Flight Patterns (5 page)

“As much as I'm sure we'd regret it, I'm equally certain that we'd survive.”

James turned around and faced me, his eyes unreadable. “I'm just not sure that I will. I was looking for an excuse to get away from my life for a while when my sister suggested I find out more about my grandmother's china. I've recently suffered a personal loss, and it was either this or check myself into a mental hospital. I chose the china.”

I looked at his perfect face and form, his intelligent eyes and capable hands, and felt the old bitterness arise in me. “What happened? Did your girlfriend leave you?”

Something flickered in his eyes, but he didn't look away. “No, actually. My wife died.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, with no emotion, but I felt his words like a fist to my stomach. “I'm sorry,” I said quietly, identifying now the regret I'd seen in his eyes when we'd first met.

“Do you understand, then?”

I nodded slowly, wishing that I didn't know the need to hide myself in ordinary objects that had managed to get lost along the way. “Yes,” I said. “But . . .” I thought of my grandfather and Birdie. And Maisy. All the unfinished business I had left behind. How I wasn't ready to face it again, especially not with an audience.

“You won't even know I'm there,” he pressed. “Unless you need my help looking at catalogs or moving large boxes in the attic.” He gave me a small smile that did nothing to erase the pain in his eyes. “And I won't make you tell me anything that you don't want to share.”

I almost laughed. “That's not what I'm worried about. It's a small town. People will make it their business to tell you everything you want to know, and a good part of what you don't.”

A genuine brightness lit his eyes. “I'm from New York. I'm very good at rebuffing people.”

I sighed, knowing I'd lost more than just this argument. “Fine. I'll let Mr. Mandeville know. I was planning on leaving tomorrow and will stay with my aunt. There are a few hotels and B and Bs in town and I'm sure you can find them online. I'm thinking two days, tops.”

“That's better than nothing,” he said.

“And I'm still hoping to get a phone call from my sister to let me know she's found it and we don't have to go. She's as eager to keep me here as I am to stay.” He didn't ask me to explain, and I was glad to know he'd been serious about not making me tell him anything I didn't want to share. I led him to the door. “Thanks again for the croissants.”

“You're welcome. Thanks for letting me come along.”

I pushed away the swelling of regret I felt rising like bile. “Nine o'clock sharp. Be on time, because I won't wait.”

We said good-bye and I closed the door before I could change my mind. I shut my eyes for a moment, remembering my mother's face as she pressed her finger to her lips, took the small cup from my hands, and told me to keep a secret. I imagined now the buzzing of the bees painted into the china, held down by my years of silence. And how I was getting ready to finally set them free.

He who would gather honey must bear the sting of the bees.

—NED BLOODWORTH'S BEEKEEPER'S JOURNAL

Georgia

I
was carrying the box of china catalogs out to my car when a taxi pulled up behind me at the curb, a good twenty minutes early. It meant James had taken seriously my threat to leave without him, or he was naturally punctual. Since he'd grown up with four sisters, I could only imagine the sort of friction that must have caused.

“Let me help you with that,” he said, rushing toward me as the taxi pulled away.

“I've got it,” I said, lowering the box into the trunk, sounding peevish. I was disappointed that he'd really shown up, and angry with myself for allowing it. But even after tossing and turning all night, I hadn't come up with anything else to stop what only promised to be a massive train wreck. I'd tried to explain it to Mr. Mandeville when I'd spoken with him the previous day, but I couldn't without going into specifics. And that was something I was not yet prepared to do. It was like standing on the beach staring at an oncoming wave, knowing sooner or later I was going to get wet.

“Wow. Is this your car?” James stood back to get a better look at
my white 1970 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, his expression like that of a ten-year-old boy who'd just been given a new bike.

“It was my grandmother's. My grandfather gave it to me when I got my driver's license at sixteen.”

He nodded appreciatively, taking in the bright chrome bumpers and the angular fins on the back. “I was going to offer to pay for gas, but now I'm thinking that I can't afford it.”

I surprised us both by laughing. I didn't want to enjoy his company. But my learning about his wife had formed a tentative bridge between us, a loose connection of loss and memories. It wasn't that we wore badges on our sleeves announcing our emotionally crippled status. It was more a wariness shown in the eyes that only the fellow wounded could recognize.

I sobered quickly. “I like a big car so that if I pass any garage sales along the way and find a stray piece of furniture, I can bring it back with me. And I always stop.” I sent him a pointed look, a last-ditch effort to make him change his mind.

“Sounds like fun,” he said, returning to the curb and picking up a leather duffel bag. “I travel light, so there will be plenty of room for any garage-sale finds.” He tucked the bag next to my own small suitcase in the voluminous trunk, as if to emphasize the fact that even if I found a giant chifforobe, it would still fit.

“Did you bring the teacup and saucer?”

He nodded. “Packed securely in my bag.” He studied me again with those blue eyes that seemed to miss nothing. “I like your outfit.” I figured a man with four sisters would probably be used to noticing such things and wouldn't think twice about saying it to somebody he barely knew. But still I felt pleased.

I flattened my hands against the bright floral fabric of the A-line dress. “Thank you. It's vintage. Circa 1960.” I was about to tell him about the great vintage clothing store I frequented on Royal Street but stopped myself in time. I wasn't comfortable with relationships with the current and living, and didn't want to invite any interest.

With no further distractions or reasons to delay, I returned to the
house to lock up. As I slid behind the steering wheel and stuck the key in the ignition, I said, “Just don't expect to drive her. Nobody but me is allowed.”

“Good. Because I don't know how.”

I slammed my foot on the brake, making both of our heads snap back. “What?”

“I mean, I know how—I took lessons so I could get a driver's license—but I've never owned a car. I've never needed one—way too complicated to park them and to navigate the city, especially when there are so many other options.”

“But what if you want to get out of the city, drive to the country or the beach for the weekend? Do you rely on your friends?” I was remembering my own childhood in Apalachicola, where the most popular kids were those with a driver's license and a big enough car. My nose and cheeks stung with remembered sunburns from visits to St. George Island, my trunk full of coolers and all of us pooling our loose change for gas.

He cleared his throat. “We, uh, had a driver for those kinds of trips. My mother said she felt better knowing we weren't behind the wheel, so it worked out for us.”

I looked at his neatly pressed knit shirt and Rolex—definitely not vintage—and couldn't picture him shirtless and sitting in the sand with a beer bottle raised to his lips and singing along to an AC/DC song blaring from the open doors of a pickup truck. And that was a good thing. The more uncomfortable he felt in Apalachicola, the sooner he'd be ready to leave.

I put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. “So if I have a flat, I'm on my own.”

He held up his phone. “That's what this is for. Help is only a call away.”

I resisted an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “Assuming your battery hasn't died and there's cell coverage in the middle of Alabama, which is never a guarantee. Which is why I know how to change my own tires. And have on multiple occasions.”

“I'm impressed. You're pretty petite. I wouldn't think you'd be strong enough.”

I met his gaze. “People aren't always what they appear to be.”

He faced forward again, staring at the pocked asphalt on St. Charles Avenue as we merged into traffic heading toward Carrollton. “I know,” he said. “I just need reminding every now and again.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but was glad of my increased speed and the sound of the wind rushing into the convertible that prohibited conversation. The car still had its original radio, so our choice of music was limited to whatever we could pick up on AM or FM. We sped east on I-10 toward Florida, barreling down the asphalt, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

He spent a lot of time tapping into his phone, his fingers quick and agile. I wasn't a Luddite, and could even admit to myself that some technology—like computers and the Internet—were actually good for business. But that didn't make me want to have a cell phone. A cell phone meant that I could always be reached by the people I'd left behind. I had a landline in my house that I used to call my aunt and grandfather, but I didn't have an answering machine or caller ID. It made my life simple, and I liked it that way.

After a brief stop for lunch near Mobile, where we ate at a Chick-fil-A because he'd never been to one, and during which we stayed on safe topics of conversation, like the weather, we continued across the panhandle, exiting the interstate to Highway 98 heading south along the white sandy beaches of the gulf. We detoured onto Highway 30, which ran parallel to 98, hoping to run into a roadside sale, but I was disappointed. Mostly because I'd been eager to see whether James's enthusiasm about garage sales had been genuine.

I'd grown up on the coast and had taken for granted the beauty of the blue-green water and tall pine forests, the salty breezes and thick, humid air that never seemed too hot to me. Even in New Orleans, too far inland to smell the tangy air of the gulf, the steaming days of August only made me homesick. Homesick for what had been, not what was there now.

“That looks like snow,” James said, reminding me of his presence. We were crossing a bridge near Panama City, allowing us a glimpse of the tall dunes that cupped the iridescent water of the gulf like protective hands.

“It's sand,” I said impatiently. The closer we got, the tenser and more agitated I became. Angrier at myself. I didn't want anybody with me to witness the humiliating return home, and snapping at James was the easiest recourse for my personal misery.

“I'm sorry,” I said. He wore sunglasses, but I imagined his eyes full of understanding, which only made me feel worse. His wife had died recently, yet I was the one holding on two-fisted to my own losses that were mostly self-induced and almost a decade old. Such self-involvement reminded me of Birdie, adding to my shame.

He rested his head against the back of the seat as if to go to sleep.

“You shouldn't have come,” I said quietly, the words torn from my mouth by the wind rushing through the car.
I shouldn't have come
, I thought. I was acting as if ten years could be stomped beneath my feet like flotsam, as if promises meant nothing and memories were short. I found myself torn between wishing this visit were already over and holding on to the hope that ten years really was long enough.

The two-lane road stretched out in front of us between tall stands of pines, the small beach towns of the Forgotten Coast—Mexico Beach, St. Joe Beach, Port St. Joe—like knots in the ribbon of asphalt. The scents of seaweed and raw fish crept into the car as we approached the Apalachicola River on 98, the smell alerting me that I was home long before we reached any recognizable landmarks.

The original city plan of wide streets and squares had been modeled after Philadelphia, although that was where the resemblance ended. I'd always been proud of that fact: that our little city had managed to keep its unique Southernness despite its origins or the devastation of fires, hurricanes, and war.

“Are we here?” James asked, his voice audible now because of my slow speed.

I understood his confusion. We hadn't yet passed the single
streetlight in town. The only clue that we were nearing civilization was the appearance of a Burger King and a Piggly Wiggly, as well as a corner lot filled with garden statuary for sale that was as familiar to me as the back of my hand.

“We're here,” I said, feeling an odd sense of pride mixed with trepidation. I took a left on Eighth Street and pulled up onto the grass alongside Chestnut Cemetery to put the car in park. After a moment's hesitation, I turned off the ignition and pulled out the key, not sure how long this might take.

“Why are we stopping?”

I stared through the iron fence of the old cemetery, seeing the funerary art that had managed to become a tourist attraction for those visiting Apalachicola or passing through on their way to St. George Island. I'd always known it as the place where most of my ancestors had been buried for the last two hundred years. In more recent years, a little girl named Lilyanna Joy had been laid to rest beneath one of the towering oaks that huddled over the tombstones with bent limbs. There were no more interments in the ancient cemetery, hadn't been in a long time, but an exception had been made because there was just enough room in our family plot for such a small coffin.

“I needed to catch my breath. I'd feel better if I had a game plan.”

He slid off his sunglasses and I could read the amusement in his eyes. “A game plan for seeing your family? Are they that difficult?”

I loosened my death grip on the steering wheel, focusing on getting the blood flow back into my hands. “Not so much difficult as . . . damaged.”

He nodded as if he understood, but he couldn't. Not really. “Has it been a long time since you've been here?”

I leaned back in my seat, focusing on pressing my shoulders against the leather. “Almost ten years.”

He was silent for a moment, as if trying to remember what he'd promised about not asking questions. “Is there anything I should know before we go any farther, so that I don't say the wrong thing?”

“I don't think we have enough time for that,” I said quietly before
glancing at my 1953 Bulova watch and subtracting fifteen minutes to arrive at the actual time. It was another one of the stupid games I played with myself, this one meant to keep me punctual. “It's four o'clock, which means you can check into your hotel room. Why don't I drop you off there now? That will give me time to head over to my grandfather's house and break the ice, and at least let me warn them that you're here and that they need to be on their best behavior.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I don't think they'll throw anything or shoot anybody, but I promise that it will be awkward. My sister and I don't get along. And our mother—Birdie—is . . .” I searched for the politically correct word for crazy, quickly discounting all the words my aunt Marlene had used to describe her sister-in-law. “Not in her right mind,” I said, deciding on something ambiguous enough that he could draw his own conclusions. “She doesn't speak anymore, although we're pretty sure she hears and understands everything that goes on around her. She just chooses not to involve herself. Oh, but she does sing.”

James was silent for a moment. “Or I could go with you, to deflect some of the awkwardness. And I'm a big guy. I could even deflect a blow or a bullet if necessary.”

He said it lightly, but I didn't think he was joking.

“Why would you do that for me?”

“Because it's my china that's brought you down here.”

“True,” I said ungraciously. I sighed, ready to admit the truth that had been niggling my mind ever since we'd left New Orleans. “But I needed to come back eventually. You just sped up the inevitable.”