“Well, I said it, didn’t I? And it’s not even a lie. Who would want to become my mother?” Aaron’s entire face wobbled as his own blatant honesty struck him. He shook his head, sliding off the bench and walking away. “I can’t talk about this right now. I’m going to watch something. I took notes on your morning classes. You had Networks, something with Signals, and Security something. Anyway, your schedule is clear for the rest of the afternoon. Took you long enough to wake up.”
“You didn’t have to cover for me.”
Oscar was a seven-year-old boy again, standing in front of his mother with his bangs on the floor, blinking as she screamed in his face. Except Aaron wasn’t screaming, and Oscar wished he would. He hated how quiet he’d gone, how subdued he sounded. He hated that he’d done this to him, that he’d made everything worse.
“I know. But I did. And you need to pay your sister. She covered your massive bill at the bar. I asked.”
When Aaron turned to go, Oscar didn’t stop him. He owed him better than that. So as he sat down on the couch and browsed until he settled onSchitt’s Creek, curling up against the other arm and patting the cushion for Luigi, Oscar said nothing and carried on eating his bread. It had grown cold and hard and went down like cardboard, scratching the inside of his throat.
And all Oscar could think as the discomfort settled was that he deserved it.
Oscar had never been beaten as a child, nor sent to dinner on an empty stomach. Despite the screaming matches between him and his mother, the punishments at home had always been fairly calm. On some nights, he had been banned from watching a beloved show. On other occasions, he’d missed a trip to the cinema.
Unfailingly, whenever Oscar and his mother argued, he went to sleep without a goodnight kiss. Eventually, the kisses stopped coming altogether. Maybe it was because the fighting raged on day and night without pause. Or maybe Oscar’s mother had decided that the best way to punish him was to make it clear as crystal that she didn’t love him anymore.
Somehow, this felt different. His entire skin prickled as he paced around the kitchen, sipping water while he wiped down already clean counters and cleaned the coffee machine, eyes skittering to the tuft of hair poking out where Aaron lay across the couch, Season 1 ofSchitt’s Creekon a way lower volume than normal.
When the kitchen failed to provide more distraction, Oscar found himself in possession of far too many hands and nowhere to put them. His mind was a broken record, playing the opening segment of a Mitski song over and over again.
He hadn’t been able to shake the clarity in Aaron’s gaze as he’d compared him to the man who had made his life so miserable, the father he hadn’t spoken to in so long. Oscar couldn’t imagine ever comparing Aaron to Marjorie Peters, couldn’t imagine loving him if he had reason to. So maybe Aaron wouldn’t anymore. Maybe Aaron was only here because he was afraid Oscar would go to sleep alone and choke on his own vomit.
A part of Oscar wished he would. It was the same part ofhim that lingered from the previous afternoon, the ugly woodpeckering that had wasted so much of his parents’ toilet paper when Oscar was a teenager, the same that had him on his knees scrubbing his own blood out of the tile grout in the bathroom just across from where he stood that one time he’d relapsed and done it again. The same voice had carried him to that bar. It had made him hurt Aaron by costing him a job and reminding him of his own personal monster.
It’s you. That voice is you.
Aaron sighed, not even bothering to pause the show, which he could recite by heart for the most part, as he got up and headed to the toilet.
Oscar fixed his eyes on the closed door. Its orange-toned wood reminded him that autumn was the most beautiful among the seasons, and it had only just begun, that he had dreamt all summer of walking through the farmers’ market arm in arm with Aaron when the trees changed color. Autumn reminded him that winter would be just around the corner, and Oscar wanted Christmas together; he’d dreamt of pink and white marshmallows floating on the surface of their hot chocolates, cuddling in their sweaters, eating candy through the end of January. As the water ran in the sink while Aaron washed his hands, Oscar thought about the ice melting as spring came around and remembered how he’d imagined celebrating the anniversary of their surgeries together, kissing each other’s scars while they made love all morning long.
By the time Oscar got round to summer, he was out the door, a jacket on his back and his earbuds in, Mitski playing an entirely different tune that reminded him he was a temporary thing, making him pray to a moon that had not yet risen in his sky so early in the afternoon, making him wish that someone, something, somehow would tell Aaron that he loved him. That he didn’t want to lose him.
Oscar didn’t want to go to sleep without a goodnight kiss.
Aaron was watching David and Moira fold in the cheese when Oscar came back. Their eyes met across the room. It felt almost ceremonious when the door clicked shut behind him, and Oscar was sure Aaron had heard his lump of spit go down as he swallowed.
“I wondered where you were.” Aaron pushed up his glasses, scrunching his nose.
“I needed to go get some things,” Oscar said, mouth twisting to the side uncomfortably. He peeked into his bag, moving forward a step that felt like a thousand. Luigi eyed him curiously, curled up still next to Aaron, whose fingers were gently rubbing the soft fur between his ears. “I thought you’d enjoy this.”
Aaron stopped petting Luigi when Oscar passed him the ball of colorful yarn he’d bought, autumn colors mixing in a bright blend Oscar could imagine him weaving into something beautiful.
“And these,” Oscar said before Aaron could respond, pulling out the mini sunflowers he’d picked up from Paulie’s and pressing them into Aaron’s free hand. “There’s more yarn in the bag. And the coffee beans you’ve been looking at. I’ll take those to the kitchen. Here.”
Oscar pulled the artisanal bag of coffee out and put the paper bag down on the couch next to Luigi, darting around the sofa and into the kitchen, where he started brewing a fresh pot.
Dinner would be special, too. He’d make Aaron the fried rice he liked, and he’d drown it in enough soy sauce to turn it nearly black, just how Aaron preferred. Oscar could take the salt if it made Aaron happy. He would take anything if it madeAaron smile. He would do anything to know that Aaron loved him anyway.
Moira was already presenting herself to Ronnie’s friends when Oscar plated the rice, and Aaron had finished the mug Oscar had taken to the coffee table a good two hours before, but there had been no words between them.
The Nemean Lion and the many-headed Hydra were nothing to the labor it took for a child unable to survive December from the sheer anticipation of a Christmas present to force himself into quiet patience, so to call this amicable silence a Herculean task was to diminish it.
Oscar brought Aaron his plate of rice to the couch, set down his glass of iced soda, and slid the salt and pepper shakers his way, counting every action to stop himself from spouting all the apologies he’d lined up throughout the afternoon and early evening. He brushed a thumb over Luigi’s back where he loafed on the arm of the couch and made to go back to the kitchen.
“Where’s yours?” Aaron asked, twisting his neck to look at him.
The eye contact flipped the mains on somewhere inside Oscar, whirring his anxious organs to life. He choked on air as he searched for the simple words that would convey his decision to give Aaron as much space as he needed without going into a long-winded and unnecessary explanation about all the lessons he’d learned from pressing his mother on and on until her lid came off. Oscar didn’t want Aaron’s lid to come off again. Not that he was too happy about this quiet simmer. He’d never been too good with uncertainty.
“We always have dinner in front of the TV,” Aaron said.
