"Why don't you come down to the hospital with me today?" Aunt May asks one morning. He knows it's morning because of the limpid sunlight that streams into the kitchen as she draws the curtains. For a moment he's so caught up watching the dust motes (falling, falling) that he doesn't notice the involuntary tremor in her clasped hands, nor the abortive glances she gives him. Then his expression changes, contorts itself into a smile that looks more like a grimace to her wary eye.
"Sure," he starts to say, but his voice comes out like a croak so he clears his throat (loudly, too loud in the silence) before continuing. "You go ahead or you'll be late. I'll swing by after lunch." He winces at the word choice, but hazards a quick look of strained reassurance that promptly causes her face to crumple.
Simultaneously, they look askance, him down at his long-soggy bowl of cereal and her at the clock on the wall. He picks up his spoon — what a strange fidelity objects have, staying in place through hours of nothing — and pokes diagnostically at the clumps in the souring milk. The clinking of metal against ceramic gives him a sensation so approaching pleasure that he keeps up the repetitive action for a while, chasing the ghost of a feeling as if across a featureless steppe. Then she's striding briskly to the fridge asking wouldn't he prefer some meatloaf, maybe, and the spell is over along with the obscure fascination. He's almost disappointed. Almost. He frowns a little as the near-emotion slips away.
"You know what, forget leftovers," Aunt May announces too cheerfully, shutting the fridge door and touching his shoulder lightly. "Let's get some pancakes from IHOP. You can have as much chocolate syrup as you want, how's that sound?"
Her palm resting where it is, she can feel the immediate, although subtle, tensing of his back muscles with her last sentence. She'd said she wanted to live in a chocolate house... he'd been peeking over the arm of her sofa chair, pain throbbing in his chest from three deep gouges but rapidly being eclipsed by her warmth and her light, oh, she was sunshine. She was adorable giggles and that irresistible nose rub; she was his path but damn it all, he keeps. Breaking. His promises.
"You need to go in for your shift," Peter finally manages to say, standing abruptly to disguise his shrugging off her hand. And then, because he's not really answering the question, he adds, "Pancakes sound good, you should give yourself a treat, Aunt May." He picks up his bowl and puts it in the sink, turns on the faucet and watches the cornflakes swirl dully in the rapidly diluting rancid milk. "I'll drop by after lunch," he repeats when he doesn't hear her leaving.
Lunch means walking a now-familiar route of Gwen's favorite cafés, then turning into the cemetery and picking his way through the headstones to her grave. This is something they both know.
He never stops to actually eat something along the way. The one time he'd ordered those Korean meatballs she loved, just to try, he'd started crying, silently, before the food even arrived, because she should be sitting in the chair opposite him, she should be bullying him into giving her some of his portion then laughing and pointedly withdrawing her hand from where their fingers interlock when he teases that she'll get fat. Always right before he calls her beautiful which, if she's in the mood, prompts her to pout until he kisses her and apologizes elaborately in appeasement.
The liquid spills over the rim of the bowl. The front door closes behind Aunt May. She stands for a minute on the front porch, blinking tears away, and he picks up the dishwashing sponge.
Title taken from Phillip Phillips' Gone, Gone, Gone which was actually featured in TASM2.
More to come, maybe...?
m.e.