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“What was work today, Yama-nii-nii?” Andromeda asks as she gets to the last empty seat and piles a mountain of rice on her plate. Then, seeming to forget the question she just asked, she bounces. “Ooh, Daddy, can I use chopsticks like Lana?”
He nods once, and she trots off to get a pair out of a drawer below the carrot guillotine. Around another mouthful, Pollux clarifies for my sake, “Alana only eats with chopsticks. Even if she’s eating pancakes.”
“Which is utterly ridiculous,” Alexios notes. He’s begun glaring at a green bean. “Our darling princess is so strange.”
“It’s genetic.” Andromeda giggles and sticks her tongue out at Alexios.
Pollux sighs, so she stiffens and carefully positions the adult chopsticks in her tiny hand.
“Forgive her,” he murmurs to me. “I think she’s being a little terror because she considers you company. Her brain is still developing in some areas.”
With all the innocence in the world, Andromeda just barely manages to get a few grains of rice in her mouth.
Alexios stabs the green bean, then his eye twitches as juice leaks out of it. He looks at Pollux.
“I believe in you.”
Alexios narrows his eyes. “Your faith is not only astounding, it also makes me uncomfortable.”
Pollux’s teeth flash in a single-second grin.
Alexios shudders, but he gets the bean to his mouth. He crunches it, audibly. It winds up back on his plate as a look of stricken horror overtakes his expression.
Clinically, Pollux says, “I’ll update your spreadsheet,” around a mouthful of tofu.
Tongue still hanging out of his mouth, Alexios nods.
It looks like he might cry, and I’m honestly a little worried for him.
Sighing yet again, Pollux stands, fetches a bag of cashews, and hands it to Alexios, who curls up on his seat, resting his shoulder against the back, and crunches the nuts while looking absolutely traumatized.
This is the oddest family dinner I’ve ever witnessed. Having been the sole teacher of a very small school for almost a decade now, I am more than used to parents inviting me out to dinner on occasion. I’ve seen the shouters who don’t think they’re shouting. The borderline narcissists who don’t care how their child acts so long as it doesn’t reflect poorly on them. I’ve seen the nuclear units that could star in commercials. The fathers that work too much. The mothers that resent being treated like they don’t work at all. The abusers who are so charming it’s like they think I’ll forget the bruises I’ve seen…
There are all sorts.
Good, bad, ugly, decent.
Broken homes with only grandparents to raise their grandkids.
Single mothers who have no time to help with homework.
I have never, once, sat at a family dinner table with so many worries eating away at the back of my head…and felt this inexplicable peace.
Like…like I belong right here.
It doesn’t make any sense.
All my life, I’ve needed to make sense of things. Even toys. I couldn’t just play with them. I’d sort them by shape or color. Give them all names, whether they had faces or not. Blocks had personalities and genders and ages and roles. The inanimate became creatures, and I painted cities around them. Forests. Skies. Rolling hills and endless landscapes.
My fork and spoon always had to be on the same side of my dish.
Because they were in love.
And the knife was jealous.
He believed he belonged with the spoon.
But he didn’t.
