Waffles.

The smell of waffles was by far and large the best part of weekend mornings for Fox Nelson, especially now that weekdays had changed for him.

This year, Fox started attending Kindergarten, which was actually something he enjoyed and looked forward to. What he didn’t like was how early he had to get up. Maybe it had to do with the fact that his family lived on a ranch far outside of town and he had to catch a bus at a certain time. North Ridge was a small place, but it was rural and mountainous. A lot of kids lived on the ranches, farms and cabins on the outskirts and they all took the school bus, even in Kindergarten.

Mornings at home were cold, especially by October when the sun started spending less time in the sky. His father was always complaining about bills and electricity, so they heated most of their house with the wood stove and even though his mother was always up way before him to stoke the coals from the night before to get the fire roaring again, Fox’s bedroom was freezing.

Those mornings he’d slip on his biggest sweater and his fluffy slippers and shiver his way downstairs where he’d eat cold, mushy cereal (the boring kind, his mother never let him have the ones with tons of sugar) and drink orange juice while his younger brothers John and Shane were still sleeping. Sometimes John would be up too, just wanting to tag around his mother and Fox, but Shane, being a baby, would be definitely sleeping.

His mother seemed to prefer it that way. She often talked about Shane sleeping like it was best thing in the world. Sometimes Fox wondered if she even liked Shane since every time the baby was awake, he was crying or wanting their mother and it always seemed like a huge weight on her shoulders.

On cold dark mornings, that weight seemed heavier than normal. Fox had a feeling that after she walked him to the bus stop down the road on the other side of the river, that she’d go back to bed. Maybe even cry. Sometimes Fox would glance at her as the bus pulled away and she’d still be standing on the bridge, staring down at the water below.

Sad. She seemed impossibly sad, which made Fox want to be a better son, to do what he could to cheer her up. His father and grandfather were like that too, always being extra kind and understanding to her, but they operated the ranch and were almost always busy.

But weekends, on weekends that sadness seemed to lift just a bit. Fox liked to think it was because he was at home with her and not at school and so she now had a helping hand with Shane and around the house. Fox liked feeling needed, feeling special. He liked the responsibilities of being the oldest.

On this particular morning though, on a sunny, cold Saturday in late October, his mother could barely get out of bed. In fact, she didn’t even wake him up like she usually did.

He went down the hall to her bedroom and found her sitting in the rocking chair by the window, staring at nothing.

“You didn’t wake me up,” he said.

But she said nothing. She didn’t even look at him.

“It’s Saturday,” Fox went on and for some reason this morning, the fact that she didn’t wake him up, the fact that he should be smelling waffles right now, it bothered him. “Where are the waffles?”

“You make your own waffles, Fox, I’m sick and tired of it,” she said in a dull voice. She wouldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know how, I can’t even reach the cupboards,” he whined, feeling this was completely unfair. She knows he can’t do it.

“I can’t do everything!” she snapped at him. “You make your own waffles, you take care of Shane, you take care of everyone. You’re the oldest, it’s your responsibility now.”

And even though she broke down and started crying, Fox was upset too. She took something he was looking forward to and she ruined it.

“I hate you,” he said to her and then stormed out of the room and down the stairs.

The fire wasn’t even on this morning and it was cold as hell. He flicked on the TV for a few minutes and tried to watch his favorite cartoons until the guilt started to get the best of him.

Maybe his mother was sick. Maybe he really was old enough to do everything now.

So Fox got up and went into the kitchen and tried to figure out how to make waffles on his own. He brought out the buttermilk she used for it, the eggs, the butter. The waffle mix itself was high up in a box so he brought a chair from the kitchen table over to the counter and climbed up on it.

Normally he would never be able to do this but since his mother told him to make the waffles, then this was what he was doing. While he was up there grabbing the waffle mix, he also found a box of chocolates and snuck a few of them into his pockets to eat later, maybe share with John, if John didn’t end up annoying him.

Then he climbed down off the counter, brought out the mixing bowls and attempted to make the waffles. Fox was smart and could already read quite a bit, so he tried to make sense of the directions on the boxes but with the tiny print and the words he didn’t know, he ended up giving up and winging it.

He made a mess. The entire kitchen covered in spoons and broken eggs and flour and he wasn’t even sure if what he had put in the bowl was the right thing or not. What he did know for sure though was that even if he ended up making them correctly, he wasn’t allowed to cook them.

Then he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

His mother.

He expected her to smile at him, say she was sorry, or just yell at him for making a mess. But she didn’t say either. She didn’t say anything.

She just walked past him like he didn’t exist at all, like he was a ghost in one of grandpa’s stories. She took his bowl and dumped the contents in the garbage and then started to make the waffle mix herself.

Fox backed away slowly. It was starting to scare him that she didn’t even notice the mess he had made, that she was standing in bare feet amongst sticky eggshells and flour and she didn’t care.

Maybe she was the ghost.

With that troubling thought, Fox went into the living room and started watching cartoons, trying to forget all about it. Luckily his favorite, The X-Men, was on.

Soon John was up and joined him on the couch.

Then the smell of waffles filled the air and when he and John went to go sit at the kitchen table, it was almost like everything was normal again. The kitchen was cleaner. A pile of fluffy waffles with maple syrup was on the table.

But things weren’t quite right. Shane started crying from upstairs in his crib.

Both John and Fox looked at their mother, expecting her to go upstairs but she didn’t. She just stared out the window, not moving, like she didn’t hear him.

Finally, John said, “I’ll go tell him to be quiet.” Though John was only four, he liked the baby a lot and was often wanting to talk to him and be around him.

“Good,” their mother said, her voice so absent of life that it sent chills down Fox’s spine. “I’m going to go pick some flowers.”

She walked out of the kitchen and over to the front door, still in her nightgown, still in bare feet.

Fox watched all of this happen as if in slow motion. He knew he should yell after her to tell her to put on some clothes, tell her it was cold out. He knew that there were no flowers growing at this time of year. He knew that Shane needed her to go upstairs and take care of him, not leave it to John.

But he didn’t say anything. He was still mad. And now, a little scared.

So she walked out the door and he ran to the window and watched her go down the hill toward the river, the breeze rippling through her nightgown, the sun low in the sky and lighting her up.

She went down but she never came back.

* * *

Fox didn’t remember much of the actual funeral. It was something that his mind blocked for him. He remembers the casket going into the ground, the fact that it had snowed earlier that morning and there were still a few traces of it on the graves. He remembers everyone in black, crying. Even people from the town, like his Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Matthews, and the old lady at the library, and the guy from the toy store. They were all there, everyone, crying and crying.

He doesn’t know if he cried or not. Perhaps he was still numb. Perhaps it had just been a dream.

But he remembers when he left the funeral, he was lagging behind, not realizing that his mother would forever be buried here and that he could come see her anytime he wanted. He thought that this would be his last chance to say goodbye.

So while his family walked off, baby Shane in his father’s arms, his grandfather holding John’s hand, Fox took a moment to say goodbye.

But he didn’t know what to say.

There was really nothing for him to say except, “I’m sorry,” because Fox knew, he knew that he was the reason she died. She was so upset that he said he hated her, that she died from it. From a broken heart.

Now Fox had that broken heart.

It weighed him down like lead.

It would weigh him down for the rest of his life.

He turned away from the freshly-churned dirt on the grave and started walking back through the crowd to catch up to his family.

On the way he was stuck behind two old women who walked so slow they were like going through molasses, arm in arm.

“It was the baby that did it,” the one woman said. “Baby Shane. They should have seen the signs.”

“They should have. Even I knew she wasn’t well. She should have never had that child, they were struggling with that ranch enough as it was,” said the other.

Fox was shocked. How on earth could Shane have killed his mother?

“He didn’t kill her,” Fox said to the women, both of whom had the faces of wrinkled cabbage. “I was with Shane, he didn’t kill her. He’s only a baby.”

The ladies stopped and looked at each other. Finally, one of them gave him a sad smile and patted him on the head, to which he flinched. “Some things you’ll understand when you’re older, young man. Why don’t you run along to your family, they need you right now more than ever.”

Fox didn’t have to be told twice. He started pushing through the crowd, trying to run, until finally he found his family at the long black car that they were using for the day.

“Fox, there you are,” his grandpa said with a sigh of relief. “Get inside the car before you run off again.”

Fox was going to protest, going to tell them that he hadn’t run off, that he was trying to say goodbye and he didn’t know how.

Then he was going to tell them what the women said.

But he didn’t say any of that.

He just looked at baby Shane in his father’s arm, his poor father who never looked more tired or sadder in his whole life than right at that moment, and Fox started wondering if maybe, somehow, this was the baby’s fault and not his.

But try as he might, the blame he would put on Shane was only a deflection for the blame he put on himself.

It was his own fault she was dead, that he knew deep inside with unwavering certainty.

His fault.

His fault.

That night the tears came for Fox, in waves, in torrents, in relentless gusts. He held onto a stuffed cow that his mother had gotten him years ago, a cow that reminded him of her back when she was alive, when she was happy, back when he had a mother, back when he was happy.

He cried and cried as the shame inside him deepened and darkened, carving out an ugly place inside him that would never go away.

He cried calling out her name.

Saying he was sorry.

He cried for the little boy he was before she died.

The person he would never be again.