Friday nights the Richardson's always have dinner together. The kids are old enough now that Mr. and Mrs. Richardson cannot keep them at home afterwards. Dinner is when they get to hear about their kids, Davis and Kelson, which is a strange, but familiar, result of conflicting scheduling and adolescence.
The Richardson's dining room sits off of the kitchen. The kitchen is traditional. As is the dining room--some would call it unspectacular. Aesthetics have never been their primary concern. Finances are not desperate, but they are usually tight, so there has been little to donate to a new dining set or granite countertops—Mrs. Richardson's guilty desire. The rest of the house agrees with the traditional theme established on the first floor. The Richardson's house has this incredible quality that when a person has seen the first floor, they have a confident understanding of what is on the floor above them and the floor below them.
Kelson works on Fridays at the local grocery store. He does not work everyday, though sometimes he feels as if he does—not that he would consider that an issue. He has been working at "Robinson's" for about two years, long enough that people no longer bug him about having a similar last name to the grocery's name. Kelson always thought that it was a peculiar thing to repeatedly bother him about, but he knew that Lewes was a small town, with smaller people, so even the subtlest coincidence could occupy minds for quite some time. Kelson still enjoyed his job, if not enjoyed then appreciated. His first appreciation for the job came when he was hired as a sophomore, noticeably younger than other workers. The second came as the managers did not dismiss him, giving him the opportunity to catch up in age to the others. But there is no reason to ever dismiss someone as diligent as him. Kelson was satisfied to say that he was content, even if that was all.
Davis is one year older than Kelson and comes home after tennis practice. Unlike Kelson's job, tennis is everyday. Davis has already accepted a scholarship to the University of Arizona for tennis. His younger brother does not think that there should be scholarships for tennis, but he is still proud of Davis' accomplishment. Kelson attributes the former notion to sibling rivalry. The latter notion is attributed to the same. Davis does not work, but views his sport as enough of a time commitment that it warrants him not having a job, even one on the weekend.
Around seven, the Richardson's assembled from their respective tasks—Mr.   Richardson was rereading the paper, Mrs. Richardson was preparing the matter for the assembly, Davis was on his computer, and Kelson was looking for a lost shoe--for a family dinner of baked chicken, steamed vegetables, and potatoes. Mr. Richardson looks forward to dinners because of the convenience of two of his favorite things: food and family; however, recently he could feel an unspoken tension gathering at the table. He described the tension to a friend as "the moments in the Earth before there is earthquake, like when tectonic plates shift." But Mr. Richardson was not a seismologist, he was a contractor, so this foresight was unprecedented. The family gathered at the table, sat down, and waited for someone to speak, as if casual conversation had been complicated into a game of chess.
"How was school today?" Mrs. Richardson began with this expected opening.
"It was okay, kind of uneventful," replied Kelson.
"Yeah, same. Nothing extraordinary," agreed Davis.
"It seems like nothing ever happens anymore. Does anything interesting ever happen anymore?" Mrs. Richardson was mildly hung up on this. From the little she could remember, high school was exciting. She knew that a lot of it was monotonous, but there were some things that must be outstanding.
"Not really. Sorry, Mom," Kelson hid behind this answer, a little nervous to speak.
Davis did not respond. He kept eating. Silence had always been his best hiding spot.
Mr. Richardson's awareness made him uneasy. He could tell Kelson was doing his best, but he knew that Davis was becoming frustrated. The tension disturbed Davis the most. Occasionally Mrs. Richardson's eyes would forget what they were looking at and begin to look through it. She could see the floor through the table.
As Mr. Richardson was internally approaching scenarios, Mrs. Richardson kept speaking. Sometimes her voice would gently fade out until all her thoughts left behind was a comfortless silence. These moments were the hardest. When no one dared to say anything, fearing that the sudden insertion of sound into the fragile silence would shatter a consciousness.
Even Mrs. Richardson noticed that something was amiss. So her contentment began to wane along with everyone else's. But not for the same reason as her family—for she could not decipher what was bothering them. Her misery came from feeling that she was left out of something. She internalized the growing complexity of the situation and her mind left her bereft of an answer. Mrs. Richardson succumbed to a noticeably more frequent inability to assess anything and continued to quietly cut her chicken, sometimes accidentally hitting the plate with her knife.
"But, anyway, how was work today?" Mrs. Richardson's attempt to heal the moment.
"Good...it was good, dear. This chicken's incredible. Right guys?" Mr. Richardson was also attempting to salvage the crumbling situation.
"Yeah, mom. You did a really good job," Kelson immediately agreed.
Davis nodded and kept eating, purposefully fixing his eyes downward at his plate.
"So how was school today?" Mrs. Richardson asked again.
The question hushed the room. Kelson, Davis, and Mr. Richardson all looked at each other, hoping the other one would have the missing answer. Mr. Richardson replied carefully, "Dear… you've already asked them that. Earlier at dinner, you asked them if school was okay."
He spoke as if he was teaching times table to a struggling elementary school student, gently, without criticism for the mistake.
Mrs. Richardson looked back at him with an expression that indeterminably drifted between confusion and absence. Her thought's boundaries were the first thing to weaken. They no longer have neater ends. Mrs. Richardson's thoughts run into each other. Other times they leave her suddenly. The doctor said early-onset Alzheimer's was more common than they believed. That she was not an anomaly.
Davis got up from the table—the noise of his chair sliced the settling silence. He was furious. Davis went straight to his room. It was an over-reaction, but Kelson and Mr. Richardson knew that he still had not accepted the diagnosis. Davis was not furious at his mother. He knew he could not blame her for her condition. He was mad he had to watch her disappear into another empty person. He was mad he had to watch his mother's mind die before her body died.
Mr. Richardson and Kelson made a brief eye-contact which provided each other with a profound assurance of how to handle the ensuing situation. Kelson followed his brother to his room and Mr. Richardson remained at the table to comfort his wife who was now crying for a reason she could neither identify nor articulate.
Kelson walked upstairs and slightly opened the door to Davis' room, which was thankfully unlocked.
"Davis…?" He asked cautiously, knowing that his entrance had yet to be approved.
"What, Kelson?" Davis' voice was muffled. He either had been crying or was about to cry, similar to a darkening sky before a storm.
"Can I come in?"
Davis did not respond. Kelson let himself in to find his brother sprawled on his bed. Davis' room was once adorned with tennis trophies. But he became embarrassed by them his junior year of high school when he brought a girl home and she laughed when he told her they were for tennis. Now the decorations are limited to old rackets, books, knick-knacks, and empty shelves. His bedspread was a non-confrontational light-blue, and his sheets were a faded white. His self-expression in his bedroom was conveyed by what he did not show rather than what he did. Davis attributes his conservatism to necessity after the aforementioned event, not just a casualty of indifference as Mr. Richardson thinks. Kelson considers it fear. He stood by his brother's bed for a few seconds, noticing a racket with a broken string on the ground, before addressing him. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Kelson."
"You and I both know that that's not true."
"It is. Now leave me alone."
Kelson was never the one to find himself comforting another. Some friends found his sincerity appealing, but nobody every described it as comforting. Once a teacher said she found his presence reassuring, but he was pretty sure that the compliment had more to do with his punctuality than his personality.
"You know you can talk to me."
Davis looked up at his brother, obviously considering what his brother had just said. He tumbled internally with the idea for a few seconds before concluding on anything. "No, I can't. And you know that."
"Yeah, you can. You've listened to me plenty of times and now I'm here to listen to you."
"No, Kelson. I can't tell you. You don't know how to give anything away."
"What do you mean…?"
"You can't give away a burden. You take everything in and you carry it yourself, Kelson. I don't want to break you."
"You aren't gonna break me. I can handle whatever you have to say."
Davis sat up in the bed and put his legs over the side, positioning himself as if he was preparing to get up. "No, you can't. Everyone tells you everything, but it's not because you can comfort them. It's because you can't stop being a good person. You can't stop listening."
"Davis, for God's sake, I'm here, right now, whatever you want to say, we can talk…"
"That's just it, Kelson. You don't talk. You only listen. Until you learn to talk you can't give anything away. You always try to please mom with whatever you say. You don't have to do that."
"Well, then what do I do? I can't just tell her how hard this is. How it destroys us to watch her own mind turn against her." Kelson started to shake. He had intended to comfort Davis, but he realized he did not have any idea what he was doing. He felt powerless.
"No, you can't tell her how you feel. But you can tell someone else. Listen, I don't want you trying to comfort me when you haven't figured out how to comfort yourself. You don't need more on you than you already got. I can always find someone else to help me with what I have. I'm going back downstairs, but I need you to start figuring out what you want to say, can you do that?"
Davis regained his composure at this point and stood up from the bed. He walked out of his room and left the door and a question so open that Kelson could not decide how he could possibly approach them.