Chapter Text
Sundays were always Will’s favorite growing up. It wasn’t church — the hard benches were splintery under his little fingers and his mother would pinch his side when he squirmed. It wasn’t the baseball games, though he loved sitting on his dad’s lap and listening to the Rangers broadcast in their little apartment while his mother read. It wasn’t even the fact that Sunday was the one day his family would all be in the same house — Daddy worked on the docks most days and Mama seemed to always have another shift that meant he’d be left with the neighbors for hours on end.
It was the pancakes.
Sundays were for pancakes in the Graham house. His dad would snap on the local country station and Will would watch, rapt, as his father conjured pancakes from thin air. Jacob Graham never measured an ingredient in his life. He cracked eggs one-handed and shook flour absently into a chipped ceramic bowl, humming along to Dolly Parton. Will would clap, tugging anxiously on his father’s shorts so he wouldn’t forget that it was Will’s job to stir.
Once his father was done adding to the bowl, he’d heft Will to his hip and hand over the spoon. Will took stirring very seriously. One time he’d tried to whip the wooden spoon as quickly as his daddy and had sent flour everywhere. Daddy had laughed, Mama had told him he couldn’t stir pancakes anymore.
“The boy’ll never learn if we don’t let him try.” Jacob had handed the spoon back to Will. “Now you keep the tip of the spoon touching the bottom of that bowl, ya hear? And don’t worry about going fast, worry about making all the ingredients dance together.”
Will had frowned at that, focused on his task. He’d dragged the spoon carefully through the mix three times before his father’s big hand wrapped around his.
“Let’s get a rhythm going, huh?” Jacob squeezed Will’s fingers and guided him through the ingredients, murmuring along with Dolly. “Two doors down, they’re loving and drinking and having a party…”
The large hand securing Will to Jacob’s hip started tapping, and Will began to nod along to the beat. He pulled the spoon through the bowl to the beat of the drum, watching as the heaps of dried flour crumbled into the trenches of milk and egg, making a soft, fluffy batter. It was like learning a magic trick, and he grinned up at his father, who winked as he sang along to the radio.
When the batter was mixed just right, Jacob would pat Will before lowering him to the floor. It was time for Jacob to pour the pancakes. Somehow, Will’s daddy just knew when to flick his wrist and send the pancakes careening into the air, landing with a sizzle on its uncooked side. Will would watch with wide eyes as the pancakes cartwheeled through the air.
In a matter of minutes, there’d be a stack of 12 pancakes on the big blue platter Mama had found at a yard sale. She’d said it was real porcelain, and Will wasn’t to touch it no matter what. So he’d wait, grinning ear to ear, as she picked up the platter, pecked a kiss on Daddy’s cheek, and delivered the pancakes to the table.
They’d say grace with hands held, and Will would wriggle in his chair as Daddy piled his plate high. Will would dig in, butter and sticky syrup smearing the edges of his cheeks as he stuffed his maw with pillowy bites. His mother would tut, but Jacob would smile, pulling his thumb through the smear on Will’s cheek and wiping it away. “He eats like a growing boy, Kitty, can’t fault him for that.”
And Will would eat himself sick every Sunday. There was something in the pancakes, sweeter than the sugar, more filling than the flour. Every bite made Will feel sated and ravenous at the same time. He’d spend the rest of Sunday laying with his dad by the radio, full to bursting and brimming with a satisfied feeling he couldn’t quite describe.
The pancakes were also the first indication that something wasn’t right in Will’s world. At first, he could still taste the warm sweet flavor, but something else was in the pancakes now, something bitter. It seemed to flood his mouth and taint the cakes, no matter how much syrup he dredged the bites through. He wondered what changed in the batter, and why the kitchen was so quiet. His father hadn’t put on the radio, no one was talking about what the ladies wore to church or the sermon. In fact, the only sounds were the clinks of forks scraping plates. His mother barely ate, maybe she tasted the odd bitter flavor in the pancakes as well?
The bitterness seemed to grow every Sunday until Will could barely swallow the pancakes anymore, eyes watering as the unpleasant flavors coated his tongue and teeth. His parents fought more — both staying out and leaving Will with the neighbors. Music had died in the kitchen, and his father never let him stir anymore, ignoring Will’s little tugs to the legs of his cargo pants.
One Sunday, Mom wasn’t at breakfast. Will had asked where she was and if she’d gotten another shift. His father had told him to shut the fuck up and set the table. The pancakes were inedible that day — a massive stack of slimy cakes sitting on a regular plate because the blue platter was missing. Will cried quietly, tears splashing into a pool of syrup until his father grumbled that he should get his little ass to his room if he wasn’t hungry.
There were no pancakes after that. No mother either.
It was just as well. Everything his father cooked was flooded with bitter flavors. Jacob and Will lost weight, both picking at the food on their plates and preferring the hollow ache of hunger to the horrible, hateful food. Eventually, family meals were a thing of the past, and Will picked up burgers or microwave meals that he could eat in his room. He’d hear his father crying some nights and wondered if Jacob Graham was still trying to eat his own cooking.
Two days after he turned 18, Will was on his own. He’d bought a bowl, some eggs, and a box of pancake mix for his little shithole apartment. He flipped on the radio, about the only luxury he could afford in his tiny home, and found the local country station. He couldn’t find Dolly, but he supposed Reba McEntire was good enough to cook by. He followed the instructions on the back of the Buttermilk Pancakes box, humming along to Fancy as it played on the radio.
The first two were burnt. But once he adjusted the heat, Will managed a respectable stack of browned pancakes. He still didn’t know how to flip the pancakes in the pans, but with a spatula the previous tenant abandoned in a dusty drawer, he got the job done well enough.
He slathered the best of the bunch with butter and syrup and dug in. After three bites, Will pushed his plate away. The bitter flavor was still there, mixed with a sort of sour aftertaste that made his teeth ache. He tried again a few days later but ended up feeding the pancakes to the stray dogs that hung out near his apartment.
Every now and then, when he had a few extra dollars in his pocket, Will would browse the internet, looking up recipes for pancakes. Didn’t matter whether he used Vietnamese cinnamon, buttermilk, or a grate of fresh nutmeg — there was always something missing and the pancakes tasted like sawdust.
Will was 19 before he realized the ingredient missing was love.
He was 28 when he accepted the fact that he’d never taste it again.
He tasted other things. The first time his girlfriend made him chicken tetrazzini, it tasted acidic. He’d smiled when he watched her fiddle with her napkin, anxious eyes studying him as she chewed. Nervous. The chicken tetrazzini tasted nervous. The next time she cooked, there was a tinge of sweetness to the food. It wasn’t the same as Daddy’s pancakes, more like the memory of the taste. Beneath the sweetness was a stodgy greasy aftertaste. Will realized he could taste her confidence with every bite.
But even as he got brownies and the occasional meal from Carol, the sweetness started to fade even if the fatty confidence didn’t. Soon her food was indifferent, tasteless. And then, worst of all, a hint of bitterness pricked his tongue. He tried calling her more, holding her hand whenever they walked together on campus, but the bitter hint only seemed to take over his palate.
When Carol had served him spaghetti that flooded his mouth with marinara that tasted rotten, he’d known it was over. Sure enough, she offered him a brownie as she broke up with him. Will didn’t eat it. He couldn’t stomach another mouthful of disappointment.
In the years that passed, Will developed a system. The more processed a food was, the more impersonal it tasted. He never let dates cook for him; he told them he had allergies. It was better not to know, to keep his expectations managed. Eyes could tell him too much, but one mouthful of food could tell him everything. Microwave dinners, cans of soup, fast food bagged by bored teenagers — it didn’t taste like much, but at least it didn’t taste like the acrid food he made with his own hands.
There were two exceptions to the rules: His dogs and his catches.
Whenever Will had a spare moment, he’d head to the river, where he’d try to catch a bass or a bluegill. The spark of satisfaction would translate into a bright savory flavor — not quite the satiation of those childhood pancakes, but something to remind him that food wasn’t always bland and thoughtless. The other exception was Will’s dog food, which he made by hand. As Will mixed the meats, oats, eggs, and fish tripe by hand, adding oils and pumpkin for consistency, he was always tempted to try it. He knew for a fact that he made this noxious substance with love and wondered if he’d be able to taste it again, just once.
He hoped the dogs could taste it, at least.