A Leaking Pipe; A Taut Bedsheet

A story about tensions at the dinner table.

There is going to be an incident at your dinner table. There is going to be incivility. The large mirror hangs at the head of the table. It hangs on taut wires and beckons us blindly. If you turned around you would see it as clearly as anyone could, but, of course, your head will remain fixed in place. You will stare straight ahead as the scene becomes cruel and the light slowly dims. You will do nothing and imagine the sun falling towards the earth. It will start slowly: your nephew will make a vulgar comment about the food on his plate. He will imply something obscene about the white sauce that it’s bathed in. He will use the word “emission,” and glance around at the rest of us, sneering, eager to see if he will be slapped. We will try to ignore him. We didn’t ask to be part of this. It is you that put us here. Your aunt, sensing what’s coming, will get up and draw the curtains. She will bind them tightly shut. She cares so much about public perception. She had often wished, before her daughter left home, that she could point a remote at her, and put her on mute when she cried. Her daughter couldn’t be here today. Her excuse was implausible, but no one could do anything about it. The air in the room will get heavier. Your aunt’s new boyfriend, a barber who, we suspect, is using the basement beneath his establishment for some unsavory purpose, as evidenced by the reinforced door, and the keypad beside it, will shift in his chair, unsure what his role is. He worries that, as the oldest man present, some action might be expected of him, but relaxes when your father, bleary-eyed, more decrepit than ever, hobbles into the room. He had been fast asleep in the reclining chair in the living room, a horse falling over again and again in his dream, but the sound of the curtains awakened him, and drew him in here. The door shuts behind him, and a crossbeam falls into place. At this point, we will see there’s no turning back. Our food will become unimportant. In the mirror, your father will be pointing at one of us. Your nephew will make another comment, speculating on the nature of the pink meat on his fork, and his friend, who wasn’t invited, who came of his own accord, for reasons we prefer not to imagine, will laugh in a way that betrays his incomprehension. A dam, you’ll remember, can be a great stone thing and last thousands of years, or it can be nothing but spittle and twigs, gone by next morning, or later that day. A crown can be made out of rusted old chains. Your mother, dead all these years, could be standing in the corner as all this unfolds, as it will, holding one of her porcelain figurines, the one of the boy in the tricorne hat putting his finger in the mouth of a kitten. The kitten is aware of the strength of its jaws, the prick of its teeth, but it is frozen in the moment before it makes a decision. The child, likewise, reaches for a mystery he will never uncover. The case will remain unresolved, lost in a box growing mildew, dark and quiet, self-contained, eventually swallowed by flames. Your father will climb up onto the table. He will position himself on his hands and knees facing towards you. He will quiver and arch his back and cough up a glob of tar the size of a golf ball right onto your plate. You will realize, at this point, you have forgotten to eat your own food. You will realize you’re not hungry. You will realize that none of us are. The barber, looking sideways at nothing, will say it was hot yesterday, and we’ll all start to argue with him. We’ll all get up and start shouting. Things will get darker then. The barber will show his true colors. He’ll try to break your nephew’s friend’s fingers. The skeletons will all be pulled from the closet, and our tongues will find a way into their mouths.