Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

“It’s time for a game!” Kristin calls out, standing. “Come. Shall we repair to the parlor?” There are crimson splotches on her cheeks. She gestures invitingly with her arms. “C’mon! Thomas and Maloney. Let’s go! Maya and Nina have prepared questions.” And so everyone tumbles more or less tipsy and bubbly into the living room. Alice crawls immediately onto the couch with the twins clutching onto her like a pair of small monkeys. Luke collapses into the big wingback chair before anyone can tell him that’s Kristin’s seat. Slow on the uptake, Thomas winds up in a beanbag chair that’s impossible to get comfortable in; it feels awkward sitting so low to the floor, knees touching his chest. Patricia settles on a footstool, and Maloney brings chairs from the kitchen for himself and Jenny. The low-hanging, rose-pink rice paper lamps cast a reddish sheen over the living room. The dog ambles in and plops down at Maloney’s feet. Helena sits, erect and cross-legged, on one of the many lambskin rugs adorning the floor. Kristin stretches out behind her, looping herself around Helena, curling her arm, and resting her head on her palm. “Okay girls,” she says, nodding to the twins. “You’re up.” Maya begins, stuttering, until her sister talks over her. “So, we want to ask you some questions. Or Kristin told us we should ask you about some things (Kristin shakes her head, smiling). First — I mean first question: ‘What is your favorite food?’” They respond cheerfully. Maloney shouts, “Anything fatty!” Patricia gives the question serious consideration, thinking for some time before deciding on stewed rhubarb. Closing her eyes, Helena says, “Oysters,” to which Kristin makes a surprised face. Luke says, “What? My favorite food? Do I have a favorite?”

“Yes, you do!” Nina screeches eagerly.

“Lasagna. Or turbot. And frozen custard!” Patricia and Helena apparently feel inspired to applaud excitedly. And so it continues. Favorite film. Best friend (“Maloney,” Thomas says. “Oh, now I’m not so sure,” Maloney responds, causing Jenny to howl with laughter), but when Alice falls silent so too does the entire living room, and then she whispers, “You, Luke” and glances at him, looking lovely. Beneath his giddy pot-mask, Thomas stiffens, his bones stiffen though his muscles are soft, his heart stiffens in its calm rhythm, skips a beat or maybe races ahead too quickly. Something happens that doesn’t feel good. “I thought it was Maria,” Jenny says, challenging her daughter.

“Not anymore. Now it’s Luke,” Alice says, lifting her chin. Then comes Maya’s next question, and they’ve reached the end of the game: “Who do you miss the most in your family?”

“My father,” Nina whispers. Helena and Kristin look at the girl in dismay. “But you don’t have a father, we had a sperm donor, you know that, right?” Helena sounds as if she has wool in her mouth.

“That’s why I miss him,” Nina mumbles, tucking her head under Alice’s arm.

“I miss my mother most of all.” It’s Jenny’s turn, and her lips begin to quiver. “I really mean that. I do, Thomas!” She’s clearly drunk, her eyes are swimming. “Though I was so little. . when she disappeared . I have. . a hole inside me where she was. I do!” She lifts her chin, a martyred expression on her face. “Oh.” Jenny lowers her head and Maloney hugs her. “You cry so easily, sweetheart.”

I’m in a circus, Thomas thinks. An emotional circus. It’s a TV show. It’s a group therapy roundtable with some sorry psychologist. Then he hears Maya’s clear voice calling out his name: “Thomas? Uncle Thomas? Who do you miss the most in your family? They don’t have to be dead.”

“Nobody,” he says. “I don’t miss anyone. I’m not sentimental.”

“Ha!” Jenny interrupts. “You’re a liar. He’s unbelievably sentimental. Just like his uncles. He even looks like them. Or he did anyway, back when he was still young and handsome.”

“Yes, he does,” Kristin says. “I don’t know if they were sentimental, but they’re the ones I miss the most. My brothers. I miss my brothers.”

“That’s right,” Helena says, reaching back to touch Kristin’s knee. “You do.”

“Don’t you miss Mom?” Jenny asks.

“Of course. You know I do, Jenny.”

“Where are your brothers?” Maloney asks, following a silence. You fucking know the answer to that, Thomas thinks. I told you.

“They’re dead. Many years ago now. Meningitis. The doctor came too late. We lived way out in the country back then.”

“In the big house,” Nina says.

“That’s right. In the big house. Tom died ten hours after Jon. They were only eighteen. The exact same age as you now, Alice.”

Everyone turns toward Alice with her ultra-short hair, sprawled on the couch beneath the wall tapestries. The two skinny girls are twined around her like yarn on a spinning wheel.

“Relax, people,” Alice says, grinning. “ I’m not dead yet.”

Kristin and Maloney are the first to laugh. The others follow suit.

“Nope, you’re not!”

“Thank God!”

Liberating laughter , Thomas thinks, smiling to himself. His eyes slide shut, his body is so relaxed and heavy that he couldn’t possibly budge an inch. And it feels so good, so good. He imagines his two uncles in the big yard, their short blond hair, shiny and glistening in the sunlight, slicked back, their knobby knees poking out of their dark shorts; the twins whom his mother told him about when he was in bed, because he so badly wanted to know about them, because he pestered her; his mother’s voice warm and low, maybe she made up all the stories just to make him happy. Tom and Jon, the magical uncles who were now in heaven, the innocent pair who’d played so divinely on the piano in the conservatory, who had such a great future ahead of them. And then: dead, gone, in a single feverish day. The doctor stood there with his bag, unable to bring them back to life. The images flit through Thomas on delicate, flailing wings. “Tell me about the time Tom fell in the lake.” “Tell me about Jon! That one about the loose tooth that he swallowed.” “Or that time they got a little horse, and you taught them how to ride.” “Or when Tom painted a huge tiger on the kitchen wall!” His child-voice is hoarse and extremely close, practically oozing from his adult vocal chords, his throat. He can almost feel his Adam’s apple vibrating. He can feel his mother stroking his neck. A mosquito bite itches on his thigh from under the duvet. And there’s a wall light with its blue screen, its special evening light. His mother’s silhouette on the wallpaper. Later, he’s rustled awake by Patricia. She helps him out of the beanbag chair and, with Kristin’s assistance, guides him into the cold night, across the yard to the barn, and he struggles to get his long legs into the sleeping bag while Patricia, irritated, sits up, then down, waiting beside him in her sleeping bag. All this remains in a foggy haze — until he wakes in the middle of the night to a chorus of breathing, the sleeping flock. He was so incredibly tired, vaguely recalls that Luke resembled a kind of Jesus figure or king sitting in the wingback chair, and that Jenny couldn’t stop talking about her uncles, whom she didn’t even remember, that Helena missed her grandmother, who’d had a good head on her shoulders, and smelled of oranges (though that could’ve been something he’d made up), and that he’d thought he was the only normal person in his entire family of bastards and outcasts. Now he believes this was unnecessarily hostile on his part. He’s in his sleeping bag, his feet sweaty. Around him it’s pitch dark. He’s insanely thirsty. He tries to conjure up images of himself as a boy, his mother. But now the images are gone. Something tickles his left ear, he puts his finger in and wiggles it around. When he pulls the finger out, he can hear a zipper slowly unzipping, after which someone stands very quietly, and begins to move searchingly, barefooted, across the floor. He props himself up on his elbows and sees that it’s Luke with a flashlight; its bluish cone guides him, a well-lit path leading to the door. Luke gently unbolts the door, then he’s outside.