What goes unsaid.
Tiny, frail hands–what’s left of a teen–push a few cold peas about her plate. The hot sweet scent of steamed vegetables assaults her senses. She quietly weeps and looks to her right. “Are you sure?”
A desperate, breathy whisper.
There is no response. It’s not ‘normal’ to respond to the same request over and over and over. She pushes a diversionary pea off the edge of her plate and a gentle hand on her shoulder prompts her to retrieve it. Reaching over the plate, she brings it back, letting her sleeve brush another pea into her lap. She gently parts her legs and lets it silently roll to the floor, where she meticulously crushes it into the soles of her Doc Martens. She keeps her face carefully blank.
A soft squeeze at her shoulder and a nod towards her hand prompts her once again. Her eyes widen, pupils dilate, and she looks to her right. “Are you sure?”
Post-meal support was an hour-long intrusion on her day. A pyroclastic rage was building inside her and reached for arguments, responses, or answers to those responses, her focus consumed by the branching paths. She jumped when she felt a steadying hand on her twitching knee. The touch, yanking her back into the room, suddenly aware of the conversation and television banter that had been filling the space.
“I would be too scared to go to the beach.”
She put her anger away for a moment. “Really? I love the beach!” Her voice is a masterful performance of prim and practiced joy.
Across the room, a senior, Piper, turned from her perch on the arm of the sofa. Piper was a force of nature and her excitable voice, practiced but not feigned, broke out across the room. “You’ve said that before! You should learn to drive whilst you’re here?”
“Could I do that?”
“Why not?” Piper leaned forward conspiratorially. “See, that would be real control.”
They shared a look over that last word.
Muffled laughter works its way through the unit, infiltrating the kitchen from the floor above. A man, not with his family for Christmas, fills colourful bowls with pretzels and mince pies. He carries them upstairs and stands outside the door, then holds a breath, waiting for the right moment. Hearing a scandalously constructed response hit its mark, he shoulders the door and enters to laughter. The girls’ glances landed on the tray in his hands. He noticed and keeps them off-guard with a comment.
“Did I seriously just hear that?!”
He sets the bowls down, markedly ignoring them as he jokes and feigns incredulity.
“You should play!” One of the girls calls out and a chorus of agreement spreads around the room.
“Pfft! I’m a professional.”
“You have glitter in your eyebrows!”
“Fair point! Deal me in!”
As they play, he notices a hand reach, absent-minded, for a pretzel. It is eaten unaware. An intense, prideful heat flares behind his eyes, and he tamps it down discretely.