Cat may be on Tom’s side, but whether Pop is on Cat’s side is something else again. I worry about this all the time we’re planning the vacation. Suppose the motel won’t take cats? Or suppose he runs away in the country? If he messes up the vacation in any way, I know Pop’ll say to get rid of him.
I practice putting Cat back in the wicker hamper to see if I can keep him in that sometimes, but he meows like crazy. That’d drive Pop nuts in the car, and it certainly wouldn’t hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just sit back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty feeling in the bottom of my stomach that something’s going to go haywire.
Pop’s pretty snappish anyway. He’s working late nearly every night, getting stuff cleared up before vacation. He doesn’t want any extra problems, especially not Cat problems. Mom’s been having asthma a good deal lately, and we’re all pretty jumpy. It’s always like this at the end of the summer.
Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop what’s happened about Tom.
“We’ll work something out,” he says, which isn’t what you’d call a big explanation.
“You think he can get back into college?”
“I don’t know. The Youth Board is going to work on it. They’re arranging for him to make up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get credit for that semester. Then he can probably start making up the second semester at night school if he has a job.
“Apparently the Youth Board knew his father had skipped—they’ve been trying to trace him. I don’t think it’ll do any good if they find him. Tom had better just cross him off and figure his own life for himself.”
You know, I see “bad guys” in television and stuff, but with the people I really know I always lump the parents on one team and the kids on the other. Now here’s my pop calmly figuring a kid better chalk off his father as a bad lot and go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you could face up to it eventually, but having him just fade out on you, not care what you did—that’d be worse.
While I’m doing all this hard thinking, Pop has gone back to reading the paper. I notice the column of want ads on the back, and all of a sudden my mind clicks on Tom and jobs.