Page 33 of Cut Off
“I ordered it.” He shifts the box from one arm to the other. “It’s something Eli and I can do together. Eventually. When he wants to.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “It is.”
Eli appears at the top of the stairs in pajamas that are too big for him, hair flat on one side, Flash action figure in hand. He looks at his father. He looks at the box. He creeps down the stairs like a scared squirrel.
“I know you love Star Wars.” Jonah holds out the box. “And I thought… you know. If you wanted.”
Eli takes it. He’s careful with it, both hands, the way you’d hold something breakable. He stares at the picture on the front. “Thank you.” His voice is quiet. “I’ll put it in my room.”
He doesn’t open it. He doesn’t ask if they can build it. He carries it to his room and doesn’t come back down.
After Jonah heads upstairs and tells Eli goodbye, he’s out the door. His SUV hums to life, then fades, and the house gets quiet in the way it does after someone leaves and a child is still in it.
I climb the stairs and knock on Eli’s open door. He’s sitting on the floor next to the Lego box, not touching it, just looking at it.
“Hey, Eli.”
“Hi.”
“You want breakfast, or do you want to skip straight to lunch prep?”
He gazes up at me, and for the first time this morning, his face flickers with interest. “What kind of lunch?”
“Cook’s choice. You’re the cook. I’m support staff.”
He stands. “Mac and cheese.”
“From a box?”
The look he gives me is so withering I almost apologize. “From scratch. You need a roux.”
“Oh my God, I’m being out-cheffed by a fourth-grader. Lead the way.”
In the kitchen he pulls a stool over to the stove without asking, like he’s done it in a hundred kitchens, which I guess he has. He opens cabinets and finds the saucepan he wants. He measures milk into a Pyrex.
“Sharp cheddar.” He holds out a hand like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. “And do you have parm?”
I check the fridge. “Yup. Jonah has good cheese.”
“Good. You need parm. Otherwise it tastes flat.”
“Noted.”
He works the roux like a pro. Butter. Flour. Whisk, whisk, whisk. He warms the milk separately—“cold milk seizes,” he tells me, very serious—and pours it in while I hold the pan. He grates the cheese in three stages, adds the parmesan without a prompt, a tiny pinch of nutmeg, then black pepper, then salt, tasting after each one.
I don’t say anything. Not,Did you learn to cook this from your mom? Did you learn this because you had to, or was this special time you shared together?I just hand him spoons and bowls and watch a nine-year-old move through a kitchen like he owns it.
We eat at the island. It’s the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had, and I tell him so, and he ducks his head over his bowl and almost smiles.
“You said you played chess,” he says after.
“I did. In high school. I was a champion.”
“Of what?”
“Of my high school?”
He puts down his spoon. “I’ll do the dishes if you set up the board.”
