• • •

Carrie’s father hadn’t told her he was leaving permanently; her mother had simply announced they were getting a divorce one morning before school, after her father had already been gone a week. Danielle had declared it as she’d been walking down the hall, like it was nothing, like she was telling her daughter there was leftover meat loaf in the refrigerator for dinner.

“Are you sure?” Carrie had put down her orange juice and asked dumbly, as if Danielle could have misinterpreted what her husband had said, as if he’d been so drunk he’d slurred his words.

“Yes, honey,” she said.

“And it’s…definite?”

Danielle blinked at her, as if not sure what her child was asking. Did Carrie think she’d have a chance at rebuttal? That he could be persuaded by a cogent argument?

“Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s been a long time coming, Carrie. I’m sure you felt the tension between us over the years.”

“I heard the tension. Anyone could.”

“Well, yes. I suppose.”

“So the house will be quieter.”

“Yes, the house will be quieter.”

“Better for doing homework.”

Danielle smiled. “I’m glad you see the positive side. I’ll be out job hunting today, but I hope to be back in plenty of time for dinner.”

“Okay,” Carrie said, and her mother kissed her on the forehead.

By the time Ethan arrived to drive her to school, Carrie had already wiped away the few tears she had shed and was making calculations of whether she could afford to pay for her own books at college, assuming she got a scholarship.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ethan said. “So you’re telling me that good ole Robb and Danielle didn’t sit you down at dinner, all serious, and tell you they both still loved you and it wasn’t your fault and this way you’d get twice as many presents at Christmas?”

“No.”

“Your father wasn’t even here?”

“No, he’s in Minneapolis trying to get a new job.”

“Well, you know what this means.” He sighed.

“Yes. It means he’s going to move to Minneapolis with a new woman who doesn’t consider him an item on her to-do list.”

“Your mother told you that?”

“No, I overheard him yelling that a couple of weeks ago. Drunk, slurring his words. And that means we’re going to be broke, because even if he gets a job and pays back his debts, his money is going to be split between her and us.”

“You’re wrong,” Ethan said, shoving a Pop-Tart in his mouth. He usually ate one cold in the morning and the other one he warmed on the defroster of his car and ate it before he went into school. “Your father blames your mother, you see? That’s why he made her tell you. Because it’s her fault.”

“Ethan,” she said with a sigh, “if my father is moving to Minneapolis with another woman who doesn’t care that he gambles and drinks, then how is that my mother’s fault?”

“Carrie,” he said. “You really need to read John Updike.”

“My parents are getting a divorce, and you’re assigning summer reading?”

“It’s not summer.”

“Winter then. Winter reading.”

“Novels illuminate the inner life. It’s a way to understand adults, since we have so few clues as to why they behave the idiotic way they do. Everybody goes on and on about the teenage mind and how it’s not fully developed, and then you look at what adults do. I’ll take my half-assed brain anytime. At least I have reasons for doing everything I do. Why do you think your parents got married, anyway? Was your mother pregnant?”

“No,” she said. “I did the math the last time they had a huge argument. They had a good four-month overlap.”

“Maybe they lied to you about their anniversary. Have you ever seen their marriage certificate?”

His blue eyes, so light they almost looked like water, were open wider than usual, as they always were when he tried to make a point. Ethan spent his whole life trying to be edgy and dark, but his ocean-like coloring betrayed him. He was a soft guy trying to be a hard-ass.

“Ethan.”

“We could go down to county records and bribe someone for it.”

“My parents did not invent their anniversary.”

“Okay, okay. I still maintain that he blames her though, instead of the other way around,” he said. They walked to the front door where Carrie’s backpack sat on a bench near the hat tree and umbrella stand.

“See this, right here? This foyer? Empty except for your stuff? None of his? This is why you need to read those novels. It means something, like it’s all waiting for your father’s umbrella and that weird beret he wears in the rain sometimes. This is a sad metaphor of a room.”

“It’s not weird to wear a hat in the rain. It’s a reason to wear a hat. Since you like your reasons.”

“Men don’t wear hats in the rain, because they don’t give a shit about their hair,” he said.

“Some men do,” she’d said, and their conversation had continued on and on over nothing, as it always had, as he’d lifted the backpack onto her shoulders and let it down gently, one strap and then the other, as if they were going on a long, arduous climb.