William Edwards Leaves His Screaming Son on a Friday Afternoon in Hartford
“You are making him as fragile as you are,” she said. “If you keep this up, he will never survive a real school.”
I looked at the paper on the floor, the blue folder bent at the corner where she had thrown it.
A heavy fatigue settled over my shoulders, the weight of a hundred arguments we had carried through the autumn.
“Maybe I am being too cautious,” I said, the words tasting like copper in my mouth.
“You are being paranoid,” she said, turning her back to me and pulling the duvet up to her chin.
“I just want him to be safe,” I said.
“Then let my mother do her job,” she said into the darkness of her pillow.
I stood by the edge of the bed for a long minute, waiting for her to say something else, but her breathing remained slow and even.
I turned off the bedside lamp and walked out of the room, my socks silent on the carpet.
I went down to the kitchen and sat at the wooden table in the dark, the cold air from the window drafts chilling my ankles.
