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: : : —LOOK, SAYS HER MOTHER'S VOICE, over the phone, —when are you just going to end this?
—End this, Freya repeats, as though she's trying out the sound of the phrase in her mouth. Jakob, lying on the couch at the far end of the room, the new issue of The New Yorker splayed across his lap, turns cautiously to look—his warning light flashed when he heard Freya say end this in that particular flat tonality. He can hear the pressure of her welled-up rage behind those words. He knows in a moment it'll be forcing its way through. Who's she on the phone with?
Freya: —When am I going to end this? Look, I didn't start this.
—Then who did, Freya? says her mother. —Who started this? Tell me. I'm interested.
—I don't—I don't even know what you're talking about—what this even is.
—I mean this whole situation.
Jakob sits up, leans into Freya's field of vision. Who is it? he mouths, although he's pretty sure he knows the answer. Freya turns her back to him without answering.
—This situation? she says, ornamenting the words with a hard little shard of laughter. —I don't think I started this situation.
—Well, then, who started it? says her mother.
—It's not a matter of—she sighs—I don't know. Maybe Tim started it when he flunked out. Maybe you and Paul started it when you guys started acting so crazy. But it doesn't even make sense to talk about it like—
—The situation was under control before you got involved—
—The situation wasn't under control—Tim was miserable and—
Jakob sighs, opens the magazine again, flips numbly from cartoon to cartoon, trying not to listen.
—No—Freya says, —No—listen—you know what can happen to a kid if you keep him miserable like that all the time? It's not going to help him—
—And you think that what you're doing is helping him?
—What? Freya says. —I gave him a place to be where people aren't breathing down his neck all the time. I gave him a job. Tell me—how is that not helping him?
—What he needs is to finish high school.
—Don't talk to me about what he needs. I mean, ma—I love you and all, but you don't really know much about what an eighteen-year-old kid needs. You didn't know shit about it twelve years ago when it was me and you certainly don't know shit about it now.
Jakob looks over again, eyebrows raised. He's never really gotten adjusted to the fact that Freya will curse at her parents. He tries to think about the angriest he's ever been at his own parents and even though he can remember a small theatre of disputes he can't remember uttering a curse during any of them.
—Yeah, look, ma—Freya says, talking over the stream of her mother's agitated response—why don't you call me later? Okay? Yeah, alright. Bye, mom. Bye! She bites down on her bottom lip and punches down on a button with her thumb, then tosses the phone into the armchair.
—Jesus, she says. —That woman.
She sits on the floor by the couch. Jakob leans over and runs his hand through her hair.
—That's good, Freya says. —Keep doing that.
: : :
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