Flight (41 page)

The streets of Ryville are deserted. She drives by the Dairy Queen, the Friday-night hot spot. There’s the insurance office where her aunt Janice works, and the turnoff to the factory where Eddie was recently made line manager. There’s a small diner where she and Margaret used to go sometimes, and, as she gets to the edge of town, the high school they never attended because, as their mother put it, a diploma from there and fifty cents would get you a cup of coffee.

Leanne brakes at the town’s single stoplight. There are no other
cars, and after a minute, she’s so eager to be on her way that she eases through the red light. She makes the turn toward the expressway and speeds up, putting the town behind her.

She hasn’t gotten far when she sees the red lights in her rearview mirror. She wipes her eyes. “Damn.” To think there was actually a cop sitting in downtown Ryville at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning. Who was he hoping to catch? He must have seen her pull through the light.

She pulls over and turns the car off, watching in her mirror as he glides in behind her. She keeps her hands on the steering wheel. With any luck, the ticket won’t be expensive. If she’s going to give up her store, she should watch her expenses. A knot catches in her throat.

The cop climbs out of his car and walks slowly toward her. Leanne thinks of the conversation with her father from the night before. She was blurry and tired, and what he was saying barely made sense. Dead reckoning. You might arrive somewhere without knowing it.

The cop leans toward her window, and she rolls it down.

“Officer,” she begins, “there wasn’t anyone at the light—”

He cuts her off. “Are you Margaret Gruen?” he asks.

Leanne looks at his hand, puzzled. He doesn’t have his ticket book in it. “No,” she says. “I’m her sister.”

He bares his teeth once, not really a smile. He doesn’t believe her. “I’ll need to see some ID,” he says. He looks into the backseat as if expecting to find something there.

Leanne takes her purse off the passenger seat. She reaches in and finds her wallet. The cop shifts nervously, his hand moving toward his gun. He’s young, clearly younger than she is, and anxious about being alone with her. Since when has Margaret become a dangerous outlaw?

“Here you are,” she says, holding out her New York State driver’s license. He holds it up, scrutinizing it, then looks back at Leanne. Light rain is falling on the license, and he flicks it to clear it off so he can peer at it some more. She glances at his badge.
Terhune.

“Is there a problem?” she asks.

“This is Margaret Gruen’s car, isn’t it?” he asks.

Leanne nods. “Yes,” she says. “She lent it to me.” It occurs to her that Margaret could have reported the car stolen to bring her back. That’s the kind of thing Margaret might do if she thought Leanne was making a mistake. But her sister had supported Leanne’s desire to leave. Maybe Kit reported the car stolen. But he wouldn’t know the plates.

“I’d like to see the registration,” the cop says, and Leanne hopes Margaret is as organized about her car as she is about everything else. She pops the glove compartment open and almost smiles. How could she have doubted her sister? On top of a box of tissues is a small folder with Margaret’s handwriting on the front:
Car Documents.

“Here it is,” Leanne says, handing the whole thing to the cop. He flips it open to the first page and reads. After a moment, he hands it back to her.

“Where is your sister?” he asks.

Leanne’s stomach flips. This is really happening.
Dead reckoning,
she thinks. Suddenly, it seems clear what her father was trying to tell her. Your life doesn’t happen somewhere in the future. You can’t wait to arrive at it. You’re already there.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Why do you have her car?”

Leanne grips the steering wheel harder. Her stomach felt sick already; now she’s almost certain she’s going to throw up. She wonders if she can get the cop out of the way so she can step out of the car.

“I told you, she lent it to me.” She takes a deep breath. “For my wedding. I flew to Chicago, and we were supposed to drive up together, but she didn’t come. I drove up to Michigan alone.” Her sudden flow of speech seems to relax the cop.

He rests one arm on the top of the car window. “So where is she now?”

Leanne shakes her head. “Like I said, I don’t know.”

“You’re getting married?”

She nods. “That’s right, today.”

“So where are you going?”

There’s a spill of freckles across his nose. His chin is nice, and his eyes are dark but not cruel. One ear sticks out more than the other. To her great frustration, Leanne’s eyes fill with tears.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking down at the steering wheel. “I was just … I just couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a drive.” She sniffs, trying to get control of her tears, and looks back at the cop.

Amazingly, the tears seem to have exactly the right effect. He leans back, unsure of himself, clearly wanting to put distance between them.

“Well, all right, then,” he says. “But watch yourself. You were going a little fast through town.”

Leanne nods, shocked by how quickly things have turned around. He swivels on his heels and moves back toward his car, adjusting his hat in the rain. Leanne watches in the rearview mirror as he climbs back into the cruiser.

He hits his blinker once and, without waiting for her, moves out onto the road and passes her. He lifts one hand stiffly, dismissing her.

Leanne sits in the car. The rain has gotten harder. She can hear it drumming on the roof like tiny fingertips. The police want Margaret. Undoubtedly, it’s a mistake, a misunderstanding. She turns the key in the ignition, but the car wheezes grindingly. She started it already. Leaning forward to squint through the windshield, she checks to see that the cop has truly gone. Then she looks behind. No one. Smoothly, in one easy curve, she does a U-turn. The light turns green as she approaches, and she speeds up. She wants to be home.

MARGARET WAKES FOR THE SECOND TIME WHEN the phone rings. She sits bolt upright. Who would call on the morning of the wedding? It might be David. Or Leanne. Maybe she’s having trouble with the car. Whichever it is, there’s no doubt in Margaret’s mind that she’s the one being hailed.

She hurries to the kitchen and grabs the receiver.

“Hello. I’m trying to reach Margaret?” It’s the last voice on earth she expected to hear.

“Vasant?”

“Oh, Margaret, I’m very glad it’s you.” Warmth floods Margaret’s body. One of the things that drew her to Vasant was his calm, melodious voice. Just hearing him speak was somehow sensual. Now his voice has manifested itself when she most needed to hear it. He sounds relieved to hear her, too. Perhaps the separation has been unbearable for him.

“I think we have a problem.” His voice is stilted by anxiety. Margaret looks at the clock: 7:40. Under four and a half hours to the wedding. Except there won’t be a wedding; the bride has fled. And Margaret has to explain it to everyone.

“What’s going on?”

“I was going to ask you about that. I’ve been quite concerned the past few days. About David, I mean.”

“David?” Margaret’s heart thuds. He wouldn’t have done anything self-destructive. She’s sure of it. Or at least she used to be, when she knew him.

“Yes, David has been acting … a little unhinged.” He says it reluctantly, with his characteristically Indian good manners. Vasant is nothing if not gracious. She liked that, too, the strict propriety masking a passionate sensibility.

“Unhinged?” Margaret can hear shuffling coming from her father’s study. He must be up, too. She lowers her voice almost to a whisper. “What do you mean, ‘unhinged’?”

“Well, he challenged me to a duel.”

“What?” Margaret forgets to be quiet and gives a short, hysterical bark of laughter. The way Vasant says “du-el,” with two syllables, makes it sound as if people actually conduct them.

“Yes, I was coming into the department after teaching my afternoon lecture, and David was there, lying in wait, as it were—”

“Lying in wait?”
Margaret suppresses an almost overwhelming urge to giggle. She had no idea Vasant could be so dramatic.

“Yes, and he handed me this, uh, note that he had printed up …”

“A note? He challenged you to a duel in a
note?
”

“It appears so, yes.” Vasant’s voice drops, and now he sounds less dramatic than simply morose.

“Oh God.” Margaret takes a deep breath. The effort not to laugh is making her feel as though she’s going to hyperventilate.

“I can only assume”—and here Vasant’s voice takes a cooler, more formal tone, as if he’s treading cautiously—“he is aware of things transpiring between you and me.”

“Oh my God,” Margaret says again. It’s too much, too many levels of misunderstanding and missed connections. Poor Vasant—he’s like a dramatic character who turned up in the wrong play. “Yes,” she says, “of course he knows. I told him myself.”

“I see.” It’s clear from Vasant’s tone that he doesn’t see. In the play he comes from, a nineteenth-century melodrama, perhaps, infidelity is always secret. Margaret sighs. If only she could join him in that play. Suddenly, she’s exhausted with the prospect of everything she has to do. Here and now, with her family, there’s too much, and now this ridiculous farce going on in Chicago without her. She’s going to be the laughingstock of Evanston.

“Look, Vasant,” Margaret says, “I’m really sorry you were dragged into this. David has cracked somehow. It was not our arrangement. This was not supposed to happen.”

“Your arrangement?” For the first time, an angry note creeps
into Vasant’s euphonic voice. “You had an arrangement concerning me? Perhaps I could be privy to it?”

“Not about you.” Margaret puts a hand over her eyes. Her head is aching. “About us. David and me. We were supposed to be free. You know, both of us, free to …” What was it her lawyer said?
Open marriage.
She isn’t going to be able to describe and justify something she never truly wanted.

“You know what?” she says. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that David’s behaving crazily. But I’m going to work it out. What did you … How did you leave it with him?”

“I did nothing. I thought the best thing would be to pretend it never happened. After all, I don’t think it would be good for people in the department to know he’s acting … as you say, crazily.”

“No, you’re right, of course. Thank you. Maybe you could avoid him for a while?”

“He has given me one week to respond, in any case.”

Margaret squeezes her lips together in order not to laugh again. She takes a deep breath through her nose. “That’s good,” she says. “I’ll be back there before then, and I’ll try to sort it out with him.”

“I just thought you should know.” Vasant sounds uncertain.

“Thank you, Vasant. Really. I mean it.”

“You’re welcome.” There’s an awkward pause. “And things there? Does your sister’s wedding progress well?”

Margaret can’t stifle the laugh this time. “Oh, yes, as well as can be expected,” she manages to get out. “Thanks again. I’ll let you know how things are going.”

“Yes, thank you, that would be nice.”

Margaret hangs up the phone and leans her forehead against it. She doesn’t cry. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband has gone completely mad, her sister has taken her car and ditched her own groom at the altar, and her mother is about to come downstairs and keel over when she finds out, but Margaret feels slightly better. It’s as if the insanity has finally gotten out of hand. There’s no telling what will happen next.

The whole thing with Vasant seems childish and somehow desperate.
Margaret is sorry she got him involved. As for her flights of fancy about a future together—she pushes away the vague sense of embarrassment. There’s no time for that now.

Her marriage to David has no future, either. But there’s an odd comfort in the fact that David loved her enough to be jealous. For years, she secretly suspected that his issues with fidelity were not, as he claimed, intellectual, but about not loving her enough. She stifled her doubts and went along with his idea not because she wanted it but because she wanted to be the kind of person who did. She wasn’t—and neither, in the end, was he. She rocks gently from side to side, her forehead rolling back and forth on the telephone’s smooth plastic surface.

The front door opens. Startled out of her thoughts, Margaret straightens up.
Get a grip,
she tells herself. The phone leaves a tactile impression on her forehead. She goes out into the hall.

“Margaret?” Leanne is dripping in the foyer, whispering and looking pale. She’s holding out a cupped palm. “Here are your car keys. I decided to come back.”

The phone wakes Carol. One ring, then half a ring stopped short. Her eyes open, and she’s not sure if she heard it or dreamed it. She looks at the clock. Wedding day.

And marriage-ending day.
Trial separation.
She hadn’t thought about the words before they came out. But then they were there, a fact, living and breathing like a third person in the room. She stares at the ceiling and considers how she feels. Strangely, she’s not distraught.

Sometimes, when she was a young housewife, she would lose control of her checkbook. Little errors would creep in here and there, and then they would add up to bigger errors, and by the time she sat down to untangle the numbers, the account log would be an impenetrable web of confusion. Will would get annoyed with her.
Just figure it out,
he would say.
Just sit down and do the math and sort it all out.
And she would shake her head.
I can’t,
she would tell
him.
There is no sorting it out.
She would call the bank, get the new balance, draw a line under the entries so far, and start over.

That’s how she feels now. It’s almost a relief to acknowledge it—yes, it’s a mess, but she doesn’t have to wade into it, she can turn her back and move forward.