The Invention of Flight (3 page)

The singer knows that she is nothing to the percussionist and feels that that somehow protects her, this awareness of his motives, the way he automatically reaches for women like a newly blind man who, in order to move from this room to the next, this street to the next, constantly must feel the touch of something—a chair, a wooden table, a railing, a bush, a tree—or be overwhelmed by the immensity of space around him, once teeming but now, without sight, empty. She realizes also that he is not indiscriminate, reaches only for the beautiful, the talented, is flattered by this attention at the same time she is aware of a certain danger in the clearness of his eyes, the practiced fumbling with keys at
doorways, the lovely structure of his face and shoulders, his hands, something sinister in the way he expects always to be met with yes, with compliance, is so sure of this that he never asks. The one frightening truth she learned as a young girl is that men who ask if they can kiss her are the ones she never wants to kiss. As he talks she becomes aware of the texture of the black wool dress on her skin, the way it tapers to her wrist, the slimness of that, the heartbreaking beauty of the silver in her bracelet. She moves her hand to watch the light catch in the bracelet, to watch the grace of her own fingers, something she seldom notices, how good the air feels to her, the night. She can feel herself wanting to hum, to sing, imagines how she will look on her first album cover, a famous jazz singer performing for audiences of thousands, each one of them in love with her and she distant, remote. There are certain songs she hears which are so beautiful that she can't bear to think that she hadn't written them, certain voices so perfect that she can close her eyes and feel them in her throat. The percussionist touches her face and she knows the smoothness of her skin beneath the thumb that he runs in a half moon from her cheekbone to chin. He tells her that he's been in love with her for years, has worshiped her voice, that she is more talented than he, more intelligent than he, that he feels a kinship with her, something mystical, that he wants to be a part of her greatness, and she leans against the wall, catches her lower lip in a tooth, is aware of the movement, the roundness of her breasts, moves toward him finally at the same moment that his eyes grow cloudy, that he looks away, that he turns to leave.

In the kitchen, the percussionist has to step over the tuba player to get to the bottles on the counter. He fills his glass with straight bourbon, knows he is already drunk, can't remember exactly what he's said to the singer, but knows he could have her if he wanted, if that's what he wanted, is not sure. To take the risk of the rhythm being not right, the sound of springs becoming at one time more important to him than anything, he now sleeps only on a mattress, hoping still for perfect syncopation not a matter of technique but of communication like jazz artists who can improvise together, a rarity. And the women, paradoxically, thinking of him only as an object, building romantic fantasies about him, returning always to the others, the ones they take seriously so that now he gets rid of them before they have that chance. He slides down the kitchen counter, sits on the floor next to the tuba player who leans his red cheeks toward him and asks which one he's taking home, what's it like, is it true that it's awful the morning after. The percussionist pities the tuba player but doesn't answer him, takes a sip of his drink, thinks that the mornings are the best part. His mouth always tastes sweet when he wakes, no matter how much he's had to drink, and he always wakes before the woman so that he looks at her asleep in the light, more innocent, and he goes downstairs, makes coffee and toast, puts on music, and sits looking out a window. In the winter he makes a fire, never is reading the paper when she comes down in one of his bathrobes, hair combed by now, warmed by the mug of coffee he has for her, by the fact that he's been waiting for her, that he does in fact have respect for her. Then the civilized conversation about books,
about music, and he never asks her to go, always lets her decide on the right time. He has never been disappointed. As he begins to get up from the floor, the tuba player says my wife thinks you're sexy, sometimes I think she pretends that I'm you, and the percussionist reaches a hand down to him, says come back and join the party, but the tuba player shakes his head, no, takes some of his drink, which is bright red from sweet cherry juice and which sickens the percussionist. He leaves the kitchen, having decided that the singer would be pleasant in the morning even if perhaps disappointing at night. He stops in the doorway, thinks that he's been to bed with half the women in the room, that they've told him their secrets, all comfortably now in conversation as if there isn't someone in the room who could suddenly shout I know you, I know who you are, what you're afraid of. He looks at them, the flutist, the singer, the rest of them, even the cornet player, the pianist, the teacher himself, decides that they're all hideously alike in some way, pauses, feels suddenly that the room is too small, too full, leaves through the side door and no one notices.

The back yard is circled by small trees, the base of the trunks wrapped in white tape like the legs of race horses. They make her feel wild like the dry brittle leaves she's sitting on and the wind and the movement of branches reflected in the at-night-black glass of the small greenhouse make her feel wild. She holds a leaf to the part of her face that feels hot from the flame. There is the pleasant odor of dust, of stems, a rusted scythe blood red among the weeds, the red of the quince bush,
dried foliage of peonies and geraniums, she is mad for this, for all of it. She sees the drummer come out the door to the side yard. Always he has smiled at her, the kindest smile, and passed on. He doesn't see her now, sits down at the base of a tree, stretches one leg out in front of him, then the other, slowly, like an old man would. Somewhere there is the sound of hammering, the movement of birds, a boy practicing archery in a yellow lighted garage two houses down, a loose wire thudding rhythmically on a wooden house. She sees the drummer put his head back against the tree, look up, the strength of his hand running down his leg to one knee, knows that he is feeling the same things she is, hearing, seeing the same things, and she thinks of going to him, of saying something to him, but she doesn't. Instead she too leans back, looks up, stars tangled in the emptying branches of trees, of wires, and all of it, all of it singing.

Summer, and the sidewalk cracks are lush with weeds; the concrete buckles. Last year's crop of high school pom-pom girls push strollers with new babies over the waves of sidewalk, the wheels catching. A factory that makes car seat cushions sends out clouds of white fallout, coating flowers. A half acre of old tires catches fire and smoulders.

Mrs. D. watches through her screen. She knows the names of the girls' grandparents, remembers the factory strikes when executive wives kept guns in their cars next to their children. She was born in the corner house defined by the sidewalks, was almost blown out the upstairs window trying to save her good silk dress from the Walnut Street tornado. Fifty years ago she danced under the stars in an indigo dress at her senior prom and that night went to bed with TB until she rose a year later, cheerful and undaunted. She sees the girls and their strollers, but she doesn't see the white dust on the flowers and she's unaware of the burning tires. In the spring she hides plastic daffodils among last year's dried-up weeds. Before the factory, the streets were paved with star bricks and trod by pony carts, dress materials were fine and costly and one-of-a-kind, her house the cornerstone of the finest neighborhood. Her
house is wood, painted white, very little of it chipping, and that in the back. An asbestos roof is lined with delicate lightning rods.

Energetic, still known for her cheerfulness, she looks twenty years younger than she is, even in bright sunlight. She attributes it to the Normans, Merle and Vincent Peale. Her husband looks older—gray, almost too thin—but he too suffers from a constant optimism which keeps his paper-dry skin healthily pink, his movements agile, his eyes clear. He has a small business and still works at age seventy. When anyone new moves into the neighborhood, they're the first ones to call with a loaf of sweet bread. They never had children, and they're the kind of long-married couple that other people point to and say, “How like newlyweds,” or “Married couples stay more in love if they don't have children.” They go out for dinner at least twice a week, have friends in at least once. They make charming dinner companions. Mr. D. brings his wife cinnamon toast and coffee on a tray every morning before she gets out of bed. In all their years of married life, no one has ever seen them disagree about anything, even though they both have strong opinions.

Mrs. D. hears a knock at her back door and turns back through her living room and out through the kitchen. A short, stubby woman in bermuda shorts stands with her back to the door, bent over and clapping for a dog to stay in the yard. “Mrs. Lovelace,” Mrs. D. smiles. “Call me Lonnie,” the woman says, then, “Just a minute” and she runs after the small dog, dragging it back and attaching it to a post by a two-foot chain. The post is in the sun and Mrs. Lovelace always forgets to leave water
when she goes to work. Mrs. D. has mentioned it a hundred times and Mrs. Lovelace always seems to take it to heart, but she continues to forget the water and she never moves the post, so that Mrs. D. has decided that Mrs. Lovelace is probably feebleminded like many of the Kentucky people seem to be, as much as she hates to say it, using old television tubes for target practice, and hanging sheets at the windows, their children always dirty and running around in underwear, and their houses crumbling. She finally decided that the Lord had just given her an opportunity to do good works when Kentucky people moved into the double next to her house and left her with the responsibility of keeping the dog alive while the husband and wife were off making seat cushions and their one daughter at home, a fifteen-year-old girl who was already pregnant and big as a house without even making it to the pom-pom squad, sat upstairs eating Oreos and reading
True Confessions.

“You know,” Mrs. D. tries again, “you could get your husband to dig another hole for that post over there next to the redbud, and your dog would get more shade.” Mrs. Lovelace comes back up the steps, her dry, over-permed hair sprayed hard, a brush roller in the bangs and a metal clip in the back for no discernible reason. Mrs. D. doesn't open the screen door, but talks to her through it. “That jerk,” Mrs. Lovelace says, and she looks away from Mrs. D. The sun makes her face look sallow, and Mrs. D. notices that parts of her face are twitching. Mrs. D. looks at her watch and notices it is two hours past when Mrs. Lovelace ordinarily leaves for work. “Don't you work on Tuesdays now?” she asks, trying to distract Mrs. Lovelace from the crying that
seems to be inevitable. But her face still twitches and finally, without looking, Mrs. Lovelace reaches up to open the door and Mrs. D. steps back into the kitchen as the woman enters and saying “I'm sorry, could I have some water?” sits down at the formica kitchen table that is covered with two sets of Mrs. D.'s crystal—the amber and the green, this being the day she had planned to give them a good dusting.

Mrs. Lovelace picks up one of the amber goblets and hands it to her, letting out a large sob at the same time so that Mrs. D. lunges for the glass which she's afraid will meet its irreplaceable end on the kitchen floor. She takes the glass over to the sink and reaches up into the cabinet for a plastic one which she fills with tap water. She gives it to the woman and then goes over to the coffee-maker to pour herself some coffee. She wishes her husband were here. Together, with their positive thinking and their collective wisdom, they've counseled a lot of poor souls, often transient people like this one who have followed the industrial revolution from Kentucky to Indiana and most of whom are now out in Texas. They've taken in three or four runaway children at different times and turned them from delinquents. “Just give them love and let them know they're responsible for their own happiness,” she would say across cut-flower arrangements at dinner parties. Mrs. D. never heard of a woman giving birth to a defective baby without saying “She must have had too many drinks or smoked or taken drugs” or of a new case of cancer without tracing it to an earlier tragedy, improperly dealt with. Her own life has been flawless, her health, after the TB, perfect, and she believes she can take credit for
that. A regular churchgoer, she's proud she gives the Lord so little trouble. She never asks for anything when she prays, aside from world peace and other things she has little control over, and she's sure that the amount of His time she frees up by causing so little trouble every day helps someone somewhere, the Kentuckians of this world who are always, it seems, so miserable.

She takes her cup of coffee over to the table and sits down across the crystal goblets from Mrs. Lovelace. As frustrated as she's been with that whole family, she's excited by the opportunity to help them. “Now, tell me what's wrong,” she says, “Mrs. Lovelace.”

Mrs. Lovelace reaches inside her blouse and pulls out a Kleenex from somewhere among a tangle of straps, then starts tearing it apart distractedly and sniffing. “It's that man,” she says, and in between sniffing and periodic sobs tells Mrs. D. a long story about her husband's drinking problem, how he's beaten her for years, but never badly, and how finally yesterday when he came home and started beating her fifteen-year-old pregnant daughter by her first marriage so that the poor sensitive girl had moved out to stay with a friend and said she wouldn't be back until the husband was gone, Mrs. Lovelace had decided to kick him out and told him as much. “And he just laughed in my face,” she says, and she rips the Kleenex further as Mrs. D. watches the fibers hit the air and settle on some of the green goblets. “I decided that if I stayed home from work and I got me someone to help, I could move all his belongings out of the house and change the locks and then he'll see who'll fix his supper and who won't.”