“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Her mouth is slack and she swallows a mouthful of air as she pushes her plate across the table.
“No-no-no, I’m definitely going to be sick.”
She plants her two hands on the table and blinks, her eyes lolling and unfocused.
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“Did I eat too fast? I was starving.”
She had been. She had said it while walking through the door.
“I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”
Her delight then at the sausages spitting and sizzling on the pan, lifting the lid of the pot to see daffodil blooms of butter melting on the potatoes, the steam lifting from the bowl of beans. Heinz, not Bachelor’s. I’d made that mistake before. As a bachelor.
It was her favourite dinner, the home comfort that brought her back to a tight kitchen, her two sisters and her mother, and the small round table, stained like an old deck of cards. It was the table that she wanted in her own house, not the plain square table, the right size for our kitchen, but too large for the two of us. She had always wanted a round table for me and for her, and for those that we had been waiting to join us.
Now, she plants her hands on the table and reels out of the room, the door swinging open behind her. From the kitchen table I hear her vomit echoing in the toilet bowl. I fill a glass of water and wait an appropriate length of time. The toilet flushes. When the noise of the toilet fades away, I knock on the bathroom door. Her face is puffy and white like cotton, her eyes red and wet.
“Oh God, I don’t know why I’m sick. Is it food poisoning? Did you cook them right?”
She laughs with me and sits down on the toilet seat. Taking the glass of water, she leans over the sink and washes her mouth out.
“I don’t feel well at all.”
Her eyes are blinking and focusing once more. She stares at the wall and her eyes crease.
“I need the toilet.”
I am handed the empty glass and return to the kitchen table. The soft, yellow mash, the salty sausages. No wonder she wolfed it down. I take my time as I eat, chewing the sausages and thinking of my own childhood, when I hid unfinished sausages under my plate, in my milk glass, or smuggled them in my cheeks and spat them out to my dog. I’ve told her these stories before, but I’ll tell her again when she comes back in. She will tell me again of her own childhood kitchen, the table, the noise – the stories you want to tell your own kids. There is a sadness to this, but a comfort too.
The toilet flushes again and the water runs in the bathroom sink. I wait for her voice from the hallway, running my hand along the smooth surface of the table. It is plain and square, but it has seen good times in this house too, and who knows what stories it still has to tell. I am about to say this to her too, when she is sitting beside me, a white stick shaking in her hand.
This story was published in The Irish Times Fighting Words magazine, a collection of stories, poems and essays by young and international writers.
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