Mom gave my knee a hard shove under the table—my not-so-subtle cue to answer Dad.
“Oh, yes, of course, honey,” my voice shook.
Mom and I had somehow swapped bodies earlier during an argument. That was right before Dad got home from work.
I watched him sprinkle shredded cheese over his spaghetti, the same way he always did, so certain in his habits, so allergic to change.
"You feeling okay, hon?" Dad said.
"Mm-hmm," I replied, reaching for the pepper shaker.
I could tell, right then, he would never know, not really, if we never told him. There was a sinking in the pit of my stomach –Mom’s stomach.
“Did you have a good day at work, Dave?” Mom’s voice came out of my mouth.
Dad grunted, “Yeah, fine. You know how it is.”
His hand slid casually onto my thigh. Great. I was wearing Mom’s snug knit dress that screamed “married woman.” The jersey knit fabric accentuated my—her—hips and pressed her breasts into view, boldly, as though daring Dad to notice. I was her, and somehow I needed to play the part.
Now I was inside the dress, inside her, every curve and silhouette on display, the fabric doing nothing to obscure how her body made its presence known. My hips looked immense; my chest shifted with every move, and the sensation of weight, of shape, of the unfamiliar pull of gravity on breasts, made everything strange.
But what was stranger was him watching me—watching her—without noticing a thing. Or noticing, but only the way a husband notices his wife after twenty years: with a glance, a smirk, a squeeze of the knee.
I forced a smile, hoping it would look authentic, and then went for the wine, pouring a generous splash into my, her, glass.
Dad gave me that weary, end-of-the-day look and said, “You sure you’re all right, hon? You’re quiet.”
“Just tired,” I said, pitching my voice to match hers, though I felt like a ventriloquist with a sock puppet, “Long day. You know.”
I suppressed the urge to scrape off the polish under the table.
Dad nodded and started in on a diatribe about his boss, about how nobody at the office appreciated his ideas, about how the world had gone soft or mad, depending on his mood and the news that day. I tried to react as Mom would—eyes wide, head tilt, the occasional “Oh, Dave!” for emphasis. Even the way she gestured, with her delicate wrists and palms presented, felt like a foreign act. I wondered if he could see how much I was straining to perform.
Soon enough, Dad poured me another glass of wine and then another.
At some point—somewhere between the second and third glass—I heard myself laugh. Not my laugh, but Mom’s laugh, high and trilled and crisp, breaking at the top like a porcelain cup. I clapped a hand to my mouth, stunned, but the sound had already escaped.
The sound was horrifying.
I sat there, reeling, as Dad continued his monologue without pause. The laughter—her laughter...
I tried again: a low chuckle to reassure myself, to see if I could reclaim my own voice, but it came out wrong, exactly the way she’d always done it, a little too bright, a little too sharp.
I felt Mom’s eyes burning into me, as Dad twisted open another bottle of Cabernet
I could feel Mom’s panic swelling in the air. I saw her mouth something—was it “stop”?—but I couldn’t stop. I let that wine pour, let the heat creep up my cheeks in waves, let her laughter slosh around inside me until it spilled out again.
And bit by bit, I started to relax.
The plates stood empty in front of us now, as the evening dragged on and Mom’s eyes made steady contact with mine. She wanted me to end this, to excuse myself, to fold away into the kitchen and regroup. I couldn’t. I didn’t want her—me—to lose. I wanted to prove, even now, even in her body, that I could out-mom the mom.
See, the fight we’d had earlier was about me not handling my responsibilities. How I was just a lazy teenage boy, who didn’t want to help around the house.
“If you’re going to be an adult, you need to start acting like one,” she’d said.
Dad cleared his throat, snapping me back to reality, “Oh, I have that Friday after work thing tomorrow. Did you have time to run a wash, honey?”
“Oh… I, uh…” I looked towards Mom for a clue.
She shook her head.
"Shoot, no I forgot," I said, "I'll, um, take care of it now after dinner."
I cleared the plates. I stacked them the way I’d seen Mom do, scraping each one methodically, rinsing in the sink. I felt a petty satisfaction; if she was watching, she’d have nothing to criticize.
Mom padded in, silent, a shadow behind me.
She flicked off the faucet and hissed, “Less wine.”
I rolled my eyes, “Yeah, yeah. I’m just trying to deal, okay?”
I finished up in the kitchen before heading down to do the laundry.
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