A Chick in the Cockpit (14 page)

Another difficulty with aviation is that you never know when you'll have a huge weather or mechanical delay. In the past, I would sometimes get home days late. How was I going to get care for Lindsey? Brad wouldn't do it or let a nanny live with us. I said I could go back to work just until we got some steady clients and our finances stabilized. If I didn't go back now, my currency would expire and it would be harder and harder as each week passed. It was now or never. Brad was a licensed pilot and knew the rules and terms. He knew the intricacy of the aviation world, but he was astonished that I even mentioned going back to flying.

This conversation lead into the discussion about trust again and he let it be known that he was deeply offended that I thought he couldn't make our business prosper. He said it was because of my negative attitude towards his ability that our business wasn't thriving, and that if I just put my full trust behind him, then things would get better.

I wanted to believe. I knew Brad could sell snow to an Eskimo. He was a natural bull-shitter and salesman. He could get you to smile even when you didn't want to, and he could be standing on hot coals and look you in the eye with a smile and say he was cold. I wanted it to work, so I said I'd set aside the idea about returning to work, but I don't think he was convinced. His ego was wounded to think his wife would go back to work to pay for his mistakes.

15
Unidentified Indications of Impending Failure

1.
Aircraft components fail in unique individual ways

2.
No one knows how or when they will fail

3.
The only guarantee is that even the strongest components must eventually fail

4.
It ain't gonna fix itself

A Boeing 747 has approximately six million parts, give or take a few bolts, not including the 250 miles of wiring. Engineers understand that items will eventually fail, so all aircraft are designed to have their major or moving components fail to the “safe” mode/function so as to not damage other devices or put personnel in danger. This fail-safe concept is used in all fields of engineering, like having a dead man's switch on a lawnmower or Jet Ski. Since many types of failure are possible, it must be specific to what failure a component should fail into—either the “safe” or “secure” mode.

If, for example, a building catches fire, a fail-
safe
system would unlock the doors to let firefighters in. A fail-
secure
mode would lock the doors to prevent unauthorized access. One would think that safe and secure are both positive traits, but it always depends on the situation.

Two days before the New Year, the sun had finally powered through the clouds. One of Lindsey's first Christmas presents was a crystal ornament that refracted rainbows around the room when placed in the sun. I hung it up in her window that morning and laid her on a blanket in the middle of the room. She had been kicking and squirming, but when she saw the rainbows, she stopped in mid-movement and held her breath. Her eyes opened wide and she squealed in delight at the sight of a thousand rainbows dancing on her walls and ceiling. I took off her pajamas and let her move around with just a diaper on. She loved the sensation and freedom of being half naked after months of winter clothes, and the sun was warm on her skin. Since she was content and safe, I left the door open and walked down to the computer room where Brad was working on setting up our new QuickBooks program.

Brad was holding his head like it would explode. I understood because that's how I felt in class trying to learn QuickBooks. I sat on the bed behind him and he started asking questions about getting the program set up. Unfortunately, the class I took was just one day and they only discussed how to use an existing program. For every question he asked, I had to answer that I didn't know or wasn't sure. He had been sitting for hours and his frustration was at its maximum level, but I didn't realize this until he started talking.

“I just want to know how to get the new checking account going and to have it track expenses!”

“Well, try clicking on this and see what happens...”

“I've already tried that three times and it's not working, damn it!”

“Okay, take it easy. Why don't we look it up in this QuickBooks reference guide? Have you already tried looking it up?”

As soon as I said it, I knew he'd be mad. I knew that he didn't really want my help and he was just venting his frustration. As soon as the words left my mouth, my insides recoiled and I felt the intense urge to bolt out of the room.

“No, I haven't fucking looked it up! That's why I paid money for you to take a QuickBooks class—so I didn't have to look it up. You're supposed to fucking know how to do this! I knew I shouldn't have let you go to that class. I should've taken the class myself so I wouldn't be sitting here for hours just trying to do the basic shit that you should know!”

With this, I just got up and walked out of the room. While I was walking away, he yelled, “Where the hell do you think you're going?!”

“I'm not going to sit and listen to you insult me. You're acting like such a dick!”

I called him a “dick.” Not off the charts nasty, but yes, not nice. The catch is that I'd never called him a name before. In the past and on numerous occasions, he had called me a cunt, a stupid fucking bitch, and a dumb shit...yet “dick” offended him. I could hear the chair crash into the desk as he bolted to his feet in an instant.

“What did you say?”

“I said you were acting like a dick—and you are!” I wasn't going to back down this time. He was being ridiculous about a damn computer program.

“I wouldn't be acting like a dick if you weren't so stupid! If you just knew how to do this like you said you did, then we wouldn't be yelling at each other!” I didn't know how to respond so I turned around and fled up to Lindsey's room.

Lindsey was still cooing and smiling at the infinite number of dancing rainbows racing around the room. I walked over and kneeled down on the blanket with her and started talking to her, but I could hear Brad coming up the stairs. She needed a diaper change so I planned on just ignoring him and work at the task at hand as a way of not engaging in this crazy conversation.

I think the mere fact that I was ignoring him made his mind leap from rational to utterly illogical, and I could feel sweat breaking out on the middle of my back where I hold all my stress.

He walked to the opposite side of the blanket and kept berating me for not paying attention in class. His voice was rising and I kept giving him the crusty eye more or less to keep his voice down. Lindsey had definitely stopped smiling and was looking intently at Brad as he brought his face closer and closer to my face over the top of her.

When he was about three inches from my face, I could smell the stress on his breath as he contorted his face up and raised his upper lip as he spat out, “You are just such a stupid, fucking bitch. I can't believe I married you...” He held his face in front of mine waiting for a response.

That moment, that exact moment, I felt it. “It” is an instinct that comes from the gut of your soul that says enough. My fail-
secure
system kicked in, and I wasn't going to allow further access. The variable was our daughter. He'd said this in front of our baby girl, lying on her blanket with rainbows dancing above our heads. It was too much. I took the heel of my right palm and pushed his forehead back and yelled, “Back off! Right now!” With that touch of his flesh, my life as I knew it ended.

Before I could process what I was seeing, Brad jumped over Lindsey and football tackled me into the corner between the wall and the crib. The force of the impact sent the back of my head into the wall hard enough to give me tunnel vision. As I slid down the wall, he accelerated the momentum by pulling both of my ankles out from underneath me. He changed his grip and dragged me out of the nursery by my ankles, right in front of Lindsey.

Something inside, some loose piece of rational thought floating around inside, made him turn around and close the door so that Lindsey couldn't see what he was about to do next. In the time it took him to let go of me, turn around and close the door, I tried to get up and run away, but the only way out was down the stairs.

I got to the second step before I felt the kick to the middle of my back and my forward momentum propelled me down the rest of the stairs at incredible speed. I flew down the stairs. I lay dazed for what seemed a split second before the sight of Brad filled my field of vision. With white lips and dilated pupils, it was a stranger who reached down and grabbed my wrists and stood me up faster than I thought possible. The head rush was enormous and my vision blacked out for just a moment but, as in a dream, I could still hear what he was saying.

He was shaking my body like a rag doll and telling me that he couldn't believe anyone loved me and that he certainly didn't because I was “too stupid to be loved. Look at you. You don't even have any friends here. You're all by yourself and you better fucking treat me right because I'm all you have! You have no job, no friends, no life...” During this tirade, he was shaking me and twisting my wrists with increasing force as I tried to pull away.

Lindsey's wail brought me back to my existence. I opened my eyes wide to try and focus, and what I saw was frightening. Brad's face was blood red, but his lips were completely white and his eyes were dilated like a shark. It was as if a demon had entered his body and pushed out everything that could be good in Brad. He was gone in that moment, and I was faced with an intruder into the lofty life I'd worked so hard for.

My fight or flight instinct told me I couldn't get away and I was going to be severely, physically damaged unless I did something right now. Right now! Fly the fucking airplane. The way he was holding my wrists, I could've kicked him in the groin, but I chose to do something I'd never tried before on a person. I spit in his face. My sweet grandpa laughingly taught me how to spit, and his lessons paid off in a way he never imagined. I hit Brad right in the eye with a wad of spit and he was so completely shocked, he let go. Now I know where the term “spitting mad” comes from.

The moment he released me, I ran upstairs to Lindsey's room and locked the door. I sat down with my back against the door trying to collect what was left of me. Lindsey didn't make a sound. She stared in amazement at my behavior, not quite sure what to make of the fear that emanated from my being. Her little mouth made an “O” as I tried to smile at her with fear in my eyes. I confused her instincts. I smiled at her, but she knew something was extremely wrong. In an instant, her face contorted and she began to cry.

On shaking legs, I walked over and scooped her up into my arms. I buried my face into her smell, her comfort, her warmth. Her existence soothed me as I tried to soothe her. As her cries turned into little hiccups, I heard the stomping of feet coming up the stairs to her room.

I felt his presence before he let it be known. He stood outside the door and with all the power and passion of his thirty years, he started pounding on the door. Lindsey was instantly startled and jumped in my arms. We both jumped.

“Open this door. Right now! If you don't open this fucking door, I'm going to call the cops! Open the fucking door, open it, open it, open it...”

I prayed. Please call the cops. There was no way in hell I was ever going to open that door. That door was shut, never to be opened to him again. He just kept pounding on the door. I looked over at the phone lying on the shelf. I would never dream of calling the police, but I thought the one woman who might know what to do could be on the other end of that phone line. I dialed Brad's mom for help.

Bernice was at work, and I knew this drama would be upsetting, but I was terrified and didn't know what to do. I thought if Brad knew his mom was on the phone, he might calm down or at least stop what he was doing. If a mom couldn't do something about this, no one could.

The front receptionist started speaking but I interrupted and said, “Bernice's office, please.” The hum of being transferred zinged in my ear.

“This is Bernice.”

“Bernice, this is Erika. I need your help, right now. Please. I don't know what to do. Brad and I got into a terrible fight and he's out of control and I'm scared. Can you please come up? At least take Lindsey for me? I need to get her out of the house.”

Brad heard my voice and stopped pounding on the door. “Who the fuck are you talking to?” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and I said, “I'm talking to your mom.”

“My mom?!! You're talking to my mom? What the hell is wrong with you that you'd call my mom?”

“I don't know what else to do! You won't stop scaring me. I'm scared! I just want you to leave me alone!”

He did stop. He immediately bolted down the stairs and I could hear the office door slam. In the meantime, Bernice had heard this conversation and her voice jolted me back to the fact that the phone was at my ear. She didn't ask if I was okay or anything, she just started in with a lecture.

“Erika, you have to remember that Brad doesn't think the same way we do. You have to remember he is a sensitive person who uses a different side of his brain. He is a left-handed creative person, and he just can't process his anger like everyone else. He has to let it out. You just have to let him be. I've learned this because he used to put holes in the wall as a child. It's mostly just a threat, but he won't hurt you. Once you learn to just accept Brad the way he is, he won't fight you like this. Just go along with him and you'll be okay. I learned way back when Brad was in high school that if I just accepted Brad the way he is, then we didn't have anything to fight about and we got along great. I was like a friend to him and that's what you need to learn to do too. Just accept him the way he is...”

Her response was almost as shocking as his behavior. He had just tossed me down the stairs, and she was suggesting I “accept him the way he is”? I thought she would condemn the behavior, tell me to put him on the phone so she could talk to him but, instead, she justified his behavior and made me feel like I'm the one who is wrong.

“Can you please still come up? I think if he knows you're coming over, he won't hurt us.” I was truly afraid and didn't know how to get out of this situation.

“Oh, Brad won't hurt you. He just puts on a big show. All growl and no bite.”

“But, Bernice, he tackled me into the wall and knocked me out and then pushed me down the stairs...” She interrupted my attempt at recalling the story. She didn't want to hear it.

“Erika. I'm sure you're fine. I'm not coming up. Just tell him you're making tacos. Give him something to look forward to. I'll see you next week. We're doing the family photo shoot at my house. Make sure you wear a blue shirt. I'll talk to you later.” She hung up. I still cringe when I see that family photo.

A half hour had passed since he'd tackled me in the nursery. He shouted if I was off the phone and I simply responded, “Yes”.

He shouted back, “GOOD!”

I sat down on the futon in Lindsey's room and nursed her for a few minutes. It took a few moments for the milk to let down, but when it did, I felt the euphoria of a nursing mother. There is a chemical that can be as calming as valium, which is released into your system as the milk swooshes into your breasts and you connect with your child. It was intense after the emotional trauma that my mind and body just experienced, and I breathed deeply into the sensation.