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Lore sat down on Edward’s bed as she pulled his covers up over his small body. He looked up into his mother’s large, green eyes—so like his own in every way except color—as she leaned down to place a gentle kiss on his forehead. As she began to stand, Edward’s small hand shot out and grasped her arm as hard as he could manage.
“Can you stay for a few more minutes?” he asked, doing his best to emulate the biggest, sweetest puppy-dog eyes he could possibly muster.
“I think I can do that,” Lore replied with a soft smile as she sat back down on the edge of his bed. She threaded her fingers through his short curls as she talked to him, “How was school today? You enjoyed it?”
“I had lots of fun!” Edward exclaimed, joy sparking behind his eyes.
“I’m glad,” his mother responded with a light chuckle, “And what did you do today that was so fun?”
“Well, we all gave presentations on ourselves. Mine was the best, obviously,” he said without a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, “But there was this one girl from Ms. Hall’s class, Jenny, and her presentation was pretty good, too.”
“That’s great! What was Jenny’s presentation about?”
“Her parents are from China, and she was talking about how they talk, um—I mean speak to her in Chinese. And she talked about how that’s really neat, because then she feels like she is still connected to the place they’re from, even though she’s never been there herself!”
“Ah,” Lore replied, trying to keep an expression somewhere between neutral and happy as she sensed her son’s upcoming query.
“Why don’t you speak to me in German?”
Lore looked down, averting her son’s eyes as she answered, “I tell you German fables before bed every weekend.”
“That’s not the same thing, Mom.”
“I know,” she conceded, meeting his eyes, “I don’t think you need to know German. Why would you want to be connected to Germany when you live here? It’s so much nicer here. I have everything I could ever want here in Waterbury. So, I think that it is good to let go of my past and focus on this beautiful present that I am blessed with. Jenny’s parents may...appreciate their past...differently than I do, and that’s not a bad thing. Some people find the best way for them to honor their past is to hold a candle to it and preserve it. Other people find the best way for them to honor their past is to move forward, thankful for how it has shaped them as a person, but willing to...äm...change what their past means in relation to their current life and their future.”
“Wow.” Edward stared at her with wide eyes for a moment before elaborating, “I thought you’d just say that you like how English sounds better.”
“Oh, well that’s definitely part of it,” she joked with an over-exaggerated nod of her head. Edward was thrown into a fit of giggles at her response.
“You said you have everything you could ever want here,” Ed started.
“That’s true.”
“Everything?” Ed pressed.
“Everything.”
“But...we aren’t rich. We don’t live near your mom and dad and sisters. We—”
“Eddie, you forget that I have something so much more important than money, or living a few minutes walk from my parents.”
“What do you have?”
“I have love. Love from you, love from your father. That is all I could ever want or need,” she replied, her eyes holding both a warmth, the flames of which were fed by a love and devotion so strong no mortal force could be compelled to stop them, and a secret, a phantom so perilous and elusive it melted into the shadows beneath itself each time it was seen, unified with the gossamer imitations of the world around it before anyone could truly fathom what they saw.
“Love is everything you need?” Ed asked, unable to comprehend the concept of needing nothing beyond the knowledge that one or two people loved you. Ed had never seen love as the awe-inspiring gift others proclaimed it to be. It was just...love. “How?”
“Love is the most beautiful thing in the world, Ed. When you are older, you will come to truly understand that.”
“Okay,” Ed said, clearly unconvinced, as he rolled to his side and tugged the blankets up to cover his shoulder. Lore got up, smiling down at him as she pressed a gentle parting kiss to his forehead once again, and walked to the door.
As she began to pull the door shut behind her, Lore heard Edward’s voice call out softly, “I think games are the most beautiful thing in the world.”
She chuckled to herself as she clicked the door shut. Edward was so mature at times, but, in moments like this, he reminded her through the little things that he was only eight years old. Brilliant, but still a child.
✦❃✦
Ed sat on his bed, playing chess against himself with the new travel chess set he’d saved up for months to buy. He thought it might even qualify as his favorite hobby, though that was debatable.
He managed to steal a rook from himself with his knight, proud to spot a move—a mistake he had unintentionally made during his previous turn. As he swirled the tiny chessboard back around so the black pieces were facing him once again, Ed heard the clattering of pots and pans downstairs, followed by loud stomping and two voices, distinct in their timbres, but indistinguishable in their unintelligible words. He sighed deeply as he walked over to the small radio his grandmother had given him for Christmas, turning the dial until the sounds of cheerful, smooth jazz filled his room—Not loud enough for anyone else in the house to hear, but loud enough to drown out the commotion from downstairs...for now.
✦❃✦
Soon enough, Ed heard the reverberating clang of a pot, followed by a pained shriek. A minute or two later, he heard the ringing of shattering glass. He dutifully walked over to the radio, turned the volume up by two notches, and resumed his chess game.
✦❃✦
It was nearing one hour since he’d heard the glass shatter when Ed finally stopped feeling vibrations in his room from the fuss in the kitchen below him. He lifted his chess set from his lap, carefully, so as not to disturb any of the pieces, and set it down on the bed beside him. Unflustered, Ed stood and calmly walked to turn off the radio. He walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and opened the door to the cabinet beneath the sink.
He could hear the plodding of footsteps coming up the stairs. Shortly after that, Ed heard the door to the master bedroom clink shut. He finished gathering all the items he needed and patiently waited, watching as the second hand circled his watch. After five minutes, he opened the bathroom door, walked down the small stretch of hallway to the master bedroom, knocked on the door, and opened it.
Without a word, Ed set the first aid kit, as well as the extra ‘in case’ items, on the bed and walked towards his mother, supplies in hand. She sat silently near the head of the bed, facing away from him. Ed took a cloth and placed it on the bed beneath her arm, and wrapped a hand towel just below her shoulder before pouring a generous amount of rubbing alcohol on her shoulder. Lore hissed through a clenched jaw and tensed, but otherwise made no effort to move away. Ed picked up the tweezers he had sanitized in preparation—tweezers were seldom necessary, but always prepared—and used them to pick the glass shards out of his mother’s shoulder.
It was sad, of course, to see his mother beaten and bloodied, but as Ed skillfully plucked shard after shard of glass from her shoulder, he couldn’t help but notice a beautiful sort of metaphor in her injuries. The glass was like her, a mosaic, beautiful yet broken at the same time. A destroyed entity reassembled to be something magnificent, but left eternally changed and incomplete—fragments only reflecting the art they were once able to create when fused together, but never able to form a truly whole structure, a whole being again.
“Thank you, Ed,” Lore whispered, still not turning to face him, “You show me so much love. What more could I need?”
Her choked whispers made the sentiment feel a bit forced, as well as the fact that she also claimed Ed’s father loved her. And yet, Ed’s father had done this to her. Repeatedly. Ed knew it was just normal, just how life goes, but something about it always felt wrong. He just got this feeling in his gut whenever he saw his father hurt his mother, or saw the aftermath of such an incident—a feeling that said it just...wasn’t right.
Love. Ed thought to himself, scoffing internally, as he gently turned his mother’s head to face him so he could tend to a blossoming black eye. If this is love, it is definitely not the most beautiful thing in the world. No. Chess. Chess is the most beautiful thing, not love.