Flight (15 page)

Leanne and Kit are in their room. Kit is on the bed with one of Will’s
Airways
magazines. Leanne is hemming her dress. Her mother would be shocked to know she’s doing this with Kit in the room, but he promised, laughing, not to look. There’s something comforting about the regular sweeps of the needle, in and out, over and under. Leanne has always liked sewing. It’s steady and predictable, and if you make a mistake or end up with something you didn’t intend, you can always go back and change it. It’s nice that nothing is ever permanent. Sometimes she takes whole dresses apart and puts them back together another way, just for the fun of it.

From downstairs they can hear the ongoing monotone of the news. Her father seems to listen to the television at higher volume than he used to.

…
reports that bin Laden may have been hiding there turned out to be false
…

Leanne had been hoping this might be the moment, her chance
to have her talk with Kit. But he kissed her when he came upstairs, and she tasted beer on his mouth. She can’t say anything now, because it would sound like an accusation of some sort, a remonstrance for having had a drink. She doesn’t want to do that. She has never joined AA, never subscribed to the twelve steps, the higher power, the one day at a time. Alcohol was just something she did too much of and had to stop. She found it easier to stop cold turkey than to cut back, so that’s what she did. She’s not convinced that one drink will undo her efforts. She’s not even sure she qualifies as an alcoholic—she always considered herself a drunk. A person who was throwing her life away and didn’t care. A person who aimed for numbness. “Alcoholic” seems too clinical to describe a failure she had willingly embraced.

In a way, that’s what she fears about Mexico. It’s not that she doesn’t want to go—it’s that she does. The trip is too appealing. She’s got the store set up and her senior assistant trained well enough to run things smoothly without her for a long time, months even. And she has always been fascinated by Mexico. Her family went there when she was little, but she can’t remember. There are hazy seventies photos of her and Margaret standing in scenic spots—in front of a baffled burro, or perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. But that’s not Mexico City, which she imagines as a sprawling metropolis full of low adobe buildings and twisty streets beckoning to be explored. There, she could lose herself. That’s a seductive idea, and she’s scared to be seduced.

“Ow, damn,” she says. A red bead appears where the needle jabbed her. She puts her finger quickly to her mouth, to avoid getting blood on the dress’s pure white expanse.

As if on cue, Kit, closes his magazine. “We should probably talk.”

Leanne presses her finger against the inside of her teeth. It feels good somehow. “What do you mean?”

“Leanne, don’t be evasive.” He sets his magazine aside and sits up. That’s one nice thing about Kit, he always gives his full attention to conversations. “I know you. I can tell something is bothering you.”

Leanne leans over and peers closely at her stitches, checking their evenness. “Why would you say that?” she asks.

“Leanne.”

A dull resistance overtakes Leanne. It’s like the conversations she used to have with her mother about what she was doing with her life. Even letting the subject come up was a kind of defeat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

“Okay.” Kit lies back down on the bed and takes up
Airways
again. “If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine.” There’s a hurt edge in his voice.

“Kit.” Leanne wants to stop sewing and say something, but she can’t think of what. She leans over even farther, sewing furiously. Downstairs, the news drones on.

…
CEO resigned after an indictment for failure to pay sales taxes
…

“I don’t know,” Leanne says. “I’m sorry. I have been feeling odd.”

Kit stops reading but doesn’t sit up, just raises his head to look at her.

“I mean, doesn’t it all seem a bit strange to you? With what’s going on in the world?”

“Doesn’t all what seem a bit strange?”

Leanne stops sewing to raise an arm and gesture around her. “All this.” She waves a hand over her dress. “Satin. Tulle.”

“You’d prefer a nice cotton-lycra blend?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I’m not sure I do.”

Leanne drops her hands into the satiny pile in her lap. The fabric is smooth and shiny, untouched by the world’s rough edges. It feels like hope, like promise. “It’s just so … absurd,” she says.

Kit pinches the top of his nose. “Well,” he says, “if you mean the ceremony and all the hoopla—for lack of a better word—I guess I agree with you. White dresses and rice-throwing and big fancy cakes that are always too dry—all those things are absurd. If you mean that, yes.” He looks at her, and there’s a hollow feeling in her stomach.
“Is that what you mean?” Kit sits up and moves to the edge of the bed. “The wedding itself? Or do you mean the marriage?”

Leanne feels empty, drained of all emotion. She puts her hands on the heap of white froth in her lap. “Of course that’s what I mean,” she says. “I mean the wedding.”

Kit watches her closely, some debate playing itself out in his mind. After a moment he blinks and looks away. “The world
is
falling apart,” he says. “For me, that makes something like marriage seem even more important. It gives you something to hold on to.”

Leanne looks down at the dress again. Froth. How can you hold on to that? “You’re right,” she says. “We’ll just have to live through the hoopla, won’t we?” She makes her voice sound light.

“Mott the Hoopla,” Kit says, going back to his magazine. “Weren’t they a band in the seventies?” It sounds forced. His real sense of humor is dryer.

Leanne puts in a few more stitches. “This is killing my eyes,” she says. “I think I’ll finish it later.”

“Why don’t you have a little rest?” Kit pats the bed beside him.

Leanne stands and drapes the dress over the back of the chair she’s been sitting in. “Don’t look,” she says jokingly, and she notices that he does, in fact, glance away. Perhaps he really does want to be surprised. She moves to the bed and crawls onto it, stretching herself out beside him.

“Isn’t that better?” he says. He keeps reading but puts one hand on her calf. It rests there heavily. Her thoughts scrabble about, but she blocks them by focusing on the feel of his hand on her leg, warm and solid as a small animal.

Only that,
she tells herself.
That’s all any of this is about.

“Whatever you’re doing, it smells great.” Carol comes up the basement stairs in an expansive mood. She has been lying on the couch, half dozing while her clever grandson played with his cereal prizes and the plastic farm animals Will bought him last year. Trevor’s steady stream of chatter has soothed her, like those machines that
make the sound of ocean waves or rain on an old tin roof. Now she feels refreshed and generous, ready to make peace with everyone, ensuring their help and support for the arduous two days ahead.

Margaret has a giant pot simmering on the stove. Two of Carol’s cutting boards are on the counter with scraps on them, and a bowl of something disgusting—chicken parts, it looks like—is sweating on the counter. Averting her eyes, Carol picks up a wooden spoon and turns to the stove.

“Don’t touch that,” Margaret says.

“I was just looking at it. Is that the gumbo?” Carol sets the spoon down casually, pretending not to have noticed the bossiness in Margaret’s voice.
Family togetherness,
she reminds herself.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Margaret wipes her hands on Carol’s apron and takes a more conciliatory tone. “It’s going well. We can eat in twenty minutes or so.”

“Can I do anything?”

Margaret starts to shake her head but stops herself. “You could set the table,” she says. “I think you’ve moved things around since I was here last.”

Carol nods and goes to the linen cupboard. She finds six of her favorite place mats—yellow plastic ones with large red poppies—and carries them out to the dining room, arranging them neatly on the table. When she returns to the kitchen, Margaret is hovering by the stove, hesitant. She starts to say something, then balks.

“What?” Carol looks up on her way to the silverware drawer.

“Um, why don’t we just eat in the kitchen? It’ll be homier.”

Carol looks at the kitchen table. It is homey, but it’s not her idea of sophisticated.

“I thought we could keep the dining room nice for Friday,” Margaret adds.

It could be about Trevor, Carol tells herself. Margaret probably doesn’t want him making a mess. There’s no reason to think she’s insulting Carol’s nice dining room. “All right,” she says. She goes out to retrieve the place mats.

“You know,” she says, coming back in and rearranging the mats
on the kitchen table, “I wasn’t sure whether, when I have the B&B up and running, I should serve breakfast in the dining room or the kitchen. We always eat in the kitchen. But if there are more than six people, it will be tight.” She gets out the napkins that match the place mats and distributes them, stopping to admire the effect. The napkins are the same pattern in reverse colors: yellow flowers on a red background.

“Do you expect you’ll ever have that many guests at once?” There’s a funny strained tone in Margaret’s voice, as if she’s making herself join the conversation.

“We could have six guests at once with the three bedrooms fixed up, which makes eight, counting the two of us.” Carol turns to putting out silverware. “Should we have forks and knives or just spoons?”

“Both, I think.”

“I’m going to redo the dining room, too,” Carol goes on. “I think it should be a little more country. Maybe blue-flowered curtains and tablecloth and white dishes. And I thought I’d bring in some of those pieces from when Will’s mother died: the old butter churn and the milk can and that big washing tub and washboard.” She pauses, imagining the room finished. She had planned on putting potted plants in the big washbasin, something with tendrils like ivy that would droop down over the edge. And then she’ll fill the hutch with appealing rustic pieces of stoneware. She already has a lot of classic country pieces from flea markets and antique fairs: milk jugs with flowers on them, creamers shaped like cows, teacups sporting tiny rural scenes.

Margaret has stopped fussing over the stove and is contemplating her mother. “But Mom,” she says, “you’ve always hated that country style.”

Carol laughs and waves a hand. “I hate ducks in bonnets. All country isn’t bad.”

“You’ve spent the whole time you lived here doing everything possible to make this house look less like a farmhouse!” Margaret’s voice is light, but there’s something almost like anger behind it.

“Oh, well, you know,” Carol says. “People will come here expecting that kind of thing. Gotta give the customers what they want!”

Margaret watches her, then turns back to the stove. “So,” she says casually, “when do you expect to have this endeavor up and running?”

Carol goes to get water glasses from the cupboard. “Oh,” she says, “it’s hard to say. What with all the preparations for Leanne’s wedding …” She stops to fix a crooked fork and, unable to resist, blurts out the secret she’s been keeping like a talisman. “I’ve already placed an ad,” she says. “In the
Chicago Tribune
special section. The one on Midwest getaways.”

“You’ve placed an ad?” Margaret sounds incredulous.

“Not a big one.” Carol leans over to remove the centerpiece from the kitchen table. “Just one of those small-print ads in the back. It wasn’t very expensive.” She doesn’t mention the copy and how she agonized over it.

“When is it scheduled to run?”

Carol tries not to notice how Margaret couches everything in hypothetical terms:
when is it scheduled, when do you expect.
“It’s running at the end of June,” she says.

“Just before Dad’s birthday?”

“Oh, that.” Carol waves a hand. “He’s insisting we don’t make a big fuss.”

Margaret stiffens as if about to say something else, but then she moves to the fridge instead. “Shall we have wine with dinner?” she asks.

“I don’t care. Your father and I probably wouldn’t.”

Margaret nods and pulls a bowl out of the fridge. She’s made a large green salad. “We should probably get everyone together,” she says. “I’m just going to taste the gumbo and see if it needs more salt.”

“Well,” Carol says, succumbing to an irresistible urge to have the last word, “remember your father’s blood pressure.”

Leaving Margaret in the kitchen, she goes to the bottom of the stairs.

“Kit, Leanne!” she shouts. “Dinner’s ready!” She calls downstairs
for Trevor, then goes into the living room, where Will is watching the news. A tank is slowly rotating its way into a small street, while crowds of young men shake their fists and shout. It’s somewhere in the Middle East, Israel probably. Something catches in her throat.

“Do you have to have that on all the time?” she asks. “Dinner is ready.”

“I don’t have it on all the time,” Will says. “I watch the news for one hour every night. That’s not all the time.” He takes the remote from the coffee table.

“It’s not exactly what we all want to be hearing when we’re planning a wedding,” Carol says. She doesn’t like the way her voice sounds, but it’s too hard to explain the feeling the news story gives her, the sense of being lost, of not mattering.

“It’s the news. It’s about what’s going on in the world, not about planning weddings.”

“That’s what I mean,” Carol says, unable to back down. “It’s not helpful.” She stands there, fighting the sinking feeling, as he draws himself up from the couch, pressing his thumb against the remote several times.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she says, exasperated. “You have to aim it at the thing.”

The TV shuts off with a staticky pop. Will tosses the remote onto the couch and ambles over to Carol. “I guess I know where to aim it after all these years,” he says. He reaches out as if to grab her, then pokes the side of her hip with a finger, like a kid.

“Cut it out,” she says. “Margaret made dinner.” She turns away from him, but she feels a slight, unbidden smile tugging at her lips. Half the time, he’s like an unruly dog. You don’t want to laugh at its tricks, but occasionally, you can’t help it.