Just the Two of Them
He was filled with childlike glee, running around the room on a sugar rush, shouting now and then just to clap with delight at the echoes that the empty room gifted him back. She came up the stairs lugging the carton of kitchen supplies to find him standing on top of one of the stools to peek outside their fourth floor window. He turned back when he heard her footsteps and her heart skipped a beat as she saw him wobble a little on the stool. She ordered him to get down and made a mental note to get bars for the windows.
She put down the carton, dusted her hands and looked around the room, trying to figure out how exactly to set it up. For all she cared, she could live out these boxes for the rest of her life but she had to get at least a semblance of order in their lives. She was trying with all her might, but it was proving to be just so hard.
She was woken up from her reverie by his tiny fists pounding her thigh, he was hungry. She smiled and bent down to kiss his head, and set him off on a search for her phone so she could order some pizza for lunch. She sat down on one of the unopened boxes and watched him hunt high and low for her phone. He looked inside the half opened boxes, amidst the pile of clothes heaped upon the thin mattress laid out on the floor, between the mass of books that lay unpacked in a corner. She saw him scuttle from one side of the room to another; thinking how this room was the extent of their world now, how she could no longer pick up her phone and order food without pausing to do a few calculations. It was strange to be just the two of them, she was still not used to it.
She got up with a sigh and walked over to the pile of clothes. She rummaged around for a while and surfaced clutching one arm of a periwinkle blue shirt. She sat there with the shirt, inhaling his scent. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tears to flow. She wanted to howl away her pain but she just couldn’t cry. He was her world and he wasn’t coming back and yet, she couldn’t cry. She ran her fingers over the stain from when he had spilled some wine and was upset that his favourite shirt was ruined. She was on the verge of half a smile as she recalled his pouting face that she would never see again when her boy ran up to her with the phone in his hands and hunger in his eyes.
