Flight (34 page)

“Dad might go,” Margaret says, “if he can. But Mom won’t. She’s really into this bed-and-breakfast thing.” Margaret says the words “bed-and-breakfast” reluctantly, as if they embarrass her.

“You think she’s really going to do it?” Leanne hands over her first hand again as Margaret reaches for the polish.

“I don’t know,” Margaret says, the conviction in her voice lessening. She leans over to get a closer look at one of the nails as she paints. “I’m not sure I even understand why she wants to. But she seems pretty intent on it. She’s already put an ad in the
Chicago Tribune.
”

Leanne considers this. It’s the first she’s heard of an ad. It’s not that surprising. What’s surprising is that their mother confided in Margaret. It’s Leanne she always used to share secrets with.

Margaret leans back, surveying the result so far. A small furrow of distaste creases her forehead, and she leans forward to correct something. Leanne has the feeling that they
are
having a moment of sisterly bonding, just as their mother intended. Probably, though, she didn’t mean for it to be about her.

Maybe I could tell Margaret,
Leanne thinks. But tell her what? That she has lied to Kit? That she doesn’t want to go to Mexico? Except that wouldn’t quite be true. That she doesn’t really want to marry Kit, perhaps. Or doesn’t know if she does. Margaret wouldn’t understand that. Margaret has always known exactly what she wanted and proceeded methodically to get it. She’d never find herself in such a situation.

A still-unformed understanding of something is arriving in Leanne’s head. It’s like the moment when you’re waiting for the subway to arrive: everything is darkness until, faintly, a dim light appears in the tunnel. Slowly, it grows brighter, but there’s no sign of the train.

It’s not just that they’re different. Leanne and Margaret have never been particularly close. In grade school they played together, which meant Leanne agreed to do what Margaret wanted. When they got older, they grew even more different. They would do things together, but they never shared the kind of intimacy some sisters seemed to have. Margaret had more fun with Eddie, who was her age. Sometimes they let Leanne join them, but more often they told her she was a pain. That was where the nickname “Pester” came from. Occasionally, they were even meaner. Once they built a bike ramp out of a plank and cinder blocks. When it was Leanne’s turn to go over it, one of them moved the plank to the edge of the blocks so that when she went up it, the plank slipped off and she crashed. Neither of them would admit to doing it, but she could tell by how they laughed that they had intended to make her fall. She didn’t cry. She had learned very early that the best way to avoid more teasing was refusing to get upset.

Even when they fed her dog food, she didn’t let on that she was upset. It was a warm September Saturday sometime in junior high. They were watching the Michigan game when Margaret said she wanted a snack. Eddie and Margaret went into the kitchen, and Leanne could hear the blender. When she went in to see what they were making, ice cream and Hershey’s syrup were on the counter, and the two of them were holding jumbo plastic cups from 7-Eleven. Margaret was sucking the straw on hers, but the shake was thick, and her cheeks were caving in with the effort. As Leanne came in, Margaret gave up, pulled out her straw, and lifted the cup to her lips. When she took it away, a slash of chocolate was across her top lip. She smeared the back of her hand against it.

“What do you want?” she asked, and Leanne said, “Can I have one?”

Margaret was about to say something, but Eddie slipped down off the countertop where he had been sitting.

“I’ll make you a shake,” he said to Leanne. “Go watch the game. Call us if Michigan scores.” Margaret shrugged and looked bored, so Leanne went.

When the two of them came back into the TV room, Margaret handed Leanne a plastic cup, her eyes on the game.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asked, throwing himself into the armchair. Margaret went to the other end of the couch and curled up, feet tucked under. Leanne took the proffered cup and let the first gulp slide, shockingly cold, down her throat.

“How is it?” Eddie asked.

“Okay,” she said. The two of them shrieked with laughter.

“Oh my God, you ate
dog food!
” Margaret gasped, and Leanne’s throat constricted.
I will not throw up,
she told herself.
I will not cry.
She set the cup down on the coffee table.
I will not take that to the kitchen,
she thought.
They can do that.
And the cup sat there, sweating circles onto the table, through the afternoon, through Margaret and Eddie’s spontaneous bursts of laughter, through Michigan’s pathetic loss, until their mother came and said, “Time to go.” Then Margaret silently picked up the cup and carried it to the kitchen, and Leanne felt that something, no matter how small, had been won back.

“There,” Margaret says. She holds Leanne’s hand up in front of her, as if she’s incapable of lifting it herself. “What do you think? Do you want another coat?”

Leanne looks at her nails. They’re still stubby and gnawed at, but Margaret has smoothed the edges to a nice curve, and the pink gives them a finished quality.

“They look great. Thanks,” Leanne tells her.

“The thing is,” Margaret says, “Mom has always wanted to go somewhere else. But that was before. I’m not sure she wants that anymore. I think she wants something of her own.”

“Something of her own?”

“You know, like a business.”

“But she’s always said she wanted that,” Leanne says, waving her hands in the air to dry them, “and she’s never followed through on it.”

“Well,” Margaret says, “she got pretty close, with the children’s clothing store.” She stops suddenly, turning to put nail polish bottles back in the cabinet. There’s something too deliberate in the set of her shoulders.

Leanne looks down at her hand. “Dad didn’t give me my seed money, did he?” she says. “It was Mom’s. For her store.”

Margaret turns back, and from the honest misgiving on her face, Leanne can see that she didn’t make this revelation on purpose.

“You didn’t know that?” she says.

Leanne shakes her head. She doesn’t trust herself to speak. She crosses her arms in front of her.

“Watch out for your nails,” Margaret says, pointing.

Leanne extracts her hands gently and examines them for damage. “They’re okay,” she says.

They both stand there. They should turn and walk out, head downstairs to help out. But something unsaid hangs in the air. Leanne blows on her fingernails again, lightly, with pursed lips, so the thin stream of air tickles her fingers. She waits for Margaret to say something. She can feel Margaret waiting as well.

“Girls!” Their mother must be at the bottom of the stairs, yelling up. “I could use your help with the deviled eggs!”

“Eggs.” Margaret raises her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth in a mirthless grin, then sighs herself into motion. Leanne finds herself nodding, even though Margaret has said nothing that might require agreement. Margaret points at Leanne’s nails one more time before heading out the door.

“Don’t knock them against anything for two hours,” she says.

Someone must need Will somewhere. Party setup is in full swing, and he has already done the one job he was assigned: to deliver Kit’s mother, Bernice, from the Grand Rapids airport. She’s not quite
what he expected. He had in mind a plump, gray-haired matron in a dress and jacket, perhaps sporting a hat or a hairnet—someone like David’s mother—but Bernice is nothing like that. For starters, she’s tall—not just tall but statuesque—and she has blond hair cut in a fashionable chin-length style. She wears a pantsuit with a large scarf draped across it, adding to the impression of height and giving her a vaguely bohemian aspect. Magnifying the effect is her attitude of uninhibited, uncomplicated warmth for everyone and everything around her. She behaves like a movie star turning on the charm for her fans.

“So Leanne tells me you’re a pilot,” she said to Will in the car. Kit was in the backseat. “And also of your attachment to your farm. I must say, I find that very humanizing.” Will was unsure how to respond. What did it mean to call someone humanized? Bernice has a distinct British accent. He’s sure Kit said his mother has lived in the States for over thirty years. That’s often true of English people. It’s as if they hang on to their accents on purpose. Will didn’t say much for the rest of drive, just nodded and gave short answers to her questions.

Now they’re home, and Bernice has met everyone and been shown to her room to “freshen up,” as Carol puts it. Kit has gone outside to deal with the birdcage. Will roams around downstairs, looking for something to do. He passes Leanne on her way to the dining room, a stack of table linens balanced on two flattened palms.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“This is all they’ll let me do,” she says, moving past. She betrayed him this morning, and now she won’t answer a simple question. She’s holding out on him, they’re all holding out on him, angry about the Cathay Pacific revelation. He’s officially the villain now. He listens to her rustling in the dining room. It makes him feel helpless and somehow bereft. He puts a hand on his neck and rolls his head right and left, cracking it.

In the kitchen, Carol is peeling eggs and passing them to Margaret, who is slicing them in two and popping the yolks in a metal bowl. Both of them are frowning, intent on their tasks, and
Will pauses in the doorway, surprised at how alike they look from behind.

“What can I do?” he asks. He senses a stiffening in Carol as he speaks. So she’s going to continue with the cold treatment. Her voice is level, the tone that offers him nothing.

“Probably you should just stay out of the way,” she says.

Margaret glances up. There’s something edgy in the way she’s moving—it’s been there since she arrived, but it’s clear she’s going to acknowledge nothing, at least not to him. Her eyes meet his briefly, her expression carefully blank, before she goes back to her task.

“So David’s not coming for the ceremony, either?” Will asks.

She looks up again, and this time there’s a flash of something, perhaps anger, perhaps fear. “He just couldn’t,” she says. “He’s completely swamped.”

Carol moves a step closer to Margaret. “I think we should use the large blue plate for these,” she says. “You finish the eggs. I’m going to get going on those garnishes.”

“We’ll have to make space in the fridge.” Margaret turns away to look at the fridge, and Will fears he’s overstepped the line and made her cry. He stands there, unsure whether to retreat or try to contain the damage.

“You know what you could do, Dad,” Margaret says, turning around. She is not crying. She looks as composed and determined as ever. “You could go help Kit paint the other birdcage. It’s sitting out in the garage.”

“Oh yes, get it, please,” Carol adds. “Help him take it out to the barn, so he doesn’t get paint all over everything.”

“He already went to the barn with it,” Margaret tells her. “I saw him heading out there about an hour ago.”

“Oh.” The two of them pause, coming to an agreement without language. Will feels stupid as he waits. A transaction has occurred, but he has missed its import. Clearly, they’re casting about for reasons to dismiss him, but he can’t point that out because both of them would feign innocence and ask him what on earth he could mean. He would then be accused of bothering
them with silly distractions and making trouble when there was work to do.

“Why don’t you go entertain Trevor for a little while?” Carol says. “He’s in the basement, right?” She looks quickly at Margaret.

“Is he? I didn’t take him down there.” Margaret stops what she’s doing. “I thought he was upstairs.” She wipes her hands hastily on a dish towel. “I’ll go and check on him.” She hurries out of the room.

It’s Trevor. Whatever is bothering her has something to do with Trevor.

“I’m sure he’s just playing somewhere,” Carol says, more to herself than to Will. She glances up at him and sighs, obviously finding it harder to ignore him with Margaret gone.

“How long are you going to be mad at me?” he asks. Immediately, he regrets saying it. She’ll take it as provocation and be even madder.

To his surprise, she merely presses her lips into a thin line.

“I’m not …” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I kept meaning to tell you about the job. But I wasn’t sure it would come through. I thought it would be a nice surprise.” Even he can hear the false edge in his voice. He kept his secret because he was afraid of her anger; both of them know that. He lifts his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t have to take it,” he says.

Carol leans back against the counter. “Yes, you do,” she says. “You do and you will.” Her voice has some of its angry edge back, but its dominant note is resignation.

“It would be fun,” he says, sensing an opening and unable to resist aiming for it. “You’ve always wanted to live abroad.” He wants this. He’s surprised at the strength of his desire.

“It would have been fun,” she says. “It would have.” He can’t tell if she’s giving him something or taking something away. She turns away from him and starts fussing with a bowl of radishes, taking them out one at a time and examining them. Will sees that her thumb is bandaged.

“What’d you do to your thumb?” he asks.

Carol moves it slightly, pulling it toward herself as if embarrassed by it. “It’s just a little cut,” she says. He can hear the barrier
dropping down in her voice, like a garage door closing on the day. Conversation over. He’s discharged, whether honorably or dishonorably, he can’t tell.

“I guess I’ll go help Kit with that cage,” he says. “Like you wanted.” He stands there for a moment, watching his wife’s back. It offers him nothing.

AT FIVE O’CLOCK, CAROL AND MARGARET START TAK ing things out of the fridge and carrying them to the dining room table. Leanne is upstairs showering. She and Kit took a walk in the late afternoon, showing Bernice around the farm. Carol felt an odd flash of displeasure when Leanne suggested it.