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“Your show finally aired last weekend.” They’d had some problems with scheduling the Sunday morning spiritual hour in which he’d been featured. A student had double booked three different shows for one slot, and when Martha had phoned him, David had graciously offered to be postponed.
“I saw it.”
“We’ve had a number of calls.” She’d known they would. It had been a good segment.
And apparently there were a lot of people whose lives were driving them to seek fluffy clouds. Heavenly clouds.
But not her. No more. Never again. She was keeping her life firmly grounded in reality.
“You spoke to Shelley about her grades?”
It was the bottom of the second inning. Tim was warming up.
“Yes.”
“And?”
Martha didn’t care to replay that conversation. Ever. She’d done nothing else for most of the night. And the fear in her heart hadn’t diminished one bit.
“I was basically told to get off her back.”
“I figured her for playing the Ellen card.”
She’d done that.
“Or the Todd one.”
That, too.
“She’s in victim mode. Everything is the fault of someone else.”
He was good at this.
“What’d she say when you told her ‘getting off her back’ wasn’t an option?”
That’s when the pain had really started.
“She seems to think there’s not much I can do about it one way or the other. It isn’t a crime to get bad grades. In fact she informed me, she’s old enough to quit school altogether if she wants to.” Martha hadn’t meant to spill so much. Hadn’t even told Becca the extent of her argument with Shelley when, crying, she’d called her best friend late last night.
“She says I can ground her, and she’ll just run away. I can tell her not to go someplace, but there’s no way for me to know if she does or doesn’t because I don’t have the time to follow her around. She’s her own boss now and that’s just how it’s going to be.”
He never took his eyes off the game. Martha appreciated that.
“I’m assuming you set her straight.”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t so much worried that Shelley would do any of the things she’d threatened as she was hurt by the loss of her connection to a child she loved with all her heart. “I reminded her who paid the bills. And that her freedom is based largely on the fact that I provide the car and the money that allow her to come and go virtually as she pleases. I reminded her that she likes to wear department store makeup and designer clothes, plus have her own room.” Tim walked the first two batters. “That yes, she can run away, but sleeping on the streets, where she’s at the mercy of everyone else out there, was going to be a lot more restrictive than the relative freedom she now enjoys. And I reminded her that until she’s eighteen, or made a ward of the state, she is legally bound to follow my rules.”
Their third batter got a hit.
“I’d say that just about covers it,” David told her, elbows on his knees as he rubbed his hands together.
“And I told her I loved her and I said that counted for a lot.”
He looked at her then, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. “How did she respond to that?”
“She pretty much ignored me.”
And she’d continued to ignore her for the rest of the night, after she’d announced that if she wanted her Mom’s love she’d ask for it, and had stomped off to her room.
