Takeoffs and Landings (16 page)

 

Chuck listened to the entire videotape of his mother's congressional testimony with his mouth hanging open, in awe.

Mom has really suffered,
he thought.
She knows about pain. She understands.

It was strange how happy that thought made him.

 

WHAT JOAN LAWSON WANTED TO SAY DURING HER SPEECH IN LOS ANGELES:

How dare you. Did you all enjoy that, watching my grief? Was I entertaining enough?

You're all too close to Hollywood. Everything's entertainment here. Did any of you think about the fact that I wasn't acting up there? That my husband really died and I was fighting real tears? That I've got two kids out in the audience who might not be ready to see that yet?

I don't know when I thought Lori and Chuck would be ready to see that particular videotape. Maybe never. I've never watched it myself. I've never wanted to.

Living it was hard enough.

And now you think I'm going to smile and walk to the podium and act like everything's fine—you paid me enough, you deserve to get your jollies from my grief?

I'm smiling. I'm walking to the podium. I'm making a joke. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. I learned a long time ago that you can't crumble to the floor in agony just because you want to.

But don't think you could ever pay me enough for my grief.

 

WHAT JOAN LAWSON ACTUALLY SAID DURING HER SPEECH IN LOS ANGELES:

But when the time comes that you're signing that final contract, that's not the moment to think,
Oh no, what am I agreeing to here? Did I read all the fine print?
In life, too, as in law, you've got to pay attention as you go along. You can't rush through, eager to get to the next page, because you might miss a cogent point. You might miss the scent of roses, your two-year-old's best smile, the sound of the high school band marching in the Fourth of July parade. . . . And when you get to the last line of this contract called life—a contract between you and God, if you will—you can't hesitate. You have to grasp the pen firmly and write your last signature with a flourish. Because at the end, there are no more appeals courts, no more addenda, no more codicils. When you've signed your last, you have to put away the documents and go out into the sunshine, knowing you've done your best.

 

It was all Lori could do not to slam the hotel door.

Mom and Chuck had walked into the room ahead of her. Chuck was sitting on the bed already, untying his shoes. Mom was hanging up the jacket from her suit.

Lori stood with her back against the door, stunned.

Mom started washing off her makeup at the sink.

“That's it?” Lori finally burst out. “Aren't you going to say anything?”

Mom turned her head, her mascara smeared across her face as though she'd been crying.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked.

“I don't know!” Lori exclaimed. “Something! Anything! How about, ‘Well, now at least you know what I told Congress. Too bad you had to find out in front of five hundred strangers.' How about, ‘Gee, I really meant to tell you about that insurance policy before now.' How about—”

“I'm sorry,” Mom said.

Chuck kept his head down, accepting his mother's words. Lori wasn't satisfied.

“‘I'm sorry'?” she repeated. “That's all you have to say?”

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” Mom said. “It was totally unnecessary for them to show that.”

Her tone was calm, refined. It infuriated Lori.

“‘Unnecessary,'” she echoed again. “‘Unnecessary.' Sifting flour is unnecessary. Double-stitching hems is unnecessary. Algebra is unnecessary. That film clip was—is—”

“Essential,” Chuck finished quietly for her.

Lori stared at her brother in surprise. She wouldn't have guessed he even knew the word “essential.” But it was exactly right, exactly the word she'd been searching for.

Mom didn't reply. She went back to scrubbing makeup from her face.

“Why did you bring us on this trip?” Lori whispered.

Her ears were ringing again. Her heart beat in panicky thuds. It was like being back on the plane again, convinced she was seconds away from crashing.

Mom wouldn't look directly at Lori and Chuck. She stared at their reflections in the mirror.

“I wanted you to see—,” she began. “I wanted you to know—”

Lori couldn't wait for another deliberate answer. It would just be a half answer, anyway. A mask.

“Oh, I know why you brought us,” Lori accused. “You wanted to get us to hate Pickford County. Just like you do.”

She could have gone on, said,
You wanted us to hate ourselves, too.
But those words didn't tumble out so easily.

“What do you mean? I don't hate Pickford County!” Mom protested. “It's my home!”

“Oh, yeah? Then why aren't you ever there? Why have you spent this whole trip telling Chuck and me how much better the rest of the world is?” This was safe terrain—safer, anyway, than talking about the videotape. Lori started mimicking her mother, “‘Chicago has such great shopping—not like Pickford County. Can't get good shopping like this back home.' ‘Let's eat out at this fancy restaurant, because you can't get anything but McDonald's back home.' ‘Pickford High School doesn't have an art program, does it? Not like a
real
school.' ‘If Lori weren't such a Pickford County hick, she'd know better than to wear that stupid 4-H dress outside of her own house.'” Mom hadn't actually ever said that, but Lori felt as though she had.

“Stop it!” Mom commanded.

But Lori was on a roll.

“You don't have to lie to us. You hate Pickford County so much, why didn't you just move us all out of there with you after”—Lori forced herself to say the words—“after Daddy died?”

Mom was blinking rapidly. She swiped one of the stiff, white hotel washcloths against her eyelids. For a minute, Lori wondered if she was wiping away mascara or tears. Then Lori decided she didn't care.

Mom finally turned around to face Lori.

“I don't hate Pickford County,” Mom said slowly. “I'd never leave it. When your daddy died, everyone we knew brought us casseroles, for weeks. A bunch of our neighbors got together and finished harvesting all our corn, without even being asked. The auctioneer who sold our farm wouldn't let me pay him. Thirty people offered to baby-sit Mike and Joey during the funeral. For a long time, I got hugs every time I walked into church. And then—when I stopped needing them—the hugs stopped. People knew. It isn't like that, other places. That's why I could never leave Pickford County.”

“But you did!” Lori insisted. Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she tried to ignore them. “You do. You leave it all the time. You leave us. And you want us to leave, too.”

“Oh, Lori, don't be so melodramatic,” Mom said. “I'm not leaving on purpose. It's just my job. And this trip—I just wanted you to understand there's a whole big world out here, beyond the county line. I don't want you to get married at eighteen, like I did, never knowing there are other choices out there.”

“But what if that's what I want?” Lori asked.

“Is it?” Mom asked. Her eyes were dry now. She took a step toward Lori. “Got your future husband all picked out already? Who's it going to be? One of those perfect gentlemen who've been picking on Chuck? Poor guy probably doesn't stand a chance. You get your claws in him, he
won't know what hit him. Next thing he knows, he'll have a mortgage and a passel of kids to support, and he'll never be able to come up for air.”

Lori gasped.

“Is that how it was with you and Dad?” she almost whimpered.

“No,” Mom said, shaking her head violently. “No. It wasn't.”

Chuck recognized the look on Mom's face. Shame. Abject, heartbreaking, regret-filled shame. Mom backed away from Lori and slumped onto the bed beside Chuck. She looked at him in surprise, like she'd forgotten he was there, witnessing this. Then she put her arm around his shoulder.

Chuck stiffened at first, thinking,
Fifteen-year-old boys are not supposed to let their mothers hug them.
But it felt so good, he decided he didn't care. He leaned into the hug.

“Your father and I were in love,” Mom said. “We wanted to get married. We wanted kids. We were happy.” Mom squeezed Chuck's shoulder. She patted the bed on the other side. “Come on, Lori. Sit down and we can talk about all of this. Without screaming. Without either one of us screaming.”

Mom held her arm out stiffly, like she was just waiting for Lori to slide into position, into her mother's embrace.

Lori wondered how her mother could possibly think she wanted a hug now—from her.

“But you're happier now,” Lori said coldly. “Why shouldn't you be? You get to stay in fancy hotels, and people fawn over you, and you don't have to do any real work, and you eat in restaurants. . . . You just jumped at the chance to get out of changing dirty diapers and washing manure out of coveralls. Let Gram do that. You don't care. The day Daddy died was the happiest day of your life.”

Oh no. She'd said it. She'd said what she'd been afraid even to think this whole, long trip.

Mom's face went white. So did Chuck's. Lori forged on. The dam was broken.

“And having a dead husband is just like—something you can talk about, to make people feel sorry for you. You're like those people who sell their stories to the tabloids. What you say isn't worth anything anymore, because you've spent it all. You're just a—a shell. And it's our story you sold out. You made it not real anymore. It's like, on that tape, you were real, I could tell you meant what you said. Or at least I thought I could. Maybe you didn't even mean it then. Maybe you were just acting, like you're always acting now. You get in front of an audience, you're like a robot. Someone pushes your button and you talk.” Lori didn't even know what she was saying. “And it's not fair! How do I know if you're ever real with me?”

Suddenly Lori was crying so hard, Chuck could barely understand what she said.

Is this how other families act?
he wondered.

Mom buried her face in her hands, like she deserved
the onslaught of words. When Lori's last sentence blurred into sobs, Mom looked up.

“You're right,” she murmured. “A lot of what you say is right. Not about me being glad when Tom died. Oh no. But the rest—I do give speeches like a robot. I probably even use a fakey accent, like you said back in Chicago.” She grinned, but it was a pained grin. Chuck forgot himself for a minute and wondered,
How would someone draw that—a smile that looks like tears?

“I've always had rules for myself, though,” Mom said. “There were things I would never talk about. Tom dying was one of them.”