Current mood:	pensive
Entry tags:	father, in my time of dying, laura, max, mother, nano, peter, the distance to here

Section 10 (Instalment 1)
Word count: 1 111


Max remembered...

Being curled up to his mother, herself sitting on an armchair and him on the armrest as she was reading to him, he was too young to be able to, on his own. The armchair's upholstery was deep green, plushy a little, and warm, and with a golden braiding on the sides, and with his mom there, it felt perfectly comfortable. His cheek was leaning on her hair, and he could see it, so close to his eyes, the yellow of it looking perfect to him, and the scent of it mixing with her voice to lull him into something that wasn't quite a drowse, but wasn't full awake either. She wasn't reading him a children's story tonight, it was something that she was studying, and he would listen to anything quietly and with interest and sometimes ask questions afterwards, and Max remembered that she seemed to enjoy that.

He didn't have quetions now, just a little more than half-awake but soaking up the information as he always did. Soaking in the sight and smell and sound of it all. It made sense, being like that. It made him feel alright, conent. Didn't want it to change, not a bit, even though that when the 'chapter' was over, and he'd seen the break in the paragraphs on the next page, when the 'chapter' was over, that would be it, and that was fine, since she'd come back to reading to him later, or tomorrow. It was all interesting, and he wanted to learn it all, and she watned to learn it all, it seemed - Max recalled that one day she seemed to be studying plays, so thanks that for his middle name; and the next day it could be physics, or tha Qur'an. Ant though she laughed that he didn't understand a great deal of it, she didn't mind reading them with him.

And he always snuggled to her her when she did that - on the other side of the light so as not to throw a shadow over the book, and in a way that wouldn't get in her way at all. But he recalled the feel of her hair against his face, soft and shifting under his cheek and shiny and clean and nice.

And then there was a sharp noise, and the door of the room opened and there was his dad, and he seemed angry. He yelled at him to go to bed, and mom closed the book even though the chapter wasn't over. And he tried to tell his dad that it was still early and he wasn't tired yet, not at all, and there was--

"Do as you're told, Maximilian!" The man's bellow echoed in the neat room, making the boy cringe. He tried to speak again, but...

"Go to bed, Maxy." His mom's voice sounded strange as she intercepted his try to say something more, and then she echoed those words as well. "Do as you're told."

"Now!"

Max hugged his mother once again, then slinked out of the room - his father shut the door after him - and then into his own bedroom. He was rather proud that he could put himself to bed on his own, too, only tonight it seemed that something was wrong and even this brought him no joy. He closed his door carefully, not shutting it or making any noise. When his dad was like that, Max didn't want to be like him. At all.

The next day, his mom didn't talk much. There was something wrong with her lip, and there was black and blue around her eye and she winced when he touched her arm at one place, and she was very sad. (But what did a boy of four years of age know about things?) His dad, however, was very nice. He brought her flowers, and took them out to the park (mom wore glasses), and it should have been fine, but he was too nice and Max had the feeling that something about this was wrong too, didn't like it too much either. But he didn't understand why or what, or how he could do anything about it, since neither would talk to him about it. And he tried to ask what was wrong, and was just told to eat his buttered bread, or go to the swings with the other children, or drink his milk.

And his mom didn't feel like reading to him for a few days. Which was alright, since she was real nice about it, even though he never learned what happened at the end of that chapter, or in the next one or any of the following of that book. But there were other books, and she returned to reading to him when he lip was better (and he'd tried to kiss it better, but it didn't work for some reason, and he didn't like that either). And she also slowly started to teach him how to see the letters, and then the words, on the pages, until he hesitantly started stammering into reading himself. And his dad was back to normal, and he'd lift him up and not yell when he came home, and not tell him to go to bed early and without dinner when he'd done nothing wrong, and Max tried to do as he was told without anybody having to tell him that he had to.

He didn't like being told what to do, but what else could he do? He wanted his mom to be okay, and his dad to be okay, and to learn more and know more and know everything about everything in the world, and bit by bit he was learning more. So he supposed doing as he was told wasn't that bad, shaking his hair out of his eyes and turning the page, trying to slowly makes his way through another... how were they called? Paragraph. One more, and then another, until he had managed that page too, and his head was throbbing but he wanted to keep going. Anoghter paragraph, and then another and another merged into yet another page, and then two more paragraph, and he had read a whole chapter on his own! Again! So what if the letters were bigger than mom's book, and it wasn't that interesting. It was still a chapter of his own!

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