Dad’s baritone booms through my cell phone, his words striking.
“So, how’s teaching going, old sport? Are you getting tougher with them?”
I stare at the cardboard box that I’ve plopped onto the plastic coffee table. The box looks like it could break.
“I think people are too tough already. They’re freshmen, not Marine recruits.”
A pause. It practically hums.
“Old sport, but that’s your problem. You don’t understand. The world’s got to kick your ass a little bit.”
Part of me wants to tell him. But he’ll never forget what’s happened. Just like he never forgot the time I got a B in a sophomore history class back in high school (“Every schmuck gets a B; Botkins get As,” he said). The time I picked a fight with Jake Brandt on the soccer team, after Dad bragged about how we Botkins were fighting men, and how he once beat up a Marine. Or the time he wanted me to go spy on Mom right after the split; he even offered me $50.
“I think the world’s kicked my ass a little too much.”
I look around the room. The cardboard box sags; it’s bound to break. I look away to the little turd-colored sofa. The dust that waltzes about. The holes in the baby food colored walls. The empty bottles of Merlot, the liquid reverie long metamorphosed into belligerence and sorrow, as Anastasia puts it.
“Nick, you’re too much like your mother. Look, I’m proud you have that teaching position. But you need to wield power. Don’t go into Dead Poet’s Society mode. These kids are idiots. Believe me, I used to be full of ideas and hopes. But after your grandfather died, I learned that abstractions don’t make money.”
I wince. I was so close to getting tenure. To getting a parking place away from the dumpsters full of flies, half-eaten pizzas, French fries. To escape views of old dorms that look like Stalinist torture chambers. I was close to giving Anastasia something. Pride. I think of the way her crooked grin turned into a frown, the way she exuded sweat and fatigue when I gave her another setback. When I told her the words that I uttered in class, the words that sank us all.
“You could have avoided it,” she said. “I thought this time was going to be different. But good God, Nicky, your mouth’s always writing checks that your ass can’t cash. Maybe I need to consider my options.”
Options. A word Mom uttered like a liturgy when I was twelve, just before she and Dad split.
Dad’s voice rises again.
“Nick? Are you there?”
“Yeah. Sorry, Dad. I was just thinking.”
“Look, if you need help, don’t be shy.”
I walk over to the coffee table. Run my fingers through the stacks of Richard Ford and Kevin Canty and Jess Walter story collections, my highlighters and pens (never red), once arranged from brightest to lightest, soldiers waiting to march onto students’ papers. The awards for teaching I received three years in a row. The photo of Anastasia I kept in my office, the two of us hand in hand, grinning at Cockroach’s Bar on our tenth anniversary, the two of us clinking White Russians and toasting a world that seemed full of possibility.
“I’m serious, Nick. You know I kick your ass, but I love the hell out of you.”
I close my eyes. It’s been so long since I heard that word, “love.” There’s something gruff, yet beautiful in it now. I almost tell him about the way Dr. Fredericks broke the news to me, using words like “conversation” and “concerned” and also bandied terms like “therapy” and “assessment of your life.” But then I think of how Anastasia said, “You’re like a child sometimes, Nick.” I think of the way her voice deflated, like a beautiful balloon that crumpled to earth.
I just inhale and say, “I love you too, Dad. I’ll try to do better.”
“Good man,” he says. “I’ll let you go, but you let me know if you need something.”
I hang up. Think about what comes next. I could try applying at the community college; in some ways, that place is ten times better than the university. Less political, more focused on goals and student enrichment. But they’ll find out. No, I’ll have to get some other job. A job that doesn’t entail discussing the symbolism in Richard Ford’s stories or teaching freshman how to write fiction. I’ll work as a barista. A cashier at a burger joint. Anything to keep Anastasia with me.
I pick up that box. Cradle it. Hug it. Feel the weight. It shifts, but doesn’t break.
Image: battered cardboard box with a lid from dd
literally stories 
Life throws up too many challenges and problems sometimes and it’s difficult to see a way clear. I wonder about this guy. It seems to me that there could be a squashy centre there that will mean he never quite makes it. I thought it was clever not to name the reasons outright so that the reader had to make their own judgements. Good stuff – thank you – dd
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