Transgression

                  “Oh, Tomas, aren’t you asleep by now?” my wife, prepping tomorrow’s snacks for backpacks, spoke slowly to this twelve-year old, a guest from France on a week of foreign-exchange. He’d come downstairs from the bedroom of our son Ben, who was away this week for a school trip of his own.

                  “I’m ahngry,” Tom said.

                  “Really? About what?”

                  “I’m ahngry,” he repeated.

                  Katerina looked at me for help. By coincidence, I was angrily keyboarding with the fickle wi-fi and my off-hours need to fill out online documents. “Honey, maybe you can take this. Tom is…”

                  “Ahngry,” he turned to me with raised eyebrows.

                  “Hmm. Was there something, Tom, that…um, happened? Today? This… jour?” I also raised my eyebrows like an empathetic emoji.

                  “Un moment,” Tom scampered to the stairwell and called to the other foreign exchange guest. “Hugo, quel est le mot pour ‘affamé’?”

                  Hugo, from the darkness, set him straight: “ahngry.”

                  Tom followed that with something, but Hugo stayed mute, as if suddenly asleep. With slightly more a skip in his step, Tom came back to the kitchen to announce: “I’m ahngry!”

                  “I’m sorry,” Katerina told him. “Maybe… you can call home? Mama? in France? I’m mama here—but your mama, I mean…or—” She was evidently having second thoughts about spreading Tom’s mysterious rage across the continent.

                  “No, no. Is fine. Okay.” Tom waved a pre-teen reassurance of some sort. He nodded a confused ‘Merci’ and backed his way out of the kitchen to go upstairs again.

                  “Odd.” Katerina waited to hear the bedroom door close. “What do you think of that?”

                  “He’ll get over it. You know these trips aren’t everybody’s fancy.” I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge as the internet stalled.

                  Minutes later, Tom bounded down with a new announcement: “feud!”

                  “With whom?” Katerina referreed, “Hugo?”

                  “No, Hugo okay. Please, feud.”

                  Katerina and I tried to read our minds, let alone his. “Let’s wake up Emma”—our daughter, who’d likely know what to do.

                  Tom waited patiently as I went up for Emma, who was wide awake and messaging friends about our French guests and theirs. “Em, you should be sleeping by now—yeah, yeah, yeah—but while you’re awake… Tom seems to be upset about something. Do you have a clue?”

                  “About what?” she was still messaging.

                  “About Tom. He’s downstairs—come talk to him, S’il vous plaît.”

                  “Dad, I don’t know French. I’ll be useless.”

                  “The whole point of this foreign exchange is to apply what you’ve been studying. How are you going to do next month, at Tom’s house?”

                  “I’ll be at Hugo’s. And his English is better.”

                  “Just come on down. Troubleshoot, for goodness sake.”

                  As we went downstairs, I thought she should be aware of his request for a feud. “He’s a rugby player, Dad. He can break my nose with a shoulder shrug.”

                  “Now, now, he’s been a perfect gentleman these past two days.” But that said, it got me thinking.

                  Emma giggled at Tom’s gesticulations, his “I’m really ahngry”, his own, machismo-challenged giggles. The dog chimed in with barks to quiet down, it’s past curfew! Eventually, we had to fetch elder brother Joey to translate the conundrum. He had taken four years of French in school.

                  “He says he’s angry,” he concluded.

                  “But why?” his mother pleaded, “what did we do?”

                  “Pourquoi?” Joey garbled.

                  Tom clenched his stomach. “He’s gonna barf,” Emma warned, to which her guest started giggling again.

                  Hugo came down to investigate his compatriot’s plight. While reticent, he read the situation instantly and felt a need to circle us together for a coming-to-terms. “Tom ahngry,” he started, and we nodded that we got that. “Me, no.” So, we knew we had an isolated situation. A lone wolf? Giggles surceased. “Vous”—shake of the head—“You… avoir—has?—feud. C’est une transgression de ne pas donner. Yes?”

                  “Erm… Joey?”

                  “‘Avoir’ means ‘have’,” he said, reaching for his phone to check even that.

                  My wife made a moue. “I heard ‘transgression’. Is that what you said, Hugo?”

                  “Oui, but… un peu.”

                  “That doesn’t sound good,” Em whispered. “What’s ‘transgression’, anyway?”

                  “No, no, sorry,” Hugo tried to clarify, sticking his index finger almost to his uvula.

                  “Now he’s gonna barf,” Joey offered. “This is like some sort of cult ritual, perhaps—”

                  “There’s no cults in France,” my wife was pretty sure.

                  “Ahngry!” Tom reiterated, pointing at Hugo’s charade. “He too ahngry.”

                  “Ahh!” I finally figured it out. “They’ve been having a feud upstairs over some transgression—crossing a line, stepping on toes, snarfing the other guy’s Snickers bar, unaware—”

                  “Yes! Yes—Snickers!” Tom exuded. Hugo removed his encaved finger, satisfied his job was done.

                  “Good—progress comes with talking things out,” I continued. “So maybe, I don’t know: Joe, would you mind taking the living room couch so Tom can sleep in your room? Kinda to let cooler heads prevail.”

                  “Prévaloir,” Hugo added, “avec Snickers!”

                  Emma was impressed. “Gosh, it’s like those guys in Les Misérables—‘Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?’”

                  “So, sing it!” I goaded, and set the key with burlesque baritone: “‘Do you hear the people sing?’ C’mon, ‘Singing the song—”

                  “Dad!” Em was mortified. Hugo clapped some approval. Tom pretended to be shot at the barricade, or else went into some rugby roll.

                  Joe, meanwhile, announced how stupid this was and led the boys upstairs to sleep in different rooms, then came back down with a blanket to claim the couch. “They were confused, but…”

                  Katerina came out of the pantry and asked Emma to trade her mobile phone for a macaroon—among the goodies the boys had given two days ago as house gifts. Em demurred but understood her need to be away from the glowing device. “Don’t want to make a transgression,” she twirled.

                  Quick study, I smiled.

                 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2018)