The food skirmish continues.
At the moment, he’s practicing his spatial reasoning skills, carefully manipulating the items on his plate to create an illusion of emptiness. His least favorite, the peas—but typically any vegetable—are exiled to the outer rim of his plate, circling it like a pretty wreath. His second least favorite, the rice—but as a rule, any starch, except for spaghetti or macaroni and cheese—has been expertly spread out and distributed with near-perfect symmetrical balance.
“I can still see the peas, sweetheart,” Jenna says with a patient smile.
“Peas suck!” my son shouts.
Jenna frowns, and I’ve got to cut off any argument at the pass. With a stern look as my warning, I say, “Devon, there are better and nicer ways to state your likes and dislikes. Mom works hard to prepare dinner for us each day, and it hurts her feelings when you say things like that.”
“Sorry,” he mutters. Not the most earnest apology but hopefully enough to facilitate peace.
Jenna still looks mildly irritated. I offer her a warm smile of diplomacy: He’s just a kid.
She rolls her eyes: Boy, do I know.
Our smiles broaden. Mission accomplished.
Until less than four minutes later when, with his plate still full of food, Devon gleefully announces, “Okay. I’m done now.”
“No,” Jenna says, “you are not.”
“But Moooom!”
I’m about to step in again when a wave of pain chisels through my head, so severe that it makes my teeth chatter. I close my lids and try with everything I’ve got to endure the agony.
Jenna and Devon are still debating, but I can’t hear any of it. I’m too busy trying to ride out this bone-crushing agony. A few deep breaths later it eases, allowing me back into the moment. Devon offers Jenna his signature scowl, then gives the plate his signature grimace. He goes back to rearranging—but not eating—the food. Jenna scolds. He whines. The collective tone grows more heated by the second. With evident frustration, my son finally makes a token attempt, forcing himself to eat a single pea, while holding his nose and squinting at the offending vegetable.
“I ate it,” he says.
“Not one pea. All of them.”
“Mom!”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
My wildly inappropriate profanity leaves me thunderstruck. I heard it but have no idea where it came from. I look at Devon, his eyes wide and brimming with tears.
“Chris!”
I swing my head toward Jenna. Before I can respond, a blinding flash of white light goes off, followed by the sound of shattering glass, which scares the bejesus out of me. As the light fades, my wife reappears, but her expression has changed. Though she apparently didn’t see the light, she clearly observed my reaction to it, and her face now mirrors my confusion.
“I’m so sorry,” I offer, voice sheepish, mind reeling further into disorder and uncertainty.
The lines on Jenna’s face deepen. Devon is stunned into silence, staring at me with unfamiliar—and heartbreaking—fear.
I’m just as appalled by my behavior. No, I’m horrified, because the words shot out so fast that my conscious mind never had a chance to see them coming. It felt like somebody else was talking. Now, in addition to the shock, I’m frightened.
I look at Jenna.
I’m also in deep trouble.
“Wow,” she calmly says to Devon but keeps her eyes pinned onto mine. “Daddy’s very upset right now. Everything’s going to be okay. Why don’t we set you up with a movie so that he and I can talk about it?”
My son makes tracks toward the staircase, but, to my surprise, Jake stays behind. Much like last night, he’s lying on the floor, head resting on paws, same desolate look painted across his face.
Staring at me.
And I’m even more confused, but lately that seems to be the flavor of the day. Jake follows Devon everywhere but now seems to be detaching from him, and I don’t understand why.
“What the hell was that all about?”
Jenna’s voice jars me from bafflement, and all I can manage is, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It means what I said.”
“That’s not acceptable,” she replies, the heat of her glare nearly scorching the hairs on my arms. “We had an agreement, Chris.”
“I know.”
“That we would never speak that way in front of our son, especially directly to him, and especially not that word.”
My own anger unexpectedly flashes red. “You don’t have to recite the rules to me! I’m not a child. I didn’t forget!”
“Well, apparently, you—”
“I slipped, okay?” I slam my fist on the table with such force that silverware rattles and dishes clank. Jenna falls silent, and I know in an instant, without a shade of doubt, that I’ve managed to turn this mess into a disaster. And the worst part is that, with all the rapid-fire distractions going through my mind, I can’t remember how it all began. I start to apologize again, but before I can finish, Jenna gets up and leaves the room.
And here I sit, off-balance, bewildered, but most of all, deeply troubled.
Seconds later, I’m climbing the stairs. Though I don’t understand what just happened, I can’t leave my son feeling lost in it.
When I reach Devon’s room, he’s in bed and watching his movie. He looks up at me, but before I can speak, my face goes bloodless and my stomach shrinks into a rock-hard knot.
Sloppily scrawled across my son’s blanket is one word.
MUD.
Written in mud.
24
WITH A WAVE OF HER WAND
My mother and I watched a stranger emerge. An intruder. A thief who, little by little, was stealing my father away. It was frightening and infuriating, but most of all, it was so utterly brutal.
The day after I found Dad talking to the drain, we received a new and unsettling surprise.
My mother stepped inside the bathroom and turned on the shower, then went to the bedroom so she could change into her robe. When she returned, the floor was flooded.