“Hey, Mom,” Zac’s voice was gentle and it prodded her gaze towards us. She was so focused on her task that she hadn’t noticed our presence. She took us in with wide blue eyes, seemed to truly recognize us. It was a good day.
“Oh, you’re home early!” The peeler shook slightly in her hand as she spoke, the small instrument looking as though it could crush her fragile bones. “I’m making apple pie. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Her eyes shone brightly. My throat tightened at the simple sincerity of her words.
“Well, you know how I am with surprises. I’ve never been patient enough for them,” Zac said, flopping into the empty chair in front of him. He plucked a strip of skin from the table and stretched it tautly between his fingers, his fingertips grazing its crispness.
“How can I help?” I asked, sliding into the chair opposite her.
“You can peel some of these, if you’d like,” she motioned to the four remaining apples balanced on the tabletop and set the peeler beside them. “My hands are starting to get sore.”
Zac chuckled as I picked up the peeler and turned it around in my hands, examining it. He sensed my discomfort. At his laughter, his mom looked at him inquisitively, like a child.
“Janie’s not a very good cook,” Zac explained.
Blood rushed swiftly to my face, and I imagined that it filled my cheeks with nearly the same color as the deep red skin of the apples. Although his comment was spoken with a good-natured smile, I couldn’t help feeling the sting of his words, along with their truth.
But now was not the time nor the place for an argument over something so trivial. I matched his grin as I gripped the peeler in one hand and grabbed a medium-sized apple from the table with the other.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” his mother said placidly. “Everyone can cook. The only people who fail don’t care enough to even try. But Janie cares, and I know she'll try.”
As I started peeling, I noticed every motion that my body made. I felt nervous, put to the test; and I always became much more aware of my own mortality whenever I was around her. I felt the way my arm tensed up and my lips pursed, along with the quiet, shallow breaths that escaped them in a slightly offbeat rhythm. I watched my dark veins spread prominently across their territory like webbed feet beneath my skin as I worked. Choppy, uneven layers fell away from the apple and gathered on the table like a heap of dying soldiers.
I felt a barely-perceptible pressure on my wrist, light and feathery, and realized that his mom had taken my hand in hers and was guiding the peeler towards the apple at a less harsh angle. With her gentle direction, a layer of skin cascaded from the apple in an almost perfect spiral. Her fingers lifted from my wrist with the same weightlessness with which they had descended. Another neat curl of skin was added to the table’s colorful display. I smiled, pleased with my small but significant accomplishment.
“There,” I pronounced happily, setting the naked, coreless apple in the table’s center. “Maybe I’m not that bad after all!”
I shot a pointed look in Zac’s direction, and was taken aback to find his hazel eyes wet with unshed tears. He scooted his chair close to me, leaned over, pressed his lips against mine. His mom’s entire face was beaming; even her wrinkles seemed to smile. Maybe, by overcoming that simple challenge, I had received full admittance into a family so close to me but not quite my own.
(word count: 745)
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