Takeoffs and Landings

  “I wasn’t paying much attention,” Lori admitted.

  “The company was running a scam,” Mom said. “Tom and I should have read the fine print. The head honcho ran off with the money and put the company in bankruptcy. And there were enough loopholes in the law that he pretty much got away with it.”

  Mom looked over the table edge at the pile of glossy brochures, and Chuck thought, That’s it. She’s not going to tell us anything else. But then Mom sighed and looked back at them.

  “Actually,” she said, “I could have sued. I had lawyers calling me, telling me I had a million-dollar case. But . . . there was no guarantee. I could have spent years on a lawsuit and gotten nothing. It all felt like a scam again.”

  “But that’s no reason—,” Lori started in heatedly.

  Mom gave her a wary look, and Lori shut up.

  “My husband had died,” Mom said. “I had just given birth. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. The only reason I could get out of bed, I think, was because somebody had to feed Emma, and somebody had to change Joey’s diapers, and somebody had to keep Mike from sticking forks in electrical outlets, and somebody had to make sure you two had clean clothes to wear to school. . . . I thought that that somebody had to be me. Because if it wasn’t, I had no reason to live, either.” Mom stopped, like she’d forgotten what she was trying to say and needed to get back on track. “You know what Gram and Pop think about lawyers. Gram and Pop told me I couldn’t trust those crooked lawyers any more than I’d been able to trust the insurance salesman. I was glad to let someone else do my thinking for me.”

  “But—,” Lori objected.

  Mom shrugged.

  “Just last year, I read that some court dismissed the last of the suits against the insurance company. Nobody got anything,” Mom said. “So it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “It wouldn’t have brought Daddy back to life,” Chuck said softly, and Mom nodded.

  Why did Chuck like that so much, having Mom agree with him?

  “But you testified before Congress,” Lori persisted. “What good did that do?”

  “They wanted to change the law, close the loopholes, so no other insurance company could do what ours did,” Mom said.

  “I bet Gram and Pop didn’t want you to talk to Congress, either,” Chuck said. He’d heard Pop’s opinions about Congress: “Bunch of crooks in bed with thieves—they don’t care about real people, you know that? They don’t even try to do what’s good for us. The only people they listen to are those lobbyists. The ones who can give them trips on their fancy jets, expensive meals with the liquor flowing. . . . It makes me sick.”

  “No,” Mom said, “they didn’t. But I was starting to wake up, starting to think for myself. . . . Even if Congress couldn’t force the insurance company to pay us, I thought I had to make sure nothing like that ever happened to anyone else. Or I could never look any of you kids in the face again.” She got a distant look in her eyes. “I can remember packing to go to Washington. . . . I felt like I was traveling to the moon, you know? I had to take Emma with me, because I was still nursing, and I couldn’t be away from her very long. They promised there’d be someone to take care of her while I was testifying. They put me up in some fancy hotel, and I was like Gomer Pyle, gone to the big city. ‘Shazam! People live like this?’ But Emma couldn’t sleep in the strange crib, so she cried all night, and I didn’t get any sleep. I was so tired, I wanted to cry, too. They put me in front of that microphone, with those bright lights on me, and I felt so stupid that I didn’t think I could put two words together.”

  Lori could remember her mother going off to Washington, D.C. “She’s going to talk to the president,” she’d bragged at school, because nobody in first grade had ever heard of Congress. But Washington scared Lori. She was afraid “Joanie’s going to Washington” was just the grown-ups’ way of saying that Mom was going to die, too.

  Lori stared out the window at a palm frond that still didn’t seem real. Was that really what she had feared? Why hadn’t she remembered that before?

  “But, Mom, you were great,” Chuck was saying. “You were . . . awesome.”

  “Oh, honey, you weren’t there. Videotape lies. I didn’t manage to say a single thing I wanted to,” Mom said, shaking her head ruefully. “And then I got so mad, because that one congressman kept trying to make it seem like a crime that I had five children. He wanted me to say that we were going to have to go on welfare and be a burden to society, and I was determined—even if I made a total fool of myself—that I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction.”

  “But then you were famous, and people all over the country wanted to hear you speak,” Lori said.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Mom said. “I went home like some dog running off with his tail between his legs. I never wanted to leave Pickford County again.”

  Lori was so surprised, she jerked back and almost tipped over her chair. Mom had felt like that?

  “Then the Highland County Farm Bureau asked me to speak to them, and I didn’t feel like I could say no. You should have seen me working on my speech. It took me two weeks. Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  Chuck realized he had seen his mother working on her speech. He could remember her sitting at the kitchen table beside him, while he sweated over arithmetic homework. He erased holes in his work paper. Mom snapped her pencil in two.

  “I stuttered giving that speech,” Mom said. “I figured the whole county felt so sorry for me, that had to be the reason the Highland Presbyterian Church Women’s Association asked me to speak at their spring luncheon.” Mom had a half smile on her face, remembering. “Afterward, they gave me an envelope with a check inside, and I thought it was charity, like they’d taken up an offering for me because we were so poor. I tried to give it back, I was so humiliated, but they kept saying, ‘That’s your stipend. Your honorarium.’ I didn’t even know what those words meant. I didn’t know people got paid for talking, unless they were preachers.”

  “But you liked it,” Lori said fiercely. “You liked talking more than you liked staying home with us.”

  Mom looked steadily at her.

  “Oh, Lori, I hated it. I felt like such a fool. Every time I got up to speak, I felt like there was a—a brick in the pit of my stomach. And I missed you all so much, it was like being turned inside out every time I had to leave.”

  “So why’d you do it?” Lori challenged.

  “At first, I felt like I owed people something. Like maybe Tom had died for a reason, and the reason was that I had to warn people not to take their husbands and wives and kids for granted. I never expected to make a career of this. I just took every speech as it came. But they kept coming. And people kept handing me checks. I started doing the math. I realized I could make minimum wage flipping burgers at McDonald’s, and you all could be kids who got free lunches at school and bought all your clothes from yard sales; or I could go on the road, and you could have piano lessons and dance lessons and pay 4-H club dues and wear the same clothes as everyone else.”

  Mom’s eyes begged Lori and Chuck to say, You made the right decision. We’re glad you did what you did. But Chuck was wondering, How could Mom hate something she was so good at? And if she hated it, how could she bear to keep doing it? Lori kept her lips pressed tightly together. Mom filled the silence.

  “After a while, when I realized I was going to be speaking a lot, I stopped hating it so much. I got better at it. It was kind of fun, like being in a play. I knew my lines. But it was still hard, being away from you kids. Every second I was away, I worried about you—even the times when you would have been in school and I wouldn’t have seen you anyway. Then—” Mom hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure how much she should say. Lori and Chuck kept quiet, waiting. Mom went on. “One night my flight got delayed. I should have been home before supper, but it was past you kids’ bedtime before I pulled into the drive. Gram came out apologizing, right and left: ‘They were just so tire
d. If I’d known when you were getting home, I’d have kept them awake.’ I tiptoed into your room, Lori, hoping you were still up and we could talk, and you could tell me about which of your friends wasn’t speaking to which of your other friends. But you were already sound asleep. You looked so peaceful, with your hair spread out on your pillow, that I realized you didn’t really need me. Gram was giving you everything you needed. After that, I didn’t worry so much. It was like you had given me permission to be away.”

  Lori was blinking fast, to ward off tears.

  “I remember that night,” Lori said. “But I was only faking. I wasn’t really asleep. I was . . . being mean.”

  “Really?” Mom said.

  “But it’s okay,” Lori said. “It was okay.”

  It’s kind of like I did give her permission, by deciding not to care, Lori thought. How strange—that Mom and I let go at the same time. And neither one of us knew it.

  Lori reached out her hand, and Mom clasped it in hers. Both of them were crying. Maybe they hadn’t let go at all. They were linked together again, tight as a chain fence. They looked across the table, and there was Chuck, sitting alone. The outsider again. Mom reached her other hand out to him, but he didn’t see it. After a minute, she pulled it back.

  “It’s my turn for a question,” Mom said, still looking at Chuck. “What did you two talk about at the cemetery after your daddy’s funeral?” She turned her gaze on Lori. “When no one but Chuck could convince you it was time to go home?”

  Lori looked puzzled.

  “I don’t remember that,” she said. “I remember seeing the coffin, at the funeral home, and everybody saying Daddy was inside. I remember Gram feeding me cherry Life Savers during the service, so I’d be quiet. I haven’t eaten them since. I don’t remember the cemetery.”

  Chuck looked down, studying the whorls in the table’s wood. They circled back on themselves endlessly. He couldn’t believe Lori had forgotten. Was she just being polite? Was she keeping secrets for him, the way she used to?

  It didn’t matter. Chuck had to confess.

  “I told Lori—” He made himself say it. “I told her that Daddy wanted her to go home. That he was waiting for us there.”

  Familiar guilt swept over him. He could remember exactly how he’d felt, standing beside Lori in the cemetery, a little boy sent to do what grown-ups couldn’t accomplish. He could almost feel the thin cotton of his church pants blowing against his bony legs. He’d wanted to cry, like Lori was doing, but Pop had told him boys weren’t allowed. Then Lori had looked at him with big, trusting eyes, and he’d said the first thing that popped into his mind.

  “I lied,” he said now. “I knew it was a lie. But I wanted to believe it, too. I thought if I said that, maybe it would be true.”

  Lori gasped.

  “I remember now!” she said. “Then we went home, and Daddy wasn’t there, and I was so mad at you. You kept saying, ‘Just wait. Just wait. He’s coming.’ And I kept waiting. I’d sit by the front window every day, watching for him. You promised me! I thought it was all your fault that he didn’t come. And then I forgot I was even waiting for Daddy, but I was still mad at you.”

  Chuck nodded, barely hearing her words, except for “mad at you.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I—I don’t blame you. You should have been mad at me.”

  He looked up, and Mom was staring at them both, her face flooded with dismay.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—Chuck, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault, either, Lori. I just—someone gave me a book about how kids deal with grief, but I never had time to read it. If only . . .”

  Chuck stared back blankly. Lori shrugged.

  “What good would that have done?” she asked. “Neither of us told you what was wrong. We were just being stupid. We just didn’t want to believe that Daddy was never coming back.” She looked across the table at Chuck. “I shouldn’t have been mad at you,” she said. “I’m not mad at you anymore. It’s over. It’s all in the past.”

  Saying that, Lori realized it was true. The place where all her fury lived was gone. The walls had broken down, and it had all washed away.

  Chuck closed his eyes, waiting for some sense of relief. Lori forgave him. She wasn’t mad anymore. Why didn’t he feel good? He opened his eyes, still bothered, still worried. Still guilty.

  Mom reached down and gathered up the travel brochures and guidebooks.

  “Anybody in the mood for Disneyland now?” she asked. “We really ought to get out of the hotel room.”

  Lori grimaced.

  “I don’t feel like Disneyland,” she said. “Or Hollywood. But does—does Los Angeles have an art museum?”

  “I think so,” Mom said.

  She and Lori both turned and looked at Chuck, questioningly. He kept staring down at the table, listening to an argument in his head. Tell! No, no, I can’t. But this might be your only chance.

  He opened his mouth.

  “I was drawing when they came in to tell me Daddy died,” he began slowly. “I wasn’t supposed to be. I was supposed to be doing math. Mrs. Swain warned me, lots of times, that I’d get in trouble if I drew instead of paying attention. Then Daddy died. I thought—”

  “You thought it was your fault?” Lori asked incredulously.

  Chuck nodded slowly.

  “I decided I’d never draw again,” he said. “And I didn’t. Even when I wanted to. Even when I was flunking art.”

  “You flunked art?” Lori asked in disbelief.

  “And I didn’t notice,” Mom muttered, almost as if she were talking to herself. “That was the one F I didn’t think to worry about.”

  Chuck didn’t seem to hear his sister or his mother.

  “Then on this trip, away from home . . . it seemed like maybe it’d be okay to draw again.” Chuck’s words came so slowly, it was excruciating. “To go to art museums and all. Like I was free. For–forgiven. And then in Phoenix—what happened there—it started to seem wrong again. . . .”

  Mom laid her hand on Chuck’s arm.

  “Oh, Chuck,” she murmured. “I—” She hesitated, as if searching for the most comforting words. Lori wasn’t so cautious.

  “You really thought Daddy died because you were drawing instead of doing math?” she asked. “And you quit drawing because of that? Are you crazy?”

  “Lori!” Mom exclaimed.

  But Chuck didn’t scurry back into his usual shell. He looked up slowly.

  “It is crazy, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “You were thinking like a seven-year-old,” Mom said. “That’s all. And because nobody tried hard enough to find out what was wrong, you never escaped the guilt. Or the guilt about what you told Lori. It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Her voice was so full of pain that Lori and Chuck both reached for her at the same time.

  “It’s okay,” Lori said. “Really.”

  “Yeah,” Chuck echoed. “It’s okay. Now.”

  Lori and Mom let Chuck have the window seat for the flight home.

  “You like looking at things more than I do,” Lori said.

  Chuck started to protest, then he realized she didn’t mean it as an insult. It was a flat statement of fact. He did like looking at things more than Lori did. He slipped into the row of seats, put his backpack on the floor, buckled the seat belt.

  The flight attendant down the aisle launched into the safety lecture, but Chuck didn’t listen. He closed his eyes instead, visualizing his favorite pictures from the art museum the day before. If he remembered them well enough, he could look at them anytime he wanted for the rest of his life—sitting in algebra class, plowing a field, pressure-spraying the hog barn. He couldn’t believe Lori had asked to go to the art museum.

  She did that for you, a little voice whispered in his head.

  And she hadn’t done it to mock him. She’d stood behind him, gazing at the paintings with him, as if she’d honestly wanted t
o understand.

  This was going to take some getting used to, Lori being nice to him again.

  “Ready to go home?” Mom asked beside him now.

  “I guess,” Chuck said, his mind still back on Lori and the museum.

  “You don’t feel sick, do you?” Mom asked.

  Chuck shook his head and held up his wrists to show his airsickness bracelets. They were taking off, and he hadn’t even noticed. He wasn’t scared at all now. What was the big deal? People flew all the time.

  The plane’s engine roared beneath his feet, sounding ever so slightly like a tractor engine. For the first time, Chuck felt a pang of homesickness. How could he be thinking of tractors longingly?

  They left the city behind, far below, and flew out over mountains—mountains and desert, landscapes so foreign to Chuck that they seemed to belong to a different planet. There’d been mountain and desert paintings at the museum yesterday. Chuck closed his eyes again, but this time what he pictured against his eyelids was the pattern of sunlight on corn leaves, of soybean rows flowing toward the horizon, of wheat stalks bowing in the wind.

  He hadn’t seen any of those designs in any of the museums he’d visited. Someone needed to draw those or paint those or sculpt those—or something.

  No, he thought. I need to.

  Without thinking, Chuck turned to his mother.

  “Remember what you offered?” he asked. “Can I still—I mean, will you still pay for art lessons?”

  Mom looked up. Smiled.

  “Of course,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  Chuck felt a shot of joy. For just a second, he felt the usual guilt: Drawing is bad. Daddy died because I was drawing. But then the guilt was gone. He could draw, and it was okay.

  They were in clouds now, high above the earth. The pilot announced he was turning off the seat belts sign. Chuck stared out the window, losing himself in following the arcs of cloud against the wings of the plane. Such designs. He wanted to draw those, too. He didn’t have another notebook yet, but maybe when he got home . . .