Flight (6 page)

Carol was happy for Margaret. Everything was exactly as she would have wanted it to be. Still, at the wedding she had almost wished for some last-minute disaster, some unforeseen event that would require her intervention and offer her an opportunity to prove how useful she was, remind her daughter that she was the woman who, for years, had solved all of her problems—sickness, sadness, confrontations at school. Carol could remember being all-powerful. Why was she now treated like the child? She could look at her daughter, so capable, so determinedly in control, and remember the day—not so long ago!—when she found the four-year-old Margaret sitting rigid on the floor of her bedroom, her mouth a perfect O of horror, tears sliding lasciviously from the corners of her wide eyes. Her favorite doll’s head had come off. Carol fixed it and rocked Margaret—clingy for once—on her lap, her heart aching to see how gingerly her chubby hands held the doll, unwilling to be subjected again to the appalling sight of the mute, decapitated body.

But Margaret’s wedding went off like clockwork. Guests arrived to find their hotel rooms stocked with a welcome basket put together by Margaret. Each wedding event unfolded exactly as planned: the waitstaff and caterers were as accommodating and gracious as one could wish, and the music for the ceremony—Margaret refused the traditional wedding march—was played beautifully by a string quartet from the University of Chicago. Even the weather was perfect, which was a waste, because the wedding wasn’t outside.

The only disaster at Margaret’s wedding, as far as Carol could
see, was Leanne. She arrived looking dragged out and sullen, she wore awful thrift-store getups, and she was drunk from the get-go every night. The worst night was the rehearsal dinner. That was when Carol knew something had to be done.

They were in a dimly lit banquet room somewhere on Chicago’s north side, and Carol was exhausted. She and Will had driven down the day before, arriving just in time for the cocktail reception. The next day they had tried to do some things from the list of recommended Chicago activities Margaret had included in the welcome baskets, and barely made it in time to the rehearsal dinner. There, they were stuck sitting with David’s parents for the entire dinner, and once it was over and everyone was up and mingling, David’s parents remained staunch at her side. Somehow, Will had escaped and left her to man the ship. Running out of conversational topics, she got stuck on her latest project: opening a children’s clothing store.

“I’ve always had a thing for kids’ clothes,” she told David’s mother. “Ever since the girls were little.” David’s mother was nodding and smiling in what could only be described as a matronly way. She was gray-haired and plump, and she treated Carol as if she were Margaret’s sister, not her mother.

“It’s so brave of you,” she told Carol. “Starting up a new business like that. Your own store! I’m sure I wouldn’t have the energy.”

She glanced at her husband, propped blandly at her side, and Carol wondered if the kindly matron was quietly disapproving.

“Oh, lots of people are doing it these days,” she said. She could feel the tightness in her smile. “It’s so much easier with all the new computers and software they have to help you do the accounting part.”

She glanced around the room. During the endless string of small courses—what kind of cuisine had Margaret said it was, anyway, Armenian? Andalusian?—she had noticed the waiter refilling Leanne’s wineglass at least five times. David’s parents stood, waiting for her to carry on.

“I’m hoping to find a commercial space in Kalamazoo,” Carol
continued, at a loss for anything else to talk about. “It’s a good-sized town with lots of kids.” Her eyes traveled to a group of smartly dressed young people, standing close together and laughing loudly. “Pre-millennial angst,” she heard one of them say. Chicago friends of Margaret or David. Leanne was not with them.

“So there really is a Kalamazoo?” David’s father cackled. Carol pressed her lips together in an attempt to smile at the worn-out joke.

“But Will flies out of O’Hare? Isn’t that awfully far?” asked the matron.

“Not for a pilot,” Carol said. She hoped that would suffice. She had been waiting for years for Will to get sick of the three-hour drive to O’Hare. But even after all the airlines shifted over to the hub-and-spoke system and he was required to fly out of St. Louis, Will stayed in Michigan. He flew down to Missouri on a competitor’s airline. It added half a day to every trip, but he thought it was worth it.

“You’ll have to travel, won’t you?” David’s mother said to Carol. “To do your buying and such.”

“Oh yes,” Carol answered vaguely. “I’ve always liked traveling.” It wasn’t strictly true, but it was part of her new persona as entrepreneur. She imagined herself driving to the Chicago Merchandise Mart, dressed in a smart jacket and pants.

Leanne emerged from the little hall leading to the restrooms and stood surveying the room. Carol tensed with predatory alertness. Leanne couldn’t get past without walking by Carol. The minute she was within reach, Carol grabbed her arm.

“Leanne, have you met David’s parents?” she said brightly. She felt Leanne stumble a bit, thrown off balance. She was wearing high, tottery heels and a formfitting black dress that showed off her trim figure. It had cutouts in sheer black netting around the waist. She had never dressed that way before moving east.

“Leanne lives in New York!” Carol told David’s parents. “You guys are almost neighbors.” She was aware of a slightly galled feeling as she said this. One daughter in New York, another heading for
San Francisco. She had always wanted them to get away, and once they did, she was surprised at how keenly she felt left behind.

“Oh well—,” David’s father began, but his wife interrupted him.

“It’s true it’s not so far from Westport to New York,” she said, nodding benignly. “We ought to get down there more often. We do love the opera.” Carol, still gripping Leanne’s arm, felt her squirm subtly, in exactly the way she used to as a little girl, trying to get away from something her mother thought was important.

“I can’t afford the opera,” Leanne said. Belligerence edged the gaiety of her tone. She was clearly drunk.

David’s mother smiled fixedly at her, unperturbed. “We’ve just been talking about your mother’s little project,” she said. “I think it’s so brave of her to start her own children’s clothing store.” She nodded, buffing the conversation to a quiet sheen. “And creative, too.”

“A children’s clothing store?” A waiter passed by, and Leanne, in a surprising burst of agility, managed to slide her arm out of Carol’s grasp and neatly snag a glass. “Didn’t you always say that after we left, you were going to pack up and move somewhere civilized?”

Carol heard a thudding in her ears. David’s parents pretended not to have heard. Leanne lifted her glass, and for the first time ever, Carol saw determination in her—determination aimed at oblivion.

David appeared then and took possession of Leanne. He told everyone she’d had enough to drink and he was going to drive her back to the hotel and see her to her room. There was something confident and commanding about David. Everyone agreed with what he decided.

Carol watched them leave. From behind, Leanne looked tiny and fragile. She had always been far more pliant than Margaret. From the beginning, Margaret had tested boundaries, complained, made demands. Leanne drifted along, apparently content with whatever life doled out. Occasionally, Carol would find herself trying to crack the veneer of complacency.
What do you want?
she would ask, trying not to sound critical.
What are you doing with
yourself?
Leanne would shrug and look away. She could never be drawn into talking against her will.

Once, when Leanne was about five, Carol lost track of her on the beach at Lake Michigan. She never forgot the feeling, a chasm of fear, as her body yawned open to receive a dark terror. Her knees shook and her groin clenched. She staggered down the beach, frantic. When she found Leanne, she wanted to drop to her knees and shriek out all the fear. Leanne was just twenty or thirty yards down the beach with a group of older kids. She had let them bury her up to her neck in sand.

“Oh, Leanne,” Carol whispered, watching David lead her away from Margaret’s party. Embarrassed, she glanced around to see if anyone had heard. David’s parents looked discreetly away. Carol looked down at her glass. She had found her unforeseen crisis.

Two weeks later, she flew to New York and showed up at Leanne’s place. Leanne was shocked at first, but eventually, she did what Leanne always did and accepted the state of things. She was unhappy with her life. Carol assumed a love affair had failed, but Leanne didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, they talked about what Leanne might want to do now. Two months later, financed by Carol, Leanne moved to Cold Spring and started her store.

Carol has reached the fish counter. She draws her mind back to the present, focusing her eyes on the display. The first things she sees are little jars of cocktail sauce so cute even Margaret will have to admit they’re elegant. The labels look handwritten, and the lids are wrapped in a sweet gingham fabric. Carol takes two of them and then looks for the shrimp.

To her infinite delight, the fish man has a huge bowl of the most beautiful shrimp Carol has ever seen. They are large and pale, with striking gray stripes. The only problem is that they still have their heads. And they’re twenty-four dollars a pound.

“What are those?” she asks, pointing.

“Tiger shrimp,” the fish guy says, beaming. “Just got them in from New Zealand. Best shrimp you’ll ever taste.”

“Would they be good boiled?” she asks.

“Perfect,” the guys answers. “You can’t go wrong with these critters.”

Carol admires the shrimp. She imagines arranging them around the rim of her large crystal bowl, a heap of crushed ice in the center. She can perch a small colorful bowl of the cocktail sauce in the center of the ice. It will be like a work of sculpture.

“I’ll take four pounds,” she says.

The man begins scooping the shrimp into a plastic bag.

“Wait,” Carol says. “Can you take their heads off?”

The guy stops and looks at her. He picks up one of the shrimp and, as neatly as a child plucking a dandelion, pops its head off. “It’s that simple,” he says. “Besides, they’ll taste better boiled heads on.”

Heads on is not the kind of thing Carol likes. Margaret does, though. Once when Carol was visiting Margaret’s house, Margaret baked a whole fish, its belly filled with some kind of mushroom stuffing. She brought it to the table like that—head, eyes, tail, and everything—and rolled her eyes when Carol looked away.

“All right, then,” Carol says. “Leave the heads on. My daughters are coming today, and they can help me with them.”

The bag of shrimp is so heavy she almost drops it. She puts it gently in the cart’s child seat, where nothing else can touch it, and heads for the deli counter, her heart swelling with triumph.

“Some olives, please,” she tells the deli man. “A pound of French country mix.”

After wandering aimlessly through hardware for what seems like twenty minutes, Will heads back toward the checkout counters. He didn’t expect to see Carol finishing up on time, but there she is, nudging her cart toward lane seven. She looks pleased as she pages through an issue of
House & Garden.
It must be the excitement of picking up Leanne. While the girls were little, Carol and Margaret were always in cahoots—planning home improvements, organizing school outings—but Leanne was always her baby, the silent shadow attached to her leg.

Will stops next to a stack of charcoal and lighter fluid so he can watch Carol, unobserved. She’s fifty-five, but other men still notice her. She has continued to pay attention to her appearance, her makeup always carefully applied, her hair blown shiny. When they were first married, she wore it long. Now she has it cut short and layered. It’s not unattractive. But something about her is harder than it used to be. Her angular beauty is turning into a kind of flinty coating, like the shell of an exquisite crab.

When he met her, she was in what she called her Jackie phase.

She wore neat shifts and matching jackets in bright colors. Her shoes and bags always matched. He was intimidated by her. She had grown up in Dayton, where her father owned a successful furniture store. Ed Timmins, the Duke of Dining Tables. He had a series of billboard ads showing him robed and crowned, with a different title for each type of furniture. The Baron of Bedroom Suites. The King of Couches. The Regent of Recliners. Will was just a farm boy, an officer-in-training in the Air Force. He wore his dress uniform on their first date; it made him look more impressive. Within a week, he had proposed. He didn’t want to risk losing her.

They married before he went to Vietnam. When he came back, there was Margaret, and if anything, they were happier together. It was when he decided to move back to Michigan that things changed. He had been with TWA only a couple of years, and the bankers had gotten control of it from Howard Hughes, so things were looking up. Carol was happy, too. She hadn’t wanted him to give up his Air Force career, but the war scared them both. And the airline wasn’t that different at first. They lived in a suburb of Chicago with lots of other pilots. Their wives would come over for coffee to talk about their husbands and swap airline gossip. Carol belonged to the tennis club and was looking forward to joining the nursery school board when Margaret went. It was a perfect life for her. But not for him.

After they moved, he kept thinking she would learn to love the farm. It seemed like she was trying. First she went back to school, but she dropped out before she even finished her first semester.

Then she was going to start some sort of farm-style baked-goods business, but that idea disappeared when something happened to their chickens. Later, she spent a long time taking a correspondence course in interior design and then redoing the house in anticipation of starting a decorating business. Then she switched from that to children’s clothing. She had put together enough money for the initial investment when she gave that up, too. Now there’s the bed-and breakfast. He doesn’t expect to see that happen any more than any of the other things happened, but he won’t say so. Carol doesn’t seem driven to finish things. He’s always figured the charge came from having a project.