Of Shapes & Shadows June 2005   Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Fiction

Breakfast
By ADAM JEFFRIES SCHWARTZ

Zachary walks into the kitchen without his cane. He's nervous doing this, even in his own house, surrounded by his family. So, the three women try, unsuccessfully, not to stare.

Sylvia, his mother, attempts to smoke casually. Zelda, his grandmother, putters at the sink, muttering to herself. Estelle makes the occasional wheezy, gasping breath. Sylvia watches the two old ladies disintegrate and takes a drag off of her cigarette.

Sylvia looks at her mother swirling water around the empty sink and says, "Hey mother, if you want a hobby, then go empty the dishwasher."

Zelda snaps back, "Do it yourself."

"I thought you were looking for something to do," Sylvia grimaces.

Zelda thunders at her daughter - "I'm sanitizing. Your house is a cesspool. There are so many germs they're unionizing. You mark my words, someday they're going to rise up and slaughter us while we sleep. You hear me! Slaughter us! Then, then you'll believe me."

Sylvia takes a long drag, blows it out her nose. "After we've been slaughtered?"

"Of course not," her mother snorts, "Just minutes before." She adds ominously, "When it's too late."

Zachary walks to the refrigerator ragging his plastic leg behind him. The thing is always dragging behind or swinging ahead of him; it is an odd sensation, to have a body part with its own agenda. He hates it, wants to rip it off, hurl it down the street.

Estelle thinks he looks like a wolf, he'd chew off his own leg before he'd complain; he's so stubborn. Where, she wonders, did he get that from, we're all so easy-going.

She rasps at him, "So?" This translates roughly to 'So kid, what's the story?'

He looks at her and shrugs.

Estelle answers authoritatively, "Sure."

He smiles at her like an old Vaudevillian and says, "More importantly, how are you?" He almost tacks on, "Darling" at the end, but restrains himself.

Estelle almost giggles. Sylvia shoots a look at her mother - 'When did they get so chummy?'

Zelda shrugs, she doesn't know.

Zachary asks Estelle, "How'd you sleep?”

"I don't sleep," Estelle rasps, "I pace."

"It's good you're keeping busy.”

Zachary says this taking a pitcher of orange juice out of the refrigerator and carries it on the long trek to the kitchen table.

Zelda barks, "That stuff'll kill you. Put it back."

Sylvia gives her mother a withering glance.  "Orange juice, mother?"

"From con-CEN-trate." She spits out, "It's all sugar. SU-GAR Feh!"

Sylvia exhales smoke, takes a long pause.  "OK, sugar, BAD, get me a pencil I'll make a note. She looks up at her mother and asks, "So, no more cakes or cookies, no more chocolate pound cake, from Toddy's, is that what you're suggesting? I didn't go to college, it's all so confusing, explain it to me, wouldya."

"Pound cake," Zelda barks, "is different. Pound cake is food." Then she says to her grandson, "Darling, let me fix you something, you must be starving."

"No!" Sylvia screams, "No, no, no, no, no! Don't touch anything, I just had the stove fixed.

"Sylvia," her mother bellows, " What kind of way is that to talk, it was just a stove top."

"Mother, you touch the stove and I'll break your arm."

"What joy you bring to my golden years," Zelda announces, exhaling smoke. “How about the microwave?"

"OK, mother, but first, what does Mr. Microwave not like?"

Estelle jumps up and down in her seat, raising her hand, "I know! I know!"

Sylvia sternly counters, "I asked Mother."

Zelda hurls the rest of her coffee into the sink, yelling a cathartic, "Feh! This stuff'll kill you."

"Now, you don't like coffee, either, is that what you're telling me?"

Zelda looks at her daughter like she is a head of cabbage - she's so dense, "They have chemicals, I saw it on TV."

"Sure,” Estelle says.  "I saw that on Action News at 4. But it wasn't the coffee, doll."

"No?" Zelda's certainty is shaken.  "You sure?"

"Yeah." She squints, trying to recall.  "It was something about Guatemala, I can't remember what."

"Whatever, it's a filthy habit." She looks at Zachary and says, "It'll stunt your growth."

Estelle says, "Sure, just look at me."

"Darling," Zelda yells, “Promise me you'll never start."

Zachary is in an awkward position, neither seated nor standing; he has a pitcher of juice in one hand, and a chair that still needs to be pulled out. Then there's the matter of swinging himself around; it's almost too much to bear. He holds onto the back of the chair, catches his breath and pretends to think about the question.

Sylvia watches him. To calm her nerves she takes a long drag from her cigarette. If he were younger, she thinks, I could help him. She taps an ash into the ashtray. When he was a baby his legs were perfect. They were soft and doughy, she could have eaten him up.

"Coffee, Nana?" He gives the pitcher back to her. "That stuff'll kill you." He pulls back the chair.
Zelda leans into her daughter, lights a cigarette, blows smoke up in the air and says, menacingly, "See, you don't have to be so difficult."

Zachary maneuvers himself around and plops into the cane chair. Sylvia doesn't say anything. Zelda takes a folded twenty out of her bra and hands it to Zachary.

"It was only a chair,” he says.

Sylvia rolls her eyes. "Mother," she says angrily, "Focus."

"Why should I? What's in it for me?" For confirmation she looks at Estelle who nods gravely.

Zelda pats Zachary on the head, "You're a good kid." Then she heads back to do battle with the sink. When his grandmother's back is turned Zachary slides the folded twenty down to his mother.

Zachary takes a bagel from the plate of the table and butters it. He takes a bite. Everything tastes the same to him, but he doesn't know why. It's not that things have no flavor, it's that they all have the same one. Everything tastes like death: metallic, shiny, flat and endless.

Zelda says, "Darling, you want some eggs."

Zachary shrugs.

Sylvia counters, "Watch it."

Zelda spits out, "Boiled, you ungrateful creature! Boiled! After all I've done for you the least you could let me do is boil a pot of water!"

"No, Nana, really, it's OK."

“You won't be happy until blow us all up, so fine, make your egg, do whatever you want, give me a minute to run for cover."

"You'd think I deliberately set the kitchen on fire! I'm mean but what, what kind of crazy person would do a thing like that!" Then she smiles at Zachary and says, "Some nice fruit?"

Zachary shrugs again. He puts down the bagel and looks at the chocolate pound cake.

Estelle announces proudly, "From Toddy's."

"From where?" he asks, making fun of her.

Estelle smiles her terrifying smile, tiny rows of brown teeth. Her laugh turns into a wheeze and ends with a hack. Zachary thinks, death is everywhere. He swears that he can see her skull through her face.

Estelle recovers, this time, and cuts him a slice. He takes a bite; it tastes like a bicycle. He chews it slowly, turning it over in his mouth. Zachary tries to remember when things had different tastes but can't. He tries to remember what he used to feel like, and can't. He feels separate from his own body.

Zelda says, "Not hungry? You have to eat something darling; it's putting your mother on edge. You want some ice cream?"

Estelle agrees, "Pizza?"

Zachary shakes his head, "No, I just want to go back to bed. I feel funny."

"Pain?" His mother asks.

"Nausea?" Estelle asks.

"No."

"Numb?" His mother asks, "They said that was normal, you'd have to massage it." She breathes out and says cautiously, "You want Estelle to massage it?"

"No, I can't explain it."

Sylvia says, "Some people have pains afterward."

"It takes practice." Estelle rasps.

Zach can't explain.  "It's not the leg."

Zelda understands; she has to sit down.

He gets up and limps away.

Zelda wants to tell him something, something important, something about life and death, but can’t think what. So she says nothing.

Zachary drags himself up the stairs, down the hall and into his bedroom as the three women sit in the kitchen holding their breath.