172

It was a Friday afternoon in October when I ran back to my dorm room in search of props. Mainly a black T-shirt and sunglasses. One of my SigEp buddies was organizing a contest. We were going to re-create iconic movie scenes in pics. The Shining. Titanic. Forest Gump. The Matrix.

I heard a knock on my door and called out, “It’s open.”

I shut my dresser drawer and turned to see my dad. Standing in my room. Holding a Ficus and looking like he didn’t know what the hell to say or even, exactly, where he was. I’m pretty sure I looked just like him.

Seconds passed before he finally said, “You forgot this.”

I took the plant from him and set it by my desk.

“Thought it might . . . spruce up the place,” he said.

My roommate and I kept the room pretty neat, but neither of us had made a bed since we got there, and we opted for the stack method of organization—stacks of books, stacks of papers, stacks of clothes that didn’t fit in drawers and that we just couldn’t bother to hang up.

“Thanks,” I said. “I actually left it home on purpose. I was worried I’d forget to water it or something.”

“Sure. Well. I can take it home.”

“No, it’s good,” I said. “It’ll be fine here.”

“So everything’s good? Settling in?”

I nodded and shrugged at the same time and said, “It’s a process.”

“If you want to feel like you belong,” he said in that game show host voice, hoping I’d finish the sentence for him. Act like you belong. But instead I just gave him a halfhearted, “Yeah,” and he gave me one right back.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to sit down?” I offered.

“Uh, no. Maybe we could go somewhere and talk.”

“Talk?”

He sighed out a long breath and said, “Talk.”

“Sure. You want to see the campus?”

“I’d like that.”

On our way outside he told me, “Mom sends her love. You know, she and I are in therapy.”

“Yeah, she mentioned it. Uh. How’s it going? Not that I need many details.”

“Uh, not great,” he said. “Hard.” He scrunched his eyebrows down like he was completely confused when he said, “Apparently she doesn’t find me very funny.”

“You? No,” I said as we stepped outside in the sky-blue cool of the day.

“Is that sarcasm?” he asked in a way that let me know he finally understood that it was.

“Look, I wanted to tell you in person that we’ve filed the papers,” he said. “Divorce.” He nodded a couple times, like he was just now agreeing to it. “It’s for the best.”

“Yeah. Uh. I’m sorry.”

“Me too. Me too. We’ll stay in counseling through the process, but after that . . .”

He shrugged. He ran his hand over his head. I scratched at the back of my neck.

“Hey, I pledged SigEp,” I said.

“Well, why not Phi Psi? You’re a legacy. Did you tell them that?”

“Yeah. I like SigEp better.”

“But what’s wrong with—”

“Dad,” I said. “Why don’t you ask me why I like the SigEp house better?”

A trace of a smile appeared on his face, and he said, “Okay. Why do you like the SigEp House better?”

I listed my reasons, and he said uh-huh after each, and I could tell he wished I had joined Phi Psi.

He asked me how classes were going, and I said, “Good. I really like my construction management classes.”

“Construction management. Uh-huh. Nothing wrong with throwing a pre-law class in there.”

“No,” I agreed. “Nothing wrong with it.” My phone chimed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. “Nothing wrong with drafting classes either.”

“Do you know what the starting salary of a general contractor is?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I said, smiling at him and at my phone.

It was this text: Thinking of you. Just checking in.

Me: Everything’s good. Everything okay there?

“Who’s that?” Dad asked.

“My girlfriend,” I said.

“You have time for a girlfriend?”

“I’m making the time,” I said. “It’s long-distance.”

She texted back:

Everything is fine.

“Those relationships can be tricky,” Dad said.

“Relationships take work.”

“So the marriage counselor tells me.”

“So about contractors and their salaries,” I said.

“Thirty to fifty thousand. In a good year.”

“That’s not bad.”

My phone chimed with one more text.

“No, it’s not bad,” Dad said. “But do you know the average starting salary of someone with a JD-MBA?”

I glanced at my phone while Dad kept talking. And I thought, of all the changes in my life since I was nine, the one thing that stayed the same was him. There was something kind of admirable about that. And something kind of odd.

I read the text to myself: Over and off.

Me: Over and off, Mrs. B.