A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl

Author:Bob Proehl
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-26T16:15:17+00:00

Anomaly Hiatus

The hotel restaurant’s menu attempts to serve all comers. It is a culinary United Nations. Along with hot dogs and steaks, there is an extensive offering of pastas and curries. An entire page details stir-fry options; another, falafel, kibbeh, and tabbouleh. Val and Alex sit there for an hour, and Alex doesn’t eat. Not won’t but doesn’t.

It’s a savvy trick on Alex’s part that in these situations he doesn’t present resistance or declare his intentions not to do something. He simply doesn’t.

Won’t she could break down. Doesn’t is a reed that bends with wind. When the waitress comes around and Val insists that he order something, he chooses a hamburger, plain, which goes cold on the plate while Val works her way through a massive Cobb salad.

She asks if anything is wrong, and he makes a noise that resembles the letter M.

Missed, skipped, and refused meals have always been crises for Val. Alex is an engine, burning through calories at an alarming rate. The caloric intake required for sustenance, let alone growth, is daunting to her, and most meals barely end before she’s contemplating the next one. On the occasions Alex will not eat, she finds herself less interested in the cause than obsessed with the idea that without food he will grind to a halt, or collapse like a puppet with cut strings. In the past, she’s tried to force the issue, over stomachaches and queasiness, over the rare claim that he doesn’t like this food or that. But the amount consumed ends up outweighed by the effort expended in its consumption. Her current defeatist strategy is to let it go and leave the food around, trusting he will find his way to it when he needs it, but part of her wants to reach across the table and stuff the hamburger into him like stolen goods into a burglar’s sack.

The waitress asks him if everything is okay, and he nods. She boxes it up for them to cram into the tiny hotel fridge, hopefully to be eaten cold later.

Upstairs, Alex gets into his pajamas and brushes his teeth wordlessly, without being asked. It’s a bad sign, because he is fastidious about not eating after he’s brushed his teeth. Once he’s out of the bathroom, Val goes in, shuts the door, and sits on the edge of the tub, sweatpants gripped in her right hand. It’s a testament to what an agreeable child Alex is that she has so few coping strategies for when he’s not. Negative emotions usually float through Alex like ducks down a stream. She’s thought that his basic mood has something melancholic about it, but real sadness and pronounced anger come upon him rarely. When they do, they strike quickly and dissipate just as fast. She tries to think of times he’s been this recalcitrant and can only think of the car ride from California to New York when he was three. She’d left her lawyer’s office that day, the manila envelope gripped in her hand, and walked to a copy shop a few blocks over.

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