House of Wonder (11 page)

Flying Machines

S
cattered over the porch were all manner of painting supplies: brushes and rollers and trays, everything we might need to restore the columns that graced my mother's front porch to their mid-1980s splendor. The thin brown plastic bags in which my mother had transported her haul from the home improvement store were weighted with paint cans, and packages of sandpaper had been torn open, the rough sheets peeking out. “They said we should sand off all the existing paint as best we can,” said my mother, her hands resting supportively on the small of her back. “Before we put on the first coat.”

I looked up the length of the column in front of me, my eyes following its grooves to the top, squinting as the trajectory of my gaze approached the sun.

“Oh! That reminds me,” said Mom, as she disappeared inside the house. When she emerged, she was awkwardly carrying a stepladder, its metal legs bumping against her shins. “I thought we could use this,” she said. “Rather than having to stand on a chair.”

I took in the scope of the project, estimating how much would be involved in the sanding and repainting; it was likely to be more than either my mother or I had initially imagined. Then, angling my head toward the still ajar door, I called, “Hey, Warren!” waiting a moment for a response that I knew wouldn't come. “Warren!” I said again. “Do you think you can help us sand?”

After a brief pause, Rose answered. “We're playing Candy Land.” She sounded annoyed at the interruption.

I rolled my eyes. Warren had always gotten a pass on chores, even though, if you asked me, he was perfectly capable of helping out. It was at least part of why my mother's house was in such bad shape.
He's been working on his planes,
my mother used to say when my father would ask why Warren hadn't mowed the lawn.

“Let 'em play,” my mother urged, moving to close the door. “They love being together.”

Rose did seem to view Warren as a playmate, the next-best thing to an actual kid.
When's he going to start acting like a normal teenager?
my father used to ask, when he would come home to find Warren in the backyard, fighting off Maglons or sending a tiny plane up into dusk's watercolor sky. And as I had sensed my father's growing distance, as his business trips increased in both frequency and duration, I used to look out the window and pray that Warren would suddenly straighten
up. That his shoulders would become broad and solid. That he would brush his bangs back off his face, and stride confidently across the park. That he would become someone other than Warren.

I took a deep breath, running my hand up the back of my neck until it met the base of my ponytail. Then I pulled the stepladder over to the nearest column. “I can do the sanding, Mom,” I said, reaching for a package of sandpaper. Having sanded a secondhand dresser prior to giving it a coat of bright pink paint for Rose, I knew that the task was tedious and tiring—not something I wanted Mom to have to do. “You can hang out with Rose and Warren.”

“I can help,” she insisted. But as she watched me climb the ladder, her voice grew less certain. “Maybe you can do the tops and I'll do the bottoms.”

As we began working, running the rough paper over the already chipped paint, my arms fell into a rhythm. Heat rose in my muscles and my heart pumped steadily. Up and then down, the smooth, tender-looking wood appearing where it had been hidden. Soon my sweatshirt was covered in the thin, white dust, and despite the chilly air, I peeled it off, tossing it toward the welcome mat and looking down at myself. I had on a threadbare T-shirt with the logo of a noodle bar I used to go to in New York. I'd gone there the night Duncan left for Japan. I had stood on the front steps of our apartment as he got in a cab for the airport, wishing that I could cross and cross and cross my arms over my chest, wishing that I had rows and layers of arms, like the horseshoe crabs my father used to pull out of the water at the beach. He'd turn them upside down and their legs would be probing and reaching, warning you away. I watched
Duncan as he waved good-bye as the cab drove off, but I just rested my hand on my belly. And when he was gone, I remained on the steps for a very long time, my hand still on my stomach until, feeling the movement inside it, I forced my feet forward. Walking down the street to the noodle bar, I ordered an enormous bowl of soup. When the waitress came back to ask how I was liking it, she noticed that I was eating only the noodles, that much of the broth was still in my bowl. “Drink, drink,” she said in a thick accent as she pointed to my belly. “Is good for the baby.” And so I brought the dish to my lips, the steam meeting my face and masking the tears in my eyes.

“What time do you have to leave for the store?” I asked my mother.

“I should get going around one,” she said, between slow, easy strokes of the sandpaper. “What are you and Rose doing the rest of the day?”

“We're actually going to see a movie,” I said. I paused to scratch my nose with the back of my hand. “That one with the rat.”

Mom clucked with recognition. “I heard that one's cute.” There was the sound of a leisurely up and down with the sandpaper. “Too bad Warren has to work later. I'll bet he'd like to go with you.” I pulled a fresh sheet of sandpaper from the packet. “Is it just you and Rose?”

I tried out the words that came next in my mind before speaking them aloud. “We're actually going with Bobby and Gabby Vanni.”

“Oh,” said my mother. “Oh,” she said again. Though I was focused on the bare stretch of column in front of me, I could tell from her pleased-sounding tone exactly the look that was
on her face. “Well, maybe Warren and I will go see it another time.”

Rose soon came popping out the front door, Warren trailing behind her but hesitating at the threshold, keeping his body partially hidden as he held a white foam airplane at his side.

“Mom!” called Rose, standing at the base of the stepladder. She hooked her fingers in the tops of my boots. “I won Candy Land
four
times in a row!”

“Whoa,” I said, staring down into her bright little eyes. “You must be
really
good.”

I sensed Warren's attention, his smile. I glanced over at him. He lowered his head. “She just kept getting Princess Frostine,” he said, shaking his head as if marveling at her luck, as if he hadn't found a way to slip the best card to the top of the stack. “I don't know how it happened.”

“Uncle Warren!” said Rose, bouncing back to him. “Let's fly the plane!”

Warren assumed the expression of an affectionate old monk trying to remain stern with his enthusiastic apprentice, but his delight was clear. He made a noise of hesitation, like creaky old gears turning reluctantly. “I don't know,” he said.

“Please, Uncle Warren!” she begged, looking as though total devastation were just a single “no” away. “I want to see it
float
.”

His chuckle was mixed with a groan. “Okay,” he said. Then beneath his furrowed brow, he glanced out at the street, and at the neighborhood beyond it. And as Warren took his first steps into the daylight outside the house, I was again aware of his injuries, which I had begun not to see. That's the way it always was with Warren; the more time you spent with him, the less
apparent the anomalies became. But in the starkness of the bright outside light, they were once again very real.

“Hey, Rosie,” I said. “You need to get your coat. It's cold out.”

Rose scowled in my direction. “But
you
don't have a coat!” she whined.

“I have a layer of blubber,” I answered, then pointed inside the house. “Go.”

Rose pulled a little foot-stomp-and-turn combination as she rushed into the house.

“So what's that plane, War?” I asked, again sliding the sandpaper up the column.

My mother perked up. “Is that the one you've been working on?” she asked. “The one that can hover?” She turned to me. “That's hard to do,” she said. “To make one of those planes hover.”

Warren stood still, seeming almost annoyed that we were using such basic but irresistible means by which to draw him out of the house. When not fulfilling his duties for Pizzeria Brava, Warren seemed to prefer being indoors since the “incident.” “You just have to use multiple gyros,” he said, his lips barely parting to release the words. “On the canards and the rudders.”

Rose came bounding back out the door, dragging her coat behind her by its sleeve. “Uncle Warren!” she said, as I climbed down the ladder to help her put it on. “Are you gonna fly the plane?”

Warren made another soft groaning sound. Again he glanced around the neighborhood. He seemed to start for the door, then changed his mind before taking a step. “You really want to see Uncle Warren fly the plane?” he asked Rose.

And all she had to do was nod.

Warren seemed uncomfortable as he crept out onto the lawn, his head sunk into his shoulders, his posture tense. But as he looked down at Rose, who was bouncing at his side, a smile inched onto his face. He said something to her that I couldn't hear, then set the controller down on the ground. Gripping the side of the plane with a single hand, he suddenly began spinning and spinning like a top, the plane held at the end of his extended arm gathering speed. When he released, it soared slowly, without ambition, until he darted down for the controller, and with movements that seemed instinctual, he directed the plane elegantly back into the air, lifting it out of the downward arc it had begun. The plane circled over Rose's head a few times, and she jumped and squealed when it swooped toward her—her very own air show. His hands moved quickly and the plane seemed to stop in midair, its nose lifting until it was almost vertical, hovering there.

“Look!” said my mother. “Warren says that's called ‘high alpha' when it does that.” She stared at the plane, marveling. “There aren't a lot of people who can make planes do that. He had to program that control panel and everything.”

But as Warren stood there, his plane in a state of equilibrium, totally balanced between up and down, right and left, backward and forward, I saw his gaze move away from the sky and toward the road, and the car that was moving down it. Almost instantly the plane dropped, free-falling until it hit the earth, helpless and unguided. Warren walked over to it and scooped it up, his eyes focused on the ground two feet in front of him; then he hurried back toward the house. “Uncle Warren!” cried Rose, with a small, joyful leap, looking from Warren back toward the sky. “Make it go back up!” But he didn't respond; he
kept moving as the car sped past, too fast for me to decipher much besides the fact that it was driven by a young kid and that he glanced discreetly but unquestionably at Warren—making it look so casual, so unintentional, so unremarkable—before disappearing down the road, the volume of the music coming from his car a blur of noise that lingered after him.

Warren kept his head down as he climbed the steps of the porch, silent as he brushed past us and went back into the house. “I knew it,” whispered my mother as the screen door clattered shut. “Goddammit. I knew it.” The words weren't meant for me, weren't meant to be spoken aloud.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Mom stared hard after the path of the car that had turned onto Mountain Road. “Zack Castro,” she said.

I recalled the threesome of teenage boys hovering over Mrs. Vanni's Crock-Pot of sausage and peppers during the block party. “He was the one whose bike was stolen,” I said.

“Yup.” My mother's jaw tensed and she remained focused on the void at the end of the road. “That's him.” She looked over at Rose, who had followed Warren to the steps of the porch, her small face weighted with matters she didn't understand. Then Mom smiled at her, made her voice light again. “Can you get Uncle Warren's controls, honey? I don't think he meant to leave them on the grass.”

Mom and I looked at each other for one honest instant before, with pursed lips, she turned away.
That's him.
And the soft-sounding strokes of sandpaper once again sounded from her direction.
That's him. That's him. That's him.

“I'll be right back.” I stepped down from the ladder.
Distressed and curious, Mom looked at me. “Keep an eye on Rose?” I asked. Then I disappeared inside the house.

After gently knocking, I pushed open Warren's door. “Hey, War,” I said, peering into his room. He was sitting at his desk, his back to the door, his hands efficiently and methodically dismantling his plane. “Warren,” I said, padding toward him. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“The gyros were overcorrecting,” he said, shrugging away from my touch, continuing to pull at wires. “The plane wasn't stabilizing.”

I rested my hand on his shoulder. “So you can fix it.” It was the way I'd speak to Rose.

His hands slowed, and he gave me a discreet but suspicious look from the corner of his eye, as if making sure I was the person he presumed me to be. “That's what I'm doing,” he said softly.

I lowered my head, feeling not like his twin, the person who understood him better than anyone, but like one of the people who tried not to stare at him as he flew his plane in the front yard, wondering what Weird Warren was doing now. For a moment, I listened to the sounds of his work. When I spoke again, it was without hesitation. “That kid was the one who beat you up, wasn't it? The one who drove by?” Warren seemed to contract, to pull his entire being into a thrumming center, and concentrate more intensely on his plane. “Zack Castro?”

I watched Warren's slender fingers work at pulling the tiny wires. When he spoke, he said only, “The plane is tail heavy in neutral.” He pulled at what looked like a small secondary wing on the side of the plane. “So the canards need to be angled
down.” His focus seemed to narrow, his gaze to zoom in on the LED lights on the sides of the tiny aircraft. And taking a breath first, he said, his lips barely moving, “Sometimes after work at night, I fly in the park.” And I knew I had my answer. The backyards of half the homes in King's Knoll abutted the park. That Warren hadn't denied it was Zack was as good as his admitting that it was. I pictured my mother's face.
That's him,
she had said.