Lori had her mouth open, the words gathering in her mind, before she saw what Mom and Chuck were doing.
Chuck was throwing up into his airsickness bag. And Mom was patting his back, practically cooing, “It’s all right. You’re okay.”
Didn’t Mom have any regrets? Wasn’t there even one Oh no pealing in her mind?
Didn’t she have anything she wanted to say to Lori?
This was all he deserved: the queasy stomach, the instant gag reflex, the plane shivering around him.
Then they were on the ground, gliding toward the gate. They weren’t going to crash.
Was Chuck disappointed or relieved?
Mom still had her hand on his back. Just that light touch made it impossible for him to decide.
Around them, people were reaching for their carry-on bags, taking off their seat belts, grumbling about the rough landing. They were like statues brought to life. Lori and Chuck and Mom were the only ones not moving.
“We all oughta sue,” someone griped behind Chuck.
“Aw, that was nothing,” someone else countered. “I used to fly military jets. Our motto was, ‘Any landing you survive is a good one.’”
Did I survive? Chuck wondered. “Survive” was such a funny word. He’d been listed in the newspaper all those years ago as Daddy’s survivor. Chuck could remember Gram explaining it to him: “That just means you lived longer than your daddy did.” Chuck hadn’t been able to understand—his father had been twenty-eight, Chuck was only seven. Twenty-eight was a bigger number than seven. No, Daddy outsurvived me, Chuck had wanted to tell Gram and all those other grown-ups.
But there were things you couldn’t tell grown-ups. Couldn’t ask them, either, because then they looked at you with crinkly worry lines around their eyes.
Chuck hadn’t survived. Chuck wasn’t surviving.
Mom removed her hand from his back.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Chuck couldn’t answer.
Another speech.
Lori didn’t know how Mom stood it, just about every night, sitting through boring before-dinner introductions, stupid chitchat over rubbery chicken and undercooked broccoli, unfunny jokes about people she didn’t even know. And then she had to give the speech itself. Lori wasn’t sure what the speech was tonight, but if she had to hear Mom say, “Oh no, I was going to spend more time with my family!” one more time, Lori was going to need an airsickness bag, too.
Of course, hearing Mom say that even once was enough to make Lori puke. But she was trying not to think about anything Mom said. She didn’t want Los Angeles to be another Chicago, another Phoenix. She wasn’t going to let Mom get to her.
Not after they’d been on that plane, almost crashing, and Mom hadn’t bothered even to say, I love you to Lori or Chuck.
The introducer stood up, and Lori braced herself for another maddening burst of praise for Mom, some clump of overblown words that made her sound like someone Lori had never met. This introducer was a tall, thin, Hispanic man (Latino? Chicano? Lori would feel a lot more comfortable about different people if she knew what they wanted to be called.) He seemed supremely confident, waiting calmly at the podium until the banquet room was quiet.
“We have a special speaker for you tonight,” the man said.
Oh no. Here we go again, Lori thought.
“I could give you a long list of her awards and accomplishments, but I thought I’d do something a little different,” the man continued. “I have a friend at C-SPAN who was able to get me this footage. Watch.”
The lights instantly dimmed. A giant blue screen lowered from the ceiling. In seconds, the blue faded, and there, larger than life, was Mom, sitting at a table, leaning toward a microphone. Lori tried to identify the occasion, but it was hard, because what else had Mom done the past eight years but lean into microphones? This must have been fairly early on, because Mom looked a lot younger. Her hair was long and feathered back from her face, the way Lori remembered her wearing it years ago, when Lori was a little girl.
When Dad was still alive.
A flickering label appeared beneath Mom’s face: CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, JOAN LAWSON—WIDOW OF INSURED.
Oh, Lori thought. Oh no.
Though she couldn’t remember anyone ever telling her so, she knew that Mom’s whole speaking career was launched because she testified before Congress about Dad’s death. Some people saw her on the evening news and were impressed. They invited her to speak at churches and Farm Bureau meetings in surrounding counties. And the next thing anyone knew, she was jetting across the country talking every night.
Lori had never seen her mother’s testimony.
On the screen, Mom was biting her lip.