Improvisation (14 page)

Tina dumped three tiny containers of creamer into her watered-down coffee and stirred while she looked around the diner. The restaurant at Felts Field was one big, chaotic collection of airplane memorabilia. Tina decided it must have been decorated as much by the owners and patrons—given the signed prints, personal photos, and license plates and postcards from around the country—as by a professional designer. The effect was of one enormous collage, even down to the navigational charts and World War II-issue playing cards scattered on her table and covered by a protective sheet of glass. Tina was glad she had arrived early, giving her time to absorb the barrage of images coming from every corner of the room.

Jan had picked the restaurant, located at one of Spokane’s smaller airports, because it was one of her dad’s favorites. Tina had opted for breakfast because she loved early morning diner fare, with its bad coffee and greasy food. The idea of a family meal, even with someone else’s family, usually would have her stomach in knots, but today felt different. Maybe, like Tina’s increasing comfort around Jan, it was partly due to her work on the video project. She had been piecing together this man’s past through a random collection of photos. She hoped a meeting with him, a chance to talk and ask questions, would help her find the theme she needed to make a cohesive life story. And she had to admit to an interest in seeing Jan interact with her dad. His choices in the past had helped form the woman she was today. And her future was tied to him in ways Jan couldn’t yet anticipate. Tina felt an objective curiosity and nothing more. Their future wouldn’t affect her in any way.

She watched them come through the door, engrossed in a conversation and seemingly barely aware of their surroundings. Tina had noticed little resemblance between father and daughter in the photos, but she could easily see the similarities in expression and gesture as they talked.

“It was a Cessna 172,” Jan’s dad said as he stopped by the booth and turned his attention to Tina. “You must be Tina. I’m Glen. No, don’t get up. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Hi, Tina,” Jan said briefly. “A high-wing? No way. I distinctly remember it was a Piper Cherokee.”

“Sit down, daughter. Your mule ears are scraping the ceiling.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Jan said, scooting into the booth next to him. She started fussing with the table settings, moving napkins and flatware so they were near her dad’s good arm.

“I think I’m in trouble,” Glen said in a conspiratorial whisper as he leaned toward Tina.

“I think you’re right,” she whispered back. “I heard the same tone in her voice when she caught me talking during her seminar.”

“No one’s in trouble,” Jan said, moving her dad’s water glass closer to him. “You’re wrong but not in trouble.”

Glen captured Jan’s hand as she was reaching for his coffee cup. “If you tuck a napkin in my collar next, I’m upending my hot coffee in your lap.”

Tina wrapped both hands around her coffee mug as she watched the two interact, their affection for one another easy to see. But maybe because she was getting to know Jan better, or because she simply was aware of Glen’s condition, Tina could see the subtext playing out behind the teasing argument. They were both scared and uncertain but devoted to each other.

“I don’t know much about airplanes, but what’s the one up there? The one with the propeller-thingies?” Tina asked, pointing to a large model plane, dangling from the ceiling near their table. Glen rolled his eyes at Jan.

“Propeller-thingies? Where did you find this uncivilized woman? It’s a C-130 turboprop. A cargo plane. Jan, didn’t I take you on a C-130 when we were stationed in Virginia?”

Jan frowned. “Are you sure it wasn’t when we were in Germany?”

“No. Wasn’t that a Starlifter?”

Their debate was put on hold when the waiter came over to take their order. Tina asked for a Denver omelet and raised her eyebrows in surprise when Jan and her dad ordered chicken-fried steak and eggs.

“D’you two have a busy day of lumberjacking ahead of you?”

“It’s the best thing on their menu,” Jan said, emptying a couple of sugar packets into her coffee. “You’re going to be jealous when you smell it, but don’t ask for a bite. I’ve seen how you eat.” Jan bit her lip and looked down at her coffee mug, apparently hearing the double meaning in her words only after she’d spoken them out loud. Tina covered the awkward moment by asking Glen about another airplane.

Tina continued to move the conversation along, giving prompts based on the pictures she had seen in the apartment and her growing interest in Glen’s aviation knowledge. He could recite details and specs for most of the planes, but she most liked the way he added his personal stories to the dry information. Stories culled from thirty years in the air force, but most often about trips or air shows he and Jan had experienced together.

Tina glanced outside as a flash of movement caught her eye. A small blue-and-white plane took off, a speck of color against the dark clouds and the pine-covered ridge bordering the far side of the runway.

“Wish we had better weather today,” Glen said, looking outside as well. “There won’t be much air traffic since it’s so overcast.”

“This is light traffic?” Tina asked. “I’ve seen at least four planes take off while we’ve been sitting here. What?” she asked when she saw Jan and Glen smile at each other.

“It’s the same plane,” Jan said. “The pilot’s doing touch-and-gos. Practicing takeoffs and landings.”

Tina squinted out the window. “Are you sure? Wasn’t the last one a different color?”

“If by a different color you mean the same blue-and-white color, then yes, it was,” Glen said with a laugh. He started to explain how to identify private aircraft by shape and size while Jan excused herself. As soon as she left the table, Tina held up her hand to interrupt.

“I need to ask you something,” she said, her voice serious. She wasn’t sure she wanted Jan to hear this part of the conversation, so she needed to hurry and fit it in.

Glen nodded. “Go ahead.”

“What would make someone who loved fighter planes and worked hard to become a pilot give up his chance and, instead, fly a…I forgot what Jan called it. A gas station with wings.”

Glen raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Someone’s been going through my things.”

“Jan showed me some photos, and I happened to see some paperwork at the same time,” Tina said quickly. She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Orders to report for flight school for the fighter jet, and a second set the following year, for the tanker. I’ve noticed all the pictures in your apartment. I recognize passion when I see it, and I’m curious about why you’d give up a lifelong dream.”

Glen glanced toward the bathroom. “I’ve never told Jan about this,” he said. “Our nomadic lifestyle was hard enough on her. I didn’t want to add any misplaced guilt.” He sighed and tapped his fingers, pausing briefly before he rushed through the story. “You see, Jan’s mother was much younger than I, and back then, I was single-minded in my goal to fly fighters. The military life sounded romantic until she actually had to live it, all the moving and the long hours I had to work while I was building my career. I suggested we have a baby, foolishly thinking she’d be less lonely with a family.” Glen shook his head. “A bad reason behind the best decision I ever made. Anyway, once she got pregnant, I could tell it had been a mistake for my wife. I knew my marriage was falling apart, and I just had a sense I would be left to take care of the baby on my own. My wife left before Jan’s second birthday.”

Tina took a sip of her coffee while Glen paused in his story. She didn’t want to be tied down, to be responsible for a child, but still, she couldn’t imagine walking away if she had one. Leaving a young daughter. Leaving
Jan
. Inconceivable.

“You need to understand, I didn’t turn my back on my dream to fly the F-15. The dream left me. The moment I held my little girl in my arms, my old priorities simply disappeared, and she took their place. I called in some favors and was moved to the KC-135 program because it was less dangerous, and I could keep Jan with me whenever I was transferred. I still got to be around the fighters, doing my part to help them go places, but at night, I went home, where I belonged.”

The waiter came and set heaping plates of food in front of them. Tina sniffed. Jan’s breakfast
did
smell good. She reached across and cut a piece of steak, smearing the gravy around to conceal her theft.

“You’re likely to lose a hand doing that,” Glen warned before he continued. “In hindsight, I should have let go of my dream of flying altogether, gotten out of the force as soon as I could and given her a stable home.”

“Maybe,” Tina said. She understood how Jan’s childhood had affected her, with its loneliness and instability and constant change. “But she’s the woman she is because of the decisions you made. And, I think you’ll agree, she’s pretty wonderful. And the way she teaches, finding so many ways to connect what the kids learn in the classroom to the other parts of their lives. Would she be the same kind of teacher if she hadn’t been exposed to all those different places and people and ideas?”

Jan walked toward her dad and Tina, the two obviously having an intense conversation given their expressions and the way they leaned toward each other. “What are you talking…Did you steal my food?”

“Told you,” Glen murmured.

“Looks the same as it did when the waiter brought it,” Tina said. “Doesn’t it, Glen?”

“You’re on your own with this one,” Glen said as Jan sat down again.

Jan glared at Tina, who seemed to be trying to assume an innocent expression. She wasn’t very good at it. “You owe me some of your omelet,” she said.

“Why don’t we just trade. I’ll give you my omelet, and I’ll eat the rest of your breakfast since it got kind of messy…on the way here from the kitchen.”

Jan swatted at Tina’s hand when she tried to grab her plate. She reached for the ketchup bottle. “You’re only being noble because I was right. I made the better breakfast choice, just like I chose the best cupcakes in Coeur d’Alene.”

“Is she always this smug?” Tina asked Glen.

Jan prodded her dad in the ribs to keep him from answering. “I’ll give you another bite if you just admit I was right,” she said to Tina.

Tina grimaced. “After you drowned it in ketchup? No thanks.”

“You have no taste,” she said, taking a big bite and chewing while she looked out the window. She pointed to the north. “Look, a helicopter.”

Tina checked outside before turning back to Jan with a grin. “Is this like your old
Look, a bird!
line?”

Jan laughed, glad they were able to joke about last Saturday’s abbreviated trip. She had worried Tina might still be upset with her, but during their short phone conversation to set this date and so far today, she had seemed nothing but cheerful. “No, it’s not. See the tall clump of trees on the ridge? Look to the right of them.”

“Sure enough,” Tina said. “A tiny dot in the sky.”

“R-22,” Glen said. “Hey, pumpkin, do you remember when we took the helicopter tour in Hawaii?”

He told Tina the whole story, with Jan chiming in occasionally, while they ate. She loved seeing her dad happy and laughing and full of memories. She wanted him to be this way forever. As she had come to expect, the intrusion of worry about the future gave her a tight feeling behind her eyes, but she blinked back the threat of tears and kept a forced smile on her face. The slight brush of a leg against hers made her look up and meet Tina’s eyes. A brief press against her calf before Tina moved away again. The small gesture, the reassurance of Tina’s smile, was comforting. Not something to get used to, but nice, nonetheless.

Tina asked another question and listened with what seemed to be genuine interest as her dad explained the technical aspects of airplane-wing design. Jan watched her as she seemed to mentally process the information, as if she were filing it away for later use. And it probably would show up again at some point—in her life, her work, her music. Changed, improved, embellished beyond recognition. She had exactly the quality Jan tried to instill in her students. She seemed to love to learn, regardless of the topic, and had the talent to soak up information and images. And make them her own. Jan had gotten glimpses of the way Tina’s mind recreated ideas during their conversations and through the work she had been doing for Peter, and she recognized her own growing, and frightening, fascination with Tina. She could handle—and fight—a physical response to her. But being drawn to her intellectually was an entirely different, and entirely dangerous, phenomenon.

Jan picked up the bill when the waiter brought it to their table, but Tina snatched it out of her hand. “I’m paying,” she announced. “It’s the least I can do since you two are giving me a place to stay.”

“Plus, you ate some of my breakfast,” Jan said as they left the restaurant.

“One bite,” Tina protested. “And you never did prove it was me and not the waiter. Hey, an old menu.”

Jan peered over her shoulder at the bulletin board full of ads for planes, flying lessons, and airplane parts. In the middle was a framed copy of the restaurant’s original menu. Jan read the faded print. “Meatloaf, twenty-five cents. A piece of pie for a nickel.”

“What a great look for Peter’s website and ads,” Tina said. She frowned and her gaze was distant as she thought out loud. “Something about eating like it was yesterday, or at yesterday’s prices.”

“You can have prices listed like a menu,” Jan said. “Carrot seeds or tomato plants on one side, with a comparison of what you’d have to pay for the fruits or vegetables in a grocery store on the other.”

“I like it,” Tina said. “I’m picturing a faded, yellowish background, like old paper.”

“It fits with your old-fashioned general store theme.”

“Yes, and Peter will love it. How’s this,” Tina turned to face her, the excitement of inspiration evident on her face. “Tomorrow’s dinner at yesterday’s prices.”

“Perfect,” Jan said. She fell silent, awed by the intensity of Tina’s focus when she was creating like this. Her dad cleared his throat, and she took a step back like a guilty teenager caught out after curfew. Tina moved back as well.