Dinner for Five
Only Four of Us Are Breathing
Mom set the table with the good china, the one with the blue rims that chipped if you looked at them wrong. Five plates. Five forks. Five napkins folded into standing fans.
Dad carved the roast at the head of the table. The smell of rosemary and thyme filled the kitchen, thick and warm. It smelled like Sunday. It smelled like before.
Leo sat to my right. He was wearing his best shirt, the white one with the buttons his fingers used to fumble. His hands were folded in his lap now, still as stone. His skin was the color of old parchment, cool even from where I sat three inches away.
I watched his chest. I couldn't help it. I counted the rise and fall of the others. Mom inhaled, sharp and quick. Dad exhaled, a heavy sigh through his nose. I inhaled. Leo did not.
"Pass the potatoes, please," Mom said. Her voice was light, airy. She held out the bowl toward Leo.
Leo didn't move. His eyes were open, fixed on the centerpiece, a vase of lilies that were already beginning to brown at the edges.
"Oh, honey, you're too far," Mom said. She reached across him, her sleeve brushing his cold shoulder, and lifted the bowl. She spooned a mound onto his plate. The steam rose from the potatoes, hitting his face, and didn't fog his glasses. He wasn't wearing glasses. He hadn't worn them since he was twelve.
"Thank you, Leo," she said.
"You're welcome," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room.
Dad sliced a piece of meat. It was pink in the middle. He placed it on Leo's plate. He placed one on mine. He placed one on his own.
"How was school, Ellie?" Dad asked. He chewed. He swallowed.
"Fine," I said. I picked up my fork. The metal was cold. "Math test. History project."
"Good," Dad said. "Good."
He looked at Leo. "How's the construction site?"
Leo said nothing. The silence stretched, thin and tight like a wire across the table. I waited for the snap. I waited for Mom to cry. I waited for Dad to scream.
Mom cut her carrots into perfect little coins. "The weatherman says rain later," she said. "You should bring an umbrella, Leo. You know how your knees ache."
"I will," I said.
"Good boy," Mom said. She didn't look at me. She looked at Leo. She smiled at him. It was a nice smile. The kind she used when he brought home a report card with A's. The kind she used when he came home from the hospital the last time, before the ambulance came back to take him away again.
I looked at his hands. There was dirt under his fingernails. Real dirt. Garden dirt. He had been planting tulips before he sat down. He had said he needed air. He had said he was tired.
He had sat down and stopped.
I took a bite of potatoes. They were salty. Too salty. I wanted to spit them out. I swallowed instead.
"Ellie, you're slouching," Dad said.
I straightened my spine. "Sorry."
"Chew with your mouth closed," Mom said.
I closed my mouth. I chewed. I watched Leo. A fly landed on his cheek. It walked across the pale skin, over the cheekbone, near the eye. It didn't buzz. It just walked.
Leo didn't blink.
"Did you hear about the Johnsons?" Dad asked. "Selling the place. Moving to Florida."
"Too hot," Mom said.
"Retirement," Dad said.
"Nice," Mom said.
They talked about mortgages. They talked about the leak in the garage. They talked about the price of gas. They talked around the stillness at the table like it was a pillar holding up the roof.
I put my fork down. The clink was sharp.
"Leo," I said.
Everyone stopped. Dad's fork hovered halfway to his mouth. Mom's knife rested on the rim of her plate.
"Yes, dear?" Mom said.
"He's not... he's not eating."
Mom looked at Leo's plate. The potatoes were cooling. The gravy was congealing into a dark skin. The meat sat untouched, pink and raw-looking now.
"He's saving room for dessert," Mom said. She patted Leo's hand. Her hand stayed there. She didn't pull away from the cold. "Aren't you, Leo?"
Leo didn't answer.
"Leo loves my pie," Dad said. He winked at me. It was a forced wink. A mechanical twitch of the eye.
I looked at my own plate. The food looked like wax. The room felt too small. The air was thick with the smell of roses and something else, something sweet and rotting, like the lilies in the vase.
"Can I be excused?" I asked.
"You haven't finished," Mom said.
"I'm not hungry."
"You need to keep your strength up," Dad said. "Big week."
"I'm going to my room."
I pushed my chair back. The legs scraped against the floor. The sound was like a nail down a chalkboard. Neither of them flinched.
I walked past Leo. I could feel the cold radiating off him, a winter breeze in a summer kitchen. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to scream until the windows broke.
"Don't forget your umbrella," Mom called after me.
"I won't," I said.
I went to my room. I closed the door. I sat on my bed and listened.
Below me, the sounds of dinner continued. The clink of silverware. The murmur of voices. The chew and swallow. The rhythm of life continuing despite the absence of it.
I counted the breaths through the floorboards. One. Two. Three. Four.
Only four of us were breathing.
But downstairs, the table was set for five. And tomorrow, Mom would set it again. She would wash the plates. She would polish the forks. She would carve the roast.
And Leo would sit there, saving room for pie, while the fly walked across his face and the world turned slowly on its axis, pretending nothing had changed.
I lay back. I closed my eyes. I held my breath.
For a second, I was just like him.
Then I exhaled.
And the house settled around me, comfortable and warm and wrong.
About the Creator
Edward Smith
I can write on ANYTHING & EVERYTHING from fictional stories,Health,Relationship etc. Need my service, email [email protected] to YOUTUBE Channels https://tinyurl.com/3xy9a7w3 and my Relationship https://tinyurl.com/28kpen3k
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We Set a Place for Her Out of Habit
On the first Sunday after the funeral, my mother set out five plates instead of four. She did it the way she did everything in the kitchen—without flourish, without apology, as if the act were too ordinary to notice. The roast came out of the oven. The green beans steamed in their bowl. The good napkins, still faintly smelling of starch, were folded into rectangles and laid beside the forks.
By Edward Smithabout 19 hours ago in Fiction
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