Takeoffs and Landings(26)

Something has happened. Something has changed.

Chuck is still off in his own little world, but he sits there smiling when he thinks no one is watching him.

Chuck—smiling?

Why?

And Lori—well, I won’t tell you how Lori behaved in Chicago. I’m ashamed. And I’m ashamed of myself for not telling her so.

But here . . . in Atlanta . . . Okay, she’s still not really talking to me. But she and Chuck have something going on. They had a good day together. They’re actually speaking to each other.

Maybe I was mistaken about the purpose of this trip. Maybe I expected too much, thinking I could mend my relationship with them. Maybe the best I can hope for from this trip is that Lori and Chuck can be friends with each other again. Like they used to be.

What does my broken heart matter, if theirs are whole?

I can remember them at three and four: overall straps sliding off their shoulders, bare feet covered in mud, sticks clutched in their hands like fishing rods. Lori, who always spoke for both of them, would announce, “Me and Chuck are catching supper.”

It didn’t matter where they were—haymow, hog barn, tractor seat, cow pasture—Lori and Chuck were there together. Back then, I don’t think one of them would take a breath without telling the other one first.

When did that change? With school? No—I can remember them waiting for the school bus together, hand in hand. It was after that.

I think I know when they stopped being friends. I just don’t know why.

It was the funeral.

If you saw what I see in my mind, you’d cry. A little boy and a little girl standing beside their father’s freshly dug grave. The coffin has been lowered in, the minister has said his last “Amen.” Everyone’s leaving. The widow, her stomach huge with her fifth child, is trying to tell the children it’s time to go.

“Come on, Chuck. Come on, Lori,” she says, trying to keep the tears out of her voice. “We need to go pick up Joey and Mikey at Aunt Louise’s house.”

“No,” the little girl says.

The girl’s grandparents talk to her. Aunts and uncles plead with her. Even the funeral director bends down on his knee in the mud and assures her that it’s okay to leave her father’s body right there in the ground, alone.

“The part of him that matters is in heaven now,” the funeral director says. “He’s happy now.”

“I’m staying here with Daddy,” the girl says.

The minister comes back and tries to talk kindergarten theology, but his pleas are useless, too. The mother knows what has to be done. But, newly widowed and vastly pregnant, she doesn’t have it in her to drag a six-year-old kicking and screaming from her father’s grave.

We used Chuck instead.

You should have seen him then. It’s hard to remember now, but he was scrawny beyond words. Small for his age. Heartbreakingly thin. We coached him like a little windup doll, and he went over to stand by Lori.

“Daddy wants you to go home,” he said. “Come on.”

That thin, reedy, little-boy voice. So brave. A person could cry for days, just remembering that voice.

Lori sneaked her hand into Chuck’s. He bent his head toward her ear and they whispered, back and forth. And then, slowly, they began walking away from the grave.

If I live to be one hundred, I’ll see them like that forever. Hand in hand. Lori was wearing her leftover Easter dress. Pink. Her hair was in ringlets with a big white bow. Chuck had his hair slicked back; he had blue suspenders holding up his checked pants.

Those were not funeral clothes. They don’t make funeral clothes for six- and seven-year-olds.

After a few minutes, Lori broke away from Chuck. She ran ahead and beat everyone else back to the car.

That’s the last time I remember seeing them hand in hand or whispering or acting like they cared about each other at all.

Of course, they’re teenagers now. Teenaged siblings don’t hold hands.

Still.

Don’t you wonder what they said?

I can’t ask, of course. It’s better for them if they don’t remember.



WHAT JOAN LAWSON ACTUALLY SAID DURING HER SPEECH IN ATLANTA:

Every speech has to come to an end.

I’m sure you’ve all heard speeches that felt interminable—I sincerely hope that this hasn’t been one of them. [Big grin. Pause for laughter from the audience.] But in life, as in speeches, you don’t want to be worrying about what you’ve left unsaid. When you reach that twenty-ninth minute of your half-hour speech, that’s not the time to start thinking, Oh no! I forgot to tell you . . . We have only so much time in front of the microphone, just as we have only so much time on this earth. When the time comes for you to walk away from the great podium of life, do it with your head held high, your shoulders back, and the words of your best speech still ringing in everyone’s ears.