A Many Splintered Thing / Day 29: He cleared his throat to fight that constricted feeling and said, “Meatloaf.”

Any inconsistencies? Shout 'em out. As we progress, I trust my memory less and less. Days here are challenging. That's a good word. So if I ever don't show up, apologies. I take it day by day. So, needless to say, some days I don't trust my memory to supply the little details. Heh. Which is why I say if you see any issues...shout 'em out. 
XOXOSommer~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“So you know my story,” she said, fingering her scars. The tail ends rose above a dark aquamarine blouse she wore over dark jeans. She’d chosen to wear silver sandals instead of boots to go to town and Caleb found himself utterly fascinated and somewhat fixated on her painted toenails. “Do I ever get to hear yours?”
They sat at a small rough wooden table, handmade, according to a tag stuck to it, by Dave’s Woodworking. You could buy your own for only four hundred dollars. Caleb ran his fingers across the artfully distressed wood and thought if he had four hundred to drop on a table it would be this one.
“Not much to tell.” He bit into a wrap purchased at the deli counter. Rib eye, aged cheddar, fresh local produce and a horseradish mayo. “I was a punching bag until I was big enough to punch back.”
She played with her shrimp salad. Spearing a shrimp, putting it back. Instead she focused on the raspberry lemonade iced tea she’d declared “the best” upon their ordering dinner. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing compared to—“
She held up a hand and gave him the evil eye. “It’s not a contest. Please don’t insult us both by painting it that way.”
“I know, I just feel weird bitching about my dad being a heavy handed drunk when you had—“
“A completely different childhood that has zero to do with what you went through. Where was your mom in all this?”
“Ah, yes, Maria, the original punching bag. She never confirmed it but I have to say, I’m pretty sure he was beating on her probably almost immediately after the wedding bells rang. Oh, he was happy go lucky guy, until you put some booze in him. And since he liked booze that became pretty much every day.”
“What’s the most vivid memory you have?” she asked.
In the past he’d have ended this conversation and either left or moved on to a new topic. He’d never confided any of this in a woman. Unless you counted Belinda. She and Bob had managed to get a lot out of him as the years went past. Mostly because they treated him like a son. Or, as he found out, how a son should be treated.
He normally didn’t go for I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, but he recalled her that morning, on her knees, bare to him body and soul, telling him her story. He cleared his throat to fight that constricted feeling and said, “Meatloaf.”
“Meatloaf?”
“Yeah. My mother, when I was about seven or so, made meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas for dinner. He was on the day shift at the time so he was usually home for dinner and he loved meatloaf. I remember, very vividly, my mother telling me she wasn’t using her normal recipe. She was going to use his mother’s recipe. She’d found the recipe card in some stuff she’d been going through. She thought it would be a nice surprise.”
He looked at the wrap that had seemed appealing enough to inhale just a half hour before and it turned his stomach. He pushed the plate away but snagged a fry.
“First problem was, he was an hour late for dinner. And she kept everything warm. So right there you’re drying out your meat.” He heard himself laugh. It was a bitter, hard sound that made him sad way down to his bones.
Dahlia speared the shrimp again, nibbled it, but put it down. Her eyes were full of many things—interest, sadness, affection, sympathy. It hurt him to look at her eyes. So he looked at his work-stained fingers. When he worked outside without gloves they always looked dirty even when he knew they were very clean.
“The potatoes were dry, the meatloaf was dry, even the canned peas looked sad.” He rubbed a hand over his face and realized how tired his eyes were. From the trip, from the sun, from this story. He felt a thousand years old all the sudden.
“So he stumbles in, obviously lit up like a Christmas tree. He liked gin, believe it or not. I heard that gin is an anesthetic.” He shrugged. “I have no idea if it’s true or not. None. I just heard it and remember him falling down sometimes and laughing. And I think, well, fuck, that makes sense because it was like he didn’t feel it. I remember wondering how he could hit her that much, and then, eventually, how he could hit me that much, without hurting his hands. But if gin is an anesthetic…”
He looked up into her big blue eyes. She was twisting a long lock of dark-dark hair around her finger over and over and over again. “Caleb, I’m sorry I asked. I don’t know why I treated it so cavalierly. I was curious about you—where you come from—and I didn’t think. Stop now. You don’t have to tell me shit. I promise.”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Oh, but I do, Dahlia. What’s more, as much as I hate thinking about these things, I want to tell you. Sometimes if I can bring myself to talk about them and get them out, it’s like scrubbing a tiny little piece of my soul clean. Ya know?”
She squeezed back. “Actually, I do.”
“So back to my story,” he said with another harsh bark of laughter. “He comes in, lit up, and his eyes are red like fire and his face is flushed and he declares himself starving. Could eat a whole cow. My mother’s doing that thing she did where she scurried around like a rodent in a room with a cat. She sets the table and she gets the food and she sits. I can see how nervous she is. Hell, I felt like I was going to puke all over the table myself, because even at seven, I know my dad is the human equivalent of a ticking time bomb. She tells him it’s his mother’s recipe. She found it and she thought it would be nice.” He put his head in his hands again and then straightens up to take a sip of his soda. He wished on a star that it was fucking whiskey instead. Sadly, it remained soda.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” she said, pushing her knee against his beneath the table.
“First the meatloaf hit the wall. ‘You call this shit my mother’s meatloaf?’” he yelled. “’It’s dry. It’s horrible.’ Then the meatloaf hit my mother. The rest of what was on the serving platter. He picked it up and threw it right at her.”
He inhaled deeply and then shut his eyes. “I’d seen him hit her before. Hell, I’d seen him hit her right in the fucking face with a fist, but somehow seeing him throw that meatloaf at her was just so….humiliating,” he said, his voice dropping. He looked around, thankful she’d led them to the table in the farthest corner of the small eating area. The thought of someone else hearing about what that man had done to his mother was horrifying.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“He proceeded to pretty much decorate our dining room in potatoes and peas and meatloaf. It was running down the walls, it was dripping off the ceiling fan. Then he snagged her by her hair and she—“ Here’s where he always had trouble. “She looked at me and told me to go to my room.”
Dahlia’s hand found his knee beneath the table. Her touch was one of the most comforting things he’d ever felt.
“I didn’t come out—coward that I was—until I heard him yell, ‘now clean this shit up’. I knew he was done so I came out and crawled around the room and helped her clean while he want and collapsed in their bed and passed out. Her face was swollen, her hair tangled, he’d ripped her dress.”
“Caleb, you weren’t a coward. You were seven. What the hell were you supposed to do?
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But it felt like I was supposed to do something. Anything. That was the worst I remember. And it was around that time I could see my mother systematically beginning to shut herself down little by little. Like a robot being turned off piece by piece. She became a bit more distant, a bit more introverted, a bit more broken every day. And it wasn’t long after that I began stepping in. Provoking him. Diverting him from her.”
“How old were you when you stood up to him?”
He smiled. “I was sixteen and six foot three. He topped out at six foot. One day I realized he was looking up at me when he yelled and that’s when it clicked. I was done.”
“Done,” she echoed.
“Done,” he said again. 


Author's Note: the title of this picture is "Sacrifice"
photo credit: Luke Peterson Photography via photopin cc