7
ALEX
The small boy standing on the stool in front of the kitchen counter is me.
I’m aware of that. I’m also aware that this is a dream.
Neither shard of awareness allows me to separate myself from the fact that the sun-soaked, warm bubble in which I find myself appears totally real. I exist both within my seventeen-year-old body and that of the much smaller six-year-old version of myself, who sings in soft, breathy melodies as he digs his hands into a fat ball of dough. He grins as he splays his fingers wide, grinning at the thick sticky mess that cakes his skin and shores up beneath his fingernails. I can feel it under my own nails, covering my own hands.
The hands of a boy.
The hands of a man.
I see from two very different vantage points, through two different pairs of eyes. One pair observes the world as a place filled with wonder and hope; the other can’t help but see the promise of hurt and pain in every direction as he casts his gaze.
“Are you ready, mi amore? Have you made it just right?”
I smell her first. The scent of lilies and fresh summer fields floods the cramped space, overriding the bright, saccharine tang of the icing sugar that floats on the air, and my stomach twists in both excitement and bitter pain. My mother enters the room in a whirlwind of music and energy. Her dark, thick curls are wild, reaching in all directions like vines reaching for the sun. Her warm, brown eyes are bright with an electric, contagious energy. The smile on her beautiful face lights up the entire room so brightly that I’m almost blinded by it.
I’m completely in love with this woman. This is the type of unconditional love that sons bear their mothers before they discover she has flaws, and the illusion that she’s the most perfect creature to ever walk the earth is eventually shattered.
Joy washes over me as she rushes up behind me, tickling her fingers into my sides, burying her face into the crook of my neck. I squeal as she pretends to gobble me up. “Who cares about pizza, passerotto? I think I’ll just eat you. Little boys taste the best, I think.”
Six-year-old me gasps for breath, fighting to get his words out around his high-pitched laughter. “No, Mama! No, no, no, don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!”
The older version of myself only rumbles out half of the sentence, his words thick with misery. “No, Mama. No, no, no.”
The smell inside the kitchen evolves, the dream twisting, evolving around me like a shifting painting, and now we are sitting down at the kitchen table, all three of us, staring down at a pizza big enough to feed an army. My mother folds her arms in front of her, leaning toward my younger self across the worn grain of the wood, whispering conspiratorially. “What do you think, mi amore? Is it perfect? Should we eat and eat and eat until our bellies burst open and our guts spill out like little red snakes?”
Young Alessandro giggles, deep dimples marking both of his cheeks. His smile forces his eyes closed as he laughs at the prospect of such gluttony. “Yes, Mama. Let’s eat the whole thing. And then dessert!”
My mother, in her floral print wraparound dress, sits straight up in her seat, jerking to attention. “Dessert? Who said anything about dessert?” She opens her mouth wide in pretend shock. “Did you look inside the fridge, little sparrow?”
The little boy covers his mouth with his hands, trying not to laugh even harder. He turns to me, the older version of himself, sitting next to him at the table, and he cups one hand around his mouth, whispering loudly. “There’s panna cotta in there. Did you see it?”
I nod slowly. Sadly. “Yeah, buddy. I saw it.”
I saw it just now, when I snuck a peek inside the refrigerator, even though Mama told me not to. I saw it eleven years ago, before the darkness, and the suffering, and the broken bones, and the prison bars.
“You cheated,” Mama cries, addressing both of us. “That was very naughty.” Her eyes dance with delight. “Dessert is only for birthday boys, you know. I don’t think I know any birthday boys.”
Two voices fill the kitchen, loud and excited, quiet and withdrawn. “It IS my birthday.”
My mother continues to feign surprise. “It is?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, my goodness, little sparrow. I had no idea!”
“You did, you did!” I insist.
Her smile makes me light up on the inside. “All right then. I suppose, in that case, then there might be a little something sweet in the fridge for you after dinner. But first, mi amore, I need your help with something, okay? Do you think you can help your mama with one small job really quickly?”
I never feel more special, more needed, than when she asks me to help her. Excitement blooms in my six-year-old eyes. My seventeen-year-old heart beats a little faster. “Of course, Mama! I can do anything!”
“I know you can, my precious boy. You can slay dragons, and save the princess, and make the whole world right again. That’s why I love you so much. You’re the strongest little sparrow in the whole entire world. Come on. Come upstairs with me. This won’t take a second.” She holds out her hand to the small boy, and he accepts it happily without a second thought. The woman in the wraparound dress with the wild brown curls avoids looking at the older version of me as she takes her young son and begins to lead him up the stairs.
“Don’t go up there, Alex.” My voice is so cracked, so broken. Excruciatingly quiet. I feel like I’m screaming the words, but the little boy doesn’t hear me over my mother’s soft humming.
I follow them because I have to. I’m pulled up the stairs behind them, the smell of lilies and fresh summer fields flooding my head, intoxicating and terrifying. My legs are heavy as lead weights, resisting the pull of time and what has already come to pass, but cannot be avoided.
This isn’t how it happened…
This isn’t how it happened…
None of this is right.
The kitchen was a sun pocket, warm and bathed in the happy memories of my childhood. When I step onto the landing, completing the climb up the tight, carpeted stairway, I walk right into winter. There are no happy memories up here. Only fractured shards of grief that bite sharp teeth into my skin, twisting in the pit of my stomach, a cold sense of trepidation filling me from head to toe. Blue and grey, black and heavy.
My mother guides me into her bedroom, the room where she used to swaddle herself up in her depression, only tossing back the covers on her bed when she wanted to scream and curse at me—hate-filled words that never sounded right spewing from her mouth
I enter behind her, and fog forms on my breath. The place is as icy and frigid as a meat locker. As a morgue. My mother is no longer holding my hand. She’s lying on the floor, legs contorted and splayed at odd angles, the hem of her beautiful dress soaked red.
In her hands: a shining, silver gun.
Her eyes find mine, swiveling in her head. “What are you waiting for, baby? You know what you have to do. It’s okay. Quick and simple. Let’s just get it done.”
“N—no, Mama. No.”
Her eyes roll, too much white showing, like a terrified horse rearing before a snake. “Everything’s going to be okay, baby. It’ll all right. Pull the trigger and you’ll see. We can go back downstairs and have dessert afterward. That’s what you want, isn’t it? We can celebrate your birthday.”