The Return of the Prodigal Son
written by: Varia Abramova
“A modern-day Jack Kerouac,” mother says, watching Chris drop his two heavy duffel bags in the hallway. “Welcome home, my dear.”
Chris smiles in a charming but distant way, opening his arms when mother reaches for a hug. I sit on the edge of the kitchen counter, realising how much different Chris looks now: rough around the edges, with hair cut awkwardly, face unshaven, nails dirty, wearing worn-out clothes.
“We missed you so much, honey,” mother says, stepping back. Her hair, matted and oily, is hastily pulled up into a bun. She’s wearing a blouse that sits too big on her slender frame, and the bags under her eyes are covered up with concealer.
“Didn’t you get my postcards?” Chris asks, following her into the kitchen, where she grabs a pair of kitchen mitts and opens the oven. The scent of baked apples and cinnamon fills the tiny kitchen.
“Of course, we did,” mother says, taking the pie out and nodding at the fridge door, empty except for the one postcard my brother had sent, on her birthday of the first year that he was gone, depicting a busy street in Los Angeles at night. “I only wish you’d send more, or maybe visit us on Christmas…” She puts the apple pie on the table. It’s carefully tucked into one of our old pastel-green pie dishes that has stood lonely and untouched in the drawer for two years.
“I spend a lot of time on the road or up in the mountains,” Chris offers as a way of explanation, while mother hands him a slice on a plate.
“I understand,” she says. “We just worry, you know. No calls, no messages…”
Who’s ‘we,’ I think, swinging my legs back and forth from the counter. Mother usually says not to sit here, but she hasn’t spared me a glance since Chris waltzed in.
“The reception sucks in most of the places I stay at,” Chris says, smiling at her placatingly, before grabbing a fork. “Pie looks amazing. God! Haven’t had a home-cooked meal in ages.”
“It’s good to have you home,” mother says, opening the fridge. Chris has his mouth already stuffed with pie, the crust loudly crunching, so he just nods enthusiastically as mother pours him a glass of milk.
Since we were very young, Chris has always loved milk. He’d drink it warm before going to bed, with butter and honey; cold, with cookies and pies and home-baked bread; hot in teas and coffees and cacao. When I was six, and he was twelve, I’d catch him chugging down milk straight from the bottle because he “wished to get taller quicker.”
He must be twenty-two now, I realise.
“So, where have you been recently?” mother asks.
“Oh, all over.”
“Well, what’s your favourite place so far?”
“There’s something to appreciate in every place.”
Mother opens her mouth, then stops, then notices the untouched glass of milk and frowns. Chris follows her gaze.
“I don’t drink milk anymore.”
“How come?”
Mother looks like he just admitted to having been robbed and knifed. It’s just milk, I think, incredulous. He probably grew out of liking it.
Though as he shrugs, I look at the scene in front of me a little closer. My mother, who treats Chris as though he just returned from military service, eating freshly made pie and barely holding together a conversation; me, outside their golden apples-scented bubble, who hasn’t had milk or anything home-baked for two years, trying to squash down the red-hot envy and bitterness curling under my skin.
To Chris, it must seem like this place stayed the same, I think, as their conversation wilts, and mother struggles to disguise her disappointment, her wrong-footedness, their waning connection. To him, a fridge stacked with milk and home-cooked food and probably a thousand other things he used to have regularly may be foreign now, but are always guaranteed here, and mother is still mum, with her cooking, and worried gazes, and summer dresses, and knitting, and grocery shopping lists. To him, dad’s affair and leaving is a distant event that he only heard about on his travels. To him, this place is a home filled with warmth and pies and old family pictures and children’s bicycles. Not a tiny house with hidden wine bottles stashed under every counter; with mother’s ghost-like pale face that stares at me in the early mornings when she’s wandering around the house in a drunken stupor; not a house where the budget gets tighter every month; not a shrine to the past and a prison to me.
- The Return of the Prodigal Son - January 26, 2026
