Takeoffs and Landings (7 page)

“Fine,” she spit out. “You didn't like my speech. That's no reason to scare me to death. Didn't you know
how worried I'd be? What did you think I'd think when I finished my speech and you were gone? I'll tell you what I thought. I was imagining you dead in some dark alley or kidnapped or raped or—or . . . This is
Chicago.
It's a big city. You're not in safe little Pickford County anymore—”

Lori couldn't stand it.

“I know,” she interrupted. “In Pickford County, mothers don't make fun of their kids in front of thousands of people.”

Mom drew back as though Lori had slapped her. Lori was afraid she'd gone too far. Kids in the Lawson family were not allowed to talk to grown-ups like that. And Mom was already mad.

“What do you mean?” Mom said sharply.

“‘We were afraid Lori would grow up to be a strip artist—'” Lori quoted.

“That's not what I said!” Mom protested.

“Close enough,” Lori hissed. She knew Mom had really said, “My husband was a little concerned . . .,” but it was too dangerous to bring up Dad. Just saying his name would be like hauling a nuclear bomb into their battle.

“Lori, that was just a story. You were two years old, for crying out loud.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not two anymore. How do you think it made me feel, hearing that? To know that for eight years you've been saying God knows what about me to all these strangers? People I don't even know?” Lori held back a wail. If she was going to fight with Mom, she wasn't going
to be all weak and teary. “I mean, you were talking about diapers! How many bankers in America know the intimate details of how I was potty trained?”

“Oh, Lori.” Mom slumped against the ritzy, expensive-looking etched wallpaper behind her. Everything around them was too fancy. Lori wished they were fighting someplace real.

But someplace real, Lori wouldn't have the nerve to say anything. Beside fake trees, seventeen stories above ground, Lori couldn't stop herself.

“Maybe you want to be famous and have all these people oohing and aahing over you, but what about me and Chuck and Joey and Mike and Emma? Don't we have any rights to privacy?”

“Oh, Lori,” Mom said again, and took a ragged breath. “When I started giving these speeches, I didn't know anything. I was just a high school graduate, and I was talking to people with college degrees—doctorates, some of them. The only subject I was an expert in was you kids. The only thing I'd ever studied was the way you all looked taking your first steps, the smiles you gave out, the—the way you smelled, fresh from your baths—”

Lori couldn't listen.

“Save the flowery descriptions for the bankers,” she said, brushing past her mother. She had to get away from Mom. She was terrified of what she might say next if she stayed. “That was all a long, long time ago. Did it ever occur to you that you aren't an expert on any of us anymore?”

She was down the hall now, but she couldn't resist shouting back, “Given how little we've seen you the past eight years, I'm surprised you even remember our names, let alone any cutesy anecdotes about how we looked taking our first steps.”

She rounded the corner, wanting mostly to find a door so she could give it a good, satisfying slam. But she'd forgotten: She still didn't have a key to room 1709. She didn't have anywhere else to go, though, so she ran to the room, anyway, and gave the door a hard kick, instead of knocking. It swung open. It must not have been fully latched.

Chuck sat on the bed, blinking at her.

“Um, Mom's looking for you,” he said blankly. “I think she's kind of worried.”

Lori wanted to be home so she could flounce upstairs and shut the door of her own room so hard that the whole house would shake. She wanted privacy. She wanted to be alone. She settled for going into the bathroom. But the door must have been designed to prevent slamming—even her hardest shove sent it only gliding gently closed.

Somehow that made Lori madder than ever.

Mom came in only a few minutes after Lori.

“Lori's here,” Chuck said. He inclined his head toward the bathroom door. “In there. I was just going to call the front desk, like you said—”

“I know,” Mom said. “I saw her. We talked.”

And then she practically dived onto her bed, burying her face in her pillow. She lay without moving.

Things were getting really weird.

Locked in the bathroom, Lori slumped against the cold porcelain tub on the cold tile floor. She couldn't cry with abandon anymore because Chuck was right there on the other side of the door. She tried to distract herself.

She remembered a story Gram had told her once about Mom.

When Mom was fourteen, she'd started showing off one day in the hog barn at the Pickford County Fair. She'd turned cartwheels the whole way down the barn's aisle, not seeming to care at all that her hands and her sandals might easily end up covered in a stinky mess. She'd landed right at the feet of, as Gram put it, “that good-lucking Lawson boy.” And instead of being embarrassed, Mom had raised her arms high, victoriously, like a real gymnast.

The next thing anyone knew, Mom and Dad were going out.

But that wasn't the end of the story. Pop had gotten wind of Mom's feat, and he went around telling all his friends about it at Farm Bureau Council and down at the Pickford Farmers' Exchange. Lori could just hear how he'd say it:
Can you believe my own daughter doesn't have the sense God gave her, not to go turning cartwheels in manure? But the Lord must truly protect the ignorant, because she came up with clean hands and shoes. A miracle, if I ever heard of one. Got herself a boyfriend out of it, too.

Mom had been embarrassed then. She'd refused to go into the Pickford Farmers' Exchange for a whole year. She'd boycotted anything to do with Farm Bureau until she was out of high school.

“I think she was even kind of mad we insisted on inviting everyone on council to her wedding,” Gram had chuckled.

Lori had always liked that story. She liked imagining Mom so much younger, turning cartwheels and falling in love. It made her seem more like Lori—not like someone who belonged in hotels and up at podiums.

It also made it seem like maybe someday Lori might be able to cartwheel into someone's heart and fall in love herself.

But Mom must not remember anything at all about turning those cartwheels and Pop embarrassing her. Because if she did, she wouldn't be going around the country telling everyone horrible stories about Lori.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Lori?” Mom called softly.

Even though the door was locked, Lori scrunched back against the tub.

“What?” she said.

“If it bothers you so much, I'll stop telling any stories about you,” Mom said. “I'll cut you out of all of my speeches.”

Lori wondered why she didn't feel the least bit triumphant. She felt almost rejected instead. Didn't Mom
want
to talk about Lori?

Lori reminded herself Mom was giving in; Lori had won. She stood up and opened the door a crack.

“Promise?” she asked.

Mom nodded. “I—I remember being fourteen,” Mom said. “I remember how things can seem . . . out of proportion.”

Oh, so Lori was wrong to be upset? So Lori was just silly and sensitive? The anger flared again.

“What about the other kids? Chuck and Mike and Joey and Emma?” Lori asked. “Will you stop talking about them, too?”

Mom winced. Lori could tell Mom hadn't thought of that.

“They haven't asked me to,” Mom said stiffly.

“Mike and Joey and Emma haven't exactly had a chance, have they?” Lori asked. “They don't even know you're talking about them.”

“They're young enough that I can still judge for them,” Mom said.

Lori didn't know what made her push the issue. If
Mom had only said,
I know how you feel. I got mad when Pop spread stories about me, too. Let me tell you about some cartwheels. . . .
But Mom would never tell Lori the cartwheel story because it involved Daddy, and Mom didn't talk about Daddy.

“Chuck's here,” Lori said. “He heard your speech. Hey, Chuck. What do you think?”

Chuck was sitting on the far bed now, watching TV. He pulled his attention away from a soap commercial.

“Huh?” he said.

“Isn't it unfair how Mom's been telling stories about us in all her speeches, and she's been doing it for years, and we didn't even know?” Lori fought to control her voice, but it was useless. She was crying again.

“Well, that was certainly an unbiased account of the situation,” Mom said dryly. “Lori has asked me not to mention her in my speeches again, and we were wondering if you felt the same way.”

Lori glared at Mom. How could she stay so calm? She sounded as formal as the queen of England, ordering tea.

She really must not care,
Lori thought.

Chuck looked from Mom to Lori and back again. He squinted, looking as confused as if they'd both been speaking foreign languages. Lori had seen hogs make up their minds faster than Chuck did.

Finally he shrugged.

“I don't care,” he said. “I, um, thought your speech was real good.”

Then he looked back at the TV, as though it were dangerous to look at Mom or Lori for very long.

“Well,” Mom said. “That's settled.”

There was nothing left for Lori to do except stomp back into the bathroom and do her best to slam the door.

The televised images danced in front of Chuck's eyes, but he wasn't seeing them.

Lori asked me for something,
he thought again and again.
Lori hasn't asked me for anything in eight years.

If only he were smarter, he could understand what was going on. Mom and Lori were mad at each other. He knew that. Lori didn't want Mom talking about her. He knew that, too, but didn't understand. Lori wanted Chuck to tell Mom not to talk about him, either.

Why? Why did Lori care?

What Chuck saw now, instead of the TV, was huge tangles. The whole conversation he'd just had was like Pop's piles of old baling twine, knotted and snarled and impossible to sort out. He could picture very clearly the twisted loops of twine lying on the barn floor.

He'd just stepped in one of those loops, and gotten caught.

Now Lori will never forgive me,
he thought.