Blue Skies (30 page)

“How long was she a flight attendant?”

“Years ago we came up with this plan to both have airline jobs by the time I retired from the Air Force. I could retire at forty-two—still young. Leanne's income helped with college for the girls, and our travel benefits would allow us to visit our families and old Air Force friends no matter where we ended up. With all the time off airline employees can get, we figured we'd travel the world.”

“Sounds like a pretty good plan.”

“Leanne got her job first, when I was in my last assignment. When she died, she'd been a flight attendant for eight years, while I'd just been in my job for three—with Pacific. I got in on the ground floor so I was a captain. I was just getting home from work after a night flight and saw the whole thing happen on the news. This incredible, unbelievable, spectacular event. I remember thinking about how the world had changed forever, how every person in the world would be affected by what had happened. And I didn't know the half of it.”

Then the story began to unfold, he said. First that airplanes had been hijacked, then which airlines had been affected. He'd run to the calendar they kept with their flight patterns inked in. He saw Leanne's. Boston to Los Angeles.

“Boston?” she asked weakly.

But he appeared not to notice her shock. “Boston. Still, it took a few hours to find out that was actually her flight. You recall the chaos of evacuating airports and grounding all planes. The fact that she didn't call didn't convince us, because people all over the country were having trouble with communications.”

The next year was a nightmare of grief and trauma. “Every time they played that news footage, I lost my wife again. My kids lost their mother over and over. Not only was I widowed, my company went under when it was not granted any federal assistance. The elite committee of three that made up the Air Transportation Stabilization Board decided that air travel would not be adversely affected if my company didn't make it. My airline wasn't big and important enough. Twenty-five hundred employees were suddenly out of work right before Christmas. Most of them couldn't even get medical coverage. At least I had the Air Force retirement program, which gave me time to try to recover from my loss.”

“And the girls?” she asked.

“They're incredible. They're like their mother, thank God. Strong and positive and determined not to live in unhappiness. It was a little tougher for me. I used to drown my sorrows a lot, which led me to hang up the cup with very little fanfare before I found myself going to meetings. Somehow, over the next year or two, we began to recover enough to see life would go on in spite of this. Because, really, Leanne was the kind of woman who had raised our daughters that way, to believe that things would work out eventually, and they should have faith in that fact. She was hopelessly, almost infuriatingly optimistic.”

“It's because of her that you could get to this place.”

“I think so. Let me ask you something, Nick. If you had known, would you have hired me?”

She was taken aback by the question.

“You would have thought I'd be permanently scarred and unable to make sound decisions in a critical situation. Wouldn't you?”

“I wonder if I would have considered that. I'll never know. There was nothing about your interview or résumé that led me to worry about your stability
or
ability.”

“Military training doesn't hurt,” he said. He gave a deep sigh. “Thanks. I'm glad you didn't know and that I got to tell you. I know it's heavy. The good news is there isn't anything else skulking around in me. That's all the baggage I've got.”

“Well, I've got something,” she said. “I don't know how you're going to take it. I was sitting in an Aries 767 at the Boston gate, right next to the American jet that was hijacked. I didn't see any of the crew members—but clearly that was your wife's plane.”

The surprise registered on his face. He was rendered speechless.

“I wouldn't blame you at all if you wished it could have been me and not her. In fact, I have no idea why it wasn't.”

“You can't imagine the number of weird ironies we've learned about since that day. An old neighbor of ours was actually in the World Trade Center when the plane hit! It sure makes you wonder about the grand plan, doesn't it?”

“I wouldn't have planned it that way,” she said.

They talked for another hour about family and friends, places they'd lived, planes they'd flown. After a time,
the glum cloud of 9/11 began to lift as Sam spoke of his daughters. He was so grateful to be flying again, to get another ten years in the cockpit before mandatory retirement, and he gave Nikki much of the credit.

When Nikki stifled a yawn, Sam laughed and put an arm around her shoulders, resting her head against his chest. It was only then that she noticed most of the airline crowd had left the bar.

“I have to get home,” she finally said. “I hate to. I think under different circumstances, I could stay up talking all night.”

“I'll walk you to your car.”

As she leaned her back against the driver's side of her SUV, he braced a hand over her shoulder and leaned toward her. “Well, thank God that's all the baggage I have,” he said. “At least there aren't any surprises ahead for you.”

Ahead? So he saw this as a relationship moving forward? Her mouth parted slightly in question, but that question was to go unasked. He leaned toward her and covered her open mouth with his. It occurred to her to push him away, but the hands that rose to his chest just rested there while he moved over her mouth. She felt that light-headed, weak-kneed feeling she thought she'd left behind in her youth, and heard herself sigh. Then, instead of pushing him away, she moved her hands gently over his chest and around to his back, holding him. When he released her mouth, he smiled.

“We shouldn't be doing this,” she said.

“Oh, but we should.”

“No, Sam. It's a bad idea. I'm your boss.”

“Only sort of,” he said. “You're in charge of the pilots, true, and I'm a pilot, true, but I'm just going to fly whatever Scheduling gives me, and I doubt you'll
ever have any reason to boss me. Except, maybe, on more private occasions.”

“But still, it's bad policy….”

“In most companies,” he said. “In the Air Force, for sure. But in the airlines, it's almost standard operating procedure.”

“I don't know about that,” she said. “I'm going to have to think about it.”

“Sure. Take your time. And think about this—What weird twist of fate left you sitting at the gate while Leanne was hijacked by terrorists?” He shook his head. “At the same airport. On the same day. At the same time. Somehow I don't think I'd have met you if I wasn't meant to.”

And then he kissed her again. And again, she pulled him to her.

 

Nikki took the drive home slowly. She just didn't want the evening to end, though she was so tired. It was after midnight by the time she turned into her drive. She was surprised to see the lights still on in Carlisle's casita. Instead of going into the house through the garage, she took a detour into the courtyard and saw him through the open blinds, packing a bag. She tapped on the door.

“Hi,” she said when he opened it. “You have a trip tomorrow?”

His eyes were red-rimmed, his nose pink. “I'm going to be gone a few days. My father died.”

“Oh, Carlisle, I'm so sorry!”

“I didn't think I'd care,” he said. “But this seems to bring to a close many years of disappointment for us both. I think in the back of my mind I always thought that one day, maybe when he was very old, very ill—”

“Just go for your mother, Carlisle.”

He gave a huff of laughter. “She didn't think it was such a good idea—me coming—what with the whole family going to be there.”

Nikki felt the heat of anger in her throat, and was sure steam must be coming out of her nostrils instead of breath. The very idea that a mother could reject her own son, for any reason, was something she couldn't fathom. She'd heard of mothers weeping at death row for sons who had done unspeakable things, something she could understand far better than this. Carlisle was a dream of a man!

“Her loss is unimaginable,” Nikki said. “Just go. Go for yourself, then. Put your father and his narrow-mindedness to rest. You are the better man, Carlisle.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it gets so lonely being the better man.”

 

A few neighborhoods away, Dixie was busy trying to clean out her car while Shanna was passed out in the guest room, a bucket on the floor beside her. Of course the towel and minicooler had not been quite enough.

When they had arrived at Dixie's house, Dixie had scooped the soiled Shanna out of the car and dragged her into the guest shower, clothes and all. Dixie stood in there with her until she was stripped and washed, then helped her into a soft, clean T-shirt and left her in the bed.

The next morning Dixie propped up a note by the coffeepot.
Call in sick—I'll be home to check on you at noon. Dixie, your guardian angel, who you owe so-o-o big.

T
he first week Opal was in Las Vegas, she relaxed by the pool. “So nice, after that brutal San Francisco rain and fog.” The second week she rented a car so she could get around and do some shopping. The third week was the start-up of the new airline, and while Nikki flew the round trip to Los Angeles, the whole family was on board with other employees, dignitaries, politicians and even movie stars.

Buck and the kids rode in coach, but Opal somehow managed a first-class seat for herself and Precious. Joe Riordan reported back to Captain Burgess that Opal had informed him, “This is my daughter's airline, you know. She's running the show.”

“Oh, God,” Nikki said. “Did she really?”

“Yes, and she said that you'd never be where you are today if she hadn't encouraged you.”

“Brother.”

“But how does she get that kind of deep purple cast to her hair?” he asked.

“Do I need to apologize for her?”

“Naw, she's very entertaining. I'd eighty-six the dog, though.”

“Precious isn't.”

“And you can thank me for protecting your reputation.”

“How's that?” she asked.

“I let her think you're in charge, when everyone knows it's Riddle.”

Indeed, Bob Riddle had spent the inaugural festivities in the gate area, where banners flourished and cameras flashed. He shook hands, took bows, and all the while told everyone that he was the
senior
vice president of Operations, apparently having given himself a little promotion. “I guess you could say this is my operation,” he was heard to boast.

The next week Nikki realized with a shock that Opal had been in town, at her house, for three weeks. Jared pretty much ignored her, and April spent a little time with her in the afternoons and evenings, but her circle of friends had widened, and like any fourteen-year-old girl, she spent hours on the phone and computer. On weekends, she was more than happy to shop with her grandmother during the day and go out with her friends at night.

Carlisle was still with his mother in Anoka, Minnesota, but due home any day. Nikki was just gearing up to say something to Opal about her protracted stay when the unbelievable happened. At midnight, just a week before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel holiday of the year, the Aries flight attendants went on strike and the pilots joined them. The world watched, many of them from a line outside a ticket counter, in stunned disbelief.

Aries was the eighth-or ninth-largest carrier in the country, with one hundred forty planes and fifteen thousand employees, less than five thousand of them pilots and flight attendants. The carrier had lost hundreds of millions of dollars and would surely require Chapter Eleven bankruptcy protection after this. The employees
on strike were holding the company hostage at the busiest time of the year.

Perhaps they expected the President of the United States to step in and give an order to disallow the strike. But the industry-wide passenger loads had not recovered since 9/11. In fact, they were barely up to fifty percent of the pre 9/11 numbers. The airlines had furloughed many employees, parked their planes, sustained huge losses. Probably the easiest way to let the industry heal itself was to just let it shrink by natural attrition.

The president did not step in. The future of Aries was, at best, dismal.

Nikki went immediately to Riordan, who called Mark Shows. Their number-four airplane could be online in a couple of days, and NCA being a new company, its bookings were not exactly high. They had plenty of available seats. Nikki grabbed Danny and Eric. “Aries has passengers stranded all over the country. Let's go to Dispatch, reshuffle the pilot flying schedule, call in anyone who is qualified and legal, and go mop 'em up.”

And so they did. Aries's disaster was New Century's opportunity. With a little humility and apologies from the crews, the passengers were grateful for any kind of transportation that would get them home. “If you'll just bear with us, ladies and gentlemen, we'll give you the best service possible on short notice. Maybe you'll try us again, under less stressful circumstances.”

Nikki found herself flying till she was legally out of time, and here it was Thanksgiving week and she had no idea what to do about Opal.

“Has your grandmother mentioned what her plans are?” she asked April.

“Only sort of. She said that since the holidays were
here and she was all alone now, she might as well just stay.”

“Oh, God, she's giving me a brain tumor.”

“You hardly talk to her. You're been gone all the time!”

“I know, sweetheart, but I barely talk to her because she annoys me so, and I've been gone because…Well, because of work, but also because she annoys me.”

“Besides being so into herself, what bothers you exactly?” April asked.

“Well, for one thing, I haven't spent a holiday with my mother since she left when I was nine years old!”

“Uh-huh. And you're still pissed. So maybe the two of you should get some counseling.”

Nothing, but nothing, sounded more horrible than that. So Nikki went to the source. She found her mother in the downstairs guest room, Buck's room, which had become awfully cozy with Opal's own special touches. She was reclining neatly on the bed, pillows propped behind her, a book in her lap and Precious curled up at her side.

“Well, Mother, you seem mighty comfortable here.”

“Yes, Nicole. Thank you.”

“And your plans?”

“I'm in no hurry to leave, Nicole. Thank you.”

“Mother, you can't stay forever. I need my own space with my family.”

“Oh,” she said, as if hurt. “Am I not family?”

Nikki sat on the bed at Opal's feet. “Please don't force me to be a big meanie. You've been here for almost a month, which is longer by three weeks than any time we've spent together in more than thirty years. We get on each other's nerves.” To her utter disbelief, tears were welling up in Opal's eyes. Nikki fell silent. Although Opal topped the list of the most manipulative and
self-centered people she'd ever known, Nikki had never seen her cry, not even when Mayer Gould died. “What's going on here? What is this?” she asked almost angrily. “Mother?”

“I didn't want to have to say anything,” she said. “But I've had a bit of a reversal.”

“A what?”

“A setback. I didn't do so well when Mayer passed on. He had those children, you know.”

“But he was
rich!
”

“We were comfortable. And when he passed away, what we had was divided between me and the four children. I found I had to make some choices. I couldn't afford the big house.”

“What have you done?” she asked slowly, carefully.

“I've sold the big house.”

Nikki began to massage her temples. “And you are planning to…?”

“Get something smaller,” she said with a sniff.

“When is that going to happen?”

“After Christmas?” she answered with a hopeful question.

Although another month of Opal would probably finish her off, Nikki held out the hope that was the worst-case scenario. “In San Francisco?” she asked.

“I thought I'd move closer to my grandchildren,” Opal informed her.

“What about your step-children and step-grandchildren?” Nikki asked, trying to keep the pleading from her voice.

“We're not close.”

Get a grip,
Nikki told herself.
Say nothing, do nothing and just stay calm. Just get up and slowly leave the
room, go somewhere quiet, have a lot of alcohol, and think clearly until you pass out.

She walked into the kitchen in a daze, thinking about that syndrome in the animal world where a female has no instincts for mothering her offspring. It was a freak of nature and happened rarely, but maybe it could happen with humans, too. Maybe Opal had that same syndrome. Complicated by the I-Can't-Think-Beyond-Myself one.

April was there, biting her lower lip nervously.

“You knew,” Nikki said.

“Look, she's old and lonely.”

“April, you are fourteen years old. You are not allowed to be more mature than me.”

“It's just that I don't have all these issues with her.”

“Well, lucky you.”

“I think Mayer's asshole kids rejected her.”

It was Nikki's turn to bite her lip, because, oh, how she wanted to launch into richly deserved recriminations. Wasn't it Opal who'd rejected Buck, and Nikki along with him?

She said nothing.

“But what if Grandma really isn't well?” April asked. “What if she really doesn't have all that much time?”

“She looks healthy enough to me,” Nikki said.

 

In Anoka, Carlisle closed the box holding the last of his father's clothes to be given to the Salvation Army. He carried the box to the garage and stacked it neatly with the others for pickup the next day.

“Carlisle, can you come and eat with us now?” his aunt Julie called.

“Yes, coming,” he called back. “Just let me wash my hands.”

After the death of his father, Carlisle's aunts had done a little “coming out” of their own. In typical Midwestern style, they had refused to get into a family brawl over whether Burt's attitude toward Carlisle was appropriate, but the aunts had never favored ostracizing him. Now that Burt was gone, they took serious issue with their sister over that matter.

Carlisle had thought his aunts shared his mother's views because he didn't hear from them all that often. In fact, he didn't hear from them because they didn't hear from
him.
Now it was clear—Burt Bartlett had perpetrated a great conspiracy of misunderstanding.

It remained true, however, that his mother was enormously disappointed that he was gay. She'd rather he be straight, married and the father of several darling, towheaded children. But she admitted she wasn't sure he'd rot in hell for it.

It was sad, Carlisle thought, that his father's death should bring such a reunion. Being with his aunts again reminded him of how much he'd loved their attention when he was small. It was a pity he hadn't known how much they had missed him; he might have spent more time with them over the years.

“There you are, darling,” his aunt Jo said. “Would you like a little tossed green salad with that soup, or half a tuna sandwich?”

“Whatever you're having, Jo,” he said, taking a seat.

“Give him the sandwich—he needs the bread. He's much too thin,” said Rayanne, who was not.

“I beg to differ, Rayanne. He's not too thin, and I'll bet his blood pressure and cholesterol are perfect.”

“Very close, actually,” he admitted.

“Your father could have taken a lesson from you,” Julie told him in a stage whisper.

Carlisle only smiled, thinking of his father spinning like a top in his grave.

He sat at the head of the table, the old oval-shaped kitchen table that had been in his mother's kitchen since Carlisle was about twelve. When Burt was alive, he'd sit at the opposite end, Ethel beside him. But today, like many of the days since the funeral, Carlisle sat at the end, and the four sisters sat two on each side, yammering endlessly and good-naturedly while they ate. Every once in a while they'd draw him into their conversation, but they did quite well on their own if he had nothing to add.

Right after the funeral he had asked the most liberal of his aunts, Julie, if he had been wrong to assume the family wanted nothing to do with him because he was gay. “That was only Burt,” Aunt Julie had insisted. “No one wanted to argue with him or try to override him because, well, no one is quite so pigheaded as a conservative fundamentalist, and it just isn't worth the trouble. But it was really only Burt.”

“No,” Carlisle insisted, “it was my mother, too. She even suggested it might not be such a good idea for me to come home to bury him.”

Aunt Julie had tsked. “My sister. I love her dearly, you know I do, but she's never had the ability to speak her mind or stand up for what she believes. She'll go along with the strongest person in the room. She was probably afraid Burt would sit up in the casket and scream at her.”

“But she loved him. I know she loved my father.”

“Probably.” Aunt Julie shrugged. “Still…”

Still…Ethel seemed to be doing very well with Burt gone and her sisters overstaying their welcome. In fact, Carlisle had never seen her so happy.

Carlisle had been in Anoka much longer than he had expected to be. Three weeks. At first it was the embrace of his family that drew him in and made him so comfortable. Then it was the knowledge that Nikki had her mother visiting in Las Vegas, so he knew the kids would have an adult around if they needed one, even if the adult was the rather childlike Opal. Finally, it was the Aries strike that lengthened his stay.