Disappointment
"Don't you think it's a little late to be making cheese sandwiches?" You must imagine that said with an oppressive tiredness. He was irked and he was angry, a slow and somber anger. He was sullen.
"Dad! Give me a break!" You must imagine that said shrilly, with bite and venom and spit. Like a screech owl. I was deeply annoyed. He had already exhausted my patience, and I was damned tired of criticism. His temper flared first because the newspaper hadn't been taken in yet. The world came screeching to a halt because the burner was on too high.
And now this - it was too late for me to be eating dinner. What sort of vague remark about my lifestyle is that? What does he care if I eat late? Or get indigestion, or whatever? Why won't he let me brave the dangers of eating a sandwich at eight thirty by myself? Was he just trying to pick a fight?
"Well, I wish I could give you a break," he said. I don't know what that means. I've never had something so puzzling said to me. He didn't think I was capable of having my health forms filled out for college. He insisted on photocopying them himself when I offered to mail them. He left notes telling me what I had done wrong. I felt deeply incapable.
But perhaps he said that for a reason. I was the one who couldn't bring myself to schedule the appointment with the physician. Maybe that's what it means - he can't give me a break. If he gave me a break, I'd just sit around eating cheese sandwiches instead of filling out my college health forms.
But that is different. We are talking about two separate things. My ability to judge whether or not it is too late for me to eat dinner is separate from my (quite lacking) ability to call a doctor and schedule an appointment. No, it had nothing to do with my ability to live on my own. It had to do with my intense displeasure at seeing my parents pull into the driveway on Tuesday night.
My parents left Sunday and said they wouldn't be back until Thursday. On Tuesday, when they showed up at seven thirty five in the evening, I wanted to cry. I wanted to be alone. I approached my breaking point. When they asked me about the cat, my trip to new york, the state of the garden, I answered in sullen and trembling monosyllables. As they fussed around the kitchen, opening sodas and opening containers of Chinese food, I stood in the doorway to the porch.
I swung my stomach out. "How was New York?" my mother asked. My father was off complaining about the fact that I had kept the phone lines tied up for six hours. I rolled back on my heels. Vegetable scented heat rising from subway grates made me retch once, I charged four theater tickets in all, oh all that my friends said that made me laugh, the one picture I took of a couple pigeons, watching firemen climb up a ladder at 48th and 3rd, from Grand central we sloshed through small rivers in a downpour instead of shelling out four bucks for a cab.
"Fine. It was fine." I swung my stomach out again. I shook off my mother when she came to hug me. I stalked off, and curled on the white couch and sunk into myself, and ripped apart the evening I had planned like I've crumbled rotting peonies in my hands. I dumped the plans on the ground and watched the water from the grass make them translucent and weak. I stared at a book without reading. I nearly grieved. I couldn't cry for a very long time.
I wanted to be able to strip off my clothes anywhere in the house I felt like. I wanted to leave on the computer and blast my music from the stereo in the living room. I wanted to walk around outside paying attention to the silence and the fireflies and not feel creepy and shivery because I was being watched. I wanted to be willful. I wanted to make sandwiches without being yelled at. I wanted to not have to ask anyone to give me a break. I wanted to be alone.
2000-07-20, Disappointment
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