Eat Your Peas

“You need to eat your peas.” He can hear the smile in her voice, the calm insistence of someone who Knows What’s Best, even though he’s not looking at her. He’s looking anywhere but at her, anywhere but at the plate sitting in front of him on the dining room table, anywhere and nowhere.


“I don’t want to.” It’s a whine, and he knows it. Hates himself a little for it. He’s not a whiner. He’s a big boy, and big boys don’t whine. They obey their mothers when their mothers tell them what to do.


But. But but but.


“You need to eat them, Sammy. If you don’t, you’re not going to grow up to be big and strong like your father.”


“My father? My dad’s–” He bit his tongue, literally bit it, to keep the next words from coming out. If he didn’t say them, maybe they weren’t true. Maybe things would be better. He closed his eyes, shook his head. “I’m tired of peas. I’ve been eating peas forever.” And he hated when she called him “Sammy.” Sammy was his little kid name, and he was a big boy now. He started to say something, stopped. He was still whining. Winners don’t whine, his father would say, in his stupid dad joke voice. Sammy never laughed at all those stupid sayings, but that had never stopped them. So very dad.


His mother was silent for a long moment. He almost opened his eyes, but he knew what he would see: her standing next to the table, perfectly still, watching him closely with those bright blue eyes. And the peas. He didn’t want to see the peas. He didn’t want to see peas ever again, as long as he lived.


“You need to eat your peas.” The same invisible smile in her voice, like he hadn’t even said anything. Like everything was fine. But it wasn’t. It hadn’t been, for a long, long time.


“I’m done eating.” He sat up from the table, eyes still squeezed shut. Now he was thinking of it like a game: could he get back to his bedroom with his eyes closed without stumbling into anything? He could.
He knew every room, every corner, every shelf and table and cabinet and chair and he wouldn’t trip on any of them. He reached out; the wall was– there, no, there. A shuffle-step forward, then another, more confident, until he almost went sprawling down the two steps that separated the kitchen from the living room. A stumble, but he didn’t fall, and he didn’t open his eyes either. That would be cheating.


“But you didn’t take a single bite,” his mother said, her voice with just the faintest tinge of pleading. “You need to eat your peas.”


“I’m done!” he said, nearly shouting, as his fingers found the corner to the hallway–yes!–and then he nearly ran, ran down the smooth stone floor, socks skidding, fingers trailing on the wall. Past the first door, to the second, in, and slam!


He could open his eyes now, which was good, because he had almost stepped on his latest construction, the biggest one yet. Those pegs hurt even through his socks. And he had been working on it for weeks. He lay down on the floor, the stone cold through his thin clothes. Up close he could see the seams between the blocks, the places where he had to use pieces of different colors that didn’t quite match, although he tried to hide them as best he could. There just weren’t enough for what he wanted to build, and so he had to make do.


He always had to make do.


It was coming together, though. The shipwreck was nearly complete– if anything, he needed to take more of it apart, make it look more, well, wrecky— and the island was pretty simple anyway, just a bunch of yellow and tan blocks. It was the village that was giving him the most trouble. It used the same brown that the ship did, and there just weren’t enough pieces for it to look the way he wanted. He had tried this way and that, looked at it from every angle, and nothing quite satisfied him.


His stomach grumbled. He ignored it. It grumbled even when he ate his peas. He was used to it by now, although it hurt more than usual.


It was too big, the ship and the island and the village, too big for the floor of his bedroom, but he couldn’t build it anywhere else. The cleaning bots would just disassemble it as soon as he fell asleep, the pieces placed back in their little stacked bins on the shelf in his bedroom. His father used to be able to tell them not to do that, was supposed to show him how, but…


He shook his head. It was fine. He just had to be careful.


He dug through the bin of pieces, hoping to find just one or two more browns, knowing that there weren’t any but trying anyway. The blues were all gone too, but he had finished the water, didn’t need any more. Reds? Lots of reds, even after using a bunch of them on the internal structure, places that no one would ever see. Whites too. But no browns anywhere.


He sighed, stood up. He just wasn’t in the mood to work on it anyway. It hadn’t been very much of an argument– and hadn’t he won that? He didn’t eat his peas, after all– but he was still upset about dinner. Why did it have to be peas all the time every time? He could remember when it hadn’t been, kinda, could almost taste the sweet syrup that coated the peaches, sharp and tangy on his tongue. The grassy snap of kale, never his favorite, but right then he would have given his left arm to have some again. Anything but peas.


Maybe talking to his father would help. It didn’t, usually, but anything was better than feeling like this.


He turned towards the door. His mother could be waiting right outside, ready to coax him back to the dinner table, and that almost stopped him right there. He couldn’t face her, not right now. But, no, he would have heard her through the door, right? The whirr thunka thunka whirr of her busted wheel was unmistakable. She hadn’t been able to sneak up on him in years. Not that she did much sneaking.


Still. He pressed his ear to the door, like he had seen in movies. Nothing, no sounds other than the constant background thrum of the ventilation system and the thump thump thump of his own pulse like when he lay on his pillow in just the wrong way.


A deep breath and a twist of the handle. There was just enough room for the door to open without hitting the yellow-and-tan island. And his mother wasn’t out there waiting for him, waiting to guide him back to the kitchen table and those same damn– darn– stupid peas. He had been worried for nothing.


But he could hear her now, hear the whirr thunka thunka whirr coming from the kitchen. He sprinted further down the hallway, down to the big gray door at the end, sliding the last few feet in his socks. He thumped into the door, not hard, but the sound seemed loud in the quiet of the evening.


“Is that you, Sammy?” his mother called. “You need to come back and finish your dinner.”


Stop calling me Sammy,” he yelled, confusion and frustration and hunger flashing over into anger. “My name’s Samuel!” Yank, slide, slam.


If she answered, he couldn’t hear her. His mother never raised her voice. It just wasn’t in her programming.


It took a moment, like always, for his eyes to adjust. His father liked it dark in his room for some reason, a sharp contrast to the bright lighting everywhere else in the suite. For the first time, he thought that maybe he understood, maybe it was because of all the brightness. It felt like somewhere else, somewhere totally different.


He had been holding his breath out of habit, and he let it out, a soft phh. Took a shallow breath, then a deeper one. He could barely smell the sick any more. That was good. That was real good.


“Hey, dad,” he said. “I… Mom’s mad at me. I mean, she’s not mad, she’s never mad–” he knew, somehow, that that was wrong, that mothers were supposed to get mad sometimes– “but I just. I just couldn’t.”


He sat down in the chair next to the bed. His feet actually touched the ground, now; he didn’t have to climb up into it like a little kid any more, legs swinging as he sat there. That made him smile.


“It’s just… the peas. I’m so tired of the peas. It’s peas for breakfast, peas for lunch, peas for dinner, and I just can’t eat another pea. I’d rather…”


He stopped before he said too much, went too far. It wasn’t true anyway. He wouldn’t rather die than eat another pea, even though it sure felt like that sometimes. He hadn’t finished the village, for one. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was just starting to get interesting.


“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “I know you don’t like it when I whine. Winners don’t whine, right?”


He sighed, scooted back in the chair, so that his legs dangled again like when he was younger. Swung them back and forth a bit. Took a deep breath. “I wish… I wish Mom were here.”


There. He had said it, said something he had promised himself he’d never say. His memories of her were fuzzy, like one of the blurry photographs his father would sometimes get when the motion-compensation on the camera didn’t work quite right. He couldn’t remember her voice, could barely remember her face. Just her eyes, green and sparkling. And her smile.


“You told me that I banged on the outside door for hours, when we first came here. Crying for her. That I slept on the floor there for weeks. That you slept there with me.” He rubbed his hand across his face, wiping away tears. “I wish I could remember. Remember her more.”


His stomach grumbled again.


It was harder to curl up in the chair than it used to be, but he managed somehow. It wasn’t very comfortable, but there was something about it, something about the room, that made him feel more at peace there than anywhere else.


“I miss you too, Dad,” he said, half-mumbling, as he drifted off to sleep.


Most days, his morning shower was the best thing that happened. The splash of the warm water on his skin, the white noise of the spray, the feeling of getting clean. Everything felt new again, full of promise and excitement and adventure.


As always, he ignored the carefully-folded shirt and shorts and put his pyjamas and socks back on. Who would ever wear anything else if they had a choice? he had often wondered.


But then. He took his time brushing his teeth, rinsing and spitting and rinsing again, reluctant to leave the bathroom. Drank a gulp of water from the sink, then another, but that wasn’t enough to quiet the near-constant growl from his stomach.


It was time for breakfast.


He sighed, scuffled his feet as he went down the hallway, made the turn into the living room. Looked up towards the kitchen, the table.


She was already there, of course, her bright blue eyes glowing. And on the table, a plate, steam rising.


He could smell it from there. Peas.


His mother moved towards him, whirr thunka. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Samuel,” she said, her voice more grave than he could ever remember. “You’re right. You’re a big boy now, and I was wrong to treat you the way I did.”


“It’s okay,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I was whining. And winners don’t whine.” He gulped. “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t bring himself to call her Mom, not right then.


“It’s all right.” He heard her move again, closer still, thunka whirr. “Samuel. I need to tell you something important. I’ve been waiting to tell your father, but he hasn’t left his room in one hundred and ninety-five days. He hasn’t used any of the suite’s systems since then either. Is he all right?”


“He’s fine.” He wiped his arm across his face, shook his head. “He’s fine.” If he said it enough times, maybe it would come true. “You can tell me,” he added.


“The food stocks are critically low. We would have run out already, if your father hadn’t stopped eating one hundred and seventy-eight days ago. But even with that taken into account, there isn’t very much left.”


He gulped. “How much?”


“Assuming three meals a day, and accounting for your continued growth, there is only enough food for another seventeen days.”


“Seven– /seventeen days?/” He was whining, but he couldn’t help it. “Just seventeen days until I starve to death?”


“Yes, I’m afraid,” his mother said.


Then, after a moment: “You need to eat your peas.”


[Later edit: Notes about writing this short story can be found here.]

Eyes shut, lungs empty

The pool glitters below me, bright summer sun dancing off the waves. I take one deep breath, two three four, and jump off the end of the diving board. No elegance in my fall, no style, as I pinwheel through ten feet of air into the water. It smacks me hard as always, a flash of red across my vision. I sink.

I only know this because I was told the story so many times as a child: when I was a toddler, I nearly drowned. It was at some sort of gathering at a doctor’s house, a birthday or a graduation or just the sort of summer shindig that was part of the upper middle class upbringing. Apparently I was playing too close to the pool; perhaps it was one of those setups where the hot tub area drains down into the deep end. And it was the early eighties, before the Era of Helicopter Parenting, when children were simultaneously watched and studiously ignored. Whatever the circumstances, I fell in and sank to the bottom like a stone. One of the (many) doctors there had to jump in, fully clothed and save me. Did I have water in my lungs that they had to push out? How close was I to dying, there at the bottom of the captured sea? How much of a part does this play into my mother’s deathly fear of water?

It was surprisingly hard to force myself down to the bottom. Twenty feet of water, and while I was still a scrawny little thing, the discovery of the joys of junk food still several years in my future, I tended to float more than sink. I couldn’t just swim to the bottom. It had to look real. I pushed every ounce of air out of my lungs, waved my arms ever so slightly in an attempt to push myself down further. My eyes were shut tight; how much further? How much longer? And then, finally, the rough scrape of concrete against my back. I had hit the bottom.

When my parents first told me that they wanted me to go to summer camp at the local park, I pitched a fit and tore up the application. Hearing this now–I have no memory of this event, either, memory that most fickle of friends–I am simultaneously surprised and not surprised at all. I have always been terrified of change, comforted by routine, and going from the quiet summers spent bouncing back and forth between my parents’ and the house where my aunt and cousins lived, doting women less than a minute’s walk from our front door, to the impossible-to-know wilderness of other people was the sort of thing that would have inevitably led to hysterics. (Just thinking about it now stresses me out slightly.) But: I tore up the application? That strikes me as the sort of embellishment that comes with the re-telling; I was never an assertive child. And yet I can see myself doing it, yanking the papers out of my father’s hands and tearing them to shreds, not even thinking of the immediate consequences, the talking-to or the spanking. No, just thinking: Not that. Not change.

When they quietly pulled aside a couple of trusted kids and asked for someone to do this, the criteria were simple: we had to be willing to jump off the high diving board, we had to make it look like we landed badly, and we had to be able to hold our breath for twenty seconds once we sank to the bottom. I had only just worked up the gump to use that board the year before, mild acrophobe that I was, and I still had a few moments of flop-sweat terror as I’d launch myself off the springy surface and plummeted through the air, thinking of all the ways that it could go wrong. But here, here was a chance to show that I was brave, that I could Do A Thing. I volunteered immediately, before I could second guess myself. Making it look bad? Not a problem. I could barely dive anyhow.

His name was Kenny, and he was one of the three or four camp counselors that spent all day with us, a group of forty or so kids ranging from eight to twelve. I don’t remember the names of any of the others. I had a crush on him almost from the start, one of those innocent childish infatuations that bloom and wither in the pre-teen years before we hit the utter hormonal confusion of puberty. He was smart, he was funny, he was just a bit of a nerd too; he taught us a game that we played on the basketball court with those red bouncy balls, a modified version of dodgeball he called Wizards and Warriors, just like the NES game. I probably followed him around like an adoring puppy that first year, ten years old and scared of the other kids. The fear wore off over time; I begged my parents to sign me up for another two-week session. I was having the time of my life, swimming and bowling and running around in the park and playing Wizards and Warriors on rainy days. And there was Kenny. Were we friends? In my mind, we were. I’m sure to him I was mostly just an annoying little boy that was under foot entirely too much, but if that was the case he never let it show.

I counted slow. I think I counted slow. I knew, even at that age, that this wasn’t going to be exact, that this was part of a drill, that one of the lifeguards had to see me drowning. So. Slow. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. My eyes were still shut tight, my arms drifting loose above my head, my back bouncing slightly up and down against the rough texture of the bottom of the pool. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. I was glad I had taken several deep breaths before jumping in, but the impact of the water always shocked the breath out of me anyhow, left me gasping and flailing at the surface when I managed to come up. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

Despite having nearly drowned as a child, in my mind I have always been obsessed with water, with swimming. But. My uncle took me to Water Babies as a tot, and apparently I completely forgot everything there; my mother had to sign me up for swimming lessons when I was seven, another change-in-routine I’m told I pitched a fit over. Was it residual fear of that near-death experience? I don’t know. What I do know is that once I got a taste of the water I wanted nothing so much as I wanted a swimming pool. We ended up getting one of those above-ground jobbers, a pale imitation of the real thing, and only kept it for a few years, but I swam every chance I got, at home or at a friend’s house or, at summer camp, the once-a-week trip to the city’s public pool. You couldn’t keep me out of the water.

My lungs felt like they were about to burst; the charade was up, I was going to have to swim back up to the surface, to breathe breathe just breathe nothing in my life have I wanted so much. I nearly inhaled water in an attempt to silence the screaming in my chest, that seemed eminently reasonable in the moment. But finally, finally, rough hands around my waist, pulling me up up out. It took all of my will not to gasp like a fish as we surfaced.

The rules for diving were simple. The deepest third or so of the pool was kept empty of kids, ensuring no one landed on top of some tot scrambling to get away from a cannonballing pre-teen. You couldn’t climb the ladder until the kid ahead of you actually jumped off the board; this seemed like a dumb rule to me, until I saw the kids who climbed all the way up, stood on the board for a moment, then quickly backed down again. I was one of them, the first time. I stood teetering over the brink, looking down at the pool like it was the tiny river at the bottom of the canyon and I was Wile E. Coyote hanging over the gulf that one moment before gravity reasserted control. I couldn’t do it. It was too much. I had to climb back down the ladder, shamefaced, tears in my eyes. I had disappointed myself. I had disappointed Kenny.

They had cleared the pool, and I could hear the shocked gasps of other kids, of adults, as they manhandled me onto the small wooden plank that they used to carry injuries away from the pool area and to the front of the park, where an ambulance would pick them up. I could hear Kenny, the shock in his voice. Wondering: what happened? Is he all right? I wanted to open my eyes, wanted to say something, but no; I had to wait until they set me back down, for an ambulance that would never come, before I could give up the secret. And part of me, some dark small part of eleven-year-old me, was secretly delighted: he actually cares. As I sit here and write this now, I wonder: was my willingness to volunteer, to fake injury, really an act of bravery, as I’ve made it out to be in the dim mirror-chamber of ancient memory? Or was it some sort of test, an attempt at validation, at answering that question that gnaws at the back of my mind on dark lonely nights: will anybody really care if I’m gone?

I’ve never been the most coordinated individual, and my first few jumps off the high diving board and into the water were sprawl-y splash-y affairs that turned my belly red. But the terror and the exhilaration and the thereness of the impact of water, of plunging into the depths of the pool, of surfacing with a laugh and a gasp, they kept me coming back. I got tips from Kenny, and others, as to how to actually dive into the water. I tended to overshoot, to slam on my back rather than my stomach as I arced too far, but those times when I actually managed to do it right felt like nothing else: a smooth, swift plunge into the cool clear water, fast and slim as a fish. Kenny was proud. I was proud too.

Finally they put me down in the concrete vestibule, the sound echo-y in my ears. I opened my eyes, sat up, looked around. Kenny was there, of course, and the look on his face was that of utter betrayal. Why would you do this to me? it said. Why would you fake this? I was a precocious reader, and had read about it before, but that was the first time I had ever seen a look of betrayal. He walked away, silent, while the head of our summer camp group and the folks in charge of the pool explained that it was all an exercise, that I had generously volunteered to be the guinea pig, to test the lifeguards’ reactions and their ability to clear the pool in time. I smiled, I’m sure, as the adults thanked me for my participation, but inside my heart broke.

It had been a test, and I was the one who had failed. Failed by taking the test in the first place.

He forgave me, and we were still friendly for the rest of that year’s summer camp, but my relationship with Kenny–clearly not as one-sided as I seemed to have feared–was never the same after that. I know I went to camp again the next year, but I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t a counselor then, and while it was still a lot of fun it just wasn’t the same as before. Part of it was me getting older, sure. And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t benefit from being one of the counselors’ favorites, back before; I got picked as the wizard in Wizards and Warriors rather more frequently than was fair, and it’s always nice to feel special. But it no longer felt as special to me, as magical. Some fundamental innocence had been lost. I had betrayed someone I cared about, and that had consequences, consequences I was barely able to understand at that age. Consequences I still sometimes struggle to grasp.

But I still love the water. Love to sink down, to look up at the surface from the bottom of the deep end. It’s been years since I’ve jumped off a diving board–more likely that I’d break it, now–but someday, somehow, I’ll jump off a high board again and come splashing down into the deep end of a deep azure pool, sunlight glinting in my eyes as the terror of free-fall is replaced by the sharp shock of the water’s embrace.

No more pretending I’m hurt, though. Some things are too real to fake.

Along for the ride

Sun shone through the shifting leaves and dappled the stony path ahead.  That same breeze pushed against us, inconstant, cooling rather than cool.  I had dressed for chillier weather than this, had already shed my undershirt back at the car, and the wind through the trees did a perfect job of keeping me balanced, neither hot nor cold.

Babe was recalcitrant.  Ten feet ahead of us, she balked again, stopping in the middle of the path.  I pulled gently on the reins, said “whoa” in a low voice.  Unsure as to whether Echo responded more to the sound or the motion.  My cousin kicked once, twice, on the sides of the large brown horse, which was enough to get her moving again.  I had already lowered my hands, and after a moment Echo stepped forward, continuing our slow progress through the forest.

A thing I had noticed: Echo wasn’t fond of mud.  The lead horse–I never caught its name–tromped through the soft patches that regularly crossed the stony path with no particular regard.  Babe seemed to follow it precisely; I never quite figured out whether that was the horse’s doing or my cousin’s, although I suspect the former.  Echo, though.  Echo wasn’t fond of mud.  She nosed around, looking for a different way through the patch.  Horses don’t mince, really, but she clearly preferred ways around the muck that involved getting less dirty than her compatriots.

I approved.  I’m not big on mud either.

A thing I had noticed: Echo wanted to be in the lead.  Or, at least, ahead of Babe.  Whenever the other horse stopped in the middle of the path–which was depressingly often, usually halfway up a mild slope–I had to pull back on the reins to keep Echo from passing the large brown horse (and my cousin) up.  We had been told to keep a horse-length between us, and to stay in the same order, and I was doing my best to follow those instructions.  My ride would come to a halt after a moment, waiting patiently while my cousin kicked Babe’s sides once, twice, to get her moving again.  This happened at least ten times over the course of the ride.

A thing I had noticed: Echo never needed to be kicked.  Not once.  Whenever Babe decided to actually move along, Echo would start again as well after a moment.  After the first ten minutes or so, her desire to be in the lead had mostly quieted down, and she kept herself at a distance from my cousin’s horse without me having to guide her.  The same happened whenever we made our way across one of the several streams on the trail.  I would bring Echo to a halt, and she would wait patiently until Babe crossed, and then would make her own way across without my guidance, without me goading her to move.

A thing I had noticed: I was, in effect, completely superfluous.  The horses knew the route, knew the process, knew how to behave.  The stony sloped path would occasionally shift under their feet, but it was clear that it bothered me and my cousin way more than it troubled the horses.  This was well-trod ground for them, literally and figuratively, and I was there merely as an overweight accoutrement, tolerated by the tan mare rather more than being needed by her.  Every time I tugged her head left or right to return to the center of the path–which was not often–it was because of a low-hanging branch, or a tree on the side of the trail that I might rub up against.  None of these affected Echo, only the gangly lump sitting inexpertly on top of her.

She did want to stop and eat grass, though, and I had been explicitly told to not allow that, to pull up on the reins and keep her moving.  That happened twice in the hour-long ride.  That was the sum total of my contributions to the process: stopping a horse from feeding itself.  Twice.

We saw a fawn, nibbling on the underbrush.  It eyed us warily but did not flee.  The horses, after all, were a regular occurrence there.  This surprised my cousin.  It did not surprise me.

I could barely hear the guide when she spoke–Cara?  It was only yesterday, and already the name slips from memory–thanks to distance and my troublesome hearing.  I didn’t mind.  What could she be saying that was very important?  Well, one thing: I wasn’t letting the reins down far enough for Echo to drink easily from the water when we crossed.  I finally figured that out, leaning far down the horse’s neck as she lapped at the burbling stream.  But the ride was the sort of thing better passed in silence, in the non-silence of any living forest, birds and animals chittering in the distance, the rustle of the canopy overhead as the wind swirled around us, the steady clop-clop-clop of the horses on the stones a contrapunto to the white noise of nature.

I had never ridden a horse before.  Cara (if that was her name) complimented me on how well I did, and I silently replied: how could I not do well?  I barely did anything.  Echo knew the way.  I was just along for the ride.