傑兒·W.馬努斯/Jaye W.Manus
I watch her back her new truck out of the driveway. The pickup is too large, too expensive. She'd refused to consider a practical compact car that gets good gas mileage and is easy to park. It's because of me, I think. She bought it to spite me.
She'd dropped out of college, and I'd made her come 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 to comfort 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 cranky 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 never coming 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 Her bathroom is an embarrassment of damp towels, out-of-date cosmetics, hair in the sink, and nearly empty shampoo bottles. Ha!Some grown-up!She can't even pick up after herself. I'll show her. She doesn't want to live with me, doesn't want to be my baby girl anymore, fine. I can be even stinkier than she is.