High White Sound

  Twenty-One. The Visit

  "Friends come and go," went my grandfather's favorite line. "But family will always be there. One day you'll wake up and they'll be the only thing left."

  And so they were. My parents had brought the whole family up and organized a mid-morning brunch at Tavern on the Green to celebrate the ritualized loss of youth that was my graduation.

  “So, college grad.” My mother’s face was tight with lines. “I take it you still don’t have any plans?”

  “Maybe I’ll go to Fiji.”

  “And do what?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll find something.”

  My mother and father exchanged an unsteady glance.

  `“But what is it that you want to do with your life?” my mother asked.

  I bit my lip and stared into the distance faking a long hard think. “I don't know,” I said lightly.

  “That’s not so bad.” My father shrugged. “I'm fifty-six years old and I still don't know what I want to do.”

  “All I want to do is write.”

  My mother sighed. “That’s not what I mean. You have to commit to something. You can’t just sit there on an island and write things.”

  Watch me, I thought.

  “Here –” she pulled a brown book out of her bag. “You can start putting that English degree to good use by reading this.”

  God Wants You To Be Rich, I read before raising an eye.

  "You don't need a book to get rich,” my father began. “It’s like I have always said,” he took a deep breath, and Ainsleigh and I took deep sighs right back, “you’ve got to spend less than you earn,” and we mouthed it along with him.

  “Why don’t you come back to Chicago?” My dad beamed. “Come back to Freedom Woods and work for me. You know, that place just doesn’t stop growing.”

  I looked at my grandfather, who had migrated South long ago. “Do you miss Freedom Woods?”

  “Oh my God,” he drawled. “I’d rather sleep with the alligators.”

  “Steak please,” my father said to the waiter.

  My mother gave him a stern look. “I don’t know if you should be eating that dear.”

  “Well, I like it. And I've got my cholesterol under control so I can eat whatever I want.”

  “JACK,” my mother snapped. “Your doctor did NOT say that.”

  “Yes he did.”

  “He said you have to change your diet.”

  “He said I could take the pills or change my diet. I am taking the pills.”

  They went on like that, and the conversation was forgotten.