Takeoffs and Landings(2)

Lori toyed with one more fantasy. She could imagine having a different kind of mother, the kind Lori could sit and talk with for hours. The kind who could help Lori figure out what was going on inside her own head. Lori could imagine telling this perfect mother, You know what? I think maybe Gram was right. I did wear this dress because I was proud of it. I wanted people to see I was the kind of person who could make her own clothes if she had to. Like I’m as good as anybody out there, outside Pickford County. No—like I’m better. How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t anyone tell me how awful I looked?

Lori couldn’t imagine saying that to her own mother in a million years. The kind of mother she could say that to wouldn’t be taking her to Chicago right now.

That would be fine with Lori. She hadn’t asked for this trip.

And the longer she sat in this strange, impersonal airport, the less she wanted to go. She felt uglier by the minute. She squirmed in her seat, embarrassed beyond words to be wearing such a horrible, homemade, crumpled sundress. Her hair had gone limp now, too, and her zits were probably as bright as neon signs. If anyone like that fashion designer she’d imagined was strolling through the airport right now, he’d run from her in horror. Probably all the other passengers were staring at her when she wasn’t looking and laughing at her from behind their USA Todays and their John Grishams. Get a load of that girl over there. Ever seen such a hick?

Lori glanced around quickly, ready to glare at anyone hiding giggles. But the only person she caught looking in her direction was her brother Chuck.

Chuck was someone else Lori couldn’t talk to. She’d practically forgotten he was there, practically forgotten he was going to be on this trip with her and Mom, too.

Chuck was easy to forget. He was big and fat and dumb. And that was what people said about him when they were trying to be kind.

Chuck looked away as soon as Lori’s eyes met his. Ordinarily, that would have been fine with Lori. But she was so miserable today that his glance away made her feel rejected. Even fat, gross, sweating—ugh—Chuck couldn’t stand to look at her. Lori bit her lip, holding back tears. Aside from Mom, who didn’t really count, Chuck was the only person she knew in this whole crowded, overly bright airport. Part of her wanted to cling to Chuck, the way she’d clung to him all those years ago at Daddy’s funeral.

Part of her wanted to slide down a few seats, so nobody would think they were together.

Mom came back from the bank of phones at the other end of the waiting area.

“Well, that’s confirmed,” she said. “One of the organizers will meet us at the airport, so we won’t have to take the hotel shuttle.”

They’d been away from home for only two hours, and already Mom sounded different. Her voice was crisper, more businesslike. She didn’t seem like the same person who’d been reading bedtime stories last night to Lori’s little sister, Emma, in a lulling, singsongy tone.

No wonder Lori could never talk to Mom at home. Mom-at-home was just a fake, some role she played while she waited for her next flight out.

“Excited?” Mom said, sitting down beside Lori. “Just think—your first plane trip.”

Lori shrugged. If Mom couldn’t see how far away Lori was from excitement, there was no way Lori could tell her.

Behind her, Chuck only grunted.

Good for Chuck, Lori thought, as if they’d chosen sides and Chuck were on her team. She wished he were. She wished he were someone she could talk to, confide in. She wanted to ask him: Why is Mom really taking us on this trip? It made no sense. She wished Chuck could explain it to her. After years of traveling on business, why had Mom suddenly decided to take Lori and Chuck with her?

But Chuck wasn’t the type of person who had any answers. And it had been years and years and years since they’d been Chuck-and-Lori, inseparable pals. “Joined at the hip,” Gram used to joke. Not anymore.

Around them, people were talking in little clusters. Two businessmen types were comparing golf scores. A family with a toddler laughed as the child careened from seat to seat: “Now, come back here and give Grandma a good-bye kiss,” the mother implored.

Lori felt like she and Chuck and Mom were an island of silence in the midst of all that chatter. She wished suddenly that the rest of her siblings had come, too—eight-year-old Emma, ten-year-old Joey, and eleven-year-old Mike. Joey would be rattling off a list of questions: How fast can our airplane fly? What will the ground look like from up there? How high will we be? How many people will be on the airplane? Mike would be pretending he knew all the answers: It’s thousands of miles an hour, right, Mom? And we’ll definitely be above the clouds. Definitely. And Emma would have Mom’s full attention, as usual: Do you remember when you told me that the clouds look like cotton balls up there? In the Raggedy Ann books, the clouds are bouncy, and you can jump from cloud to cloud. Could someone really do that?