Takeoffs and Landings(14)

“Why?” Mom asked, looking genuinely bewildered. For a split second, Lori could have run to Mom, cried on her shoulder. Then Mom said, gently, “What happened?”

She honestly didn’t know. She didn’t understand at all.

“I didn’t like your speech,” Lori mumbled.

Mom’s expression changed in an instant, hardening into fury.

“Fine,” she spit out. “You didn’t like my speech. That’s no reason to scare me to death. Didn’t you know how worried I’d be? What did you think I’d think when I finished my speech and you were gone? I’ll tell you what I thought. I was imagining you dead in some dark alley or kidnapped or raped or—or . . . This is Chicago. It’s a big city. You’re not in safe little Pickford County anymore—”

Lori couldn’t stand it.

“I know,” she interrupted. “In Pickford County, mothers don’t make fun of their kids in front of thousands of people.”

Mom drew back as though Lori had slapped her. Lori was afraid she’d gone too far. Kids in the Lawson family were not allowed to talk to grown-ups like that. And Mom was already mad.

“What do you mean?” Mom said sharply.

“‘We were afraid Lori would grow up to be a strip artist—’” Lori quoted.

“That’s not what I said!” Mom protested.

“Close enough,” Lori hissed. She knew Mom had really said, “My husband was a little concerned . . .,” but it was too dangerous to bring up Dad. Just saying his name would be like hauling a nuclear bomb into their battle.

“Lori, that was just a story. You were two years old, for crying out loud.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not two anymore. How do you think it made me feel, hearing that? To know that for eight years you’ve been saying God knows what about me to all these strangers? People I don’t even know?” Lori held back a wail. If she was going to fight with Mom, she wasn’t going to be all weak and teary. “I mean, you were talking about diapers! How many bankers in America know the intimate details of how I was potty trained?”

“Oh, Lori.” Mom slumped against the ritzy, expensive-looking etched wallpaper behind her. Everything around them was too fancy. Lori wished they were fighting someplace real.

But someplace real, Lori wouldn’t have the nerve to say anything. Beside fake trees, seventeen stories above ground, Lori couldn’t stop herself.

“Maybe you want to be famous and have all these people oohing and aahing over you, but what about me and Chuck and Joey and Mike and Emma? Don’t we have any rights to privacy?”

“Oh, Lori,” Mom said again, and took a ragged breath. “When I started giving these speeches, I didn’t know anything. I was just a high school graduate, and I was talking to people with college degrees—doctorates, some of them. The only subject I was an expert in was you kids. The only thing I’d ever studied was the way you all looked taking your first steps, the smiles you gave out, the—the way you smelled, fresh from your baths—”

Lori couldn’t listen.

“Save the flowery descriptions for the bankers,” she said, brushing past her mother. She had to get away from Mom. She was terrified of what she might say next if she stayed. “That was all a long, long time ago. Did it ever occur to you that you aren’t an expert on any of us anymore?”

She was down the hall now, but she couldn’t resist shouting back, “Given how little we’ve seen you the past eight years, I’m surprised you even remember our names, let alone any cutesy anecdotes about how we looked taking our first steps.”

She rounded the corner, wanting mostly to find a door so she could give it a good, satisfying slam. But she’d forgotten: She still didn’t have a key to room 1709. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, though, so she ran to the room, anyway, and gave the door a hard kick, instead of knocking. It swung open. It must not have been fully latched.

Chuck sat on the bed, blinking at her.

“Um, Mom’s looking for you,” he said blankly. “I think she’s kind of worried.”

Lori wanted to be home so she could flounce upstairs and shut the door of her own room so hard that the whole house would shake. She wanted privacy. She wanted to be alone. She settled for going into the bathroom. But the door must have been designed to prevent slamming—even her hardest shove sent it only gliding gently closed.

Somehow that made Lori madder than ever.





Mom came in only a few minutes after Lori.

“Lori’s here,” Chuck said. He inclined his head toward the bathroom door. “In there. I was just going to call the front desk, like you said—”