Fly Away (5 page)

Bud came up beside his wife. He looked ten years older than Margie. He had grown quieter
in the past year, although none would have called him a chatty man before. He’d begun
his goodbyes to Katie long before the rest of them had accepted the inevitable, and
now that she was gone, he seemed to have lost his voice. Like his wife, he was dressed
in his customary style—Wrangler jeans that accentuated both his thinning legs and
straining paunch, a checked brown and white western shirt, and a big silver-buckled
belt. His hair had checked out a long time ago, but he had enough growing in the arch
of his brows to compensate.

Without words, they all walked back into the kitchen, where Johnny poured them each
a cup of coffee.

“Coffee. Thank God,” Bud said gruffly, taking the cup in his work-gnarled hand.

They looked at each other.

“We need to take Sean to the airport in an hour, but after that we can come back here
and help,” Margie said at last. “For as long as you need us.”

Johnny loved her for the offer. She was closer to him than his own mother had ever
been, but he had to stand on his own now.

The airport
. That was the answer.

This
wasn’t
just another day, and as sure as he stood here, he couldn’t manage the pretense that
it was. He couldn’t feed his kids and drive them to school and then go to work at
the station, producing some cheesy entertainment or lifestyle segment that wouldn’t
change anyone’s life.

“I’m getting us the hell out of here,” he said.

“Oh?” Margie said. “Where to?”

He said the first thing that came into his head. “Kauai.” Katie had loved it there.
They’d always meant to take the kids.

Margie peered up at him through her new rimless eyeglasses.

“Runnin’ away doesn’t change a thing,” Bud said gruffly.

“I know that, Bud. But I’m drowning here. Everywhere I look…”

“Yeah,” his father-in-law said.

Margie touched Johnny’s arm. “What can we do to help?”

Now that Johnny had a plan—however imperfect and temporary—he felt better. “I’ll go
get started on reservations. Don’t tell the kids. Let them sleep.”

“When will you leave?”

“Hopefully today.”

“You’d better call Tully and tell her. She’s planning to be back here at eleven.”

Johnny nodded, but Tully was the least of his concerns right now.

“Okay,” Margie said, clapping her hands. “I’ll clean out the fridge and move all the
casseroles to the freezer in the garage.”

“I’ll stop the milk delivery and call the police,” Bud said. “Just so they know to
watch the house.”

Johnny hadn’t thought of any of those things. Kate had always done all the prep work
for their trips.

Margie patted his forearm. “Go make the reservations. We’ve got you covered.”

He thanked them both and then went into his office. Seated at the computer, it took
him less than twenty minutes to make the reservations. By 6:50, he’d bought airline
tickets and reserved a car and rented a house. All he had to do now was tell the kids.

He headed down the hallway. In the boys’ room, he went to the bunk beds and found
both of his sons on the bottom bunk, tangled up like a pair of puppies.

He ruffled Lucas’s coarse brown hair. “Hey, Skywalker, wake up.”

“I wanna be Skywalker,” Wills murmured in his sleep.

Johnny smiled. “You’re the Conqueror, remember?”

“No one knows who William the Conqueror is,” Wills said, sitting up in his blue and
red Spider-Man pajamas. “He needs a video game.”

Lucas sat up, looking blearily around. “Is it school time already?”

“We’re not going to school today,” Johnny said.

Wills frowned. “Cuz Mom’s dead?”

Johnny flinched. “I guess. We’re going to Hawaii. I’m going to teach my kids how to
surf.”

“You don’t know how to surf,” Wills said, still frowning. Already he had become a
skeptic.

“He does, too. Don’t you, Dad?” Lucas said, peering up through his long hair. Lucas,
the believer.

“I will in a week,” Johnny said, and they cheered, bouncing up and down on the bed.
“Brush your teeth and get dressed. I’ll be back to pack your suitcases in ten minutes.”

The boys jumped out of bed and raced to their bathroom, elbowing each other along
the way. He walked slowly out of the room and down the hallway.

He knocked on his daughter’s door, and heard her exhausted, “What?”

He actually drew in a breath before he stepped into her room. He knew it wouldn’t
be easy, talking his popular sixteen-year-old daughter into a vacation. Nothing mattered
more to Marah than her friends. That would be especially true now.

She stood by her unmade bed, brushing her long, shiny black hair. Dressed for school
in ridiculously low-rise, flare-legged jeans and a T-shirt that was toddler-sized,
she looked ready to tour with Britney Spears. He pushed his irritation aside. This
was no time for a fight about fashion.

“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“Hey,” she answered without looking at him. Her voice had that brittle sharpness that
had become de rigueur since puberty. He sighed; even grief, it seemed, hadn’t softened
his daughter. If anything, it had made her angrier.

She put down her hairbrush and faced him. He understood now why Kate had been wounded
so often by the judgment in their daughter’s eyes. She had a way of cutting you with
a glance.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

“Whatever. I have soccer practice after school today. Can I take Mom’s car?”

He heard the way her voice broke on
Mom’s
. He sat down on the edge of her bed and waited for her to join him there. When she
didn’t, he felt a wave of exhaustion. She was obviously fragile. They all were now—but
Marah was like Tully. Neither of them knew how to show weakness. All Marah would let
herself care about now was that he’d interrupted her routine, and God knew she spent
more time getting ready for school than a monk devoted to morning prayers.

“We’re going to Hawaii for a week. We can—”

“What? When?”

“We’re leaving here in two hours. Kauai is—”

“No
way,
” she screeched.

Her outburst was so unexpected he actually forgot what he was saying. “What?”

“I
can’t
take off from school. I have to keep my grades up for college. I promised Mom I’d
do well in school.”

“That’s admirable, Marah. But we need some time away as a family. To figure things
out. We can get your assignments, if you’d like.”

“If I’d like? If I’d like?” She stomped her foot. “You know
nothing
about high school. Do you know how competitive it is out there? How will I get into
a good college if I tank this semester?”

“One week will hardly throw you under the bus.”

“Ha! I have Algebra 2, Dad. And American Studies.
And
I’m on varsity soccer this year.”

He knew there was a right way to handle this and a wrong way; he just didn’t know
what the right way was, and honestly, he was too tired and stressed out to care.

He stood up. “We’re leaving at ten. Pack a bag.”

She grabbed his arm. “Let me stay with Tully!”

He looked down at her, seeing how anger had stained her pale skin red. “Tully? As
a chaperone? Uh. No.”

“Grandma and Grandpa would stay here with me.”

“Marah, we’re going. We need to be together, just the four of us.”

She stomped her foot again. “You’re ruining my life.”

“I doubt that.” He knew he should say something of value or lasting importance. But
what? He’d already come to despise the platitudes people handed out like breath mints
after a death. He didn’t believe that time would heal this wound or that Kate was
in a better place or that they’d learn to go on. There was no way he could pass along
some hollow sentiment to Marah, who was clearly hanging on by as thin a strand as
he was.

She spun away and went into her bathroom and slammed the door.

He knew better than to wait for her to change her mind. In his bedroom, he grabbed
his phone and made a call as he walked into the closet, looking for a suitcase.

“Hello?” Tully answered, sounding as bad as he felt.

Johnny knew he should apologize for last night, but every time he thought about it,
he felt a rush of anger. He couldn’t help mentioning her disappointing behavior last
night, but even as he brought it up, he knew she would defend herself, and she did.
It’s what Kate wanted.
It pissed him off. She was still talking about it when he cut her off with: “We’re
going to Kauai today.”

“What?”

“We need time together now. You said so yourself. Our flight is at two, on Hawaiian.”

“That’s not much time to get ready.”

“Yeah.” He was already worried about that. “I gotta go.” She was still talking, asking
something about the weather, when he hung up.

*   *   *

SeaTac International Airport was surprisingly crowded on this midweek October afternoon
in 2006. They’d arrived early, to drop off Kate’s brother, Sean, who was returning
home.

At the self-service kiosk, Johnny got their boarding passes, and then glanced at his
children, each of whom held some electronic device; Marah was sending something called
a text on her new cell phone. He had no idea what a text was and didn’t care. It had
been Kate who’d wanted their sixteen-year-old to have a cell phone.

“I’m worried about Marah,” Margie said, coming to stand beside him.

“Apparently I’m ruining her life by taking her to Kauai.”

Margie made a
tsk
ing sound. “If you are not ruining a sixteen-year-old girl’s life, you are not parenting
her. That’s not what I’m worried about. She regrets how she treated her mother, I
think. Usually one grows out of that, but when your mom dies…”

Behind them, the airport’s pneumatic doors whooshed opened and Tully came running
toward them wearing a sundress, ridiculously high-heeled sandals, and a floppy white
hat. She was rolling a Louis Vuitton duffel behind her.

She came to a breathless stop in front of them. “What? What’s wrong? If it’s the time,
I did my best.”

Johnny stared at Tully. What the hell was she doing here? Margie said something quietly,
and then shook her head.

“Tully!” Marah cried out. “Thank God.”

Johnny took Tully by the arm and pulled her aside.

“You aren’t invited on this trip, Tul. It’s just the four of us. I can’t believe you
thought—”

“Oh.” The word was spoken quietly, barely above a breath. He could see how hurt she
was. “You said ‘we.’ I thought you meant me, too.”

He knew how often she’d been left behind in her life, abandoned by her mother, but
he didn’t have the strength to worry about Tully Hart right now. He was close to losing
control of his life; all he could think about was his kids and not letting go. He
mumbled something and turned away from her. “Come on, kids,” he said harshly, giving
them only a few minutes to say goodbye to Tully. He hugged his in-laws and whispered,
“Goodbye.”

“Let Tully come,” Marah whined. “Please…”

Johnny kept moving. It was all he could think of to do.

*   *   *

For the past six hours, both in the air and in the Honolulu airport, Johnny had been
completely ignored by his daughter. On the airplane, she didn’t eat or watch a movie
or read. She sat across the aisle from him and the boys, her eyes closed, her head
bobbing in time to music he couldn’t hear.

He needed to let her know that even though she felt alone, she wasn’t. He had to make
sure she knew that he was still here for her, that they were still a family, as wobbly
as that construct now felt.

But timing mattered. With teenage girls, one had to carefully pick the moment to reach
out, or you’d draw back a bloody stump where your arm had been.

They landed in Kauai at four
P.M.
Hawaiian time, but it felt as if they’d been traveling for days. He moved down the
jetway while the boys walked on ahead. Last week they would have been laughing; now
they were quiet.

He fell into step beside Marah. “Hey.”

“What?”

“Can’t a guy just say hey to his daughter?”

She rolled her eyes and kept walking.

They walked past the baggage claim area, where women in muumuus handed out purple
and white leis to people who’d come here on package deals.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly. Bougainvilleas in full pink bloom crawled over
the parking area fence. Johnny led the way across the street to the rental car area.
Within ten minutes they were in a silver convertible Mustang and headed north along
the only highway on the island. They stopped at a Safeway store, loaded up on groceries,
and then piled back into the car.

To their right, the coastline was an endless golden sandy beach lashed by crashing
blue waves and rimmed in black lava rock outcroppings. As they drove north, the landscape
became lusher, greener.

“Uh, it’s pretty here,” he said to Marah, who was beside him in the front passenger
seat, hunched down, staring at her phone. Texting.

“Yeah,” Marah said without looking up.

“Marah,” he said in a warning tone. As in:
You’re skating on thin ice
.

She looked over at him. “I am getting homework from Ashley. I
told
you I couldn’t leave school.”

“Marah—”

She glanced to her right. “Waves. Sand. Fat white people in Hawaiian shirts. Men who
wear socks with their sandals. Great vacation, Dad. I totally forgot that Mom just
died. Thanks.” Then she went back to texting on her Motorola Razr.

He gave up. Ahead, the road snaked along the shoreline and spilled down into the verdant
patchwork of the Hanalei Valley.

The town of Hanalei was a funky collection of wooden buildings and brightly colored
signs and shave-ice stands. He turned onto the road indicated by MapQuest and immediately
had to slow down to avoid the bikers and surfers crowded along either side of the
street.