Takeoffs and Landings(46)

They were in clouds now, high above the earth. The pilot announced he was turning off the seat belts sign. Chuck stared out the window, losing himself in following the arcs of cloud against the wings of the plane. Such designs. He wanted to draw those, too. He didn’t have another notebook yet, but maybe when he got home . . .

When he got home, there’d be chores. Two weeks’ worth, if he knew Pop. And then Mike and Joey would probably make fun of him if he tried drawing anywhere around them. And at school, his drawing would just be something else for the other kids to laugh at. Or destroy.

“Ready to go home?” Mom had asked him. And he’d said he was. Why? He felt a weight settle on his shoulders. He felt like an escaped criminal who’d been caught, getting sent back to prison. He might as well be wearing handcuffs. What if the trip hadn’t changed anything?

But it had.

Chuck remembered when one of their neighbors had died, trapped in a corn bin the year before. He’d gotten buried in corn and suffocated. Chuck could remember Pop describing the accident to Gram: “He just didn’t have any room to breathe,” Pop had said, again and again, shaking his head. It was like Pop had to repeat the words to make himself understand.

And Chuck had lain awake nights picturing the man, kernels of corn packed against his eyes and ears and face and nose, with no room to breathe. That’s me, Chuck had thought. I’m suffocating, too. He was surrounded by what Pop wanted and what the kids at school said about him and what the teachers said about him and what his own brothers and sisters thought about him. And what he thought about himself.

But now—Lori had given him some space, and Mom had given him some space, and the pictures he carried around in his head would give him some space, and art lessons would give him some space. And what space he didn’t have, he’d make.

Nobody can suffocate me now, Chuck thought, and it was a surprise. A happy one.





They were in the sky for the last time. The flight attendants had brought out a meal and cleared it away. Just about everyone else seemed to be sleeping now, heads bobbing uncomfortably on pillows no bigger than lunch bags.

Lori was too antsy for sleep. She flicked through her magazine—Seventeen, again—but it couldn’t hold her interest. Down the row, Chuck was peering eagerly out the window, and Mom was scribbling notes to prepare for yet another speech. Mom caught Lori’s eyes on her and made a face.

“If I do this now, I won’t have to worry about it once we get home,” she said. “I’ll have four whole days off before I leave for Kalamazoo.”

“Don’t tell Gram,” Lori said. “She’ll put you to work scrubbing windows and shelling peas.”

Mom laughed and went back to writing.

Lori regarded her mother through half-closed eyes. Poor Mom, she thought, surprising herself. “Poor Mom”? “Poor Mom”? All those fancy hotels and expensive meals and applause every night, and I’m thinking, “Poor Mom”? But fancy hotels were just empty rooms in strange cities, and the applause was just a bunch of strangers hitting their hands together.

Lori remembered how she’d thought of Mom as the Ancient Mariner, and it was true; Mom was just as trapped, her speeches were just as much an albatross around her neck. Mom kept saying the same thing over and over and over again, and she couldn’t stop any more than the Ancient Mariner could.

“When you’re on the twenty-ninth minute of your half-hour speech . . .” “When you’re down to the last second in your time-bank account . . .” “When you’re signing the last line on the contract of life . . .”

Before she had time to change her mind, Lori leaned over and tapped her mother on the arm.

“You and Daddy had a fight, didn’t you?” she asked. “The day he died.”

Mom looked startled. She stared at Lori for a long time, and Lori felt like Mom was judging her, just as she had two weeks earlier, on the first flight. But this time Lori knew that Mom wasn’t going to push her away or shut her out. Lori didn’t have to worry about being found unworthy. Very slowly, Mom began to nod.

“Yes,” she said, drawing the word out, like a whisper, an echo, a memory. “Oh, Lori, we were both so tired. And Mikey was getting into everything, and Joey was teething and crying all the time. . . . Those aren’t excuses, just . . . reasons. Tom didn’t take the time to kiss me good-bye when he walked out that door, and I yelled at him about it. And he yelled back. . . . It was just a stupid little spat. Nothing I would have remembered even a day later if—if only . . .”

Mom didn’t have to finish the sentence.