Later on in the afternoon, Shawn and I were in the living room napping together on the couch. He was on his back and I was resting on my stomach on his stomach.
"Jasmine?" Someone whispers. I open my left eye and then blink my eyes open. It's Karen.
"Sorry to wake you." Karen apologizes. "Can you help me in the kitchen, please? If you don't mind?"
"It's not a problem." I whisper back. "But getting off him will be." Karen smiles, revealing her teeth and helps me get off Shawn without disturbing him. We head into the kitchen and she has pans set up on the marble counter top.
"Can you bake?" Karen asks me.
"Yeah," I nod. "What do you need help with?"
"Can you help me make the banana bread?"
"Of course." Karen smiles and she hands me an old looking recipe book and turns to a page. I begin to follow the directions and help her cook.
"How did you and Shawn meet?" She asks me as she's opening up a pack of meat.
"It was at a party," I tell her. "My friends were mingling with everyone and I just kept to myself. He kept looking at me and then somehow, as I was about to leave, my friend got him to put his number in my phone without me noticing."
"That describes him." Karen softly laughs.
"What was Shawn like growing up?" I ask Karen as I crack open the eggs on the white bowl.
Karen smiles before she tells me. "Shawn," she smiles. "He was so sweet." Sweet? "He was incredibly innocent and kind. He still is innocent and kind." I hope she doesn't know about his sex life. "He would always tell me everything. He still does, sometimes."
"Is this a six or an eight?" I ask Karen and show her the book, pointing to the number of eggs it tells me to put in.
"Eight," she replies. "But Shawn was very special. I knew it from the moment he was born. He was very athletic, always running, always hyper."
"Is that where he took up boxing?" I ask her. Karen's smile changes. It's still a smile, but her eyes seem to have lost a sort of sparkle or warmth.
Okay, it's sensitive. A very sensitive topic.
"He started boxing at a young age. He wanted to take it up on his own." She says, going back to what she's cooking. "Shawn started out with T-Ball."
"Really?" I ask. I can imagine Shawn, so small and young, gripping onto a baseball.
"He was real good, too." She smiles.
"Were they all athletic?"
Karen nods. "Every single one of them. It was so hard having to attend both games in one night." She laughs and light shakes her head. "One time, I had to send Manny to one of the boys games so I could go to the other."
Karen and I continue to talk about Shawn and what he was like growing up. From her, I learned that Shawn fell from a tree and landed on his shoulder but refused to go to the doctor just to keep a five dollar bet he made with Scott. When he was four, he pushed Daniel in the lake and ran away for twenty minutes because he was scared that Manny would get angry at him.
"But enough about Shawn," she sighs. "Jasmine, I want to know more about you."
"What do you want to know?" I ask her.
"Tell me about yourself. What should I know?"
What should she know? Well for starters, I just had sex with your son in the shower about two hours ago. "Well, um..."
