Tuesday, seven-forty. Your mother is in the shower. Your father has left for the shop — he does a Tuesday morning half-day at the cabinet place on South Broadway he has done Tuesdays at for eleven years. Karen is at the library already. Charlotte is due at the bus at eight-fifteen. You are in the kitchen with the cereal and the milk and the weekday.
The TV in the living room is on because somebody (Karen, probably, before she left) left it on the morning-news channel on low volume. The volume is low enough that you catch only fragments as you walk past — a weather segment, a Denver municipal-bond story — and you do not stop to listen. You walk past the living room into the kitchen.
Charlotte is at the counter with her cereal bowl already eaten and the spoon resting in the milk that is left. She is wearing the unicorn sweater and a pair of jeans that are too short at the ankle by half an inch — she grew. Her backpack is by the stool. Her hair is brushed.
You going to finish that milk? you ask.
It's cereal milk.
It's milk.
It's cereal milk. You can't drink it straight.
OK.
You pour your own bowl. You sit on the stool opposite hers. The cereal is the kind with brown-sugar clusters that Charlotte says are the best part and you do not disagree. You eat.
Charlotte watches you for a while. Then she says:
Vera.
Yeah.
Why is everybody on the TV mad?
You chew the cereal. You do not look at the TV. The TV is in the other room and the Capitol-building graphic you saw on your way in is still there probably. You do not know exactly what she means by everybody. She means, you think, the specific way adults speak when they are on a news screen talking about what other adults have done.
They're not all mad, Char.
They look mad.
Some of them are tired.
Why?
You eat another spoonful of cereal. You take your time.
It's been a bad decade, Char. People are tired.
A bad decade?
A bad ten years. People have been worn out by it.
Charlotte considers this. She stirs the cereal milk she says is cereal milk and can't be drunk straight. She looks at the fridge. She says:
When did it start being bad?
Before you were born.
How do you know when it will stop?
You don't.
OK.
She picks up her bowl, walks to the sink, rinses it. The small specific rinsing of a bowl that Karen has taught her the way mothers teach the rinsing of bowls. She puts the bowl in the dishwasher. She turns around and she looks at the clock on the stove.
Eight-ten.
Go brush your teeth.
I did.
Go do it again.
Fine.
She goes.
You sit with your own cereal. The living-room TV has moved on. The chyron now reads something about a Denver ballot initiative and a municipal bond. The blue-jacket man is gone. A woman in a red blazer is now standing in front of a bar-chart. You still do not turn the volume up.
You finish your cereal. You take your bowl to the sink.
In the hall on the way to where your keys were yesterday, you pass the living room again. On the TV now is a different channel because Charlotte changed it when she ran through to get her backpack — she has moved it to a cable morning-show that Karen does not watch, and the presenter is a woman in a yellow dress reading out a weather report. Behind her, on a corner-panel chyron with a different news-service logo, you catch the words — nor has a comment been issued by the attorney representing Ilya Lenz, whose visa status — before the woman in the yellow dress cuts to the weather map and Ilya Lenz is gone from the bottom of the screen, the attorney uncommented-upon, the visa status unresolved. Adrien on the ticket. Not Ilya.
The kitchen tile under your right sock is cold. The cold goes up to the arch.
You step over the remote on the floor to turn off the television.
The house is silent again. The bus is three minutes away.
Charlotte comes out of the bathroom and goes to the front hall and puts on her sneakers. She gets her backpack. She puts on her coat.
Bye Vera.
Bye Char.
Is it going to snow?
The lady on TV said no.
OK.
You walk her out to the bus stop at the corner. You stand beside her until the bus comes. The bus driver waves at you. Charlotte gets on. The bus pulls away. You walk home the half-block. The sky is that too-clean blue that Denver has in the middle of a morning in November and the cottonwoods are shedding the last of the yellow onto the sidewalks.
You go in the front door.