<I try not to write about my brother too much, but when we were requested to write a story based around food, this was the only thing that came.>

Ryan would only eat face meat: a flesh puree watered down and ironed into thin slices, the beige and dark pink forming the smiling faces of a bear or Thomas the Tank Engine.  His grandmother would make a great fuss about the face meat when he visited with his parents, telling them how she trekked all over Weymouth to find it.  She would also make a strawberry jelly and buy a bar of expensive white chocolate just for him.

He didn’t know what to do with real meat.  He’d put a piece of dry beef or gravy-sodden chicken into his mouth and then chew and chew.  Ryan would chew the same piece for minutes on end, his glazed stare fixed on the middle of the table and lines of meat-speckled saliva oozing down from the corners of his mouth until someone at the table noticed and told him to swallow.

Meat didn’t work, and there were so many things he refused to eat, so his diet became limited and repetitive.  Perfect for Ryan.  There were boxes upon boxes of Birds Eye potato waffles in the freezer, and he’d have two most nights with fried eggs or chips.  He’d also have cheese toasties, burgers or, of course, face meat sandwiches.  The only fruit he’d eat was bananas and he’d have as many as you gave him every day along with Monster Munch crisps and Mr Kipling chocolate fudge slices.

When Ryan developed the ferocious temper of a teenager before he was ten, it was advised that glutton be excluded from his diet.  He switched to the stodgy bread from the red wire rack by the pharmacy at the supermarket, and he tried the pizza bases and thin biscuits as well.  Everything came in the same thick plastic with a white label and small print, distinctly medical. 

There was tomato puree in the cupboard for the first time, and it’d be spread in a thin layer right to the edges of the bleached and pricked pizza base.  A little cheddar was grated on top with some triangles of tinned pineapple and a slice of face meat cut into squares.  The homemade pizzas didn’t taste like pizza but Ryan had them twice a week anyway.  The biscuits were disgusting and fed to the dogs.

His temper eased but was still unbearable as he continued to lash out red-faced and screaming.  He didn’t know to wean his strength out of his blows, or not to hit girls.  When he picked up the cricket bat he meant to try and use it.

Back to the doctor, and now his diet was to exclude additives and preservatives wherever possible.  The writing on the back of packages was examined closer than ever, and Milky Bars would need to be an occasional treat only.  Ryan couldn’t have Monster Munch or Fruit Pastels anymore, but he could have Starburst almost every day.  He got a little better and his hyperactivity benefited as well, though he was still colouring in the bulb of his bedside lamp with crayons and taking epically long showers because he stood in the water and traced the grout around the tiles, over and over again.  But then there was no helping those things, and any small improvement was brilliant.

Every now and then, for a Sunday lunch, an extra effort was made for everyone to have the same meal.  On Ryan’s plate were three roast potatoes sitting in a small pool of gravy; three Yorkshire puddings with their wells filled; three optimistic carrots to one side; and three slices of face meat carefully fanned out to smile up at him.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.