William Edwards Leaves His Screaming Son on a Friday Afternoon in Hartford
“William,” he said softly. “Is everything alright at home?”
I looked down at the desk, my eyes tracing the clean, straight lines of the pink receipt.
“Marsha enrolled him in a new school,” I said. “She says it is just a standard deposit.”
“And you don’t believe her?” David asked.
I did not answer, instead staring at the blank line of the carbon receipt under the fluorescent office lights.
By Monday noon, the pink receipt was still in my pocket, folded into a tight square, when David slid a gray plastic tray across the laminate table in the college cafeteria. The smell of grease and burnt coffee hung in the air, mixed with the damp scent of wet wool coats from the students queuing by the soup station.
He set his yellow pencil next to a small bowl of chicken soup and looked at me.
“You look like you did not sleep a wink this weekend, William,” he said, his slow drawl carrying over the hum of the ventilation system. “Did you stay up grading those intro papers?”
