“I’m not carrying you, come on,” she said, because she knew he was just being lazy, the same as he always was. She couldn’t carry him even if she wanted to, the size of him, he’d been carried too much already and could use the exercise. Of course, she couldn’t say that to him, last time she’d called him fat John had heard and been so shocked he’d had to take her to one side and tell her that you’re not supposed to say stuff like that to your children. “I can say whatever I want to my kid,” she’d told him, but thinking about it he was probably right. He said she’d give the kid a complex, and it might get him dieting (if such thoughts enter the minds of five year olds) or it might have him lying on a couch talking to a psychiatrist in twenty years time about how his parents mentally abused him.
If they could find a couch big enough, anyway.
“Come on,” she said again, but he’d stopped walking and was just standing by the side of the road leaning on a red Ford Focus.
“Get off of that,” she said, “and come on. We’re going to be late.”
“But it huuuurts,” he said, pathetically.
“It doesn’t hurt, you just don’t want to go to school, well you have to go. Come on.” That was clever, she thought. She’d managed to use reverse psychology or double reverse psychology or, well, she didn’t know what she’d done really but she’d done it without mentioning his weight and so it was a definite tick as far as the psychology went. Maybe in twenty years he could talk to her about his childhood, save himself £200 an hour or whatever it was they’d be charging in those days. She’d have to get a new couch, but if she was charging him £100 an hour that wouldn’t take long to save up for.
“I’ve got a bliiiister.”
“You haven’t got a blister,” she said, even though this denial of something that was probably a fact would only confuse the poor boy. Eventually the poor boy gave up and started walking again, making as much of a show of it as he could manage. He walked with a limp so pronounced that it was as if one of his feet had been shot clean off or something. He held his arms out in front of him like a zombie as he walked. “I’m not picking you up, come on, we’re going to be late,” she said as she turned and walked away from him, keeping distance between him that would keep him walking, undead or not.
When next she turned around, it was at the sound of a car alarm. He’d stopped again, and had somehow ended up back at the red car he’d been leaning against before. She saw a man come out of his house waving his arms around and could just about hear the words “what are you doing?! Get off my car!”
Finally, something to spur him in to action. Maybe they’d make it after all, and he’d get over it eventually. You know, everything.
