“I know you will. That’s not really what I’m saying.” His father hasn’t looked at the boy once. “What I’m saying is, this isn’t the place for you anymore.”
The remark is deeply unsettling. What can his father intend?
“It doesn’t mean we don’t love you,” the man continues. “Far from it. We only want what’s best.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The holidays, okay. It wouldn’t make sense for you not to be here for Christmas. You know how your mother is. But otherwise …”
“You’re telling me you don’t want me to come home?”
His father is speaking rapidly, his words not so much spoken as unleashed. “You can call, of course. Or we can call you. Every couple of weeks, say. Or even once a month.”
The boy has no idea what to make of any of this. He also detects a note of falsehood in his father’s words, a manufactured rigidity. It is as if he’s reading them off a card.
“I don’t believe what you’re saying.”
“I know this is probably hard to hear. But it really can’t be helped.”
“What do you mean, it can’t be helped? Why can’t it be?”
His father draws a breath. “Listen, you’ll thank me later. Trust me on that, okay? You might not think so now, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. That’s the point.”
“That’s not the goddamned point!”
“Hey, let’s watch the language. There’s no reason for that kind of talk.”
Suddenly the boy is on the verge of tears. His departure has become a banishment. His father says nothing more, and the boy understands that a border has been reached; he’ll get nothing more from the man. We only want what’s best. You’ve got your whole life. Whatever his father is actually feeling lies hidden behind this barricade of clichés.
“Dry your tears, son. There’s no reason to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
“What about Mom? Is this her idea, too?”
His father hesitates; the boy detects a flash of pain on the man’s face. A hint of something genuine, a deeper truth, but in the next instant it’s gone.
“You don’t have to worry about her. She understands.”
The car has come to a halt; the boy looks up, amazed to discover that they’ve arrived at the station. Three bays, one with a bus awaiting; passengers are filing aboard.
“You’ve got your ticket?”
Speechless, the boy nods; his father extends his hand. He feels like he’s being fired from a job. When they shake, his father squeezes before he does, mashing his fingers together. The handshake is awkward and embarrassing; they’re both relieved when it’s over.
“Go on now,” his father urges with false cheer. “You don’t want to miss your bus.”
There is no rescuing the moment. The boy gets out, still clutching his paper sack of lunch. It feels totemic, the last vestige of a childhood not so much departed as obliterated. He hoists his suitcase from the trunk and pauses to see if his father will emerge from the Buick. Perhaps in a gesture of last-minute conciliation the man will carry his bag to the bus, even send him away with a hug. But no such thing happens. The boy advances to the bus, places his bag in one of the open bays, and takes his place in line.
“Cleveland!” the driver bellows. “All aboard for Cleveland!”
There is some confusion at the head of the line. A man has lost his ticket and is attempting to explain. While everyone waits for the matter to be sorted out, the woman just ahead of the boy turns toward him. She is maybe sixty, with neatly pinned hair, shimmering blue eyes, and a bearing that strikes him as grand, even aristocratic—someone who should be boarding an ocean liner, not a dirty motor coach.
“Now, I bet a young man like you is off somewhere interesting,” she says merrily.
He doesn’t feel like talking—far from it. “College,” he explains, the word thick in his throat. When the woman doesn’t respond, he adds, “I’m going to Harvard.”
She reveals a smile of absurdly false teeth. “How marvelous. A Harvard man. Your parents must be very proud.”