Things Go Flying

THINGS GO FLYING

Shari Lapeña

To Manuel

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide, “All events are interconnected in this best of all possible worlds, for if you hadn't been driven from a beautiful castle with hard kicks in the behind because of your love for Lady Cunegonde, if you hadn't been seized by the Inquisition, if you hadn't wandered over America on foot, if you hadn't thrust your sword through the baron, and if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be here eating candied citrons and pistachio nuts.”
“Well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden.”
—Voltaire

God is dead. . . . And we have killed him.
—Nietzsche

CHAPTER ONE

H
arold's recent habit of reading the obituaries at breakfast was his only new hobby in years. He didn't know why he read them; it was something he couldn't really explain. He reached for another jumbo carrot muffin, his hand fumbling around in the crinkly plastic packaging, his eyes glued to the page.

“Should you be eating that?” Audrey said from over by the kitchen counter, in her quilted housecoat and bare feet.

Lately, Harold had been letting himself go—allowing the pillowy fat to accumulate around his middle—in spite of the fact that he was terrified of having a heart attack. He ignored her.

Russell Darrell Lynch
Suddenly, in a diving accident, on Sept. 22, aged 61. Beloved husband, father, and grandfather. A great adventurer, Russell climbed mountains for charity, raising money through his foundation—

Harold, chewing his muffin, reflected that
his
life, should he die tomorrow, would certainly not warrant much of an obituary.

Audrey grabbed the muffins off the kitchen table and put them back on the counter, out of reach.

Harold seemed to be having a mid-life crisis, but it wasn't about wanting to possess young, gorgeous women, or lusting after a car he couldn't even afford to insure. He wasn't sure what it was about
. Crisis
implied a certain energy, and there wasn't much energy about Harold these days. What he was having felt more like a mid-life slump. A depression.

He told himself every day that he had much to be grateful for. He had his health. He had his sons, whom he loved unconditionally. And he loved his wife, Audrey, not with the same youthful enthusiasm they'd started out with—that was hard even to imagine now, let alone remember—but with something abiding. However, he was at that age when there is more behind than lies ahead—and what lies ahead isn't all that appealing.

“My God,” he spluttered, startled out of his inertia, squinting at the newspaper and lifting it closer.

“What,” Audrey said. She was holding the coffee pot in one hand and a cloth for wiping the kitchen counter in the other. The boys hadn't come down to breakfast yet—they were going to be late for school.

Harold was slow to answer, not quite believing what he'd read. “Tom Grossman is dead!”

Audrey came to peer over his shoulder.

“Heart attack,” Harold said. He felt a sudden weirdness flooding over him, an alarming palpitation of the heart, a difficulty breathing, a pooling of the blood in his feet.

After a long pause, Audrey said, “I wish you wouldn't read the obituaries.”

Mercifully, the strange feeling was already passing. “It's a good thing I do,” Harold responded, a little petulant. If he hadn't read it in the paper, he might never have found out about Tom Grossman's death, or at least not until long after the funeral was over, so different were the circles in which they now travelled. Tom had been his university roommate and best friend, but Tom had gone on to medical school, and Harold had gone to work for the government. Tom's life had seemed to be always expanding, while Harold's had seemed to be always contracting. Somehow, they hadn't stayed in touch. He hadn't seen Tom in close to fifteen years.

But it was Tom all right; there was a photo.
Suddenly, of a heart attack, at the age of forty-nine. Christ.

Tom's life had just suffered a pretty definitive contraction.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

“I suppose we should go to the funeral,” Audrey said, sounding doubtful.

“Of course we'll go,” Harold said, thinking about how much time he had left, and about what kind of figure he'd cut among Tom's mourners at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Would his black suit still fit?

“I guess,” Audrey said slowly, “I'd better figure out what we're going to wear.”

• • •

A
UDREY, IN THE
bedroom getting ready for the funeral, had just put runs in her only two pairs of black pantyhose and was down to a single pair of charcoal grey.
Shit
. This time, she took a deep breath and deliberately slowed down, rolling them up her legs like you were supposed to. It wouldn't help any for Harold and the boys to see her agitation. And she didn't want to have to stop at a convenience store on the way and try to put on another pair in a moving car. There—the pantyhose were on and intact.

Audrey put her housecoat on over her dark blouse and pantyhose, hauled the ironing board out of the closet and plugged in the iron, worrying about Harold. Tom Grossman's death couldn't have come at a worse time. This wasn't the time for Harold to be staring mortality in the face, or to have his life thrown into relief with Tom's.

John appeared at the bedroom door and hovered, sulkily.

“What?” Audrey said.

“I don't see why I have to go. I didn't even know the guy.” Seventeen-year-old John balked at everything.

“It will be good for you,” Audrey said, beginning to press her good black skirt. John and his brother, Dylan, two years younger, had never been to a funeral. Audrey thought it was time they attended a funeral. She also believed it would do Harold good to be able to show off his two almost-grown sons, who were both tall, handsome, and looked good in a dark suit.

“I don't want to go.”

She looked at him sharply. John complained about everything. His complaining didn't bother her as much as it bothered Harold, but she had no patience for it today.

“Tom Grossman was your father's closest friend for years,” Audrey said.

“Then how come I've never heard of him?”

She was suddenly annoyed by his attitude and his smirk, and she didn't want to be annoyed. She had to attend a funeral in an hour with a depressed, socially awkward husband and two uncooperative teenagers, and Dylan had so far not even come in from the basketball net in the driveway to shower and change. Sometimes she wanted to rip that thing right off the shed wall. And worst of all, she had a nasty secret of her own that gave her a better reason than anybody else had for wanting to avoid this funeral, but she couldn't get out of it either.

She put down the iron, looked severely at her eldest son and used the tone of voice she saved for when she really had to get results. “Go get your brother and get dressed. You have twenty minutes.”

She watched John shrug himself away from the door and resumed her ironing. Her thoughts turned automatically to Harold, reclining in his La-Z-Boy in the living room. He used to work on the house and yard at this time of year. Right now, the eavestroughs needed cleaning and the gate to the backyard was coming off its hinges. Thinking of the gate made her remember how Harold had once tried to get the boys interested in how to use his tools, but they couldn't have cared less. Her sons were useless around the house, absolutely useless.

Finished, Audrey put down the iron, cocked her head, and listened intently. From long practice, she could tell exactly where everyone in the house was and what they were doing, and by checking her watch and making her various rapid mental calculations, she could determine to the minute how far they were from being on schedule, and could make the necessary adjustments.

Because she was so good at it, no one appreciated how difficult this was or how much energy it cost her. Getting three people out of the house at the same time (she didn't count herself, she was no trouble at all) at the precisely right time, properly fed, dressed, and prepared, making allowances for moods and the inevitable other difficulties— well, sometimes it came together like a beautiful, functional ballet. At those times she felt like a gratified choreographer.