“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked her as I walked into the kitchen and found her standing in front of the stove. She had three skillets filled with food. It looked like she was cooking for an army.
She put one hand on her hip, telling me I was silly for asking that question, while her other hand held onto a spatula. “What does it look like I’m doing?” She asked without looking up at me.
“It looks like you’re cooking for an army,” I voiced my thoughts as I poured myself a cup of coffee that she’d already brewed.
She looked at the food pensively and then looked up to meet my eyes for the first time. “I have an army of a family to feed.”
“You don’t have to feed us,” I told her, sipping the coffee.
“Well, someone sure has to,” she smiled, looking back down at the pans. “It doesn’t look like you’ve been eating at all.”
“We eat!” I protested.
She looked at me in a way that told me she thought I was lying. It always used to work on all of us kids, even dad. She’d look at us, and we would confess to lying. But this time I wasn’t lying. We did eat. Especially since Casey and Chris had shown up. “I’m not lying,” I told her, trying to make my voice match the honesty I was trying to convey.
“Healthy?” She asked me with a knowing smile as she turned some sausage links with the spatula.
I had to hesitate before I could answer. “We had burgers and fries last night before you showed up. But we’ve also had spaghetti, and soup, and lasagna, and…”
“What about breakfast?” She asked, cutting off my list of dinners we’d been eating.
“Mom,” I said firmly. “We eat.”
“Well good,” she said giving in. “Then this won’t be anything you’re not used to.”
I sighed, defeated, and sat down at the kitchen table with my cup of coffee. There was no stopping her when she had an idea in her mind.
“How are things at home?” I asked.
“Surprisingly chaotic with only three kids left at home,” she said smiling. “Avery is with her boyfriend most of the time. And if she’s not with him, she’s on the phone with him.”
I laughed, knowing how familiar that sounded. It was the same way with Jessica and Justin. And then they got married. “They’re not serious are they?” I asked.
“Not serious, serious.” She looked up at me. “But serious enough to have to talk to each other every moment of every day.”
“Yea, I remember it being that way with Jessica and Justin.”
“It was,” she nodded in agreement as she went back to the food. “And then she got married and moved to Texas.”
“I can’t see Avery moving too far from home,” I assured her, noting the sadness in her voice.
She chuckled. “I don’t know. She’s the next in line.”
“What about everyone else?” I inquired. It had been far too long since I’d been caught up on anything going on at home. With Casey here, I guess things at home just slipped my mind.
“Your brother still plays soccer and Zoe is still mostly sticking to herself,” she answered. I wondered if Zoe would ever become as social as the rest of us. She had a few friends, but she always stayed close to the family. She never wanted to join any activities, except a few through the church. She never really had the chance to have a normal life. I always thought Ezra would turn out the same way, but he has Taylor’s personality. Everyone loves him and he’s not shy in the least.
“What about Dad?” I pressed.
I became more curious when she sighed softly to herself. She tilted her head to the side as she flipped some of the food in the pan. “Your father, is your father.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. “You guys aren’t having problems are you?” I asked.
She chuckled and turned around to face me. “No. He’s just stubborn.”
“He’s always been stubborn,” I reminded her.
“He’s getting worse in his old age.” She shook her head and turned back around, still smiling.
“Oh jeeze,” I mused. “I can’t imagine.”
“It’s kind of sad. He was supposed to take out the trash once, and he forgot. So, I reminded him and he got so upset that he refused to do it for a month.”
I laughed as she turned off the stove and pulled a stack of plates from the cabinet. “That sounds like Dad.”
She laughed again as she set the plates down on the table beside me. Her laugh seemed happier this time. “He’s such a fool sometimes.”
“But you love him,” I said, knowing the rest of her sentiment.
“I do,” she sighed. “Love is….such a weird thing sometimes.”
I frowned. “I wouldn’t know.”
She stopped what she was doing immediately and took a chair next to me. She went from providing-mom to comforting-mom within seconds. “You will,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes. I looked away.
“I’m not so sure. Everyone around me knows what it’s like. Taylor, Zac, Jessica. It just seemed to pass over me.”
“Zac?” She questioned. I could tell that she thought she was being kept from another secret.
I rolled my eyes, not really wanting to talk about it. “Zac and Casey. They were in love…probably still are.”
She was shaking her head when I looked back in her direction. “I don’t believe that,” she told me.
“Which part?”
“Either one. I don’t think it was ever really love.”
“No?” I asked, curiously. How could she think it wasn’t love? They were together for years and everyone around us always said it was cute how in love they were. I knew they had problems, but every relationship did. And I never, for once, thought it wasn’t love.
“Puppy love maybe,” she offered. “But not true love.”
“How so?”
“They fought more than they got along. I think it was just a convenient relationship. The fact that they lived together made it easy for them to go on and on for so long.”
“Easy?” I asked, almost laughing. “You think living together made their relationship easier? If anything, I think it made it harder.”
“I think it’s easy to stay with someone if you have to see them all the time,” she defended her reasoning.
“I think they fought so much because they lived together. And when they fought, it made it harder on them. In fact, I commend them for lasting as long as they did.”
“You don’t have to get defensive, Isaac. Their relationship is in the past, so it doesn’t even matter anymore.” She stood up and went to the fridge and started rummaging around, but I wasn’t paying any attention to what she was doing.
“That’s the problem, Mom,” I said as she continued searching the fridge. “I don’t think it’s in the past.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said absently, closing the fridge and looking at me. “Don’t you have any orange juice?”
“Zac and Casey drank it all,” I answered half-heartedly.
“I’ll have to pick some up later,” she mentioned, making a note to herself as she often did.
“Mom, no. Zac and I are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.”
“You haven’t yet,” she reminded me, pulling some silverware out of the drawer.
“Who’s to say that we didn’t just finish it off last night and haven’t had the time?”
She gave me the look again, over her shoulder. The one that said she knew I was lying. And this time, we both knew she was right.
Zac walked into the kitchen, only to notice the last few seconds of her look at me, and he laughed. “What are you lying about?” He asked, plopping down in a chair across from me.
“Your punk ass drank all the orange juice,” I told him, picking up my coffee cup and lifting it to my lips.
“Casey helped,” he defended.
“I’m sure she did,” mom said, smiling at him, cheerfully. “Do you want to go get everybody for breakfast?”
“Do you think I have a death wish? Everybody is still sleeping.” He responded and mom just looked at him with a smile. His eyes protested while his body stood up and left the kitchen, mumbling something under his breath. I laughed, glad that she didn’t put me in charge of being everyone’s wake up call. Zac was right, that job was only given to those with a death wish.
“What are you laughing about?” Mom asked me.
“Just glad you gave that job to Zac,” I said honestly, without thinking.
“Knowing him, he’ll start with the kids, so you can get everyone else.”
“What? I don’t have a death wish either!” Soon enough, her look was enough to get me up out of my seat and in search of all of the adults in the house.
Taylor and Natalie were still curled up in the chair from the previous night, so I went to them first. I kicked the bottom of their chair, next to their feet, unhappy about the job I’d just been handed. They didn’t even move.
“Wake up,” I said, smacking Taylor in the back of the head. He glared up at me through half opened eyes.
“What the hell?”
“Just get up before mom kicks my ass.”
“Mom?” He asked, finally sounding alert.
“She showed up last night. Don’t ask…long story. Just get up.” I walked away before he had time to argue. I knew if I could wake Taylor up he’d get Natalie up. Two down, one more to go.
I stopped when I reached the door of Casey and Chris’ room. The boys were sprawled on the floor, sleeping undisturbed. Casey, too, was still asleep. It was Zac that made me stop dead in my tracks.
He was leaning against the crib that we’d just gotten set up the day before, looking down inside of it. His back was to me, but I could already tell what was running through his mind. Thoughts and regrets of the baby he could have had. Having Casey around was taking a bigger toll on him that I thought it would, but I didn’t know what to do.
I decided not to disturb him and turned to leave, but when I did, he said something. At first I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or not, but when I turned back around, he was looking at me, and he repeated it.
“Do you think God will forgive me?” He asked. His voice was strong, but his eyes displayed his weak and fragile state.
“I think…” I started, unsure of what to say. I stared at him for a few moments, trying to gather my thoughts, but my mind kept hitting brick walls.
“You think what?” He asked. His voice was breaking down. He needed me to tell him that God would forgive him. That he would be okay, and he would be able to move on, and he wouldn’t dwell on the earlier part of his life. And then it hit me.
“I think you have to forgive yourself first,” I told him, sincerely. “I think God’s just waiting for you to forgive yourself.” He swallowed and closed his eyes while nodding his head in confirmation that he believed me. I hoped he did. I hoped that that little piece of advice could somehow help him through whatever he was going through. I sure as hell didn’t know what else I could do for him.
“I’ll get Casey and the kids up,” I told him. I patted him on the back as his cue to go, but he didn’t move. He looked at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. He was about to break down, and I knew why. He could always hold in his emotions unless he was around Mom. Just her presence made all of us feel young and so, so small and the world so, so big. She would bring out all of our emotions and our problems and try to fix them, whether we wanted her to or not. Zac’s stress level was probably sky rocketed, and Mom was here, to fix all of his problems, and I think deep down he knew she couldn’t, but he wanted her to so badly.
“You can’t do this right now, Zac,” I begged him. “Casey needs to be strong right now, or she’ll run. And she has no where to go except back to him.” He knew who I was talking about and he knew I was right. “Go,” I told him. “Clean yourself up and then go eat some breakfast. I’ll be in there in a little bit.”
I watched him slump out of the room slowly, head down. He headed in the direction of the bathroom, and I turned around to wake Casey up, but her eyes were already open and looking up at me.
“Tell him I forgive him,” she said, her voice thick from sleep.
“What?”
“I think if he knows that I forgive him, then he can forgive himself,” she explained.
“Casey, you need to tell him,” I instructed. “You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t.” She sounded frustrated.
“Why not?”
“I’ll just make things worse. I always make things worse.”
“If you don’t talk to him, things will never get better.”
“They will if I leave,” she said, her voice firm, but quiet.
She held contact with my eyes for a few seconds. It scared me that she was saying those things out loud. It was like she wanted me to stop her from leaving, but I had no idea how. My biggest fear was that Zac would be the only one who could stop her, and he wouldn’t have the courage to even try.
“Mommy,” I heard Chris say from the floor behind me. I turned to look at him and he was looking up at Casey sadly. “I don’t want to leave.”
“We’re not,” she said, sitting up. Chris got up from the floor and sat on the bed beside her, both of their legs dangling over the side of the bed. “Not yet.”
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” I told Chris, holding my hand out for him. He grabbed it and jumped down from the bed as I bent over to wake Ezra up. He rolled over and groaned a little. “Grandma cooked breakfast for us.” He was wide awake as soon as I said the word ‘grandma,’ and up half as fast.
“I’ll be there in a little bit,” Casey said as I led the boys into the kitchen where everyone, minus Zac and Casey, were.
“Where are Casey and Zac?” Mom asked immediately.
“Zac is in the bathroom, and Casey is still waking up,” I told her as I sat down next to Taylor. The boys sat next to each other with Taylor on one side of Ezra and an empty chair on the other side of Chris.
I looked over at my brother when I heard him laughing quietly. “What?”
He shook his head, still chuckling. “Zac and Casey were always the last ones to breakfast.”
“They were always the hardest to wake up,” Mom added from her spot, leaning against the counter.
“They were always up the latest,” I said. “Doing what…”
“Ah!” Taylor interrupted me with a yelp, covering his eyes with his hands. “Visual person here,” he mumbled as Natalie and I laughed at him. Mom just shook her head and grinned. “Don’t need to think about my brother like that.”
“Who says that’s what I was talking about?” I asked him.
He sighed, taking his hands away from his face. “Because you like to do that to me on purpose.”
“I do not,” I argued.
“Yes you do. And you always have.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Boys,” mom cut in, breaking up an argument that could have gone on like that forever. Like I said, Mom brings out the children in us.
“Are they ever going to come?” Ezra asked, staring at the food mom cooked. He was practically drooling, and I couldn’t blame him. The food looked, and smelled, delicious.
“I’m here,” Casey announced. She ruffled Ezra’s hair before sitting down next to Chris.
“I’ll go check on Zac,” I said, scooting my chair back.
“Check on him?” Mom asked, sounding concerned. “Is he okay?”
“Yea. I mean…just make sure he didn’t fall in or anything,” I covered.
“I’ll go get him,” Taylor said, quickly standing up. He looked down at me before he left the room.
Mom gave me a warning look as the rest of the occupants of the kitchen remained silent. Mom doesn’t like secrets. She never has, and probably never will. Even when we were growing up, secrets never passed by her. But sometimes, there were just things that didn’t need to be shared with everyone. Sometimes, things just needed to be concealed, at least for the time being.
Taylor came back into the kitchen with Zac in tow, not long after. Zac had plastered a smile on his face. As soon as he sat down, he started making jokes and comments, just like the Zac we’d always known.
Maybe, the reason Mom just couldn’t see the depth of his and Casey’s relationship, is because they won’t show it. When Mom is around, everything is sugar-coated. When Casey and Zac were together, Mom never saw him overly upset after a fight like the rest of us had. And maybe, that led to her assuming that it wasn’t real love. That led to her believe that they were only together out of convenience, while the rest of us knew better.