Halfway

The closet plant was no longer just wilting and turning yellow. It was all but dead.

“You are so pretty,” Veronica said to the thriving plant. “No one likes you,” she said to the dying plant.

Sylvie set the table and Veronica wondered if she always made food like this for herself or if she was trying to make a good impression. If she was, it was working.

“Are you, like, really into food or something?” Veronica asked.

“I love cooking,” Sylvie said. “It’s like arts and crafts you can eat.”

Veronica didn’t know any other eleven-year-old who made food like Sylvie did. Today Sylvie had prepared pumpkin ravioli with brown butter. Veronica wondered if her mother liked pumpkin ravioli. It seemed like something her mother would like. But she would want to get it in the fall and from the farmers’ market. Her mother loved things that were seasonal and not available all the time. Sylvie said the sauce was just butter, but browned.

“Doesn’t your mother cook?” Veronica asked.

“No,” Sylvie said. “She’s dead. She died when I was three.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Veronica said, stunned. “I don’t know what to say,” was all she could manage.

“Sometimes,” Sylvie said, “and I don’t mean this in a mean way, Veronica, but sometimes there is nothing to say. That’s why I don’t talk much.”

Veronica believed Sylvie didn’t mean it in a mean way, but she still felt like she’d been told off. Talking too much ran in her family.

She wanted to hug Sylvie, to compliment her, to say something. But she didn’t know how to express anything that would be worth expressing, so she took Sylvie’s advice and didn’t say anything. She rinsed the silverware instead.

At home she couldn’t take her eyes off her parents. Her parents who she took for granted and complained about all the time. They both drove her crazy. But that was her life: two kinds of craziness and knowing that she was loved. Poor Sylvie.

“Mary called your mother and me today,” Mr. Morgan said. “She’s doing wonderfully and apparently giving the nurses a run for their money.”

“She asked about you, honey. She misses you,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Do you think you can make it at Sylvie’s for one more week?”

“I guess so,” Veronica said.

“Has it been awful?” her father asked.

“No,” Veronica answered. It hadn’t been awful at all, but she didn’t care to elaborate. She couldn’t stop thinking about Sylvie. Sylvie who cooked for herself and who cooked so well for Veronica, Sylvie who didn’t talk much. Sylvie who didn’t have a mother.