Scenes From the City: A Knitting in the City Wintertime Surprise by Penny Reid Page A

said, “Fiona, you don’t know how much time you have left on this earth. What if the tumor comes back? What are you going to do? Hmm? You’ll be helpless, alone, with strangers. This is your last chance to come home with us. If you insist on staying here, we will follow through with our decision to cut you off. I mean it; you’ll have no support from us, and you’ll have no insurance.”
    I held my tongue and glanced over her shoulder to my dad. He gave me the faintest of head shakes, his eyes narrowing just a smidge. Although he didn’t agree with my decision to go to college so far from home, he’d pulled me aside last week and assured me that he wouldn’t be removing me from his work insurance policy.
    He’d even offered to provide financial assistance as well, but I turned him down. I didn’t want to cause any more drama in their relationship. My academic scholarship would cover the bulk of my expenses. Plus I had my sponsorship dollars from when I was still an athlete, the accounts just recently signed over to me on my eighteenth birthday.
    Like my mother, my father was overprotective. Unlike my mother, his decisions were typically grounded in well-reasoned arguments, facts, and reality. But his overprotectiveness of me was largely due to guilt.
    I’d observed that much of what parents do, their decisions and actions, is driven by guilt—either directly because of it or as a means to escape it.
    My eyes returned to my mother, and I cleared my face of expression; “I know, mother. We’ve already discussed your feelings on the matter ,” she’d told me how angry she was with me, every day since I told them of my decision to move seven states away from home, where no one knew me, and I could be just another college freshman. “I know how you feel. Now it’s time for you to go.”
    “You’re breaking my heart!” My mother said dramatically.
    I tried to keep my voice as gentle as possible as I ushered—i.e., pushed—them out of my room, out of the suite, down the hall, and to the elevator. “You’ll be fine. I’ll call you.”
    “I won’t take your calls. I don’t want to hear from you if you won’t listen to reason.”
    “Okay, I won’t call.”
    “You’ll die here, Fiona. At a s tate school!” my mother sobbed. I tried not to roll my eyes.
    I didn’t know which she felt was worse: the fact that my brain tumor might reoccur or that I was going to a state university (in Iowa) rather than to Vassar.
    My dad pressed the button for the lobby and wrapped his arm around my mother’s shoulders, addressing me, “You should call; don’t listen to her. She’s just upset.”
    “Don’t patronize me, George!” She snapped, pulling away from him.
    The doors slid shut while they continued to argue, and I closed my eyes, my forehead hitting the hallway wall. I could hear their bickering for the first few seconds as the elevator descended.
    And then I sighed.
    And it felt like the first real breath I’d ever taken.
    ***
    People completely fascinate me.
    Take my college roommate, Dara, and her boyfriend, Hivan. They had sex in our dorm room nonstop. It didn’t matter if I was asleep, and it didn’t matter if I was at my desk studying. Usually Dara was topless by the time they made it in the room. At first, Dara would be surprised by my presence and try to gently ask me to leave. Meanwhile, Hivan asked me if I’d like to join them.
    I declined.
    But it wasn’t the nonstop sex that fascinated me. In fact, as an eighteen year old who’d never been kissed or had a boyfriend, I was a little envious of the sex part.
    They fascinated me because 1) they saw nothing odd or inappropriate about interrupting my sleep, studying, or privacy at all hours of the day or night and 2) Hivan cheated on Dara all the time.
    By the third week their relationship followed a predictable cycle. For three days everything would be fine. On the fourth or fifth day, Dara would burst into the room crying and sobbing and