The Kretchens Dinner

It was a gravely evening in the Kretchens household. Everyone sat around the table, the only sound being heard by the chatter from their silverware hitting the plate while digging into their hors d’oerve. Olivia, the youngest of the family, sat at the end of the table rather poignant, awaiting the next vocal outburst debate to start up once again. Patrick, the middle youth, held a harlequin mask over his face, hiding the dissatisfaction within him, knowing it would just cause more disappointment than there already was throughout the household. Karla, the eldest of the children, looked around the room cordially, hoping that the situation with her younger brother would help elude the possibility of her mother noticing the hickeys covering her collar bones and lower neck area. As for Mrs. Kretchen, the mother and superior of the household, she kept her eyes glaring at her middle child, with unending amounts of discontentment towards him running through her aging veins.

Finally, the silence ended, and the words splattered out. “You want to be a dancer!?” Mrs. Kretchen spat in a tumultuous tone. “My son, raised in a wealthy, well-educated family, wants to flee the denizen he has had held for himself to join a feeble dance group!” She hollered. Olivia covered her ears and kept her eyes shut tightly, hoping somehow it would make the dining side of the household disappear and bring back the days when they’d all go to the park and pick daisies together.

“Mother! Please! I beg you!” Patrick pleaded. “I love it so much. You don’t know the joy it brings to me!” He exclaimed vehemently. “The way the music guides me. How the others can move only one step over in a gaudy way but have it so you can’t keep your eyes off them. You can even stroll to the beat, like pieces of art brought to life through dance! The omnibus pieces continue to be presented by the movements and emotions just made by the body of a person, them-self. These classes are so cardinal to me, Mother. They can help me prepare for the future. I can see myself doing it as a career mother. I promise! I can succeed in it! I need to keep practicing and improving, and I will succeed as you want me to! I promise!” Patrick breathed, grateful he could finally express his emotions entirely without being sent to his room without a meal.

Mrs. Kretchen stood up slowly, firmly placing her hands on the table, leaning over grimly. “I will not have another relative within my family end up like this again, you hear me! My brother was just like you. He always obligingly helps out the teachers and people within his dance lessons, but in a far more satisfactory and relaxing way than they should be. He was living a life where he participated in homogeneous ways, Patrick! You will not be resident to his ways, and I’ll tell you that! If so, you’ll be out of here, and don’t expect me to help you when you come crying in need of money or due to an injury! You could fall into a cataract, and I’d still turn my head the other way!” She barked, “now go to your room! Your presence is not welcomed here!”

“But mother, please!” Patrick begged, his eyes welling up with tears. “I said upstairs now!” She shouted back. Patrick pushed his chair out and started up the stairs toward his room. Olivia and Karla sat there in juxtaposition, not knowing if they should say anything to break the tension or keep quiet in hopes of not getting a hand to the bum. Finally, Olivia said, “I don’t want to see Patrick leave, mother.” “Yes, Mother, how can you claim to be completely superficial if you’re just going to do to him what you cried over your father doing to your brother,” Karla chimed in as well, not wanting the youngest to take all the heat. Mrs. Kretchen turned and faced the two girls, her face red with endless tears running down her face. “I’m very sorry for what you had to see, girls. I know you think I shouldn’t have done that. I was just like you when I was younger. But now I am like him, my father. I am what I once feared so much that I’m starting not to understand fear anymore myself,” she said, having her voice crack occasionally. The girls furrowed their eyebrows in confusion. “What do you mean, mother?” Karla questioned, examining her mother and trying to find the emotions she hid within. Mrs. Kretchen took a deep breath and slowly wiped the tears from beneath her eyes. “It’s best you two go up and get some rest. We have church in the morning tomorrow,” she stated. She approached the girls, kissing them both on the head and leading them to the stairs. She walked back over to the table once they were fully up and gone. She sat down and placed her head in her hands. “Oh, David, dear brother. Why? Why have I become him?” She felt a cold breeze from the window and got up to close it. Upon the window sill laid a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it and read what it said. She looked up, more tears filling her eyes, but instead, a glim smile forming on her face. “I am myself. I am not him. I shall not define my son's actions as a way of sin. Hatred is sin, as sins are full of hatred.”