September Again (September Stories) (6 page)

“Here, here
,” he replies, raising his glass in a toast.

They chat. H
e says something about Nashville and of getting back to work, while she nods and smiles. As the rest of the passengers in First Class settle in for the final dark leg of the flight, she smiles at Mr. Alabama. Taking a cocktail napkin from the tray before her, Zelda begins to scribble her phone number, then folds the napkin in half, crumpling it and dropping it on the beverage tray.
I can’t do that,
she thinks
. He would never look at a girl like me unless we were trapped across the aisle from each other on an nine-hour flight. It is useless.

After finishing his drink,
he furrows his eyebrows. Hunched forward like a monk, staring into the darkness to read a magazine, the cone of light from his overhead cabin lamp glares and silhouettes him in the dark. He crumples the cocktail napkin and bounces it like a little ball in his hand.
Is he actually going to ignore me for the remainder of the flight?

The final meal of the flight is served
by the sub-zero BMI attendants. The chicken dinners always smell so strange, it makes Zelda glad to be a vegetarian. The noise in the cabin increases as the passengers realize they will be in Atlanta soon.

He places his head on the back of the seat and buzzes the
attendant for one more drink. Zelda cross her legs nervously. This man is ignoring her and she hates rejection.

Realizing he has nothing further to say, she takes a sho
rt stroll around the cabin.
British Airways offers the best transatlantic flights,
Mum
always says.
She snarls as she thinks it. Tea is even served in china cups.
Dad took me to tea in London many times when I was a little girl. Why did he have to die instead of Mum?
So many people all on their way to a new place or returning home. She wondered what their stories were. Would someone they loved be waiting for them when they arrived? Where they running away from something or running to a new life?

Once
she returns to her assigned seat, she realizes the conversation is over with her new friend. He was a nice guy, but it did make her feel sad, knowing that there would be no further conversation with him. Maybe if she were pretty and thin, he would be chatting away. Maybe even want to take her somewhere for a late dinner and a chat. But, no. She is the chubby one with the bad complexion. Guys don’t want to know girls like her.

The wheels squeak, she smells gas
; two more squeals of protesting rubber and she finds herself in Atlanta. One more thud and she would believe the plane was protesting about having the fat girl onboard. She texts Marlowe.
“HI I’m here. Yay I’m in Americ
a


See you in international baggage claim.”
Her first non-supervised transatlantic flight is without incident and makes Zelda realize that this was actually the beginning of her new life. She needs to be here. She needs to know more about this place, its people – her people.

The movement through Custo
ms has greatly improved since her last visit with her mother. Within minutes, she arrives at baggage claim, awaiting the scruffy duffle bag and back pack. Someone nudges her arm.
Is Marlowe here so quickly?

“Here’s my private number. You call me if you need anything. Anything. You understand? Call anytime, day or night
,” he softly drawls while covertly slipping his business card into her gaping carry-on bag.

Looking up, she
sees the blue eyes of Mr. Alabama. “Why, of course,” she says, smiling sweetly. Squinting her eyes, she sees the card says “
Dr. Joseph Tillman
.”

“Doctor? You told me you were an accountant
,” she snarls. Why does she feel as if she has been outsmarted?
No one has ever outsmarted me. Ever.

“Me
n are gonna lie to you to a girl like you,” he whispers, reaching down to pick up his bag from the conveyor. “Especially to a pretty young lady like you. Men are gonna tell you anything, baby girl.”
Why did my heart flip-flop?
She thinks.

With that
, he is gone. Disappearing into the crowd like a sexy ghost, he vanishes. Zelda walks through the crowd, looking for Marlowe. Marlowe insisted on meeting her at the airport.
I love her so much. She makes me feel safe. She accepts me,
Zelda thinks
.
Finally, she sees her, speaking to
him
. Had she been set up? Is he on the payroll? Are they paying men to travel with her?
What is going on?

“Marlowe! Marlowe! I’m here!” Waving wildly
to her, Zelda’s excitement at seeing her godmother overcomes any suspicions on her part.

“Zelda, oh honey, look at you! You are beautiful! I swear, you are a clone of your father. Here, let our driver get your bags. You’ve got to tell me all about your flight. Where do
you want to grab a bite to eat? And, you are eighteen now; we can officially have a drink together at my club.” Her beautiful chocolate face beams at Zelda as she speaks.
She really does love me! She cradles me in her arms and kisses me on the head, as if I am her child, gently stroking my hair.

“How are you, Marlowe? I’ve missed you so! How has your day been? What have you planned for my visit? We’ve so much to share!
Thank you for getting me away from my stupid mother. She is really an absolute idiot, isn’t she?”

Taking
Zelda’s hand, Marlowe says, “Please be careful, sweetheart. Your mother is my best friend in this world. We have time to talk about all
that
later. I can’t believe you’re here. Now, let’s get out of this airport and on our way to Midtown. Zelda, we’ve got places to go and people to see. Welcome to Atlanta, Georgia, your new hometown.”

With that
, she squeezes Zelda’s hand again and they begin the walk to the waiting limo. The cool night air holds the scent of jet fuel mingled with Georgia pines. The stars are faintly visible, even with the glare of the airport lights as the car pulls away from the subterranean car lot.

Once in the car, she has
to ask, “Marlowe, who was the gentleman you were speaking with at the airport? Do you know him?”

“
He attended med school at Vanderbilt. He served a rotation as one of my interns when I held a teaching fellowship there. He lives in Nashville still. Nice man. He’s a Doogie Howser type. A Wunderkind. He is absolutely brilliant. He completed med school and all his Boards by the time he was twenty-one years old. Dr. Joseph Tillman. He has become an excellent physician; a psychiatrist.  He told me in an email last week that he was in London for a certification meeting. I told him my god-daughter would be visiting Atlanta. We found it interesting that you and he were booked on the same flight into Atlanta. Did you get a chance to meet him?”

Psychiatrist?

“No. No, not really,” she mumbles to Marlowe.

“That’s what he said. He said he saw you and you
seemed to behave yourself as a proper young lady.”

She
has to find out if he is on the payroll.
Although what if he really liked me?

“Where do you want to have a late dinner, Marlowe?
We so need to chat. I am having such trouble attempting to write. It appears I have lost my muse. Let’s talk about that and see if we can jolt me from this damned writer’s block.”
Oddly, I hadn’t thought about Indie too much on the flight, funny thing that. She is who I wished to write about.
With that, Marlowe and Zelda chatter and giggle as the limo glides silently toward the Phoenix City of Atlanta, Georgia in their own magic carpet, taking them to a destination somewhere amidst the twinkling lights of Midtown.

I
t’s twenty-one years to the minute, almost, since Indie Shadwick ended her life by walking into the speeding Penzance to London express train. Zelda approaches the exact spot of her exit with a posy of flowers in one hand and a poem in the other. She walks quickly, just as an eyewitness describes Indie’s passage through the hay meadow down to the railway. This macabre pilgrimage is the real and covert reason for Zelda’s return from the States for a break, not because she is freaked by her mother’s breakdown. Zelda’s taken to the States. She’s popular among her newfound peers there. Popular? Zelda? Strange but true. Marlowe, her godmother, treats her far better than her own mother does. Nothing gets past Marlowe’s guard, that’s for sure. But she doesn’t mind. Somehow, a talking to from Marlowe is a badge of honor. And she cooks up a mean rack of barbecued ribs.

All in all
, her scheme to break out from Cornwall without her mother’s blessing has worked a small miracle. She’s even been to a gym for the first time in her life. And, to her amazement, she loves it. It’s harder for her to lose weight now that she’s dropped the easy stones, but she’s still getting thinner, even with Marlowe’s cooking. Above all, she got to see Athens’ 40 Watt Club, where Indie and her father had their first American triumph with the Renaissance Bards – their breakthrough performance. And she got to swim naked in the Chattahoochee River in the same place where Indie did her famous Homage to Aurora. Life is sweet for Zelda in the States. It might not even be going too far to say that some of the kids there actually love her. For the first time in her life, the very first time – being the daughter of a famous father is not a rock around her neck. They, those kids with any appreciation for literature, actually love her father. She’s been knocked sideways. “Your father was the great Jack O. Savage? Really, really? Oh! My! God! I so loved his poem about getting off meds.” She smiles to herself. “What is it like being the daughter of such a famous poet?” She’s even been invited to address a group of poets at Vanderbilt University. Maybe she will go there as a student.
Maybe I’ll run into Dr. Tillman somewhere
. She likes everything about the place. She has never felt more welcome, or at home, since she rocked up in Atlanta and on to Nashville. She likes Atlanta very much but likes Tennessee, too.

Her blogs on Indie are getting more and more hits. More or less ignored in England, they now get thous
ands of hits. And her following on Twitter is off the scale now. She already knows how she will write up her pilgrimage to Indie’s deathplace. But that is for another day. The point and purpose of her return from the States is about to come to a head. She can see the spot. She was worried that others might be there and spoil HER Indie moment. But she needn’t have worried. The meadow leading down to the railway is deserted but for her, as is the fence along the edge of the track. She can see the bend, so vividly described by the poor train driver in his evidence to the inquest into Indie’s death. She’s often wondered what she would feel at this exact moment. In the event she feels anything.

What? What does she feel?
All of a sudden, her presence there becomes painfully important. She has to get this right. This is not about her, Zelda. Her feelings do not matter. This is for Indie, Indie Shadwick, the tragic Daughter of Poetry – and the real love of her father’s life. The woman who, if things had been different, would have been her mother. She reaches the fence overlooking the track, which curves away like an exo-spine running the length of Somerset. She pauses at the fence. She has to get this right. She checks her watch. The London train still runs at the same time. Three minutes to THE moment, twenty-one years from Indie’s death.

“
Zelda! ZEL-DA! Stop it! Stooooo-p it!”

Zelda turns to face her mother
, who is being followed by a pained-looking Malachy. Zelda flinches.

“
You BASTARD, Malachy! You absolute fucking ba-stard!”

Liz
trips and falls heavily in the grass with a whimper, her left shoe flying off her foot. Malachy stops to help her up. Zelda advances towards them, fists clenched, the posy of flowers crushed, as the Penzance to London express thunders past on the track at the foot of the gently sloping meadow – twenty-one years to the minute since Indie Shadwick’s death. Meanwhile, in a cheap nursing home in a forgettable cul-de-sac in Croydon, the broken driver of that train gazes at a wall, happily oblivious to the television in a corner where sad people are arguing out their sub-prosaic lives presided over by the usual pit bull presenter. “Is it Friday?” is all he says these days. “Is it Friday?” Actually, it’s a Thursday, but no matter.

Zelda ignore
s her distraught mother and punches Malachy in the mouth, snarling all the while. Blood shows on his mouth, although he does not cry out. She kicks at him, misses, then kicks again, catching him on the thigh, at which point he does groan. More blood. Liz catches hold of her daughter, but Zelda shrugs her off and she falls to her knees once more where she remains, sobbing. Malachy backs off to one side, pursued by Zelda, who walks after him with sinister deliberation. She still has the posy in her fist. Of the poem, there is now no trace.

“
You told HER! Didn’t you? Bastard.”

“
We thought you were going to do something stupid,” he splutters, his words borne on a fine spray of blood.