Replay

Allen walks into the kitchen where his mother is making a picnic lunch. He looks down at where she is busy on the counter-top, peeling and slicing cucumbers to be smeared with chive cream cheese. It’s the same picnic that they have every Sunday.

‘It’s the same picnic we have every Sunday.’

Allen’s voice takes on a falsetto during the word ‘every’ that is uncomfortably high for his newly discovered manhood. His right hand feigns up to his Adam’s Apple in frustration and embarrassment, the lines of his jaw clench slightly on the sides of his skull. Allen turns around, and takes a few steps back across the threshold of the kitchen and his hand drops down to his side. He has forgotten why it was up there in the first place. He hears the clean sound of kitchen knives slicing against a cutting board. Allen turns to see his mother in the kitchen, and walks into the kitchen to see what she is preparing for the Sunday picnic.

She is peeling and slicing cucumbers to be smeared with chive cream cheese. It’s the same picnic they have every Sunday.

‘It’s the same picnic we have every Sunday.’

Allen projects this to his mother in a deep tenor. He adjusts the crotch of his pants to physically compensate for an insecurity that he cannot be fully aware of while his mother wipes the flat edge of the knife against a dishtowel that’s been tucked into her waistband.

‘Is there something wrong with Aunt Greta’s cucumber surprise?’ she asks with a weak smile.

‘It’s not exactly a surprise if you serve it every weekend.’

Allen walks up to the table and flicks the peeled strings of cucumber wetly.

‘Don’t you want to mix it up every once in a while?’

Allen’s mother ignores his childish complaints and cracks open a fresh container of chive cream cheese. She peels the seal-top violently away from the cup in frustration and loses control of it. The thin leaf of plastic takes a short trip in the air before the messy side of it lands against her thigh. It hangs for one, unbelievable second, and falls—face up—on the ground.

‘Shit.’

Allen and his mother both look at one another. Although her son has heard far worse language in his first few months at public high school, he hasn’t reached the age where parents and children can cuss openly in front of one another. And being a devout Christian woman, Allen’s mother excuses herself from her son and the cutting board to step out of the kitchen and into the mudroom. Her shoulders relax, and she finds herself face-to-face with the family’s collection of winter coats. The kitchen knife is still in her hand and she realizes that she has crossed over the kitchen threshold.

She turns around to see her son who is standing with both palms flat against the tops of his thighs. His eyes are pointed blankly at the white wall opposite him, searching a little further upward than normal. A significant twinge of annoyance comes over her, she is curious about it, but walks back into the kitchen nonetheless—aware of the cucumbers that she must have been cutting before she stepped into the mudroom for the Sunday picnic that she must have been preparing for her family.

Allen’s mother strides back to where she was on the counter-top, brushing her son’s left arm as she passes to bring him back to where she is. Allen’s body does a small jump involuntarily, like the ones that happen when he’s about to fall asleep and it feels like all his muscles are getting their last bits of energy out at once before a long rest, but he doesn’t notice. He looks down at where the strings of cucumber peels have plastered themselves against the tabletop and automatically flicks them with his forefinger in an uncomfortably natural motion.

‘Stupid cucumber surprise,’ Allen mutters with more rancor than he thought he intended. Allen’s mother continues to cut the cucumbers faster and harder than any housewife should.

‘Can’t we have sloppy joe picnics instead?’

Allen looks down to his mother’s leg where there is a milky, white splotch. Allen’s mother follows her son’s eyes and sees where the cream cheese must have hit her leg. She clucks her tongue and wets her thumb with her tongue to try and massage the spot out. Allen stands and watches as the offending stain gets rubbed even more permanently into the jean fabric.

‘Allen, you can’t bring sloppy joes to a picnic,’ Allen’s mother says between gasps of breath—both from exersion and annoyance.

‘Why not?’

‘They’re messy.’

‘They’re spontaneous!’

‘They’re rude and they’re not tradition.’

‘Dad likes sloppy joes.’

‘Dad likes whatever I tell Dad to like.’

‘Well, if that’s not controlling…’ Allen stops himself midsentence. Even if his body indicates his arrival into manhood, he is still a child in his mother’s eyes. He isn’t supposed to know about these things yet—the complicated dynamics of a marriage. He isn’t supposed to know that it’s a power struggle. He isn’t supposed to know that it’s something his parents deal with every day.

Allen quickly finds his exit, taking brisk steps to where his mother had left before. Both his feet pass through the threshold and his brow softens. He looks back into the kitchen to see where his mother is standing at the countertop, eyes gazed down and body completely numb. Her hands are still on the cutting board, her right clutching her knife so that Allen can see the knuckles through her skin.

Allen takes a half-step back towards the kitchen. It looks like his mother is busy on the counter-top, peeling and slicing cucumbers to be smeared with chive cream cheese. It’s the same picnic that they have every Sunday.

‘It’s the same picnic we have every Sunday.’

Allen walks with confidence toward his mother and touches her knife-arm as he says this. Her body does a jump like it’s going to sleep but she doesn’t notice it because all she feels is this rush of hatred travel all the way up her spine and shoot to her fingertips and she finds herself stabbing her own son in the shoulder.

A little alarmed, Allen’s mother quickly retrieves the knife from her son and wipes it against the dishtowel that has been tucked into the waist of her pants. She looks to the counter in confusion. She had been peeling and cutting cucumbers before he walked in. She looks back towards her son.

Allen hasn’t moved. He hasn’t looked at the stab wound because he knows that the second he does his body will feel it. He can’t look because he knows, doesn’t know—assumes, that he deserved whatever he got from before he left the room. He keeps looking at his mother. Never taking his eyes off of hers, causing his head to tilt downward. This is the first time he has noticed how small she is.

Allen’s mother tries not to break face.

‘Why don’t you get cleaned up and fetch your father. It looks like we’re about ready to head out for our picnic. I’m sorry. ’

Allen turns and walks out of the kitchen.