Time Flies (2 page)

I was fine as I backed out of my driveway. I rolled down the
hill in my safe little neighborhood and pretended I was just going to Publix or Whole Foods, or to get my hair done. I was still fine as I navigated the interminable crush of traffic on Roswell Road, with lanes that mysteriously disappeared and tried to trick you into turning right when you didn’t want to.

Long rows of burgundy and pink crepe myrtle graced the islands in the center of the road, flanked by mounds of cheery yellow Stella d’Oro daylilies. Enclaves of new brick and stone neighborhoods peeked out between clumps of chain stores and restaurants. If you could shop it or eat it, you could find it within a three-mile radius of my house. Except for Ikea.

The instant I saw the sign for the highway, my mouth went dry. I’d stay to the right, drive as slowly as I needed to. Anybody who didn’t like it could just go around me.

My hand shook as I clicked on my blinker.

I could do this.

I willed my foot to stay on the accelerator. I wound my way up the on-ramp slowly, pretending I didn’t see the car behind me getting right on my butt.

The feeder lane dumped me out onto the highway. The car behind me screeched past and catapulted into the maze of speeding steel as if it were hurling itself off a cliff. Lane after lane after lane stretched out to my left, cars flying downhill at terrifying speeds.

Anxiety sat on my chest like a baby elephant. The skin on my arms prickled, closing me in, walling off any hope of escape. Impending doom climbed in and took the passenger seat beside me.

My right leg started to shake from working so hard to keep my foot on the gas pedal. I crept along in the slow lane, trying
not to feel the angry force of the mammoth vehicles that whizzed by my left shoulder—SUV, tractor-trailer, SUV, car, SUV, SUV, SUV. I risked a quick peek at the speedometer and made myself push it up to fifty-five. That was respectable, wasn’t it? I mean, if you could drive fifty-five miles per hour, you were perfectly normal, right?

I just had to drive past four highway exits, take the fifth, and then it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to Ikea.

Breathe.

A sign came into view announcing that the first exit was coming up in three miles. I tried to picture driving past it, but I couldn’t even imagine reaching it. For three endless miles I white-knuckled it.

By the time the first exit finally appeared, I knew I had to get off the highway. But it felt as though fear had frozen my arms in place.

I had to get off. I couldn’t get off.

I forced myself to lunge for my blinker, my hand shaking as if I had Parkinson’s, and managed to turn the wheel and escape the highway four exits too soon. I crawled my way to a semi-deserted fast-food parking lot just down the road from the off-ramp.

I leaned back against the headrest until my sweat chilled and my heartbeat returned almost to normal.

Maybe I’d just sleep in the guest room.

CHAPTER 2

Even before I’d worked the first steel spring free from the mattress foundation, I knew it would be a skirt. A great big Southern hoop skirt that twirled around and around and around. Next would come a parasol with a handle made of steel rebar, or even a splurge of copper pipe. And a hat, a wide, floppy garden hat made from galvanized chicken wire mesh. Ooh, maybe I could line the chicken wire hat with sphagnum moss and fill it with potting soil. The hat would come alive with pansies in the cooler months, and later on with bright yellow dwarf marigolds that would hold their own against the heat of the summer.

When Kurt and I bought our suburban Atlanta house, the previous owners had left behind a garage full of welding equipment. Blowtorches of various sizes and a welding machine. C-clamps and vises. Metal saws and sanders. Heatproof gloves and apron.
A big, heavy helmet with a smoked glass face shield that slipped over your head like a Darth Vader mask.

“And we’ll get rid of all
this
crap,” Kurt said as he tossed the gloves on the trash pile.

I became a metal sculptor instead. The move had left me feeling isolated and rudderless, especially during the long, lonely hours the boys were in school. Creativity had consoled me my whole life, and conquering a new medium was something I could control. And if I was really, really honest, a part of the draw was that Kurt hated the idea.

My first step was to sign up for a welding class at a local vocational school to learn how to use the equipment. “So, what?” Kurt said. “You and a bunch of plumbers-to-be?”

He was pretty much right, although a few of the guys seemed to have their sights set on auto body shops or industry production lines, and the field of
robotics
was dangled reverentially in front of us by our ruddy-faced instructor, who wore his pants crack-exposingly low, like a cartoon plumber.

I was intimidated—by the heft and force and heat of the equipment, by the fact that I was the only woman in the class—but I hung in there. Arc, or stick, welding was the scariest. The AC electric welder we used, 220 volt with 250-amp output, gave off inferno-like heat, penetrating the barrier of leather apron and flame-retardant long-sleeved shirt I was wearing. And arc welding creates a lot of slag, an ugly name for the flux coating on the weld that can burn right through your clothes or your skin or your eyes. By the time the slag cooled to a solid and I could chip it off, my sweat-drenched body would have chilled, too, and I’d be shivering.

“Here, let me get that for you,” one of my classmates would say. “Wouldn’t want you to break a nail, ma’am.”

The
ma’am
thing was scarier than the welding and the sexism put together. I knew it was just Southern but it still made me feel a million years old.

When the class moved on to the MIG welder, which was the kind I’d inherited with the house, I was in heaven. MIG, or metal inert gas, welding is a lot like using a hot glue gun—the temperatures are lower and you can do it with one hand. And a MIG has a continuous wire feed so you can weld uninterrupted.

“If you can use a lighter without setting yourself on fire, you can weld with a MIG,” the instructor said. He meant it to be dismissive, but I was encouraged.

Not that I wasn’t terrified the first time I actually pulled the trigger of a MIG welder. Lights flashed, sparks flew, a piercing crackle assaulted my ears. Welding took every ounce of courage I had, but eventually I managed T-welds and edge-welds and butt-welds. It was like learning a new language. I took it weld by weld, and eventually I had the building blocks I needed to attempt my first sculpture.

All these years later, my technique had improved but I still had the same game plan: to make the pieces I’d want to buy myself. And along the way, to do my little part to save the planet by using recycled scrap metal wherever I could.

Trevor called just as I’d finished cutting up some pieces of old tin roof with my titanium-bonded tin snips to form the panels of the parasol. I took off my leather gloves and reached for my cell.

“Hey, Mom, just checking in to see if you need anything.”

Since Kurt had moved out, this was Trevor’s and my new
ritual. He called once a week from California where he worked long crazy hours editing movie trailers, as if he could just swing by with a half gallon of skim milk or to fix my leaky sink from the other side of the country. As if he’d stepped up to be the new man of the family. It was an oddly soothing routine for both of us.

“Thanks, honey, I’m all set.”

“Okay, well, let me know if something comes up.”

“Will do,” I said. “Working on anything interesting these days?”

Trevor breathed a sigh of relief, and we launched into work talk. The client his team couldn’t please no matter how many brilliant ideas they came up with; the blockbuster movie Trevor’s boss was sure they’d landed. The juried show that had accepted one of my pieces.

“Have you talked to Dad yet?” I finally asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, and for just a second the hurt in his voice made him sound like a little, little boy.

As if Trevor had summoned him, Kurt was sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island when I walked into the house from the garage.

I jumped when I saw him and swallowed back a scream. I gave my helmet hair a knee-jerk fluff with one hand, then got mad at myself for bothering.

Kurt stood up. He was wearing jeans with actual creases ironed in them and a baby-blue T-shirt I’d never seen before,
kind of tight-fitting.
French cut
popped into my head randomly. And a thick silver chain around one wrist. A man-bracelet?

“I knocked first,” he said, “but you didn’t answer.” The implication being that it was
my
fault he’d scared me.

“For future reference,” I said sweetly, “when that happens, the appropriate thing to do is to go away. Oh, wait, actually the even more appropriate thing would be to call first.”

Kurt walked over to the kitchen sink and turned it on. Then he opened the cabinet above it and took out a water glass.

“You can’t do that anymore,” I said.

He put the glass down on the counter. He walked across the kitchen and sat down on the same bar stool again. His bar stool. Former bar stool.

We stared at each other. Neither of us looked away.

“Melanie,” he said finally. “I’m thirsty. Can you please get me a glass of water?”

I walked over to the sink and turned on the water. I chose a different glass, one I’d never really liked in the first place. I filled it with water.

I walked slowly over to the man I’d lived with for decades.

With a sharp flick of the wrist I must have seen in an old movie, I threw the water in his face. Then I dropped the glass on the cool, unforgiving tile floor.

When I walked away, the crunch the shards of glass made under my welding boots was crisp and satisfying.

By the time I got back out to the garage, I’d figured out the pose for my second box spring lady. Over her swirling skirt, she’d have one hand on her hip, elbow bent at a jaunty angle. With her
other hand she’d be holding her parasol out in front of her. Like a shield. Or maybe more like a weapon.

I’d chosen the steel spring for her skirt and I was reaching for my apron when Kurt pushed the door open from the mudroom to the garage. This was my entrance, my side of the garage, and in all the years we’d both lived here together he almost never came out this way.

Once I’d taken up metal sculpture, it was as if Kurt and I had divided the garage right down the middle with an imaginary line. The side closer to the house was my studio. The side closer to the street belonged to Kurt and held his car, his golf clubs, the lawn mower, the non-metalworking tools. The boys’ bikes and sports equipment lined the far wall—neutral territory. Either Kurt opened the garage door with the remote control and entered and exited that way, or he walked across the patio behind the house and in through the back door.

“I think you need to apologize,” Kurt said.

“I think you need to apologize more,” I said.

The watermark on the front of Kurt’s T-shirt looked like an ascot. Or maybe a man-necklace to match his man-bracelet. I flipped the leather apron over my head.

“Is that our bed?” Kurt asked.

I followed his gaze. A carved hardwood spindle was sticking out of one of the heavy-duty contractor bags.

I shrugged.

“Jesus, Melanie, do you remember how much that bed cost? If you didn’t want it, Crissy and I would have taken it.”

I picked up a steel bar. Kurt took a small step back.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen,” he said. “Let me buy you out. You’ll be much happier in a town house.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m sure my town house neighbors would welcome the sound of metal grinding with open arms.”

Kurt’s steel-blue eyes scanned the garage. Even I had to admit my side looked a little bit like a junkyard.

He shrugged. “So, you’ll rent some studio space.”

I ignored him. “And those homeowners’ associations are really big on letting you try out your works-in-progress in your front yard.”

“Maybe even buy one of those live/work units. You know, work space on the ground floor, living space up above it.”