Karen knew that kids tended to grow in awkward ways, sometimes a little chubbier before a growth spurt, or skinny no matter how much they ate, but something about Will just didn’t seem right.
She knew Joyce had been feeding him, of course she was, if she knew something about Joyce it was that she would go hungry if it meant feeding her kids, but still, something stuck in the back of her head.
The too-big clothes Will always wore, clothes she swore she had seen on Jonathan years ago. Clothes took in, holes covered by patches or sewn together. Although Will was usually neat, his clothes always washed, when Jonathan picked him up, Karen noticed Jonathan’s old, sun-bleached shirts. His dirty sneakers. The color-faded pants.
She saw Joyce, bags under her eyes, working two jobs and always running late somehow. When Karen managed to catch her a moment alone, not busy (not an easy task to manage), Joyce tended to smell of cigarettes mixed with perfume (it didn’t work as well as she hoped in drowning out the smell), and her hands shook more often than not.
Karen figured it was the divorce. With Lonnie gone, money was tighter, and they had to make ends meet. Lonnie likely wasn’t paying, Karen didn’t need to be told that, she knew, she just knew. She didn’t expect any different. She didn’t really know him much in high school, after all, he was older than them, but in the early days of his marriage with Joyce, Karen really thought it all would work out for her. She had always been mature, smart, a little bit of a rebel, but a dreamer nonetheless. Back when they were 17, she told her sometimes. “I will move far away and get rich, and everyone here will be jealous of me.” She sounded so confident, and Karen believed her, leaning back against her father’s car, apprehensively accepting a cigarette, coughing when the smoke met her mouth. Joyce always sounded so sure of everything, it seemed as if she never doubted. But she was a dreamer, getting married would do her some good, keep her feet on the ground.
That boyfriend of hers, older, “cool”, well, he sure did give topic to talk about, but Joyce was unconventional. Of course she had to go and find herself a boyfriend who already graduated.
“I’m pregnant”. Joyce was 18, both of them a month away from finishing their senior year. Quickly after the end of the school year, Joyce was married. She wasn’t sure if Joyce’s parents ever found out.
Jonathan was the cutest baby Karen had ever seen, and she realized she wanted one of her own, one that slept and drooled as much as Joyce’s baby did. As their marriage went on, well, she heard rumor around town of Lonnie going from job to job, but Joyce never told her anything, so Karen never asked. She saw the way Joyce became more and more tired, the way she checked the price of the items at the store and searched for the cheapest. Will was born, but nothing else changed. Karen saw her wearing the same clothes over and over, and she went through a pack of cigarettes in a concerning amount of time.
Will and Mike became incredibly close, and that gave Karen an excuse to get closer to Joyce too, who had slowly and silently drawn herself away from most people. Karen tried to not think about it being intentional on Lonnie’s part. She tried not too think about him a lot, but it was impossible. When she thought of Joyce, there he was, a looming figure. The way some days her voice was a little hoarse, as if she had been screaming. How silent everything was if Karen ever came over, how they just didn’t talk to each other.
Jonathan visited more, because Will practically lived at her house. He was a good kid, both of them were, but Karen didn’t miss the way they both flinched when she screamed at Mike to come down, Will’s here.
And so, that boy was too thin. Jonathan was too, but Jonathan was tall. Boys were usually lanky, specially teenagers, she would know, Mike was lanky already, even if he was just 10.
But Will, Will was shorter. Smaller than the other kids from their class Karen had seen. Small, and much too skinny, much to drawn into himself, much too quiet. Perhaps she had just gotten used to Mike blabbering on about his day, but something didn’t feel right.
He always looked at her with his big, open eyes, as if he couldn’t believe she was actually speaking to him. Or that I’m speaking to him in a normal tone, not screaming, her mind suggested. She shut it out. That would go away soon, right? Lonnie was gone now, and even if Joyce was more tired than ever, there was also a little of relief in her face that shone through.
They were going through a though time. They just needed for time to pass and do its healing.
In the meantime, she could help in her own ways.
“Will, darling, before you go.”
He was already walking up to the front door to leave, but he stopped in short and turned at her, eyes wide like a cat.
“I don’t know where my head was, honestly, I don’t know most days. I’m not sure what I was thinking about but I made way too much food for dinner. I haven’t got enough space on the fridge to keep it, already filled with left-overs, I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong lately. Would you be a dear and bring a little bit home with you? It’d save your mother the trouble of cooking.”
A lie. Karen knew how to lie through a smile, and this time was no different. She hoped the extra cups she added to the ingredients were enough for the three of them.
Seeing Will hesitating, she continued.
“It’s alright if your mom has already made dinner, you can just keep it in the fridge, for an emergency. It’s just that if you don’t take it, I’ll have to throw it out because I have no place to put it, and that’s a real shame.”
That seemed to do the trick. Throwing food away was unthinkable. Mike could learn something about that.
She divided it on two containers and wrapped them up on aluminum foil. As Will closed the door behind him, Karen knew Joyce wouldn’t mention it the next day, and neither would she.
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