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“That’s the bottom line and I’m not changing my answers. You’ll get back to school and finish what you started!”
April looked at a scared Georgia and decided to take the phone from her hands. This wasn’t something her daughter needed to worry about right now. Not after she’d spent all this time trying to tell her that everything would be okay and that she wouldn’t pressure her back into school.
Georgia sat on the edge of the air mattress and didn’t hide the fact that she was trying to listen in on the conversation. April took Carl off the speaker and walked into the front yard. “You need to stop,” she told him. “Yelling at her is not going to solve anything.”
“She needs to go back there! This is her future. She’s throwing it all away because of what? We don’t even know!” A hint of music played in the background of the call. April tried not to get distracted by it.
She sighed. “I’m sure she’ll tell us one day. When she’s ready. She said she doesn’t want to be there, so she doesn’t have to be there.”
“What kind of bull is that? When she’s ready? She’s just a kid and she has no idea what she wants.”
April peeked into the house at the curious Georgia sitting on the edge of the bed. She certainly looked like a kid from here, but she was eighteen. She was technically an adult now. They needed to let her go and begin her own journey, even if that meant dropping out of school.
It wasn’t what April wanted for her, but it was what Georgia wanted. And that’s what mattered.
“We had dreams at that age. You should try to remember that when you’re scolding your daughter for trying to do what she wants to do. How did you even find out about this?” she asked him.
There was a pause as he stopped to think. April knew that he was debating telling her the truth. She could always tell when he was lying because of the way the pitch in his voice changed ever so slightly. Sometimes she wondered if he forgot that she was a lawyer.
“The school called me. They wanted to verify some things about her semester. They said she was taking the semester off and not coming back. I asked if they could hold her spot for a few weeks, days even until I can get her back up there. She still has a chance to go back!”
April let out a sigh. It was exhausting trying to fight him. Once he had an idea of what he wanted, Carl wouldn’t take no for an answer. “She’s not going back if she doesn’t want to. She could leave the country and never talk to us again. If you keep pushing her, she’s going to end up hating us. Is that what you want?”
Silence filled the other end of the call and April knew that she had at least gotten through to him. “That’s what I thought. You don’t have to worry about her, okay? She’s safe here with me. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“Thanks,” he replied, but she could sense a kind of sarcasm in his tone.
A loud bang echoed through the phone. “What was that?”
Another bang caused her to jump. “Nothing, I’m just at this thing,” Carl said quickly, mumbling.
She smirked. Because she knew exactly what Carl was doing while telling their daughter she had to commit to college. “Are you seriously at a carnival right now?”
“It’s not a carnival. It’s a circus, April. And yes, I am doing what I said I was going to do. I’m following through.”
April had to hold a hand to her mouth to keep herself from laughing. After everything he said to Georgia, he was out at the circus pretending like April didn’t even exist. She wondered about all the promises he’d made her throughout the years.
He wasn’t following through on any of those.
When he said that he was going to love her forever, be with her for richer or poorer, for better or for worse. When he said that he would be with her forever. There were a lot of things Carl wasn’t going to follow through on.
The argument wasn’t worth it anymore. April knew they were getting that divorce. It hurt, but fighting with him wasn’t going to change anything between them. “Where are you right now? Like what city?”
“I’m in Istanbul watching a traditional circus performance by one of my favorite troupes. And my favorite act is about to go up and I’m missing it. Because our daughter decided to drop out of school and come home to do nothing.”
She couldn’t hide her frustration any longer, it overflowed like lava from an active volcano. “There are so many things wrong with what you just said. She’s not doing nothing, she’s with me. And I’m so sorry you’re about to miss yourlittle actthat you’re probably going to see a thousand times on yourlittletour.”
“Hey, hold on-”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. His incessant voice became more annoying the longer she had to speak to him. “You cannot tell our daughter that she can’t quit something while you’ve quit your life back home and are touring circuses right now. That’s just ridiculous.” Though she did stop herself from laughing, April let herself smile at the insanity that had become her life.
The man she would have died for a week ago was now being a total hypocrite toward their daughter. The absurdity of it all made her want to chase her small and practical dreams even harder.
It was insane for him to be so hypocritical at a time like that. He ran out of the country as fast as he possibly could. He told April that they were divorcing without a single discussion. He was confident and rash in his decisions, but no one else in his life was allowed to be the same.
If he knew that April had all these extravagant plans for the house, he would probably call her crazy, too. She would never have been able to do this while they were married, that was certain.
She’d tried to quit her job once, to stay home with Georgia. But Carl talked her off the ledge and back into her miserable routine.
