Holiday
I served black tea. My mother made a face. Is this what you do? She was asking me. She said, “It’s nice. A little bitter for me.”
I scoured the room for signs that we might not be living a normal and happy life. I wondered about Eddie’s smoking and whether it would set my father’s asthma off. I opened a window but my father waved me away.
Eddie looked funny. He sat in a chair with his legs crossed and the light cast a strange shadow on his face which made him look sly and angular. He kept making pronouncements that I hadn’t heard him make before. My mother looked sideways at my father, with a nervous smile. Her eyes darted brightly. My father, to his credit, handled the situation very well. He cleared his throat and said “Well, you might have a point there,” after Eddie had said something completely unintelligible from behind his cigar.
I wondered what was happening.
After the meal was over I waved them off and watched their red Peugeot disappear and stood there on the doorstep for a long time listening to the clink of plates being gathered up in the kitchen at the back of the house.
Later, Eddie stood watching the reflection of me undressing in the mirror and smiled.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked.
“I thought it went well,” He replied. He stood there smiling and nodding his head, his hands stuffed into his pockets as if scrambling for change. “I thought it went very well.”
