D. M. Kerr is the writing name of a Canadian writer currently living and working in Singapore, where he teaches game design and business. His work has been published in Blank Spaces, Eyedrum Periodically and Birch Gang Review. He can’t afford to eat at Scully’s, not with the money they pay teachers these days.
“I’ll book a late lunch,” Verlane said, “at Scully’s.” He was proud of Scully’s, of its wide white plates, white cloth napkins, burnished cutlery and haute cuisine. Late lunch was even more of a delight there: by a curious alignment, sunlight reflected off the surrounding office towers to bathe its stained-glass roof, and, through it, the tablecloths, the pale oak floor and the conversation of its patrons with a lambent rosy hue.
“I’m downtown,” Scorea had just told him, over the phone, “St. Michaels. My Gynie checkup should be finished by one. Can we do lunch?”
Verlane and Scorea had little chance to see each other after she and Jake had moved to the suburbs. Verlane had chosen to stay in the city, close enough to their mother that he could check up on her regularly. The money he saved from not owning a car he spent on expensive places like this.
Even with the sunlight, Scully’s was not busy in the early afternoon. They got a good table. “Try the sliced black pepper ham,” Verlane told Scorea. “It’s delicious.”
Scorea smiled. “I’ll take a salad instead.”
They didn’t talk much, even after the waiter delivered their choices. Their sibling relationship was like that. It needed only the occasional, innocuous question to add a bit of flavor to the arrhythmic background ambience of the fine restaurant.
But that ambience was suddenly pierced by the primal, anguished wail of a child: “Mooommmeeeeeee!” The “eeee” part of the wail, a sentence in itself, spoke of pride injured beyond repair. “I want! Now!”
The patrons of Scully’s were too polite to break their chatter. Verlaine glanced up once, as he continued to cut the slices of his ham. Scorea didn’t appear to have heard: she was moving her fork through her salad to pick out the less exotic bits.
The cry had come from behind Verlane, close enough that he could hear the woman’s taut, whispered response: “Graham, if you don’t shut up right now, I’m never taking you downtown again.”
The boy responded with another deeper wail.
He’s got her now, Verlane thought. She’s made a threat she can’t carry out, and he knows it.
“Here-” the mother said, angrily. Perhaps something was passed over, Verlane didn’t know, but the boy’s wails subsided immediately into sniffles. The chatter, which had by now, in fact, paused, like musicians waiting out an impromptu solo, returned to its original arrhythmia.
Verlane looked over at his sister. She had not paused plowing the greens of her salad bowl. The sharp lines of her face were beginning to soften. A glow of country freshness radiated from her cheeks.
O Scoreana! he thought. What will your child be like? Will you and Jake cocoon him in your house? What idle threats will you make when your children turn public places into weapons against you? What negotiations will you try, and fail?
Scorea raised her head, as if in response to his questions, and smiled gently. But she wasn’t smiling at him. Her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder. Verlane heard the squeak of stroller wheels on the oak floor, and the faint whimper a child makes when its head is nestled somewhere warm.
“He’s so cute,” Scorea said.