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Trina has never thought of Whizzer Brown as small. She tries not to think of Whizzer at all, if she’s being entirely honest with herself, but sometimes she just can’t help it. In all of her thoughts, he is big. Tall, yes, taller than Marvin and even taller than Mendel, but that is not what she means, and that is not what matters. He is quiet, calm, he knows when he is wanted and when he is not. He will sit in a corner with his hands on his knees and not speak a word out of turn, but the whole room feels the ripples of his impact anyway.
She feels it when she sleeps alone in a double bed at night, she feels it when Jason comes home with a new toy, even if it's one that they both know will do nothing but sit on a shelf and gather dust. She feels it when she seats four places at the too-small table for dinner and doesn’t know who she would rather be sat opposite and who she would rather be next to. The mess he has made in her life is big, the space he takes up in the corner of her living room is big, the love that he has for her family is big, and maybe that is why Trina struggles to hate him quite as much as she wants to. Because he makes Jason smile, because his opinion matters so much to the boy who refuses to listen to his parents and thinks that playing chess when he’s been asked not to is the pinnacle of childhood rebellion. Because he is big, bigger than Marvin and bigger than Mendel and for a man who is always so delicate and careful, he leaves an indescribable chaos in his wake.
He had not been small when she had found the two of them in the den, holed up in the dark and the silence, fooling around like giddy schoolboys. He had been sheepish, and infuriatingly apologetic, and then Marvin had sent him home, and the two of them had sat in silence until Jason got in from school, neither daring to speak, neither quite knowing what exactly they were supposed to say to lessen the fallout.
He had not been small when Marvin had first invited him over for dinner in some misguided attempt at cobbling together a functional family out of them all. He had smiled too much, been too polite, made too much conversation with her and Jason until Trina had thought she was going to suffocate under the weight of his genuity.
He had not been small when Jason had requested his presence on the matter of whether or not he should see a psychiatrist. He had almost filled the cramped living room until she felt she couldn’t look away from him. She had to admit that she could see why Jason sought advice from him, this impartial third party who had his best interests at heart with no ulterior motives, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Especially when he didn’t agree with her and Marvin’s ideas.
He had not been small when he would come to take Jason on a day out, or to his father’s. He would stand in the doorway of the porch as if he belonged there, commenting on the weather or the news of the day. He would never accept Mendel’s offer to come in and sit down while they waited for Jason to gather his things, as if he feared that making himself comfortable in their home was an inexcusable offence. As if he didn’t realise that bridge had been crossed a long time ago.
He had not even been small at Jason’s baseball game, when he knew that he would not be wanted, when he should by all rights have been silent and still, not daring to draw attention to himself. When he should have been cowed, apprehensive of their anger, ashamed to show his face around them, and instead he had been up and cheering, swelling with a pride and a care for the boy that she felt - worried, perhaps - eclipsed even her own.
No, Trina has never thought of Whizzer Brown as small. Until now.
She is not sure what it is that sparks this revelation, really. It could be many things. Maybe it is the way that Marvin and Mendel struggle to balance his weight between them, the way his feet drag clumsily against the floor as all three of them try their best to keep him upright. Maybe it is the fact his t-shirt hangs from a frame that should fill it, that she is sure at one point must have filled it, because Whizzer would not be caught dead in clothing that didn’t fit him. Maybe it is the way that he had slotted so neatly into the crook of Marvin’s neck, hiding his face like a child, both of them rocking to the rhythm of some choked-up lullaby.
Maybe he has always been this small. Maybe she has just never realised.
She’s realising now, though. Here, with Jason hugging the forgotten rackets to his chest with tears in his eyes, standing in the eye of the storm, in the moment of perfect calm before it all goes to shit, waiting for the onslaught of sirens that are going to kickstart them straight into the approaching inevitable. She’s realising now.
She puts an arm around Jason’s shoulders and walks him back to the car. Neither of them speak. She doesn’t comment on the way his hand slips into hers and squeezes in a way he hasn’t done in years, she just takes a deep breath and squeezes back. When Mendel rejoins them, he doesn’t speak either. Their decision is one that is wordless and yet unanimous, and they maintain their silence for the entire journey, Mendel’s knuckles white on the wheel, Jason staring at the passing blurs of people and buildings, Trina trying to get the world to right itself under her seat.
Somehow the two of them end up alone. Marvin is somewhere with Charlotte, Mendel has taken Jason to stretch his legs, to work out some of that anxious energy and provide explanations that he’d rather not leave to Trina, and Cordelia perhaps hasn’t arrived yet. Whizzer is sleeping, maybe, or at least has his head tucked down to his chest and his eyes closed. Trina is standing, because sitting feels as though it would require a level of familiarity that she’s not quite sure they have. Whizzer would probably disagree with that, like he disagrees with her and Marvin on everything, but if she shifts her weight onto her other foot, she’s okay with standing.
She’s trying to be quiet, but she must make some sort of noise, because Whizzer’s eyes crack open, and he half-heartedly points in the direction of the chair pulled up to the head of the bed. Not asleep, then. But not exactly far off, by the look of it.
She can’t exactly refuse now that he’s given her permission - not that she requires his permission - so she sits a little awkwardly, and after a moment of consideration, lays a hand on his upper arm. It’s an unfamiliar gesture, a display of affection she isn’t used to extending, or at least not to him, but he seems to relax into it, and smiles.
They sit in something they can pretend is comfortable silence for a moment, and then Whizzer places his hand over her own. He’s cold, and Trina has to resist the almost instinctive urge to adjust his blankets and tuck him back beneath the covers. Before she can move though, he swallows, and makes a soft noise in the back of his throat that takes a moment to become the first words they’ve directly spoken to each other in what might be months.
“Thank you...”
Trina has no idea how that sentence is supposed to end. Thank you for answering the phone? For not leaving him on the racquetball court? For sitting with him? None of those are things that he needs to thank her for, and even if they were, she wouldn’t expect him to. So she just shakes her head, and rests her other hand on top of his.
“Don’t be silly.”
That should be the end of the conversation, but it isn’t, because Whizzer cannot leave well enough alone.
“Thank you,” he says again, a little more insistently this time, linking together their fingers and squeezing. Trina doesn’t say anything to that. She doesn’t know what to say. So she just keeps hold of his hand as he falls back off to sleep, and presses a kiss to the curls escaping his hat, and finds herself worrying that if he gets any smaller, he’ll disappear completely.
He does, of course. He was always going to. Some part of her - some part of all of them - had known that this was always going to be how it ended. Still though, she supposes that doesn’t make it any easier. It brings with it a screaming sort of silence, until once again Trina feels as though she is suffocating beneath the weight of Whizzer Brown, beneath the magnitude of the gaping hole that he has left in her life, beneath the broken pieces that she has no idea how they can even begin to try and fit back together.
She pushes Marvin into the abandoned chair, letting him bury his head in her cardigan as though this is something else that he can just pretend to shy away from, if only for a few minutes. She draws Jason close to her side, turning his head away as if that’s going to make even the slightest bit of difference, she doesn’t make eye contact with either Charlotte or Cordelia, lest the tears she has been successful in holding back so far make their first appearance. Whizzer’s hand is still curled around the corner of his blanket, and Trina extracts it as gently as she can, running her thumb over the back of his palm the way she had done only a few days prior. Mendel’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder, and she turns her head into his chest and closes her eyes, tries to ignore the weight of Whizzer’s hand in hers, and Marvin crying into her chest, and Jason with an arm around both her and his father.
She had thought that things were unfixable before, all those years ago when the divorce had finally gone through. That had been nothing, really. This. This was what was going to be unfixable, going forwards like this, moving on from this. If she had thought there was nothing to say before, there is even less to say now as they stand shoulder to shoulder, huddled and stunned.
And they are so very, very small.