Unspoken

Through the front windscreen, I can see my son on the pavement, head slightly dipped, shoulders tipped forward against the weight of his school work filled rucksack. He never looks my way, but navigates straight to me, opens the door, and slides in. The back door, not the front. The back seat.

“Hello lovely, how was your day?” I twist in the driver’s seat and give him a smile. He scowls back. “Well? Anything interesting happen today? How’s William?” He growls, lightly and looks out the car window at the bushes. I start the engine, and glance in the rear view mirror. He stares fixedly away.

Ok. Scratch that. I have got it wrong again, haven’t I? Fourteen. He turns fourteen this week, my baby, and I’m not keeping up. Yesterday, Sunday, he talked to me for hours about the minutiae of his Warhammer unit’s capabilities, why would I not expect a hello at least today? But it appears to be too much. Let’s try this again.

Through the front windscreen, I can see my son on the pavement, head slightly dipped, shoulders tipped forward against the weight of his school work filled rucksack. He never looks my way, but navigates straight to me, opens the door, and slides in. The back door, not the front. The back seat.

I twist in the driver’s seat and give him a smile. His eyes, a hazel kaleidoscope of green and brown, soulful, puppy-dog, beneath dark, voluptuous lashes, meet mine. There he is, my boy. A twitch of his mouth, marginal, barely there, but searching his face, as I do when he comes back to me, I perceive it. I turn to face the wheel, start the engine, pull out into the traffic, radio off, as he likes it, and listen to his stillness.

Glancing in the rear view mirror, I see his face turned to the light of his window, the smooth curve of his forehead, the dark arch of his brow, and the swoop of his still celestial nose, now marred by the bump of an angry spot. He senses me looking and his eyes again meet mine in the mirror, a glance, a touched base only, and we both look away. I sigh. It’s been a long day, and later, I will come back out to collect his sister. Then there will be dinner, and homework and “do you think you need a shower” and “have you packed your bag” and “I’m sure it will be ok” and “I’m proud of you”. Now there is quiet.

We pull up outside the house and weary, pulling myself together, I get out the car. He takes a moment longer than me, gathering first himself, and then his bag, his coat, his half empty water bottle, and as I come round the car to his side, he falls in step behind me and we approach the door. I unlock it, push it open, and step aside, making way for him to go through. He pushes off black leather shoes, each toe applied to the heel of the other foot, steps out of their stiff stricture leaving the laces tied and the shoes discarded in the doorway. I bend, pick them up, place them on the rack and add mine alongside. In the hall, he shrugs his bag off his shoulder, lets his coat and bottle slip to the floor with it, and without turning round, he vanishes up the stairs.

I walk to the kitchen, take out a side plate, cut an apple, wash some grapes. I stare into the cupboard, think through what went into his bag this morning, and select a chocolate biscuit, which I place, not touching the moisture from the fruit, on the plate beside a handful of raisins. I no longer cut the grapes in half, like I did when he was tiny, and still told me about his day. I boil the kettle, and as I am pouring the steaming water, he comes into the room. The line of his jaw looks softer now, his cheek a little rounder, his eyes a little looser. He is wearing pyjamas, the Star Wars logo repeating across his chest, and I can see how his shoulders are too square for that little-boy motif, but his chest too slight for manhood. He comes to me, looks at the snack I have made, and then at me. Those eyes, playful now, search mine out, hook them, pull them down, then slide away to the plate. I resist, decline, play hard to get, and he flashes back to me, hooks again, pulls sideways. We look at the plate together, then back to one another. He raises one eyebrow, I furrow mine, then smile, breathe out, and place a small, pink foil wrapped chocolate on the plate. He grins at me. I open my arms, just wide enough, and though he takes half a step for my two, he allows me to encompass him, hold him against my body. His head, which rested so many years against my breast, now sits beside my own on my shoulder, mine on his, facing the opposite direction. I hold him lightly, arms against his back, enveloping, not squeezing, and he lifts his, limply, to my waist and lets his forearms sit against my sides. Beneath my cheek, I feel the some of the tension drain from his body and I breathe, my chest against his, slow, deep breaths, breaths that steadied him at the threshold of our home on his first day of big school, breaths that gathered him when the other kids scattered his self-esteem on the floor of the playground, breaths that rocked him into fevered sleep when his body crawled with itching spots and fatigue. Breaths which lulled him while he suckled. Together, we breathe, and unfurl, and release.

He picks up the snack, and I watch his slender form retreat to find the sofa, and the screen. I take out my tea bag, add milk, and hold the warmth of the mug between my hands, close to my chest. There will be time, later, for words.