Mary arrives home and pulls into driveway at 9:15 p.m. While it is true that she is home earlier than expected, it is important to note that during the summer Mary has become somewhat of a quasi-nocturnal creature, sometimes not returning home until 10:00 p.m. This is significant because while Mary is not a nocturnal creature, it is accurate to say that the unusual earlyish-late hour would naturally startle anyone whom she might catch unawares.
As she walks up the sidewalk, Mary senses the chaos before actually seeing it or hearing it. She opens front door to a cavalcade of noise and light and smell and visual bedlam emanating from the kitchen. And there, bustling around, are her three sons: One home from college to attend a funeral, one soon to leave on a European vacation, and one recently relocated to south Jersey by his engineering company.
At first she is shocked to paralysis merely by the appearance of all three in the kitchen at the same time. This is an anomaly, an event that usually only occurs twice a year: once on Thanksgiving Day, and then again on Christmas.
But this Bermuda Triangle of boys has descended upon her kitchen on September 6th, 2022.
After the initial shock, Mary notices the activity. Boy One stirs thick soup over a burner turned so high that the soup bubbles and spurts onto the burners and onto the floor. Boy Two is making potato skins, slopping sour cream onto a plate, often missing. Boy Three pours Chinese food from leftover containers into a casserole dish, whereupon he throws dish into microwave. Lo Mein and fried rice litter the floor and counter.
Mary stands, aghast the spectacle, and three boys look up, frozen at the sight of her.
(Not like deer in headlights. That is a tired cliché. More like three brothers who committed a murder, and are now huddled over the bathtub, hacking the body into pieces so that the drain catches the blood run-off).
Mary: (Speechless)
Boy 1: Oh, um, hi Mom.
Mary: Hi.
Boy 2: Wow, um, you’re home early.
Mary: Yes.
Silence.
Boy 3: Mom, this is not what it looks like.
Mary: (Sigh).
Sure it is.