Chocolate Milk With A Pinch of Salt
by Anushree Nande



​Tim had told his first lie. And now his parents weren’t getting back together. This knowledge followed him home from school, at a distance of course. Mrs. Morris, their neighbour, had come to pick him up instead of his mother, who was having one of her headaches. Tim knew what that meant. The curtains would be drawn in the living room even though Mum was asleep upstairs. He wouldn’t be allowed to watch cartoons on the telly, and would have to pretend to smile when she asked him how his second day at primary school had been. At least Tim could tell her that the spaghetti and minced meatballs she’d packed in his lunch box were awesome – and know it was the truth.
         
Yesterday as he played with his new Lego set, he had heard his mother vacuum Beth’s room for the second time in three days. She wanted everything to be perfect for when his sister returned in a few days. As she came out into the corridor, she was humming. When was the last time she had done that? Tim was wondering what to do when he heard her tell Aunt Susan that she and Mark (it took a while for Tim to remember that was what everyone else called his father) were going to give it one last shot. He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but he knew it would involve talking in person. And Dad had to move back home for a while at least for that to happen. Tim wanted that very much. Even though all they had done for the past year was argue. They tried not to do it in front of the kids, but Tim was six, not stupid. He could always feel the tension, like an uninvited visitor who had plonked himself on Tim’s favourite comfy chair in the living room. So he had swallowed the confession with a glass of plain milk as punishment.
         
Mrs. Morris gave him his milk (again, he refused the chocolate powder to take away the milky flavour) and a few of the special oatmeal raisin bites that she always kept on hand for emergencies. Before leaving, she told him to play quietly like a good little boy and not disturb his mother. She would be right next door if he needed anything, and he knew the button to press on their phone to call her. There was a note on the table in his mother’s loopy handwriting. It had the flight details for Beth the next morning. Tim couldn’t help notice that the details for his dad had been scribbled over.
         
In the morning, Mum hadn’t cried into her cereal for the first time in three months. But it was all a mess again, and Tim was sure that the universe was punishing his lie. He was also worried about not being able to stop lying now that he had started. What if it was just like the urge to pick away at a scab when you knew you shouldn’t?
         
People lied all the time. There was even something called a white lie – a concept his parents had explained to him when his great-aunt Sophia, his grandma’s younger sister, had knitted him a too-big Christmas jumper. It itched and made him want to sneeze, but as a thank you, he had sent her a card he had drawn and a photo of him wearing it. Tim knew all about not wanting to hurt people’s feelings or how sometimes good intentions mattered more than the final result. But they also said that you should never lie and always tell the truth. All of this thinking made Tim’s head hurt. Who were these “they”? He wanted to meet them and ask them in person why they made things so complicated.
         
But most of all he wanted things to go back to the way they had been yesterday. Surely that counted as a good intention? Tim finished his homework and turned to the Lego fort he had been building for the past week. He could hear his mum through the wall. Low voices with the occasional sob in her throat that he knew as a sign of things not being okay. He also recognised the sharp tones in her speech that signaled his father’s presence on the other end of the line. As he fixed a watch-tower on his fort, there was a sudden silence. Followed by padded feet on their carpeted floor, and the slammed bathroom door.
         
When Tim walked downstairs for dinner, he felt like he was about to throw up. He couldn’t even enjoy his favourite tomato soup with croutons. That was when his mother narrowed her red-rimmed eyes and tilted her head.
         
‘What’s the matter with you? Are you sickening for anything?’
          
So Tim told her, the words spilling out of him and over the sides of the bowl of soup in front of him. About how he knew she’d been sad about Beth leaving for the summer to join Dad’s archaeological dig in France, about how he’d lied about her chicken and leek pie being delicious and much better than the ones from the stores, when in fact he had swapped with his best friend, Bryan, whose mother always made him macaroni with lots of cheese and homemade tomato sauce on Mondays. And how he was sorry that his punishment meant that she couldn’t be with Dad again.
         
He felt so giddy about coming clean that he didn’t immediately notice his mum trying really hard not to laugh despite herself – he could tell by the way the left corner of her mouth twitched – as she told him that it wasn’t his fault and that sometimes adults had to make difficult decisions. Tim wanted to tell her that he understood; he’d felt so crummy about the indecision of the last two days. Instead he just hugged her and took in her freshly showered blueberry smell. Over a special glass of her chocolate milk with just a pinch of salt and a spoonful of whipped cream, Tim told her all about his day, his happiness leaking out with the bubbles he blew through the straw while his mother washed up.
         
Later, when Mum kissed him goodnight and told him that she loved him, he said it back, but didn’t tell her that he was sad that his father wouldn’t be living with them anymore. She switched off the light and closed the door. It was only then that he allowed the twinge he’d been feeling to climb out from under the covers. Was it wrong to feel a bit disappointed that he lying or telling the truth made no tangible difference to the universe? The adult world was a strange place. Only two days into the school year, Tim already felt like one of the big boys.