Chapter 14 - An Open Door
"I'm not having this conversation through a door," Karen said.
I could hear her clearly.
She'd left the phone on the hall table.
Elaine began crying before Karen finished speaking.
"We drove all this way."
"You live twenty minutes away, Mom."
Howard said something about ungrateful children.
There was a rustle of bags.
"We can talk," Karen said. "But you don't get to come in and insult my husband or his father."
"We're your parents."
"Yes. And I'm your daughter. I'm also fifty years old."
I stood in my rented room, one hand resting on a half-wrapped lamp.
For twenty-eight years, I'd seen Karen get smaller when her mother got louder.
This time she stayed the same size.
"Then call Rick," Elaine said.
"Tell him to come home and stop this nonsense."
"Where he lives isn't yours to decide."
Howard's voice rose.
"You're throwing us away for that—"
"Finish that sentence and this visit is over."
Silence.
Long enough that I heard a car pass outside my window.
Then bags shifted again.
Howard said they were leaving.
Karen told them to drive safely.
When she picked up the phone, her breathing was uneven.
"You heard?"
"Yes."
"I wanted to let them in. Just to stop it."
"But you didn't."
"Not like that."
I asked if she'd eaten.
She hadn't.
Neither had I.
We met at an all-night diner and ordered grilled cheese.
It wasn't a reunion scene.
We talked about money, the house, and what it would mean if we couldn't fix our marriage.
For once, neither of us used love to avoid the practical questions.
"I want to keep trying," she said.
"So do I. Slowly."
In February, I moved home.
We kept going to counseling.
On my first evening back, Karen handed me a new key for Dad.
"Would you give him this?"
I closed her fingers around it.
"Ask him whether he wants it."
She took it to him on Sunday.
He kept it for emergencies, then told her he'd rather ring the bell when he visited.
She said that was fine.
We started checking invitations together before calling anyone.
Sometimes Dad declined because he had plans.
We let him.
One Saturday, I found him having breakfast with Luis and three former coworkers.
He waved me over, then made me buy my own eggs.
Dad kept his house and visited Ruth for two weeks because he wanted to, not because he'd been driven away.
Spring became summer.
There were ordinary dinners, returned calls, and apologies made before resentment hardened.
Then November came again.
Karen set thirteen place cards on the dining room table.
She put Dad's beside mine.
At eleven on Thanksgiving morning, the doorbell rang.
May you like
Elaine and Howard stood on our porch.
Behind me, Dad's old jacket hung in plain sight.
