Work Text:
She stands over the range in the kitchen, simmering the ground beef for the meatloaf she'll bake later. It's only 7 AM, but she likes to get a head start in this way; it gives the day shape. Without this shape it would sag around her like a collapsing tent, she would be buried by it.
She's left a book of poems open on the kitchen island; to read them while cooking gives her a hard-edged pleasure. Nothing by the libertines, and nothing plodding or dolorous—she can't stand to read these types anymore, they seem too extravagant or else too familiar. She sticks to the pastoral now, the sentimental: garlands, bowers.
Alex, sitting at the island and eating his way through a bowl of cereal—the healthy, roughage-filled kind, bought out of principle rather than need (don't spoil him with that sugary crap, Adam had said)—thumbs through this book, raising his eyebrows, pulling faces. She knows he wants to be noticed, and the thought exhausts her.
"Thou beholdest in the warm hours, the swarm of the thievish bees, that flies evermore from bloom to bloom for perfume, hid away in tiny thighs," he mutters, stumbling over beholdest and thievish, mouth full of food. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Where did you pick up such a filthy word?" she says, without energy. Sometimes she raps his knuckles for this sort of talk, but right now it doesn't seem worth the effort. "Can't you eat your breakfast in the dining room? I don't have time for this, I'm very busy."
"Fine," he says, and clumps off out of sight, dragging his knapsack behind him. When he's finished he clatters the empty bowl into the sink, and on his way out he slams the door hard enough to make the glass rattle, something he knows better than to do most of the time.
Later, stomach heavy with guilt, she bakes him a batch of brownies, finished well before he'll be home from school. She can't bear to hand them to him person, a slice on a flowered china plate, herself smiling benevolently—she can't bear whatever his expression will be: gratitude, disappointment, alarm. Instead she writes him a note: I made these for you. She considers adding a sentimental finishing touch—sweetie, honey, a smiley face—but it would be like adding frills to a screwdriver. What else are these brownies but a tool, and a selfish one at that? It would be like a lie. She covers the pan with a sheet of plastic wrap, which soon becomes slick with condensation; there is a film of such condensation on her own upper lip.
She knows by the time he gets home they will be cool, the icing dried to stiff muddy peaks; she knows Alex will eat only one, and Adam will eat the rest. As for herself, she'll leave them alone entirely. She can't stomach the thought of eating such a sickly-sweet sponge, infused with misplaced good will; the thought of all that sugar, wetly condensed into a lump inside her, makes her ill.