“Yes, but we’re busy with homework right now. They’ll have to wait.”
I continued helping Emma with her fractions while the doorbell rang intermittently for twenty minutes. Eventually, the ringing stopped, but I could see them standing by their car in my driveway, engaged in heated discussion about their next move.My mother called my phone while standing in my driveway, an absurd display of their inability to accept that I was choosing not to engage with them. I watched through the window as she held the phone to her ear, waiting for me to answer a call I had no intention of taking.
They finally left after nearly an hour, but not before my father kicked one of my garbage cans in apparent frustration, an act of petty vandalism that Emma witnessed from her bedroom window.
“Why were Grandma and Grandpa angry?” she asked as I tucked her into bed.“Sometimes adults get upset when things don’t go the way they expect,” I explained, choosing honesty over the kind of protective fiction I might once have created to preserve their relationship with her.
The Desperation
By the end of the second week, their situation had moved from inconvenience to genuine crisis. The car insurance lapse had resulted in their registration being suspended, meaning they couldn’t legally drive until they obtained new coverage. But their credit problems made it nearly impossible to find affordable insurance, and they lacked the money to pay the deposits that most companies required.
