Positively Beautiful (12 page)

Inside is some hand sanitizer and more lemon drops, as well as a book called
Not Now, I'm Having a No Hair Day
, and Mom and I giggle over the cartoons until she dozes off.

When we are done, Sherry helps my mom up. “Remember, we have pretty good drugs to control the side effects of chemo. Not like the bad old days. Some people are able to go back to work the next day. But others feel it more. You need to take it easy until we see how you're going to react,” she says.

As I drive us carefully home, Mom gets ashen and clammy and finally asks me to pull over. She throws up and after a while we drive on.

Then she has to stop to throw up again.

And I see chemo isn't going to be easy for my mother.

Not one little bit.

The day after my mom gets her first chemotherapy treatment, I go for my first flying lesson.

“Let's go.” My instructor, Stewart Call-Me-Stew, points at a small tin can with wings. It reminds me of a VW Beetle, somehow, round and yellow and like maybe it was built right there in the seventies. It's a four-seater, but it's hard to believe that four normal-size people could fit into it.

“Go?” I ask.

“Flying. You thought we were maybe going on a picnic today?” Stew is bitter wrapped up in a soft taco of sarcasm. In his fifties—sixties?—he's got short gray hair and sunglasses, and he's dressed like he's expecting someone to give him points on anal-compulsiveness, all ironed and buttoned tight over his substantial stomach.

“I figured we would be … in a classroom today?” I say. “I didn't think …” Seriously, I didn't think we would actually
be going up in the AIR already. My stomach starts doing somersaults.

Stew is driving me in front of him, clapping his hands, like he's Lassie and I'm the dumb sheep. My phone dings and I check to see if it's from Trina. She knows I'm flying today, but we haven't talked since she called yesterday to ask how my mom's chemotherapy had gone and to ask if I was
sure
I didn't mind if she went to Faith's party tonight.

“Are you kidding me? What's with you kids? Can't you go for more than two minutes without looking at your phone?”

“Uh … sorry?”

I slip the phone back in my pocket, but not before I see the message is from Ashley, who I've been e-mailing a lot this past week.

flying high?

The words make me smile. At least someone is excited about my learning to fly. My mother doesn't even want to hear about it, and Trina said I was “plane insane.” Ha, ha, ha.

Ashley thinks it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. Somehow I'm not surprised. It sounds like something she'd like.

“What do you think, you just jump in like it's a car?” Stew barks at me. He's chewing gum like he's starving, all smacking and gnashing of teeth.

“I don't … no?”

“Even before you get in a car, you're supposed to kick a tire or two, maybe check the oil every once in a while. With a plane, it's even more important. Up there, were you expecting
to pull into the nearest service station if something goes wrong?”

I am rapidly seeing the futility of answering any of Call-Me-Stew's questions. They are meant solely to amuse him. He's already told me he doesn't like kids, never has, never will, we're all ungrateful brats, thank you very much.

I follow him around as he checks out the plane. He stabs a stubby finger at various mysterious things as he rapid-fires info in my direction, as well as the smell of stale beer. I stuff my hands into my pockets to hide their shaking.

So why haven't I already said
sayonara
? Why can't I just make like a tree and leave? Here's the thing: I
want
to fly that plane, more than just about anything. I
like
the canary yellow plane, it looks sassy and punk, like Tweety Bird. It makes me smile. I haven't had a lot of giggles lately, what with Mom puking up her guts and whispering when she doesn't think I can hear, “I think it would be easier to just
die.
”

“Let's do this,” Stew says, with an expression on his worn, lined face like this is about as fun as a pop quiz.

“Now I can get in?” I ask.

“Yes, get in.”

“You sure? We don't need to check the windshield wipers or something?”

“Get
in
. Smart-ass,” he says, looking perturbed.

I grin at him sweetly, which throws him off, and climb into the plane.

“You got your parents stashed somewhere? Your age, they're usually following their little chicks around with a camera.” He heaves his jiggling belly into the seat beside me.

“Nope.”

Mom, the last I saw her, was leaning over the toilet, heaving, heaving, heaving. And when I tried to put a wet washcloth on her forehead after she brought up a bare spittle of bile, she screamed hoarsely, “Just go, go, Erin,
I can't have you here right now.
” So no, Call-Me-Stew, my mom is too sick right now to be able to care what the heck I do.

He shrugs and starts rattling off another long list of information I sincerely hope isn't vital, as I'm so nervous I'm only catching about half of it. Then he starts spitting nonsensical words into the radio like “November Six One Seven Niner Romeo” and I hear someone through my headphones answer back, “Cleared for takeoff.”

And then we're moving. Stew stops at the end of a runway, craning his neck around to look out all the windows. He revs the engine so hard it rattles everything in the plane. I notice my window is being held shut with a twist of clothes hanger, and a piece of tinfoil covers some gadget on the dash. Not all warm-and-fuzzy-making, but on the other hand, it makes me like Tweety Bird the Plane even more.

I'm not entirely sure if the whole-body shaking is from the engine or coming from inside me. I debate asking Stew to take me back to the hangar.

But it's too late.

We're rolling, and the little plane is racing down the runway, and with a sudden dip in my stomach—
Oh no, am I going to throw up?
—we've left the earth. We're in the air. We're touching the sky.

It is freaking awesome.

I clutch the door handle as the ground falls away and the buildings get smaller and smaller, just like I remembered. The engine roars and we bump over pockets of turbulence as we make our ascent and it's amazing how quickly everything below us begins to blur together. I think about all those people living life in their own little squares, and not understanding that all the squares are connected, going on and on as far as the eye can see.

I remember a poem my dad liked.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of …

I used to beg Dad to read the poem to me at bedtime and he would tousle my hair and say,
Rinnie, don't worry, you'll do a hundred things I've never even dreamed of. Go to sleep now, and think about dancing in the sky …

Stew steers us into a steep turn and I hold my breath because it seems like we're going to drop sideways straight into the ground. I have this irrational fear Stew is going to fall on me because it seems like he's hanging above me. I'm pressed against the door, hoping desperately it won't spring open and dump me into all that air down there. I see Stone Mountain in the distance, but I can't make out the humongous carvings of the Confederate war heroes. Then we swing around into another sharp turn and all I can see out my side window is
endless sky and I claw for the handle to keep from tumbling into Stew's lap, even though rationally I know my seatbelt is holding me in place.

We straighten out and bounce over air bumps like a stone skipping across the surface of the water. Stew shoots me a sideways glance and I see that he's smirking just a little. I wonder how many students he scares off this way, because I definitely get the feeling he's trying to.

“Well?” he says through the headphones.

“Cool,” I say. “Very, very cool.” I try to look all nonchalant, like this isn't the best thing I can remember doing in … well, ever.

He nods and his expression changes, becomes less smug and more thoughtful. Maybe he was expecting me to throw up. I'm still holding the paper barf bag he shoved at me when I got in the plane. Maybe he is expecting me to be terrified. I've been terrified for weeks. This fear seems
clean
, somehow. Pure. Not putrid and creeping.

“Your turn.” He lifts his hands off the yoke on his side.

“Say what?” I stare at him in horror. My hands clamp over the yoke in front of me and somehow I push it forward. The nose dives, and my stomach comes to rest somewhere in the vicinity of my throat.

“Oh man!” I snatch my hands away from the yoke. We are totally going down.

“Pull back.” Stew grins at me. He's enjoying this, the sick sadistic bastard.

Since he seems content to watch us dive into the ground
without lifting a finger to stop us, I grab at the yoke and pull it back.

Too much. Too fast.

My stomach careens as the plane yanks up toward the sun.

“You planning on making it into orbit?” Stew says, fishing in his shirt pocket for another stick of gum. He seems completely unconcerned that a loud alarm has starting blaring. “We're getting ready to stall.”

“Oh my God!” I yell, and push down again.

Now we're diving toward the earth faster and faster, and I start wondering if this is the end.

“Slow and easy,” Stew says, popping the gum into his mouth.

I pull back slightly and the plane starts leveling out. I pull back some more but somehow I've twisted the yoke and we're flying tilted to the right.

Stew shows me a gauge on the dash that shows how far off center we are, and I turn the yoke back to the left a little. I experiment, back and forth, fascinated by how responsive the plane is to my touch.
I'm
controlling it,
I'm
in charge as we careen through the sky at over a hundred miles per hour. I manage to get us level and turn a big, delighted grin toward Stew.

“Now you're flying straight,” Stew says, chomping on his gum in satisfaction.

When I get home, Mom is sitting at the table with a glass of water in front of her. Her face is white and her hand shakes as she takes a determined drink, but she is dressed and her hair is damp. Shower. Good.

“How was the flying lesson?” she asks tightly.

“Out of this world,” I say. “Stew says I'm a natural. Okay, he didn't say that, he asked if I'd flown a plane before, and when I said no, he acted like he didn't believe me, but still. I think I did good.”

She smiles, but it looks more like a grimace. She doesn't like this. I know it, and I feel bad. How can I explain that flying makes me feel brave, when nothing else does?

“I want you to know I appreciate all your help,” she says. “I know this is … hard. I love you, Rinnie, you know that, right?”

My throat is closing up and I nod. She holds out an arm,
and I go to her. We hug clumsily, me standing, her sitting. It almost feels safe again, like it used to, but she is shaking and smells funny.

Upstairs I put on some music and write in my journal. I've always enjoyed writing, but until Ms. Garrison's class, I didn't think I was any
good
at it.

The little test tube I got in the mail from the gene-testing place is sitting beside my computer. All I have to do is spit in it and mail it back. I play with the cool, smooth tube, rolling it between my fingers. I take the top off it and put it up to my mouth.

I put it back. Not yet. Not yet.

I check and I have a text from Ashley. We exchanged phone numbers last week, so we could text. So far, we haven't talked on the phone. I've thought about calling her a couple of times, but it feels awkward, so I don't.

Ashley's fishing with her dad, and I text her back that I just finished flying and it was
beautiful.

Nothing from Trina. I know she must be thinking about what to wear to Faith's party at the abandoned school. Trina said I should come, that the school wasn't Faith's, she couldn't kick me out, but,
really?

Michael might be there.

I fall asleep with my phone clutched in my hand. When I wake up, my mom is vomiting again. I put my pillow over my head, but I can still hear her. It goes on and on, and after a while I get up to go check on her.

The door is locked. A first. I stand outside and listen to her try to bring up a lung.

I knock tentatively. “Mom? You okay?”

Like she's going to call back,
Just fine, honey! No worries. My new recreational activity is seeing whether I can bring up the lining of my stomach. You should try it!