She’d dropped out of college, and I’d made here home. All summer long she’d been an unstable cloud of gasoline fumes, looking for a match to set her off. We’d fought about her job, .about leaving school, about her boyfriend and her future. She’d cried a lot and rebuffed all my attempts tofort her.
“I’m twenty, almost,” she’d told me so often that my teeth ached. “I am an adult!”
Each time I silently replied, No, you are not. You still watch cartoons, and expect me to do your laundry, and ask me to pick up toothpaste for you when I go to the grocery store.
Now she is gone, off to be an adult far away from me. I’m glad she’s gone. She’s impossible and cranky2 and difficult to get along with. I am sick of fighting, tired of her tantrums.
Her father is angry. He watches television and will not speak. He helped her with the down payment on the truck and got her a good deal. He slipped her cash before she left. I want to say. If only you hadn’t helped her buy the truck, she would still be here. It’s a lie.
“I am nevering back,” she told me. “I’m a grown-up now. I want to live.”
What had she been doing for twenty years? Existing in suspended animation?
The cat is upset by the suitcases and boxes and unspoken recriminations. She’s hiding. For a moment I fear she’s sneaked into the truck, gone off with my daughter on an adventure from which I am forbidden.
She left a mess. Her bathroom is an embarrassment of damp towels, out-of-date cosmetics, hair in the sink, and nearl