Thank You for Listening(61)

Sewanee held up the folder. “Oh. Hi. You want to explain this?” Her voice was admirably calm.

Henry saw what she held. Shifted his weight. Took a breath. “Options.”

“Options!?” Her voice was not admirably calm.

He exhaled and shook his head. “May I have it back? Please?”

“No, you may not have it back. Please, thank you, or anything else.”

“Sewanee, you have no right–”

“I have no right? What are you talking about? I have every right. I’m paying for this!”

Henry inclined his head at his mother. “She wants to move.”

“She wants–what?!”

“We discussed it. She’s happy to move.”

Sewanee scoffed. “I thought it was the Mallomars. Now I know why she’s really upset!”

He rolled his eyes, actually rolled his eyes at her. “I’m simply doing what’s best for all concerned, including you. Even if you’re too damn stubborn to see it.”

While he was talking, Sewanee turned her attention to Blah and said, over him, “What did he say to you? What did he tell you?”

Her grandmother stared blankly back and shook her head, little shakes, close to shivering. She pointed to the box Henry was holding. “There they are!”

Sewanee walked over to the window. There were extra safety latches on it, which normally made it challenging to open. But rage has a propulsive quality and within moments Sewanee had managed it and the Sunnyside folder had taken flight.

Henry huffed something that sounded like a chuckle. “Your flair for the dramatic doesn’t change anything, you know that, right?”

She marched over to him. In her high heels they were eye to eye. “Stay out of this. I told you I’m taking care of it.” She said this in the lowest part of her voice.

“You also told me I should visit her.” The smugness. The smugness!

“You’re not helping anyone but yourself. All you’ve managed to do is confuse her. Hurt her. Hurt me,” she hissed. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you care?!” She yelled the last part.

Henry replied in his patient professor voice, “My problem is I care too much. And I won’t watch you do this to yourself. Or to her.”

“Do what? Take care of her? Protect her? Love her?”

“At the expense of your own future! This is a waste of your money and for what? For my mother, who I care about more than you know, but who is not going to know the difference between Sunnyside and Seasons. She’ll think they’re the same thing because they both begin with an S.”

Sewanee took a moment to regroup. To be more adult. To tamp down the urge to hit him. “You think that’s funny? She is sitting right there, she can hear you. God–” She groaned. “This is precisely why I’m making this decision without you.”

“And we all know how well things turn out when you make decisions with no regard for your future.”

The snap inside her was instantaneous, as if he had stepped on a twig. “IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! AND I BLAME MYSELF FOR IT EVERY FUCKING DAY! FEEL BETTER?” she screamed, a part of her voice she hadn’t used in years. She couldn’t even be sure he meant that decision; he seemed to hate every decision she’d ever made, every one that had excluded him. All the regrets that lived dormant inside her, cumulatively coiled at the base of her heart, he had the power to awaken with the slightest provocation.

Henry visibly stepped back. “That’s not what I–”

She stalked forward, got right in his face. “When you decided to fuck your student, who did you consult? How much were you thinking about the future? About anyone other than your selfish, self-absorbed”–she sputtered–“self? That decision turn out well for you, Dad? I scarred myself. How many people did you scar?”

He was silent.

She knew he’d never been hit this hard, certainly not by her. And it enraged her further that the hurt blooming on his face only made her want to reach out and grab him, hold him, cry with him. Jesus Christ, what was it with the two of them?

She didn’t have time for this. She had to get to the Audies. She had to get to Brock. She left Henry standing there while she gathered her purse, her phone, her control, all while saying, “If you keep at this, I will never let you near me ever again. Ever again.” She went back to him, grabbed the Mallomars out of his hands. “And don’t eat her fucking Mallomars!” She walked over to Blah and handed them to her.

Blah smiled as though seeing a photo of a long-lost friend. “I knew they were around here somewhere.”

“I love you, Blah, see you tomorrow.” She walked past her father without acknowledging him. As she reached the door, he said her name and his voice cracked. She stopped. She wanted to face him once more, but was afraid if she did, she would lose it. So she said, to the hallway, “This isn’t one of the bad decisions, Dad.”

As she left the room, she heard BlahBlah say shakily, in the strongest Tennessee twang she’d ever heard from her, “Well. Ain’t we just blue-ribbon people?”

THE AUDIES CEREMONY was being held at a five-hundred-seat theater less than a mile from Seasons and yet Henry had deactivated Sewanee’s sense of direction. Fuming, muttering to herself, she fast-walked to the event only to look up twenty minutes later and find herself in a neighborhood. She dug her phone out of the ballgown’s pocket and brought up a map. After one more misdirection, landing her in a grocery store parking lot, she arrived at the theater.