Takeoffs and Landings (4 page)

Mom just looked at Lori. But that look was worse than any punishment Gram ever doled out. That look could have sliced bone. It was like Mom had the same kind of X-ray vision as the superheroes on the TV shows Mike and Joey watched—like she'd seen clear to the ugly depths of Lori's soul and pronounced,
I don't want you as my daughter.

Chuck felt like he was four years old again, getting carsick just riding into town. The feel of Mom's hand on his back was the same, the sound of her voice was the same: “It's okay, Chuck. You'll be fine.”

Chuck could close his eyes and see the weeds by the side of the road back home: Queen Anne's lace and milkweed, cornflowers and foxtail, dandelions and clover. And a little boy crouched down in those weeds, his mother bent over him, comforting him: “It's okay, Chuck. You'll be fine.”

It sounded all backward, but those were some of his happiest memories from childhood, getting carsick. Not the sick part—that wasn't any fun. But afterward, he and Mom would be there in the weeds, not moving, the sky bright blue overhead, the ground solid beneath their feet. And then they'd get back in the car, where Lori and
baby Mike waited patiently in their car seats. Lori wasn't even big enough to see over the front seat, where Chuck had to sit. But she'd call out to him in her little-girl voice, “Chuckie okay? Chuckie okay?” So worried. Neither one of them liked having to sit apart.

That was when they were best friends. That was before.

Did Lori remember at all?

Mom still had her hand on Chuck's back, but she was asking Lori, “Are you all right? You don't feel queasy, do you?”

Chuck's ears were still ringing so badly, he couldn't make out Lori's answer, but he could hear the cruelty in her voice. The contempt. That brought him back.

He wasn't four years old anymore. He was fifteen. Carsick four-year-olds were still cute and lovable. Fifteen-year-olds who threw up on planes were disgusting. He deserved whatever Lori had said.

Chuck shook Mom's hand off his back.

“I'll go get cleaned up,” he mumbled.

The man who met them at the airport was black.

Somehow that made it worse, the way they were presenting themselves: Lori, all rumpled in her stupid homemade dress; Chuck, still reeking of vomit, even though he and Mom had all but hosed him off; and Mom—well, even Lori had to admit that Mom still looked pretty good. How could she have stayed clean, sitting right there beside Chuck while he was doing his impression of Linda Blair in
The Exorcist,
spewing every which way? It wasn't fair.

Not that Lori really wanted Mom covered in vomit.

Did she?

Lori couldn't think straight after that look Mom had given her. She still felt as shaky and jolted and scramble-brained as she'd felt the time she'd touched an electric fence on a dare.

And that was a shame, because she really wanted to
think about what it meant that the man who met them at the airport was black.

There weren't any black people in Pickford County.

Or African Americans—some of the more with-it teachers at Pickford High said you were supposed to call them African Americans now.

From the moment the man had come over to greet them, Lori had wanted to assure him,
I'm not prejudiced. Everybody says people in Pickford County are prejudiced, but I'm not. So don't worry.

Mom was talking to the man as if she hadn't even noticed he was black.

“Yes, I think we should get Chuck some Dramamine for the next flight. Or those pressure bracelets—I've heard those are very effective.”

“Good idea!” the man exclaimed. “My wife and I went on a cruise last winter, and it seemed like everyone we met had those bracelets. Now, that's a cure I wish I'd invested in ten years ago.”

He was leading them through a maze of people as he talked. Lori almost wished she were young enough to get away with holding someone's hand, so she wouldn't get lost. She caught snatches of other people's conversation—“caught the twelve-thirty flight” . . . “get to Atlanta before my meeting.” A woman was making an announcement over the public-address system, and it didn't even sound like she was speaking English. Lori wished Emma were along so she could hold her hand and pretend it was for Emma's sake.

Suddenly the black man stopped. Lori was trailing him so closely, she almost bumped into him.

“Oh, I didn't even think,” he said. “I'm sure one of the shops here would carry those bracelets. Do you want to look for them now, before we get your luggage?”

There were shops all around. Just walking from the gate, they'd already passed more stores than were on all of Main Street in downtown Pickford.

“That's all right, John,” Mom said. “We can always pick that up later. Our next flight isn't until late tomorrow.”

Omigosh. Mom was even on a first-name basis with this black guy.

The black man—John—went on to other topics. He patted Mom's hand.

“I hope we've managed to convey how thrilled we were that you were available to speak at our convention,” he said in a hushed voice. “Roger Palfrew heard you in Dallas last March, when you were at the NJR, and he came back and raved. He said there was no way he'd support us hiring anyone else for our June meeting.”

“Thanks,” Mom said. “I hope he didn't make me sound too wonderful—I'd hate to disappoint you.”

“Oh, I'm sure you won't,” John said reverently.

Lori watched with narrowed eyes. John was treating Mom like she was a celebrity or something. Famous. Lori felt like saying,
Come off it. She's just my mom.

Lori had never paid much attention to the groups Mom spoke to, but now she wondered. What was NJR, anyway? And
what group was she going to be talking to here in Chicago?

They went down an escalator into a tunnel of sorts. Bizarre, Asian-sounding music was playing and a sculpture of lighted tubes swayed over their heads as they stepped onto what appeared to be another escalator. Only this one stayed flat, carrying them past arcs of changing colors on the walls. Lori turned to Chuck, finally stunned enough that she had to say something to somebody. With Mom and John up there chattering away like lifelong buddies, Chuck was her only choice.

“Is this weird or what?” Lori muttered.

Chuck didn't even respond, just stood there staring with his mouth open. He looked mesmerized. Lori couldn't stand it.

“Catching flies?” she asked. That was one of Pop's expressions. She missed Pop suddenly. He'd be the first to agree with her that this tunnel was weird. He was all the time saying, “Never can tell what some fool will come up with next,” while he was watching TV or reading the newspaper. Lori could just picture him, announcing that while he shook the newspaper for emphasis, in disgust. If Pop saw even a picture of this tunnel, he'd laugh his head off.

Chuck mumbled something just then, and Lori leaned in closer to hear him. You couldn't expect words of wisdom from Chuck, but after what she'd said on the airplane, she owed him.

“Huh?” she asked.

“It looks like the future,” he repeated.

Weird,
Lori thought.
Definitely weird.

By the time they got to the hotel, Chuck was in a total daze.

Already, it seemed a million years since he'd made a fool of himself, throwing up on the airplane.

At least the landing had made him only slightly queasy. And he'd been so worried about throwing up again that he'd forgotten to worry about dying.

The plane had dipped to the side a little, landing, and he'd caught a glimpse out the window. An ocean sparkled in the sunlight—no, it wasn't an ocean, just a lake. He knew that much. But he'd never expected a lake to be so big. The downtown was just as amazing—all those enormous buildings. If they looked enormous from the air, what would they look like from the ground?

The sight made him feel big and small, all at once.

Then there was the airport.

He felt funny just thinking about the tunnel they'd walked through, going to get their luggage.

Lori had called it weird.

Maybe he was supposed to think it was weird, too, but he got mad hearing her say that. Didn't she
see
? All those lights and colors, and the music—it was crazy and wonderful all at once. It made him feel like dancing or something, not that he had ever danced.

Were he and Lori looking at the same thing?

He liked all the different people around them, too. The man who met them had skin with the sheen of homemade chocolate pudding. The color was so rich and deep that Chuck had to keep telling himself not to stare. He thought about the box of crayons he'd had when he was a little kid. There'd been sixty-four in the box. Had that chocolate pudding color been in there, too? He couldn't remember.

He didn't know why it mattered so much, a little kid's crayon. But it did.

The taxi driver was black, too, or what people called black, but his skin was a different shade entirely. When he talked, Chuck couldn't understand him at all.

He bet Lori could, though.

“It's the one on the left,” the man, John, was saying. “You can pull in at the circular drive.”

The taxi driver said something, and Chuck couldn't make sense of a single syllable. But somehow, he knew the taxi driver was complaining.
Don't treat me like an
idiot. Don't you think I know what I'm doing? Who gave you the right to boss me around?
Chuck was suddenly filled
with deep respect for the taxi driver. If only Chuck could stand up for himself like that. He wished he could repeat the words the taxi driver had said. It'd be nice to toss out some foreign phrase the next time the kids picked on him at school or Pop yelled at him for forgetting to lock the barn.

They stopped and the taxi driver began pulling their luggage out of the trunk. Chuck went over and picked up his own suitcase—still looking as new and unused as the picture in the Penney's catalog Gram had ordered it from. Then he reached for Mom's, which was a little more battered. Seasoned. Mom turned around and saw what he was doing.

“Oh, Chuck, you don't have to worry about those. Leave them for the bellhop.”

“Huh?” Chuck said.

“Someone from the hotel will carry our bags for us,” Mom explained.

Face flushed with embarrassment, Chuck dropped the bags. Both John and the taxi driver were looking at him. Chuck retreated to the curb, wishing the sidewalk would swallow him up. He could live in the sewers of Chicago for the rest of his life, if only he didn't have to see the look of scorn on Lori's face.

It wasn't fair. If Pop had been along and Chuck had stood aside like Mom said he should, Pop would have
yelled at Chuck for being lazy. That was one of Pop's favorite complaints about Chuck; how many times had Chuck heard, “You're not carrying your own weight!” hollered at him across a barn or a hay wagon or a cornfield? The words always seemed doubly cutting, considering that Chuck's weight would be a lot for anyone to carry.