Takeoffs and Landings(36)

The screen went blank. Beneath it, the flesh-and-blood Mom was walking toward the podium. She seemed to have an incredible distance to go. Lori had a sudden flash of pity for her mother, having to speak now, with the banquet hall still hushed with awe, the image from eight years ago still burning in everyone’s minds.

Mom reached the podium and stepped up on a stool. She expertly bent the microphone down to her level.

“Well,” she said briskly. “I wish someone had told me then how out-of-date that hairstyle would look now.”

Everyone burst out laughing. Lori could almost feel the tension being released. It reminded her of a time last year when she’d gotten a ride home from school with some neighbor kids, and the driver had decided to race the train at the railroad crossing on Ford’s Pike Road. The train missed the back bumper of the car by inches—Lori could see the engineer’s outraged, worried face close-up. Speeding on down the road, the whole carload had broken out into the same kind of laughter that rolled through the banquet hall now. It wasn’t so much that people were amused; it was more that they desperately needed to do something with the air in their lungs.

Everyone seemed so relieved to be laughing that they went on for several minutes. Mom had to hold up her hand for silence.

“That film clip was from a very long time ago,” she said. “What I wanted to speak about tonight was the time we can still do something about. The present.”

And then Mom rolled into a speech Lori had heard before, in Philadelphia, maybe, or Atlanta. Lori studied her mother without hearing a single one of her words. Mom said something funny and grinned proudly as the crowd laughed again, this time with true mirth.

How can she? Lori wondered. How can she go on like usual after they showed that film? How can she smile at all?

Lori herself wanted to cry. No—she wanted to scream. No—she didn’t know what she wanted. It was so unfair, the way everything had happened. Daddy shouldn’t have died. Mom and Gram and Pop shouldn’t have pretended everything was okay. And—maybe—they shouldn’t have had to sell their house and farm. Was that true?

Lori felt like there was a blender going full speed inside her, mixing up all her thoughts and emotions. She forced herself to sit up very straight and pretend she was listening to her mother. But she didn’t want to sit still, not now. And there was no way she could have heard a single word her mother said over the roaring in her ears.





Chuck listened to the entire videotape of his mother’s congressional testimony with his mouth hanging open, in awe.

Mom has really suffered, he thought. She knows about pain. She understands.

It was strange how happy that thought made him.





WHAT JOAN LAWSON WANTED TO SAY DURING HER SPEECH IN LOS ANGELES:

How dare you. Did you all enjoy that, watching my grief? Was I entertaining enough?

You’re all too close to Hollywood. Everything’s entertainment here. Did any of you think about the fact that I wasn’t acting up there? That my husband really died and I was fighting real tears? That I’ve got two kids out in the audience who might not be ready to see that yet?

I don’t know when I thought Lori and Chuck would be ready to see that particular videotape. Maybe never. I’ve never watched it myself. I’ve never wanted to.

Living it was hard enough.

And now you think I’m going to smile and walk to the podium and act like everything’s fine—you paid me enough, you deserve to get your jollies from my grief?

I’m smiling. I’m walking to the podium. I’m making a joke. I’m doing what I’m supposed to. I learned a long time ago that you can’t crumble to the floor in agony just because you want to.

But don’t think you could ever pay me enough for my grief.



WHAT JOAN LAWSON ACTUALLY SAID DURING HER SPEECH IN LOS ANGELES:

But when the time comes that you’re signing that final contract, that’s not the moment to think, Oh no, what am I agreeing to here? Did I read all the fine print? In life, too, as in law, you’ve got to pay attention as you go along. You can’t rush through, eager to get to the next page, because you might miss a cogent point. You might miss the scent of roses, your two-year-old’s best smile, the sound of the high school band marching in the Fourth of July parade. . . . And when you get to the last line of this contract called life—a contract between you and God, if you will—you can’t hesitate. You have to grasp the pen firmly and write your last signature with a flourish. Because at the end, there are no more appeals courts, no more addenda, no more codicils. When you’ve signed your last, you have to put away the documents and go out into the sunshine, knowing you’ve done your best.