Aaron thought Daniel was being a little heavy on the forlorn bit.
“That’s right.” Bonnie nodded, just as forlornly. “Anyway, Rachel did not want to come to New York. She’s trying to finish her degree, you see—”
“That’s not why she didn’t want to come, Bonnie, and you know it,” Aaron said.
“Aaron?” Daniel said gently. “Remember our rules—no one talks over their partner. Everyone has a chance to speak. When Bonnie finishes, you’ll have your turn to speak.”
Bonnie sat a little straighter. “It is true that Rachel has had a difficult time finishing school and moving on with her life,” Bonnie conceded. “She has been a doctoral candidate for a couple of years now.”
Daniel chuckled. “I can attest to the fact that taking a couple of years to finish a doctorate may not be as strange as it sounds.”
“Yes, well, Rachel has been dating this man—a professor—and hasn’t really shown any inclination to finish her doctorate and get on with her life.”
“Can you give me some examples of her disinclination?”
Aaron damn sure could, but Bonnie always got to go first.
“Okay, for example, she travels to England frequently to find a topic for her dissertation. Her degree is in ancient British history, we think, but she says there are so many interesting ideas that she hasn’t been able to land on a topic yet.”
“And you think that is . . . ? What, untrue?”
“Of course we think it’s untrue,” Aaron interjected impatiently.
“Aaron thinks it is untrue,” Bonnie corrected him. “But I don’t. Rachel is bright and articulate and has a heart of gold. She just doesn’t understand where she fits in to this world, and she never really has. And when she has to land on something as defining as a dissertation topic, she can’t find her answer.”
“And why is that, do you think?” Daniel asked. Bonnie shrugged. Daniel nodded, wrote something down on his notepad. “How exactly did Rachel’s indecision lead to your recent agitation with Aaron?”
Bonnie snorted and looked out the window. “Aaron wouldn’t leave her alone. The whole time I was gone, he kept badgering her about her useless degree, and her useless boyfriend, and her weight. By the time I got back from L.A., Rachel had fled back to Providence.”
“That was very upsetting for you, wasn’t it, Bonnie?”
“It certainly was. He swore he wouldn’t do that,” she said, pinning Aaron with The Look.
“But I didn’t swear I would let my daughter flounder,” Aaron shot back at her.
“Aaron, remember our rule,” Daniel reminded him once more.
Aaron came very close to telling Daniel to go fuck his rules, but he bit his tongue because he had promised Bonnie he would do this counseling, even if it killed him.
“Let’s talk a moment about the promises we think we hear. Bonnie, what did you hear Aaron promise you?”
“That he would change,” she said, shooting him another look. “And that he would attend marriage counseling with me, that he’d go to church and listen, and that he would stop berating our daughters for every little thing. He’s been doing that all their lives, always thinking he knows best, and he practically alienated our oldest, Robin, from us for good because he was always pushing, and then there was Rebecca—that poor girl had just suffered through a difficult time with her divorce, and Aaron was so certain he had to teach her something instead of letting her figure it out on her own, and now with Rachel . . . Well, I’m worried that he will push her away, too. And of all our daughters, I think Rachel is the one who really needs us the most.”
“When do I get to talk?” Aaron demanded.
“You may talk now,” Daniel said cheerfully.
“Okay, here is what happened,” Aaron said, sitting up a little straighter. “First of all, this guy Rachel’s been hanging around the last couple of years is never going to support her. In fact, she’s been loaning money to that loser, which means she’s been loaning him my money. She can’t even see the irony in that! She’s all, ‘Dad, he really needs it more than me.’ Bullshit! And speaking of irony, here’s my second point,” he said, pausing to take a breath. “I told her when I first got sick that she had one year to finish her degree. I said, ‘Either shit or get off the pot, but you have to figure out how to make your own way in this world, because dear old Dad ain’t going to be around to make it for you.’ Come on, Bonnie, you backed me up on that,” he reminded her.
Bonnie looked at her lap and nodded.
“So I told Rach that the money train she’d been living off of for thirty or so years was leaving the station. And you know what? She had more than a year! She had almost two, for Chrissakes, and she still hasn’t finished her degree!”