Takeoffs and Landings(38)

“Oh, Lori, don’t be so melodramatic,” Mom said. “I’m not leaving on purpose. It’s just my job. And this trip—I just wanted you to understand there’s a whole big world out here, beyond the county line. I don’t want you to get married at eighteen, like I did, never knowing there are other choices out there.”

“But what if that’s what I want?” Lori asked.

“Is it?” Mom asked. Her eyes were dry now. She took a step toward Lori. “Got your future husband all picked out already? Who’s it going to be? One of those perfect gentlemen who’ve been picking on Chuck? Poor guy probably doesn’t stand a chance. You get your claws in him, he won’t know what hit him. Next thing he knows, he’ll have a mortgage and a passel of kids to support, and he’ll never be able to come up for air.”

Lori gasped.

“Is that how it was with you and Dad?” she almost whimpered.

“No,” Mom said, shaking her head violently. “No. It wasn’t.”

Chuck recognized the look on Mom’s face. Shame. Abject, heartbreaking, regret-filled shame. Mom backed away from Lori and slumped onto the bed beside Chuck. She looked at him in surprise, like she’d forgotten he was there, witnessing this. Then she put her arm around his shoulder.

Chuck stiffened at first, thinking, Fifteen-year-old boys are not supposed to let their mothers hug them. But it felt so good, he decided he didn’t care. He leaned into the hug.

“Your father and I were in love,” Mom said. “We wanted to get married. We wanted kids. We were happy.” Mom squeezed Chuck’s shoulder. She patted the bed on the other side. “Come on, Lori. Sit down and we can talk about all of this. Without screaming. Without either one of us screaming.”

Mom held her arm out stiffly, like she was just waiting for Lori to slide into position, into her mother’s embrace.

Lori wondered how her mother could possibly think she wanted a hug now—from her.

“But you’re happier now,” Lori said coldly. “Why shouldn’t you be? You get to stay in fancy hotels, and people fawn over you, and you don’t have to do any real work, and you eat in restaurants. . . . You just jumped at the chance to get out of changing dirty diapers and washing manure out of coveralls. Let Gram do that. You don’t care. The day Daddy died was the happiest day of your life.”

Oh no. She’d said it. She’d said what she’d been afraid even to think this whole, long trip.

Mom’s face went white. So did Chuck’s. Lori forged on. The dam was broken.

“And having a dead husband is just like—something you can talk about, to make people feel sorry for you. You’re like those people who sell their stories to the tabloids. What you say isn’t worth anything anymore, because you’ve spent it all. You’re just a—a shell. And it’s our story you sold out. You made it not real anymore. It’s like, on that tape, you were real, I could tell you meant what you said. Or at least I thought I could. Maybe you didn’t even mean it then. Maybe you were just acting, like you’re always acting now. You get in front of an audience, you’re like a robot. Someone pushes your button and you talk.” Lori didn’t even know what she was saying. “And it’s not fair! How do I know if you’re ever real with me?”

Suddenly Lori was crying so hard, Chuck could barely understand what she said.

Is this how other families act? he wondered.

Mom buried her face in her hands, like she deserved the onslaught of words. When Lori’s last sentence blurred into sobs, Mom looked up.

“You’re right,” she murmured. “A lot of what you say is right. Not about me being glad when Tom died. Oh no. But the rest—I do give speeches like a robot. I probably even use a fakey accent, like you said back in Chicago.” She grinned, but it was a pained grin. Chuck forgot himself for a minute and wondered, How would someone draw that—a smile that looks like tears?

“I’ve always had rules for myself, though,” Mom said. “There were things I would never talk about. Tom dying was one of them.”

Mom’s arm on Chuck’s shoulder was becoming a burden. He wanted to shake it off, go watch TV, listen to this conversation from the other side of the room. Because he could tell Lori was going to fly right back into Mom’s face with another accusation.

“You talk about death all the time,” Lori complained, sniffling. “Oh, sorry—the final signature on the contract, the twenty-ninth minute of the half-hour speech, the closing out of the time-bank account, the—”