Tom cups his hands around the egg, his square palms and stubby fingers keeping it safe. He finds eggs fascinating, the weight they hold when they are fresh, uncooked, the way hard-boiling changes their heft. His mother handles them so gently, too, admonishes him not to dangle one over the hard kitchen tile. Yes, they are to be treated gently, unless you want to cook with them, in which case great violence is the key.

Every Saturday he and his mother make pancakes and he watches the drama unfold. The eggs, chilled in their container, ignorant of their fate. Then, she selects two. It is never random. She moves from the back of the carton to the front. Surely the last eggs know what’s up, though she shuttles them back to the refrigerator before destroying their brethren. This is when he insists on touching an egg, on holding it for a brief minute, transferring his warmth to its cold shell.

“Do you want to crack one?” she will ask and he always shakes his head:  No. The mess! Tom can tell she is relieved, even though she doesn’t let out a sigh or stretch her thin lips into a smile. It’s the way she angles her shoulders, the slight relaxation, the slump, when he returns the egg. He has become a master of the nonverbal, of the facial expression, trying to figure out the scene before inserting himself into it.

One Saturday, he did drop an egg, just let it go onto the kitchen counter to see what would happen. “Whoopsy!” his mother exclaimed in a too-bright voice as she hurtled herself across the kitchen to get a wipe. The clear white was oozing over the side of the counter, had just started to drip down the cabinets and onto the floor, and the dog, attuned to any utterance that sounded vaguely like “oops” had already honed in on the trail.

This time his mother did sigh, gave out a loud sigh, before taking out her frustration on the dog. “Mandy! OUT OF THE KITCHEN!” She threw up her arms and stomped her feet, glared as Mandy slunk back to the living room. “I’m sorry, Mama,” Tom said, his heart fluttering, as she picked pieces of shell off the counter and attacked the remains with a sponge. The air around them, charged with anger, calmed as she looked up at him. Everything stopped. She reached out and cupped his cheek, leaned over to kiss his forehead.

It’s always the way, she thought, the anger that explodes out of nowhere, like an egg cracked into hot oil. The expression on Tom's face, the knowledge that she is her mother, that she will be apologizing forever for her lack of self-control, for the spark that she passes on unwittingly. Here's hoping he isn’t as delicate as an egg.

From a prompt: You hold it. As Anne told me recently, the prompts have been good to me lately. Though very shatter-focused.

Image by Petr Kratochvil.

Tags: writing prompt, Round Robin, eggs, anger