Taking Off (22 page)

“Mm,” said Albertine in a manner disconcertingly like my father's.

“I wonder—I am wondering just now—how much of what I am I owe to the time I spent in that room. I think that as I look back I can see in my life a pattern something like the pattern in the paneling, something in which the irregularity of its knottiness is balanced by the regularity of the millwork.”

Her eyes widened.

“The paneling that my father used in my bedroom, when he finally finished, or nearly finished, the corner of the attic in our house in Babbington Heights that became my bedroom, was knotty pine nearly identical to the knotty pine that paneled the walls of his boyhood bedroom. I wonder if I haven't unconsciously or subconsciously patterened my life on that paneling.”

Albertine sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Finally, brightening, she said, “You're kidding, right?”

“Kidding?” I asked. “About what?”

“About finding in your past the regularity and irregularity of knotty pine paneling?”

“Um, no.”

“Hm.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“‘Hm.'”

“I think I mean—”

“Mm?”

“I think I mean—”

“Yeah?”

“I think I mean, ‘I hope you're not beginning to take yourself too seriously.'”

“Oh.”

“You are, aren't you?”

“Possibly. I think it may be the influence of my younger self, the self who was about to take off for the Faustroll Insititute in the Land of Enchantment. Back then, when I had the aerocycle finished, when it was ready and I began to feel that I, too, was ready, that I had become a person who was ready to mount his aerocycle and take off, I began to feel that I had a mission, that perhaps greatness had been thrust upon me.”

“It went to your head.”

“It did, and I liked it.”

“And that was when you began to think of your life as patterned? Milled? Shaped? Shaped, as in shaped by fate, or the Fates?”

“Yes, but knotty, too, remember.”

“How long did this last?”

“I don't seem to have gotten over it. Last night I found myself wondering whether I could induce and perhaps sustain that happy state of timelessness if I re-created the childhood conditions that originally inspired it.”

“Oh, no.”

“If I paneled my workroom with old knotty pine, if I bought some balsa-wood model kits from that dusty hobby shop down the block from us on First Avenue, where all the stock is old, I could assemble them, to a point, and arrange them on shelves where I could see and smell them, and I could work in that paneled room as a happy fool.”

“Oh, my dear, my darling, my dreamer,” she said, “promise me that you won't actually buy any of that paneling until I get out of here.”

“Okay.”

“No dusty old model kits, either.”

“Okay.”

“If I can pass the Walker Test, I can be home tomorrow.”

Chapter 47

My Name Stitched in Red

WITH THE AEROCYCLE COMPLETE and waiting in the driveway, and with the announced time of my departure less than a week away, I began to feel important. I began to feel that I stood atop a tower of aviation pioneers, on the shoulders of giants, almost a young giant myself. That feeling may have led eventually to my willingness to have my accomplishment exaggerated by the press and the people of Babbington. In a way, I may have felt that to diminish their perception of my deeds by throwing over them the wet blanket of the truth would be to diminish not only my own daring accomplishment, but the accomplishments of my fellow pioneers as well. I may have felt that. I'm not sure. I offer it in my defense anyway. I know this: I stood taller, I set my jaw more firmly, and I steeled my gaze. I know those things because I checked my stature, my jaw, and my gaze in the hall mirror, frequently. The changes seemed to me to border on the profound, but my mother seemed not to notice. She insisted on helping me pack.

“Mom,” I said, drawing myself to my full height, clenching my jaw, whetting my steely gaze, radiating determination and independence, “I'm embarking on a great adventure.”

“Oh, I know!” she said. “I'm just as excited as you are. It gives me goose bumps. I should sew name tapes in your underwear.”

“Is that something that only mothers can do?” I asked her.

“Sew name tags?” she asked, counting my underwear.

“No. Get from goose bumps to underwear in eight words flat.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” I said grumpily, with my eyes down, ashamed of the fact that I had been making fun of her, “it's just that adventurers do not go out into the wide world, braving the unknown, with their names sewn into their underwear.”

“They don't?”

“No. They don't.”

“How do you know?”

“Mom!”

“Come on, Mr. Smarty Pants. How do you know that the great adventurers haven't ‘braved the unknown' with their names sewn into their underwear?”

“I just—”

“Wilbur and Orville Wright.”

“Oh, come on.”

“They had their names sewn into their underwear.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you not?”

“I just—”

“Lucky Lindy.”

“He did not have ‘Lucky Lindy' sewn into his underwear.”

“Of course not. He had ‘Charles A. Lindbergh' sewn into his underwear.”

“How about Chuck Yeager?” I asked. I thought I had her. I supposed that she did not know who Chuck Yeager was.

“Certainly,” she said, a bit uncertainly.

“He had ‘Chuck' sewn into his underwear?”

“No, silly,” she said, and then she added with a girlish grin, “‘Charles Elwood Yeager, Test Pilot.'”

“And those labels were sewn in by his mother?”

“Of course they were sewn in by his mother. Who else?”

“Okay, I give up.”

“I'll have them ready in the morning.”

*   *   *

SHE DID. The next morning all my underwear, my handkerchiefs, and my socks bore white fabric strips with “Peter Leroy” stitched on them in red thread. They were discreet, and I was grateful for that, but I was surprised to find that I liked them. They had a certain style. I had expected to be embarrassed by them, but I wasn't. My name looked handsome stitched in red. I regretted that there wasn't time for her to add “Birdboy of Babbington,” the way Chuck's mother had added “Test Pilot.”

Chapter 48

Traveling Light

WHILE TRYING TO PACK the aerocycle, I began to understand what the writers at
Impractical Craftsman
had meant by the assessment that it “would not be practical for long-distance flying.” It had not been conceived as a vehicle for cross-country flights. It didn't have room for everything that my mother wanted me to take. It didn't even have room for everything that I wanted to take, and that wasn't half of what my mother wanted me to take. I suppose that the people at
IC
who dreamed up the aerocycle intended it only for what they called “sports use,” the sort of flight that wouldn't require a change of clothes, not even a change of underwear, nothing more than buzzing around the neighborhood, never very far from home.

“I don't know how you're going to carry all of this,” my mother said, surveying the clothing and gear that we had brought to the driveway, glancing back and forth between the pile of stuff and the two small compartments fitted into the fuselage behind the pilot's seat.

“He can't,” said my father. “You've got to start eliminating things.”

“Oh, dear,” said my mother. She picked up a pair of socks. “Maybe he won't need—” she said, and then, after consideration, “but he will.” She put the socks back on the pile and said again, “Oh, dear.”

“Mom,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “I'm going into unfamiliar territory, but not into ‘the great unknown.' You were right to question my calling it that.”

“I didn't—”

“Yes, you did. The question—we might even call it a challenge—was in your tone—and you were right. I'm going west, and that's a great adventure, but I'm not the first person to make the trip. Others have preceded me, blazing the trail—”

“What does this have to do—” my father interrupted.

“Because those pioneers preceded me,” I pushed on, “there are people out there already. I'm going to travel light, but my resources will be virtually limitless, because I'm going to rely on the kindness of strangers.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Don't worry, Mom. I'm sure that I'm going to meet wonderful people all along the way, swell people, people who will be happy to take me into their homes, give me a hot supper, tuck me into a warm bed, and send me off with a hearty breakfast.”

“I don't know—”

“These are the great American people I'm talking about, Mom, the folk, the salt of the earth. They're not going to turn a wayfarer from their doors. I'm going to put myself at their mercy, arriving as a new pioneer, making his way, asking for the same hospitality that I know you would extend to a boy like me if he arrrived on our doorstep in need.”

Her lip trembled. “In need?” she cried.

“Well—not in need exactly—I mean, just needing dinner and a place to stay for the night.”

“And a washing machine.”

“Right.”

“Well, of course we would throw the door wide open, wouldn't we, Bert?”

“Mmmm. I'm not so—” he began, but my mother gave him a look—begging him, I believe, to put himself in the position of a householder finding her son, Peter, on his doorstep, wet, hungry, and miserable, with a cold coming on—and he finished with, “Yeah, I guess.”

“And that's what I'm counting on,” I said with all the conviction I could dissemble. “I know that when I need food, shelter, and someone to wash my socks, I'll find what I need—out there—by putting my trust in the kind hearts of the good and simple people of this great land.”

Most of what I was saying I was quoting from the stirring final scene of
Bitter Harvest of Sour Grapes,
a movie that had played a couple of weeks earlier at the Babbington Theater. In that scene, you may recall, the lanky scion of the destitute Geibe family, their sole hope, decides to change his name to Slim and take to the road as a wandering minstrel and harmonicat, promising to send to his mother, father, and weepy sister all his earnings, withholding only what he needs to keep himself alive and kicking.

“In that case,” said my father, pulling things from the pile and stuffing them into the small compartments, “you won't need more than a couple changes of clothing, the first-aid kit, a few hard-boiled eggs, a couple of apples, the compass, the maps, and your rain poncho.”

“Oh, dear,” said my mother, regarding the great number of things remaining in the pile. “What about—” She reached for my galoshes.

“No, Ella,” said my father, laying a restraining hand on hers. “Peter's right. He's got to travel light. Remember that stuff about the American people.”

I remember the look on her face. Worry was there, and so was disappointment: she had put a great deal of effort into preparing and assembling all the things she had expected me to take on the journey. In a moment, though, defiance was added to those two emotions. Her eyes darted over the pile of rejected supplies, and I could see that she was determined—desperate, perhaps—to find something that she would be able to add to my gear. Her eyes lit up. “Well!” she cried, springing on the volume of
Faustroll.
“I suppose you'll need this at the Faustroll Institute!”

“I sure will!” I said, eager to give her a victory. I see her face now, as I write. I see the consolation of a single addition to my stock. “What would I have done without this?” I cried convincingly. “Mr. MacPherson would never have forgiven me if I had gone off without it, and the people at the Faustroll Institute might not even have let me enroll if I didn't have it with me. Thanks, Mom.”

I meant it, not thanks for Faustroll, but thanks for everything, everything she had ever done for me, including sewing those snappy name tags on my underwear.

The poignance of the moment threatened to overwhelm us. Even my father found it necessary to blow his nose. Before we could make a scene that would embarrass us in the neighborhood, though, a car came to a screeching halt in front of our house. The three of us spun toward the street and saw Rocco's T-Bucket sliding to a stop. Patti Fiorenza got out and hurried toward us with a poster in her hand. “These are all over town,” she said, waving the poster at me.

“These are all over town,” she said, waving the poster at me.

Chapter 49

Albertine's Childlike State of Wonder and Receptivity