Chris & Kevin — Part II: Lakeside House
Childhood's end
Previously → https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-i-the-town-that
Bedside — Ending — Grief — Old Man — Beginning
Not a hundred yards away along the riverbed was Chris’ home and inside Chris sat in his mother’s room by her bedside holding her hand. She was armored against the cold with three woolen blankets and a sweater. His dad’s old lantern burned away Gabril’s latest batch of oil on the nightstand right next to her. Chris wore thin linen and was drenched.
He fed her spoonfuls of old Babi’s potions and she slurped them with great effort, weighting every slightest movement against the pain. Sometimes she refused to drink. Chris insisted, evoking not her own health anymore but the town’s considerations. The pains they took. The herbs they scavenged, the powders, the roots. All stirred and boiled by Babi in her many cauldrons for hours, sometimes days at a time.
She turned away from his spoon and mumbled something. He leaned close. “Hmm?”
“Chris,” she wheezed. “Chris.”
“Yes?”
“Chris and Kevin. They’re still out there. It’s getting late.”
He looked at her. She turned away from him towards the window, as if in search of something. Half her face alight in the setting sun. Chris closed his eyes and rested them on his fists. Then she faced him again. He felt her pull on his sleeve, her gentle caress on his forearm. Like when he was little, when she came into his room at night to make sure he was indeed asleep. He could pretend through an earthquake but those tickles brought a laugh out of him every time.
“Now,” she groaned. “It’s getting late. The food’ll get cold.”
He wedged his knuckles in his eyesockets and blinked through them. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll go get em.” He pulled his chair back and stood.
She was entombed in her blankets. Clutching them to her chest with such frail effort. Sometimes he made up menial work that would force him out of the house, though he’d eat himself up over it later. Sometimes he didn’t leave her bedside for hours at a time. Sometimes he wished she would’ve beat him when he was younger. That she would’ve starved him. Put out a cigarette on his cheek maybe, or destroyed his toys, confined him somewhere dark, humiliated him somehow, anyhow, anything, any reason that would’ve enabled him now to rejoice in her pain, to ignore her decay, to be at peace with her suffering. But no. She was kind and loving. She cooked the best pot-roast. She danced with his father in the moonlight. She measured his height and taught him to play the guitar.
Outside the sun was already half-hidden beyond the lake and a chilly breeze ruffled his hair. He looped around the house for a plausible amount of time, kicking at blades of grass. Before he went back he noticed a stranger sitting on a rock by the river a few yards off. Short stout and bald, staring at the waterfall churning down into the lake. A stranger in Sellene.
Chris watched him, formulating dim questions in his mind. Then he went back inside.
“Alright, mom. Chris is back, he’s at the table and he’s very sorry -“ he paused. Something in the air.
The room felt foreign now, the lintel some kind of border. He stood at the precipice watching. Her brittle fingers curled around the blankets, her eyes squeezed shut against a presence unseen. He crossed inward and went to her bedside and knelt beside her. So small. Like an infant. He picked up her hand and held it to his face. Cold. When he let it go it slumped weightless on the blankets. He sat there a long time. Watching her. Then he exhaled.
“Alright,” he said. “Alright.” There was no sadness at the moment. There wasn’t anything. He pushed his chair back and stood and turned around in place a few times, sneaking glances at her as if she was now forbidden to look at. He stood a while longer. The respectful thing to do was beyond him. It occurred to him to ask his mother’s advice but then he caught himself and barked out a laugh he was immediately guilty for. “Alright,” he said again. Scratched his head. “Alright.”
Then he fled outside.
******
The old man sat there still. There was something very serene about him, the way he sat. The way he smiled. His hands in his lap. Staring dreamily at the waterfall, not a care in the world. As if he could sit there for years. Chris went over but the old man didn’t seem to acknowledge him and so he stood there shuffling his feet. He was used to his mere presence around someone triggering a conversation and was at a loss.
Finally the old man spoke.
Continue to part III → coming soon…