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“I have to be at the building site by 7 tomorrow or I lose the spot,” said Pyrrha through the open bathroom door, “You’re on your own for breakfast.”
“Hm,” said Camilla neutrally, mouth full of toothpaste. They had discovered recently that Nona brushed her teeth more successfully if she had company.
“I’m taking the leftovers for lunch.”
Camilla kept brushing her teeth, only half-listening. Nona was making piteous faces in the mirror at her, but it had only been 30 seconds so she continued doggedly. Nona sighed dramatically and kept brushing as well, only drooling a little bit.
Pyrrha got up early as promised the next day, whispering goodbye to a half-asleep Camilla and out the door before Nona was awake. Nona recounted what she could remember of her dream and managed to get dressed with only a little assistance from Camilla. They both padded into the kitchen, Nona thinking dismally of the breakfast Camilla would make her consume.
But Camilla seemed more lost than Nona had ever seen her. She was opening the fridge and looking in the cupboards and then opening the fridge again.
“Is breakfast off?” said Nona, cheering up at the sight of the bare table. Not a bowl in sight. “No,” said Camilla firmly, still scrounging around. Nona waited to see how events would transpire. When she turned around in her chair to see what Camilla was doing, Cam had one foot resting on the top of her thigh in what Nona recognized as her considering pose. Cam was holding a jar of something in one hand and a packet of something in the other.
With brisk determination, Camilla crossed over to the hob with a saucepan in hand. She turned on the gas ring and frowned when nothing happened. Nona wondered if it was broken, but then Camilla reached under the sink to retrieve the big plastic jug of propane. With this addition, the gas ring turned on, and Camilla began shaking something that rattled into the pot. She added some water and then filled a glass and put it in front of Nona, saying, “start with that.”
Nona drank some of the water in tiny sips. Camilla seemed very distracted today. She stood in front of the hob, staring intently at the pot. After about five minutes of nothing happening, she turned back to Nona.
“Get your comb,” she said, “I’ll do your hair.” Nona got up, pleased, and fetched her comb and the little pouch of hairpins and rubberbands. Camilla sat down in a kitchen chair and Nona sat at Camilla’s feet, and asked questions that had been on her mind while Cam combed out her hair.
“When is Pyrrha coming home?”
“Dinnertime, likely.”
“Will she be gone tomorrow too?” They had been over this before. Palamedes had said it was separation anxiety.
“Yes. She’ll be gone during the day all of this week, but she’ll be home in the evenings.”
“What will she do at her new job?”
“Construction,” said Camilla, holding a handful of hair and combing out the ends, “There’s a building that’s falling apart and she’ll be helping to take it down carefully before it falls down and squashes the buildings around it. How many braids do you want?”
“Can I have a ponytail with sections so it looks like bubbles? Like the one on the lady in the magazine?”
“Sure. I’ll do my best.”
But Camilla had only applied three rubber bands in spaced-out sections to Nona’s waist-length ponytail when there was a spluttering hiss and a smell of burning. Cam leaped up and ran to the hob. The substance in the pot was boiling over in a weird froth, sending opaque rivulets streaming down the sides and sizzling on the gas ring. Smoke rose up, and Camilla opened a window and flapped a dish towel so that the ancient smoke detector would not start beeping and anger the neighbors.
Once this unexpected excitement ended, Cam closed the window against the cold morning air. She busied herself at the counter and eventually pushed a bowl and spoon toward Nona before serving herself.
Nona inspected the food in front of her. It appeared to be oatmeal, though it came in a marked variety of consistencies. Some of the flakes were soft, as Nona was accustomed to, but some were still unpleasantly chewy and others burnt. There was an acrid smoke smell to it, and something else she couldn’t figure out. Camilla was eating a spoonful from her bowl with an absolutely neutral expression and waiting for Nona to take a bite.
Nona eventually put a tiny bit in her mouth, discreetly choked, and spat it out apologetically back into the spoon. “Try it again,” said Cam, “A whole spoonful.” Nona made a face.
“But Cam,” she said, “You don’t like it either! You’re trying to pretend you do, but you also don’t want to eat it!”
Eventually, Camilla let Nona pick out five grains of oatmeal of the consistency she tolerated best, and swallow them one at a time like pills with a whole glass of water. She had eaten only a few spoonfuls of her own bowl, and tipped the remainder back into the pot, which she covered and put in the fridge.
They had lunch earlier than usual that day. Palamedes was flipping through a magazine with Nona. It was in a language he could not read, but he seemed to appreciate looking at the pictures with her.
“I think she’s very beautiful,” said Nona, pointing at the picture of the woman whose hairstyle she now boasted, “Her smile is so big, and she looks a little like me if I had bigger breasts.”
Palamedes pulled out a notepad from Cam’s pocket and ticked something off, which annoyed her, but then he said, “she is quite stunning,” in genuine tones, which mollified her.
“I like her earrings,” Nona decided, “Maybe I could wear some like that. What about you, Palamedes? Could you wear earrings?”
Palamedes reached up to feel his earlobe, but paused as a sudden rumble came from his stomach. He stared at nothing, as though concentrating inward. Then he said, “Nona, did you and Cam eat breakfast?”
“Not really,” said Nona, “Pyrrha left early so Cam cooked.” She saw his eyebrows raise and borrowed a phrase from Pyrrha. “An attempt was made.”
Palamedes looked amused, then grave. Then he said he thought it was best if Nona and Camilla took the emergency funds and bought lunch outside, on the basis that Pyrrha would be getting paid now. When Nona related this to Camilla, she said, “hope they give her an advance on her pay,” but gathered up the stash in the locked drawer.
They went to the sausage man down the street and Nona ate part of a sausage and some crispy fried potatoes with less coaxing than usual from Cam. Camilla ate her own share with evident appetite. She even finished Nona’s food once it was clear Nona would eat no more, even though Nona’s last attempts at eating were just licking the salt off the chips. Camilla was in a much better mood after that.
Pyrrha came home that evening, true to her word. She was dusty and smelly, but Nona hugged her all the same.
“How did it go?” she asked, hanging off the front of Pyrrha’s coveralls.
“Not bad, kiddie, not bad. Guys in construction are the same everywhere, I swear…”
Palamedes came in, unrolling his sleeves. “Did they give you an advance on your pay?”
“No such luck, Sextus,” said Pyrrha, rummaging around for a glass of water with Nona still standing on her feet, “Heard the foreman yelling at the owner. The whole crew has to wait till the end of the week when the municipal government releases the money. Might have to dip into the emergency fund, find a game… not tonight. I’m knackered. Did you have leftovers from lunch?”
She took out the covered pot from breakfast, opened it, and sniffed it quizzically. Then she made a face and asked, “what is this?”
“Cam made it for breakfast,” said Nona, “But she didn’t like eating it either.”
Pyrrha took another look at the crusted pot, three quarters full of a scorched, gluey substance.
“Did she use all our oats?” she demanded, “that was meant for at least two more days. Are there fish flakes in here?”
“She says she recognizes this as a failed experiment,” said Palamedes.
“Why is it in the fridge? Did she think it would help?”
“Waste not,” said Palamedes, “She says she thought it might be salvageable. Also, we spent the emergency funds at the chip shop down the street and weren’t sure if you were getting paid today.”
Pyrrha surveyed the leftovers again, as though marveling. She had the same expression as Palamedes had when Nona failed to do the weird bone tricks.
“Sextus,” she said, “You and Hect are both very capable people. I sometimes forget that you are twenty-one. Do either of you know how to cook?”
Palamedes adjusted glasses that were not there, thought about it, and said, “We both have a working knowledge of nutrition and food safety. As for our understanding of organic chemistry–”
“That’s not what I asked. Have either of you ever prepared a meal?”
“Not individually, no. Dining’s mostly communal on the Sixth,” said Palamedes, but added a little defensively, “We’ve been put on duty roster to work kitchen shifts twice though.”
“And what did those entail?”
“Mostly peeling potatoes and washing up,” Palamedes admitted, and, “Actually we were only assigned a kitchen shift once. The second time, Cam was being punished for breaking a classmate’s wrist, and I joined her in solidarity. We were eleven.”
“So you’ve peeled potatoes,” confirmed Pyrrha, “Have you never prepared any kind of food for yourselves? Just nutrient bars if you missed dinner?”
“Of course not,” said Palamedes, “I mean, yes, there were nutrient bars, but we made plenty of food if we were studying late. Soup, noodles, mac and cheese…we figured we’d need options if we were ever going to share a studio apartment on the Seventh.”
Pyrrha sighed. “Sextus, did any of that require more than opening a packet and pouring boiling water?”
“Not as such,” said Palamedes.
Pyrrha sat at the table with the pot of scorched breakfast in the center, considering it in silence. Palamedes made himself useful, tidying dishes and dusting surfaces that didn’t need it, until the timer went off and Camilla was back. She blinked a couple times, as she always did, and Pyrrha saw her register the pot on the table.
“Why fish flakes?” Pyrrha asked conversationally. Camilla had the decency to look a little abashed. She rolled her shoulders and said, “Thought it might disguise the burnt taste.”
“What an absolute farce my life has become,” said Pyrrha quietly to herself, and, “Get me the skillet. It’s too late to soak beans.”
Camilla did so and then rolled up her sleeves and made a move to go into the living room where Palamedes had written her a letter earlier, but Pyrrha snagged her by the back of her shirt.
“Oh no, Hect, you’re helping.”
Camilla freed herself and said warningly, “I don’t appreciate being treated like a child, Dve.”
“For fuck’s sake, Hect, you’re not eleven now. It’s not by way of punishment, except insofar as we are all now being punished on some great cosmic level.”
“Can’t believe he told you about that,” muttered Camilla darkly. But she accepted the task of rolling the scorched oatmeal into little balls with stoicism, and observed as Pyrrha showed her how to adjust the flame on the gas ring and sprayed oil into the pan.
There wasn’t much Pyrrha could do besides fry the little balls into the saddest croquettes imaginable. They ate them drowned in hot sauce before they had time to cool, and encouraged Nona to do the same with little success.
From then on, Pyrrha tried to teach Camilla and Palamedes how to cook. It was uphill work, especially after a full construction shift. She knew the Sixth wunderkind were quick studies; for one thing, they kept insisting so to her. But they didn’t have enough groceries for them to mess up without going hungry, and it was hard enough getting Nona to eat anyway.
That evening, she was supervising Palamedes in the preparation of soup. Some muscle memory in her body twitched in panic at the prospect of eating soup, but there wasn’t much else to make, and the onions had been cheap because they were already on their way out. Pyrrha set him up at the cutting board with them while she considered how to add ingredients that would use the least amount of fuel. Canned beans and tomato wouldn’t take long; they could afford to fry the onion first.
After a while, she realized that Palamedes had not started on the onions. He was contemplating one, holding the knife like a scalpel, as though he were debating where to make the first incision.
“Cut it in half,” she instructed.
“Laterally or longitudinally?
“The second one,” said Pyrrha after a moment, and added to herself, “I’m in hell.”
“Rude,” said Palamedes, bisecting the onion as instructed, “Anyway, we’d have money for kebabs if you stopped buying cigarettes.”
“Daddy is not foregoing her smokes for you and Cam and Junior to eat takeout all the time,” said Pyrrha, “Don’t make me speechify about how hard I work to provide for us all. I’ll vomit.”
“Don’t start the smoking argument again!” said Nona in alarm from her sprawl on the kitchen floor.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, darling,” said Pyrrha, glancing over her shoulder and then, “Nona, what have you got in your mouth?”
Nona retreated under the kitchen table in open rebellion and Pyrrha had to bend down, grunting a little, to extract her. Palamedes looked as though he were about to come help, but Pyrrha snapped at him, “Keep chopping up that onion, Sextus!” before prying open Nona’s mouth with a practiced hand and removing a soggy price tag.
“I wasn’t eating it,” Nona insisted, “I was just chewing on it.”
“Won’t work, kiddie,” said Pyrrha grimly, “You know Camilla’s rule about putting foreign objects in your mouth.”
“It’s not just Camilla’s rule,” protested Palamedes, turning to look at them, “Neither of us think it’s a good idea if–” He cut off his sentence with a brief yelp and a clang of the knife falling.
Pyrrha turned just in time to see the overbalanced cutting board slide inexorably off the counter and clatter to the floor, spilling bits of onion everywhere. Palamedes had only cut up a bit of it, but the geometry of the onion had evidently been so intriguing, he had sliced the tiniest pieces imaginable. He had also sliced a deep cut into his thumb, Pyrrha saw, which was now bleeding profusely onto the countertop.
“How about you let me take it from here, champ,” said Pyrrha after a moment, “Nona, help me collect what fell on the floor.”
Nona scooted out from under the table to pick up the scattered bits of onion with her small fingers while Palamedes took a minute to heal the gash he’d made in Camilla’s thumb and disinfect the countertop. Pyrrha kneaded her eyes with her fists.
The next time she got paid, Pyrrha brought home fruit, cereal, crackers, yogurt, peanut butter, granola bars, and nicotine patches. The cooking lessons ended without any of them discussing it, although Nona sometimes asked. When she did, Camilla just said, “ineffective resource management,” which wasn’t really helpful.
When she asked Palamedes, Palamedes said, “It was a valiant effort, but all of our energies are best directed elsewhere.”
When she asked Pyrrha, Pyrrha said, “There is not enough nicotine on this planet for me to school two extremely indoor kids in the culinary arts when all we have is a glorified hot plate.” At Nona’s confusion, she added, “Don’t worry about it, kiddie. Just try to eat what we give you."