The father stared at the chair.
Then at his wife.
“What did you just do?”
She seemed to realize she had moved too quickly.
“I’m not doing this tonight.”
The father spoke slowly.
“You kicked his chair away.”
“I moved it.”
“Why?”
“Because he is not going to sit there acting starved so you can come home and make me the villain.”
The father looked at his son.
The boy’s lower lip trembled.
His wife noticed.
“Oh, don’t start crying.”
The father’s head snapped toward her.
“Stop.”
She stared at him.
He had never spoken to her that sharply.
Their marriage had lasted three years.
There had been arguments.
Of course.
Money.
Parenting.
Schedules.
Her frustration that he worked too late.
His frustration that she spent impulsively.
The difficult balancing act of blending two families where each adult brought a child from a previous relationship.
But he had never spoken to her like that.
Because until that moment, he had never looked across his own dining room and felt that something fundamental might be wrong.
His wife put down her fork.
“You’re going to take his side without even asking what happened?”
“He is eleven.”
“And?”
“And there should not be sides.”
She laughed without humor.
“There are always sides when he wants something.”
The father turned toward his son.
“Give me the plate.”
The boy obeyed.
The father looked at it.
A smear of mashed potatoes.
Nothing more.
He set it on the table.
“Sit.”
The boy moved cautiously toward the chair.
His wife stood.
“No.”
The father looked at her.
She looked back.
“He had dinner.”
“Then he can eat twice.”
“You’re rewarding him.”
“For being hungry?”
“For manipulating you.”
The father stared.
“What exactly is he manipulating me into?”
His wife’s voice rose.
“Thinking I’m some horrible stepmother.”
He looked at his son again.
The boy’s eyes were filling now.
The father pulled the chair into place.
His wife stepped around the table and grabbed the empty plate.
For one strange second he thought she intended to serve food.
Instead, she carried the plate to the side counter and dropped it harder than necessary.