Father Of The Brat by Elizabeth Bevarly

other.”
    Her eyes widened at his vehemence, as if she couldn’t understand where his attack was coming from. “I know, but-”
    “Things change. People change. Times change. But that doesn’t mean the world has to come to an end. It doesn’t mean you just lie down and let it run over you.”
    “Carver, that’s not what I—”
    “I, for one, am pretty happy with a lot of the changes that have come about. I’m glad that I’ve grown up. I have a deeper appreciation for things now that I couldn’t have had when I was a kid. Maybe my life gets a little rocky sometimes. But getting over the rough spots and playing the breaks usually winds up making me a stronger, more thoughtful person.”
    She only stared at him when he concluded his tirade, looking as if she had just been thrown into a cell with a lunatic. When she spoke again, her tone of voice, too, was reminiscent of the one a person might use when speaking to an imbecile.
    “I didn’t mean change was bad,” she said softly. “I only meant…” She, too, stood, shrugged into her coat and picked up her briefcase. “I don’t know what I meant,” she finally said. “Just that…it’s not the same, Carver. And it never will be. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I just knowit’s…” She sighed helplessly. “It’s not the same,” she finally concluded.
    And with that, she turned her back on him and exited the gym without another word. Carver watched her go, watched the tails of her coat flap about her ankles, watched her briefcase bang against her calf. She walked like a woman with a purpose, though what that purpose might be, he had no idea. When she had delivered her last words to him, Maddy had looked confused, as if she had no idea what she should do or where she should go next.
    She hadn’t looked like a woman with a purpose, Carver thought as she disappeared out of view. She’d looked like a woman who was completely lost. And for the life of him, he couldn’t come up with a single idea that might help her find her way back.
    “Your principal called this morning.”
    Carver looked at his daughter, seated across from him at his kitchen table, and frowned. Rachel, however, ignored him, and instead flipped idly through the pages of the latest issue of Rolling Stone that had arrived in that morning’s mail—the issue Carver hadn’t yet had the chance to read himself, the issue he had planned on flipping through during dinner, just as he always had before Rachel’s arrival.
    “Rachel,” he repeated, “your principal called this morning.”
    “Yeah? So?” she asked, pausing over an article about REM.
    “So he said you ditched school today.”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “Yeah, you know he said you ditched school? Or yeah, you did ditch school?”
    “I ditched.”
    “Why?”
    “I wanted to go to a movie with Lanette.”
    “I see.”
    Rachel had been with Carver for nearly three weeks now, and things between the two of them had improved not at all. When he tried to talk to her, she ignored him. When he tried to take an interest in her activities, she ignored him. When he asked her to help out with the chores around the apartment, she ignored him. And when he suggested the two of them go out for dinner or whatever, she ignored him.
    He was making an effort to be a good father. He didn’t work nearly as late as he used to and was home by six o’clock a good two or three days a week. He’d stopped bringing home fast food or microwaving boxed meals for dinner as he had before Rachel’s arrival, and had in fact actually bought a copy of a cookbook which he had then put to good use. Two vegetables, he reminded himself. He was actually fixing meat with two vegetables every night, and a starch of some kind. Okay, so maybe that starch was just a slice of white bread at some meals, but dammit, at least he was making an effort.
    And for what? he asked himself now. So that Rachel could come slamming through the front door every day after school and