Soft Reset — Part 3: Exactly Enough

Mom ordered a drink with a paper umbrella that the waiter had to describe to her twice, and Kat got the kiddie cocktail off the laminated kids' menu she'd insisted she was too old for right up until it arrived — something blue and virgin and sweet, a cherry on a little plastic sword, two straws for no reason anyone explained — and I got nothing, officially, because I was old enough to know better and young enough that Mom slipped me a sip of hers anyway, under the belt, like contraband.

It tasted like a vacation. Not the drink. All of it.

The plates kept coming. That was the whole premise of the place — you didn't order, you didn't run out, you just reached when you wanted and the world put something in your hand, and there was always more coming around the bend whether you'd asked for it or not. I've thought about that belt more, since, than I've thought about almost anything else that happened before the accident. A machine built entirely on the promise that scarcity was somebody else's problem. At least here. At least for an hour. At least for us.

Dad found us an hour and a half in, tie loosened, badge flipped backwards, apologizing before he'd even pulled out the chair. He and his business partner had gotten cornered past the demo booth by three investors and a journalist who wouldn't take the hint, and he said it like you'd apologize for traffic — an inconvenience, nothing more, no idea yet what that partnership would cost this family, or how many more afternoons he'd lose to people who wanted a piece of what he'd built.

He kissed the top of Kat's head. He put his hand on the back of Mom's chair without touching her, which she somehow always knew was there anyway.

"You started without me," he said, looking at the belt.

"We didn't start," Kat said, mouth full again. "We're never going to stop. That's the whole point."

"Fair," he said, and reached out and took whatever was closest, and ate it, and didn't ask what it was.

That was the first time I believed it — watching my little sister do chopsticks with her tongue between her teeth in fierce concentration, my mother's hand finding my father's without looking, everyone fed, everyone warm, nobody keeping score. The first time I thought: we made it. She's going to be okay. Somebody's going to look out for her.

I didn't know yet what that sentence would cost.

Afterward we walked along the river, because the day had one more good idea in it and none of us wanted to be the one to say no. The water was the color rivers get in cities that have stopped pretending the water is clean, and none of us cared. Kat found a rock she decided was a good rock and put it in her pocket like she meant to keep it forever. I think she still has it, somewhere, in a box, in a house none of us live in the same way anymore.

Four of us, walking. My mother's hand in my father's. My sister two steps ahead, already living somewhere none of the rest of us could follow her yet — the way she always did, the way none of us thought to worry about until it was much too late.

For one afternoon, we were exactly enough people, doing exactly enough, and nothing in the world was coming to take it from us.

I didn't know that wasn't true either.