Flight (26 page)

“All right,” he says, “I’ll guess I’ll go see how Trevor’s doing.”

“Okay,” Kit says, his eyes flicking up briefly from the television. Leanne’s head drops onto the back of the sofa, and her eyes close. For an instant Will thinks she going to speak, but she doesn’t move. He makes his exit unwatched.

In the finished part of the basement, Carol has set up a small toy area for her grandson. With the kid-sized furniture that used to belong to the girls and the box of toys Carol has collected, it’s usually the first place Trevor heads when he arrives. But he’s not there now. He’s standing at the other end of the carpeted rec room, in front of Will’s glass cabinet. His airplane models.

“I like these,” Trevor breathes as Will approaches. “Look at that one.”

“That’s a Lockheed 1011,” Will tells him. “That airplane was way ahead of its time when it came out. We were all excited to fly it.”

“My mom’s daddy used to fly airplanes,” the boy says.

“That’s me,” Will says. “And I still fly airplanes.”

Trevor looks at him, his brow furrowing just like Margaret’s did at his age. “Do these ones fly?” he asks.

“No,” Will says. “They’re model airplanes. I built them all.”

“Do you play with them?”

“No.” Will laughs. “Not really.”

“What do you do with them?”

Will pauses. “I look at them,” he says. “They make me remember flying the real ones.” He points to a 707 mounted on a gray curved stand, the old TWA logo on its tail. “See that plane? That was the first commercial jet they ever built in this country.” He loves the shape of it, the solid fuselage, the wings swept back 35 degrees,
as became the jet standard, the tail with its snazzy forward-pointing spike. They weren’t thinking about cramming people into narrow seats back then, or reducing fuel consumption, but about the speed and excitement of air travel. Even the old red and gold TWA logo suggested elegance and glamour. Not like today—the MD-80, a cheap filter cigarette, the generic 767, stripped of any detail that might give it personality. The new TWA paint jobs weren’t bad, but now they’re being methodically blasted off, replaced with American’s boring red, white, and blue stripes.

“Before there were jets, people rode horses everywhere.” Trevor’s eyes are wide, and he nods, encouraging Will to agree with him.

“Well, not exactly,” Will says. “There were a few steps in between horse carriages and jets. First there were little airplanes. Then there were propeller planes.” He points to a Constellation, also mounted on a small stand. “See how that plane has four pro-pellers?”

“I like that one,” Trevor says.

“So do I.” Will admires the airplane. “In those days, TWA was the most glamorous airline. Everybody dreamed of flying it—movie stars, politicians.”

“T double A,” Trevor repeats quietly.

“That was my airline, you know. Until a man named Carl Icahn came along and destroyed it. Now it’s gone.” He can’t help the bitterness in his voice. Right up until American’s acquisition, Carl Icahn was undercutting TWA’s sales, using the Internet to sell the cheap tickets he got in his buyout deal. TWA agreed to give him the tickets because they were so eager to get rid of him. They didn’t realize they were shooting themselves in the foot.

Trevor looks at Will, confused. “What did they do with the air-planes?” he asks.

“They sold them to another airline.”

“What did they do with the airlines?”

Will laughs. “You said it, Trevor,” he tells him. “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. What did they do with the airlines?”

He says it in a joking tone, but his voice cracks slightly, and a wave of sadness washes over him. What did they do with the airlines? What did they do with the world? Icahn was a businessman for today’s era, when making a good product or offering a good service is no longer a sufficient corporate goal. It’s all about shareholders now, and shareholders are interested in only one thing: selling their stock for more than they paid.

He and Carol were so excited when he got the letter offering him a job at TWA. They were in Hawaii. Will had been transported out of Bien Hoi in Saigon in December 1967. A month later, it was overrun in the Tet Offensive. He watched the reports on television, from his hospital room. A metal pin had been inserted to hold his leg together. He would be fine, but he wouldn’t be a fighter pilot anymore.

Four months later, they moved to Kansas City for his TWA training. They flew to San Francisco, then took a train to Kansas City, sitting up all the way to save money. Will was still in uniform, waiting for his discharge papers. Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot two days before. Cities were rioting, college girls were weeping in public. Lyndon Johnson had announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. The war was an increasing disaster. The tide of public opinion had swung for real.

As they got on the train and took their seats, a woman across the aisle stood up. “I’m moving,” she announced loudly, grappling her bag from the overhead rack. She looked stiff with fury as she glanced his way. “I don’t want to sit near a baby-killer.”

Did you ever kill a baby, Will?
Carol never asked him that question. But Will heard it hovering, shimmering in the air between them.

“I want to play with them,” Trevor says. He’s still standing in front of the display case. Will looks around for something else to distract the boy. No one ever touches his planes. But then he thinks,
What the hell.
He opens the case.

“Just one,” he tells Trevor. The boy waits, rigid with eagerness. Will reaches for the Connie, then changes his mind. The propellers
could break off. He takes the 707 instead, lifting it gently off its stand.

“Be careful with it,” he says.

Trevor beams at the airplane in his hand. Then he shoots his arm out, lifting the plane as high as he can. “To the moon!” he cries.

Will slumps onto the cast-off couch they keep in the rec room. He rests his palms on his thighs, giving in to tiredness. Thirty-three years—that’s how long he flew for TWA. He can’t get used to being an American pilot. Last month, when air traffic control hailed him as “AA 77,” he failed to answer. He was used to blocking out other flights being hailed. Finally, after two or three times, the guy on the ground guessed what was happening. “TW 77,” he said loudly, and Will heard him. It became a big joke in the cockpit.

Now he’ll have to adjust to flying for Cathay Pacific. At least that will be his own decision, not something imposed on him—like pay cuts and pension reductions—by a corporate merger. Or retirement forced on him by the FAA. He clasps his hands behind his head. Trevor is loping from one end of the room to the other, the 707 held high.

“Grandpa’s going to tell you a secret, Trevor,” Will says. “You want to hear it?”

Trevor stops and looks at Will. “Okay,” he says. He takes the 707 down to a lower altitude but keeps it airborne.

“TWA is gone. But Grandpa’s going to fly for a new airline now. One in Asia. Do you know where Asia is?” The boy shakes his head. “Well, it’s where China and Japan are. Would you like to come visit China some day?”

“I don’t know.” Trevor looks back at the 707, starting a holding pattern at shoulder height. “I might have a playdate.”

Leanne and Kit are watching CNN when Margaret comes downstairs. Leanne looks up as her sister half enters the room. “What’s up?”

Margaret doesn’t answer. She looks strange. Her hair is messy,
but her clothes are perfect: blue linen pants and a perfectly ironed white blouse. Her face is set in a blank hardness. The effect is grim and vulnerable at the same time.

“I need to use Dad’s computer,” she says. “Is he in there?” Her voice has a tone that forestalls any speech but a direct answer.

“He’s in the basement with Trevor.”

“Good.” Margaret opens the door of their father’s study and sighs before stepping inside.

Margaret’s presence infects Leanne with a restless feeling. She ought to be doing something. She sits up. Kit’s attention is gripped by a story about the resurgence of mountain lions in California. His hand drags lightly along her leg as she leaves.

Her mother is in the kitchen. “Do you need some help?” Leanne asks.

Carol looks up from an array of small candleholders on the kitchen counter. “I’m just putting tea lights in these votives,” she says. “But you could help by starting dinner, if you like.”

“What are we having? Leftover gumbo?”

“I guess so,” Carol says. “There’s so much of it.” “Where is it?”

“In the freezer. There just wasn’t any more room in the fridge.”

Leanne goes to the freezer. “Okay. I’ll just pop it on the stove.”

She waits for her mother to say the microwave would be faster. That’s what she would do with Margaret. Margaret hates microwaves, and Carol always feels obliged to defend them. But with Leanne, she doesn’t seem to need to assert herself that way. Leanne doesn’t like the microwave any more than Margaret does. But if her mother had suggested she use it, she’d have done so.

Leanne finds the gumbo containers in the freezer and empties three of them into a large pot. The gumbo has just started to freeze, and it slides out of the plastic in a slushy stream. Leanne pours it slowly, watching the little crystals flow downward.

“I think everything we need tomorrow is clean,” Carol tells her. “I washed the table linens today. Tomorrow morning, after the rehearsal, we’ll get started setting up.”

“What time are people arriving?”

“Six.”

Tomorrow night it will be over. There really will be no turning back after forty people come over and toast her and Kit. After that, there’s only the ceremony. Leanne pushes the gumbo around with a wooden spoon and looks at the trays of glasses, the platters and serving bowls her mother has assembled on the counter. All these solid objects somehow make it seem possible. It’s not such a big event, really, just a formalization of something that’s already true: she and Kit are together. All the fuss is a way to make her mother happy, to offer family friends and relatives a chance to see that she has grown up, that she has a life of her own now. Afterward, she and Kit will go back to their lives in Cold Spring. Very little will have changed. They can sort out the Mexico thing then. She thinks of Mexico City, sprawling across a dried-up lake bed, ringed by blue mountains. There are volcanoes on three sides of it.

“If you want any of these things after the wedding,” her mother says, gesturing to the countertop array of serving ware, “you should pack them up and mail them to yourself.”

“But why?” Leanne asks. “Aren’t you going to need them for the bed-and-breakfast?”

“I’m getting new stuff,” Carol says. “Country-style things.”

“You’re replacing all the china and glassware in the house?”

“Not everything, but the things I’ll need for serving guests. Actually, I have a lot already. There are those big boxes we got from Will’s father when your grandmother died.”

Leanne contemplates her mother. When Will’s mother died, his father had assumed Carol would want a lot of her stuff. “What am I going to do with all this junk?” Carol had said when the box arrived. She had the girls help her repack everything neatly and put it away in the basement. “We can’t sell it,” she told them, “but it’s not exactly our style.”

“So this bed-and-breakfast idea,” Leanne says, swirling the spoon aimlessly through the softening gumbo. “You’re sure you want the hassle of it?”

“What hassle?” Carol says. She’s setting the table. “It will give me something to do out here, with you guys so faraway.”

“Yeah, but you could find something else to do. You and Dad could travel.”

Carol snorts. “Your father’s not going to want to travel once he’s retired,” she says. “He’s sick of flying. He hates American. He’s going to want to sit here and play farmer boy, like he’s always dreamed.”

Leanne thinks of the letter she found in the barn. So her mother knows nothing about it. Cathay Pacific is based in Hong Kong. He’s probably expecting Carol to pack up and go there with him. When did he plan on telling her?

“When’s dinner?” Her father has clumped up the stairs from the basement. Trevor hovers behind him, a small airplane in his hand—one of her father’s models. Leanne glances up, surprised.

“Dinner’s in about five minutes,” she tells him.

It would make sense for him to be sick of the airlines. It must be even more stressful to be a pilot today. But flying is what he has always loved. He claimed to love the farm more, claimed to miss it on his trips, but when he was home, she could see him getting restless, itching to be airborne. She looks at Trevor, by the kitchen table, taxiing the plane along a plate.

“Hey, Trevor,” she says, going over and gently removing the model from his hand. “Time to go wash your hands for dinner.” She admires the 707 before setting it at the back of the counter, out of Trevor’s reach.

Once, when she had just turned thirteen, she asked her father why he moved back to Michigan. It was late at night, and they were driving home from O’Hare. For her birthday he had taken her with him on an L.A. trip.

He stared straight ahead for a long time. His face glowed yellow every time a car passed from the opposite direction.

“In the war once, I was on a mission,” he said after a long time. “And I saw a village. It looked just like Ryville.” He stopped, still staring forward. Leanne wondered if that was all. He glanced over and saw her watching him.

“Only it had been destroyed,” he said. “It didn’t exist anymore.”

“I see.” But Leanne wasn’t sure she did. She was uncomfortable, still young enough to be unused to her parents talking to her like a grown-up. “It was like a sign,” she said, wanting to finish the tale, to mark its end so they could go back to riding in silence.

“That’s right,” he said gently. “A sign.” He was letting it go.

Can you make a place exist by being there?
Leanne wondered. But then that didn’t make sense. She looked at her father, his eyes on the road ahead. The car dove forward into the night. Leanne leaned her head against the window, listened to it swim.