop. Wants to hug him, so scared. “You can’t, can you? You are good for nothing!”
Mary leaves Ralph standing by the kitchen table, holding tight to his dangling threads, face all twisted then, too. She walks down the hallway, turns around, and feels like the cop who grips his loaded weapon in its holster, just to frighten his wife into submission—then registers her whitened face, finds the relaxing of his hold is not sufficient, doesn’t change a thing.
Eliza C. Walton lives and writes in Maine. Her fiction can be read in elimae and Bartleby Snopes.