“There’s a bank situation.”
“A bank situation?” I’ve rarely seen my father look uncomfortable.A captain of industry should know how to steer a ship through choppy waters, he likes to say. His hands drop to the top of his desk chair. One of his knuckles pulls white.
“It seems we overleveraged some of our assets and the market being what it is…” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that some of the, erm, financial reserves you were relying on aren’t going to be available, given the current circumstances.”
“So the money is…”
“Gone.”
“Gone?” That much money doesn’t just…vanish. “I don’t think I understand.”
“Savannah,” he begins, “I’ve always admired your strength. You get that from your mother.” He always talks about her like she’s dead. Last I heard she wasfollowing her bliss,living up in the mountains with her former pottery teacher, making terrible crockery together. “You’re going to need to be strong now. There’s no easy way to tell you this, but your accounts are among the things we needed to leverage and?—”
My pulse starts thrumming; a bright spot appears in my vision. My nose fills with a faint burning smell.Not right now. Mystrengthisn’t the only thing I inherited from my mother—I also got my chestnut brown hair and my chronic fucking migraines.
The smell intensifies. The lights get brighter. I blink away tears, swallow against a wave of nausea. Migraines are like the world’s worst superpower: you don’t get a choice when they activate and most of the time you just have to let them run their course. Usually that course leaves me feelingrun over.
My father is still talking—his words are muffled as if they’re coming through deep water. I don’t understand the sounds, but the shape is clear: he took the money he’d promised me and gambled it on business ventures…and lost.
He’s broke.
So I’m broke.
My knees go weak. My migraine hovers in the distance, like a storm I can see on the horizon.
“Sav, you look pale.” My father comes around from behind his desk and ushers me into one of the cushy blue chairs in the corner of his office where I used to hang out as a kid and pretend that I was doing business right along with him.
I sink into the soft upholstery. Tears gather at my lash line. I squeeze them back.These are just choppy waters.I can make it through. Lights begin to blink behind my eyelids, pop-pop-pop, each accompanied by a flash of pain.
Something cool taps my hand—my father handing me a glass of ice water. He must have gone to the kitchen and back. I take a sip. The water tastes metallic, a sure sign this migraine will be a bad one.
“Why are you here, anyway?” he asks, after I manage to open my eyes.
“I wanted to talk with you about—” I try to remember the phrasing I used when I was rehearsing in the mirror this morning. “A potential change that will affect my educational and career trajectory.”
“Really?” But he doesn’t sound displeased. My father has never approved of my studying nursing.Let someone else change bedpans, he liked to say.
“There’s a combined five-year master’s program at Morningside University in Atlanta I’m interested in,” I say.
“In nursing?”
“In a related field.” I smile. In a negotiation what you don’t say is as important as what you do. So I don’t say I want to go into biomedical research to find genes that cause migraines. I don’t say that I can see myself working in basic scientific research—in other words, pursuing a noble cause. Noble causes, as my father likes to remind me, never earned anyone a second home or the victory of having vanquished a business foe—or the kind of wealthy, country club husband he wants for me. “I checked and they’ll approve most of my transfer credits. In fact…” I build up to what I was coming here to tell him, “I applied, and I’ve already been accepted.” A process that was simple once I assured my advisor that I would not be seeking financial aid support from Morningside.
“That’s a very good university, Sav.”
“Yes.”
“And what must be a very impressive program.”
“It is. Fortunately, you have a very impressive daughter.”
My father smiles—brief, proud—then his face falls. “If that’s the case, we need to talk about some of the realities of your tuition.”
“My tuition?” It didn’t even occur to me that that could go too, along with the furniture.
“There’s a certain amount of belt-tightening that we’re all doing and well, I’m not certain if we can outlay that as an expense.” He grimaces. “Savannah, I want to give you the world…” But from his tone, it sounds more like my world is being yanked out from under me.
My head throbs, a bright, flashing pulse like a warning sign. “Actually, I need to lie down.” I pull myself up from the chair. “We can talk later.” I pull myself from my father’s office to the stairs, scale each riser, then practically crawl down the hallway to my childhood bedroom. The door is shut, the sign on it spelling outSavannahin pink sparkly letters with a tiara underneath. I imagine the soft lavender scent of my childhood bed, the fluffy pink comforter that’s a remnant of my princess phase.
