Blood & Water

David: Friday

I'm a coward.

    I'm taking the long way home from work even though it was after six before I finally left. I tell myself I can use the drive to think over the right thing to say, even though I've had all week to think of what to say. I've put it off until Friday so she'll have time to process it: to get upset, slam doors, regroup.

    I'm managing the crisis.

    At a red light, I lean my head back and close my eyes. I'm clenching my jaw with the same level of force that presses the brake pedal.

    A week ago, Sadie came home all excited about her college applications. Her guidance counselor had told her she was selling herself short with the list of colleges she'd decided to apply to. With her grades, she could consider more than just state schools. Her new list had universities on the east coast or the mid-west, private colleges with impressive reputations exceeded only by their astronomical tuitions.

    I nodded at her enthusiasm, a knot in my stomach. I wanted to remind her how excited she'd been about the University of Arizona, which was right in town. I knew, though, that too much talking it up might send her in another direction.

    Sadie's guidance counselor had sent her home with a worksheet to fill out with her parents. It didn't need to be returned, it claimed, it was intended to start the discussion. There were two blank lines for contributions: one for me, one for her mother.

  I tried calling her counselor from the privacy of my bathroom, but it went to voicemail. Through gritted teeth, and at a low volume, I had a rambling argument with a machine. "You don't know the situation!" I said three times before deleting the message and getting on with the weekend.

    The damage was done.

    The car behind me beeps and my head snaps to attention. Green means go, moron. Even my inner voice takes sides with the other driver. I ease onto the highway and the car shoots past me, emphasizing their annoyance.

    Ahead of me, the dark outline of the Santa Catalinas dissolves into the night sky. In just a few hours, the mountains will disappear completely, their daytime beauty rendered irrelevant by the unstoppable turning of the earth.

     All week, I'd been running the numbers. Maybe I could sell the house. I didn't need all this space especially once Sadie left. That worksheet was a joke, and not a nice one. I knew only one of those lines would ever be filled in.

    Janet and I divorced when Sadie was eleven and Janet moved back in with her mother in Reno. We had shared custody, but Sadie stayed with me. She spent a couple months of the summer out in Nevada. I was up to date on my alimony payments, but Janet had never paid child support. If she was a man, she'd be called a deadbeat.

    The thing is, Sadie knows none of this. She's a child; it isn't for her to worry about.

    That stupid guidance counselor mucked it all up. Before her brilliant bit of meddling, we'd had a plan. The University of Arizona is a good school. Sadie wanted to live on campus and I understood that was part of the experience. I'd lived in the dorms when I was her age; it was time. Sadie was growing up.

    Next year. Next year; not now. It seems like Sadie is always being forced to grow up faster than she should and there's so little I can do about it. Less and less.

When I come into the house, I hear giggling. Sadie hadn't mentioned bringing a friend home and this changes my concept of how the evening will go. There's a loosening of my muscles that I don't want to acknowledge as relief.