The Art of Crash Landing (14 page)

M
y mom, Queeg, and I got home from the beach that August afternoon tired and sunburned, and before we'd even washed the sand off of our feet, my mother and I were in an argument. It was one of many that summer, the by-product of a newly sober mom trying to make up for lost time. Seventeen years of disinterest, and suddenly my mother was ready to
parent.
Is it any wonder I balked? Sadly, the fight wasn't even about anything all that special: there was a party, I wanted to go, my mother said no. Embarrassingly predictable, really. Thinking back, sometimes I wonder if I would feel any better about what happened next if the argument had been over something more important. Probably not.

Queeg was working the graveyard shift, so my mother and I were alone in the house that evening. She spent the hours watching a
Baywatch
marathon on TV. I spent them sulking in my room.

Here's the evening I wish I remembered: me pouting in my room until I fell asleep. Or better yet, me apologizing to my mother and then sitting next to her on the couch. Maybe I'd eat
some caramel corn. Maybe I would have laid my head on her lap so she could play with my hair. That would have been nice.

Instead, I waited until my mother was in her bed asleep, then I came out of my room and tiptoed down the dark hallway. I'd like to think I was going to the kitchen for a snack. Maybe I didn't really intend to go to the bookshelf in the living room; I was just walking past it and some reflected light from the snow globe's glass surface caught my eye. Maybe what happened next was an impulsive act, an unpremeditated spasm of cruelty. That's what I wish I could believe. But the truth is, I left my room and walked straight through the darkness to the bookshelf where the snow globe sat. I remember noticing the shelf was dusty. I remember that when I lifted the snow globe the tiny white birds inside flew erratically, frantically.

I carried it to the kitchen and turned on the small light above the sink. After a swirl or two to get the plastic birds circling in unison, I lowered it and tapped the glass on the countertop. Nothing happened. And again, harder. Still nothing. The Formica was too forgiving. I can still remember looking over at the red cooler next to the back door, and feeling my anger almost soften into something else. And then I turned back to the sink and tapped the globe once more, this time on the metal faucet.

With a barely audible pop the snow globe exploded, the water and birds escaping down the drain. I stood there, holding the base with its jagged glass walls, and I reached in to touch the little lighthouse. It was plastic, of course.

I was careless when I scooped the mess out of the sink into the trash can, the fragments of clear glass becoming harder and harder to see as my eyes filled with tears. When I'd cleaned out the sink, I turned my attention to my hands. My blood mixed with the water as I washed out my cuts, rubbing hard with the soap, waiting to rinse until I could stand the stinging no longer.

T
he next morning I woke to the sound of shouting and followed the noise to the kitchen. My mother was yelling at Queeg, accusing him of carelessness. It went on and on, her lurching, drunken dumping of blame, and I remember standing out of her line of sight, looking in through the kitchen doorway, watching her back as she screamed and flailed her arms. She must have dug the snow globe pieces out of the trash because fragments of glass were scattered on the table. On the counter sat that bottle of gin, opened and half empty.

Queeg looked past my mother, at me, standing in the doorway, and for several long seconds our eyes met. I was the first to look away. I don't know what he saw on my face. Gloating? Dismay? I was feeling both. The expression on his face was despair.

I went back to my room and waited until I heard Queeg leave the house, and then I waited awhile longer until I was fairly certain that my mother had either gone back to bed or passed out on the couch. But when I returned to the kitchen, there she was, seated at the table, smoking a cigarette, drinking a mug of something I knew wasn't coffee. She was sifting through the ruins of the snow globe, pushing the shards of glass this way and that. Each piece made a soft scraping sound on the tabletop. Sensing my presence at the door, she glanced up, and then she held out her hand, palm open.

She took a long drag from her cigarette and then exhaled, looking at me through the smoke. In her outstretched hand were two white slivers of plastic. “They remind me of our summers at the beach,” my mother said, reaching out a finger to touch one bird and then the other. “There's only two left. One for you, and one for me.”

She looked at me, her eyes red from crying. I looked away. Seconds passed with soft clicks from the kitchen clock. A water drop trembled, shining on the sink faucet. She waited, needed me
to tell her everything could still be okay. She needed to believe that she and I were bound by a knot too strong for the gin in her coffee cup to unravel. She needed me to take one of those damn birds.

The moment balanced there, her hand outstretched, my hands behind my back, fingers clenching and unclenching, the Band-Aids whispering against each other. My next move would shift the balance. I could walk across the room and pour the rest of the bottle down the drain and apologize for breaking the snow globe. I could lift one tiny bird from her hand and hold it in my own. I could tell her that I loved her, that everything was going to be okay. I knew that if I did that, our unsteady little family might still turn out okay. After all, we'd had a good summer, and she could climb back on the wagon if we helped her. Queeg would forgive her, and she would forgive me.

But God help me, I was seventeen years old and so filled with shame that all I wanted to do was hurt somebody.

And I chose her.

Pulling my mouth into a cruel parody of a smile, I said, “No thanks. You can keep them.”

She flinched, though she tried to hide it. I watched her face for the rage I knew would come, but instead I saw only a deep sadness so terrible that to this day the memory of it is physically painful. Standing there in that kitchen, it was all I could do to keep the tight smirk on my face until I turned away. As I left the room, I saw her take a long drink from the coffee cup filled with gin. I wasn't smiling anymore.

T
he dogs and I continue along street level awhile, walking the length of the overpass and then two or three blocks up the street until we reach the turn I would take to go to the library. Although I hope I won't have to use my newfound knowledge of Gandy geography, it's nice to know that if push comes to shove I could walk or ride the bike through the park to get to work.

By the time we turn around to head back, the light is fading and the wind has picked up. At the bridge over the park I glance down, looking for Shandy and her father, but they're gone. From here I can see that the playground is deserted; the swings hang empty, swaying slightly. I watch a jogger bounce past and a couple walking steadily, their feet striking the pavement in such confident unison that I imagine they've been together for years.

In the distance I hear a child shriek and laugh. I'd like to think it's Shandy. Maybe her father has tickled her ribs or picked her up and swung her around. They're on their way to their car, to their home, to where a mother who needed a break will be waiting, happy to see them. It's not a scene from my past, so there's no
excuse for the sinking pressure of homesickness in my chest. But knowing that doesn't keep me from feeling it.

The dogs are urging me toward the path down to the park, but I pull them back over to the other side of the street where Shandy had been sitting. Stepping up until my thighs touch the railing, I lean over the edge, angling out as far as I dare. In the gathering shadows, the creek is a dark smear, the clumps of scrubby brush alive in the wind. I close my eyes and let the breeze tug at my hair. The leaves and the water whisper to me, and I shiver, thinking of how easy it would have been for that little girl to slip off her perch, how easy it would be right now for me to loosen my grip on the railing.

I may not know much about the beginning of my mother's life, but God help me, I know how it ended. I haven't forgotten anything. I remember how to fall.

U
p and at 'em this humpday and once again I am feeling like shit. I feed the dogs and then scrounge in the pantry for a sad little match girl breakfast of my own. God, I am pitiful.

When they finish eating, the dogs trundle outside, and after a few minutes leaving deposits I fear I must at some point clean up, they come charging back in through their flap. Cheech has something in his mouth and Chong follows him close behind. I take up the rear of the rollicking cha-cha line. Thanks to my longer legs, I quickly catch up to Cheech. Thanks to my opposable thumbs, I am able to pry open his mouth and extricate whatever delicacy resides within.

It's a cigarette butt. Charming.

“Like you don't snort and wheeze enough already? You've got to give them up, buddy. They'll kill you.”

Both dogs smile up at me, wagging their tail stumps in agreement, so I declare the intervention a success. After disposing of the slobbery butt, I wash my hands. I look through the kitchen window but see no sign of JJ, the littering peeper. The day is looking up already.

Deciding that I don't need to dress up as much as I did yesterday, I put on my moderately grimy jeans, and then dig through my trash bag of clothing to find my brown lace-up boots, which are ugly but mercifully low-heeled. Back in my mother's room I look in her closet for a clean shirt. The garish polyester within is so out it's in again, or at least that's what I tell myself as I slip on the peasant blouse printed with a pink and olive geometric pattern. I tuck my jeans in my boots, and the shirt in the jeans, and then check the result. Perfect. Little House on the Kick-Ass Prairie. On LSD.

I grab the photos I took down from the wall Monday night—my mother with friends, the elderly couple, the guy with the old car—and stow them in my purse. Then I smooth out the bedspread and push my crap into the corner, so I can at least walk through the room without tripping. The plant hanging in the window looks pretty droopy—it needs water—but the sound of a horn blasting outside tells me the plant will just have to tough it out a bit longer.

Tawny is very prompt for a disaffected teenager; perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick to judge. Just because she has a face full of metal, and holes in her ears I could stick a finger through doesn't necessarily mean she's irresponsible with anything other than a piercing gun.

As soon as I settle myself in and swing the truck door shut, she turns to me and says, “What the hell is that?”

She's pointing at my shirt, laughing. This from a girl who's wearing another black mini-tee, this one with the words
Good-bye Kitty
under a graphic of Hello Kitty hanging from a noose, and either the same or an identical pair of giant black cargo pants. I am still overdressed.

She starts down the hill, and I brace myself, keeping one hand on the dash and one on the door, watching for potholes. I'm not the only one who should be worried about getting jostled; a cigarette
dangles from her lip, a good half-inch of ash trembling on the end.

“Are those pants fire retardant?” I ask.

She glares, but takes the hint and taps the ash into a Red-Bull can in the cup holder.

“You do know that smoking is bad for you, right?”

Tawny gives me a derisive snort. “Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.”

With a lurch we turn left, toward the loop. I am unsurprised that Tawny takes the shorter, less scenic way. She doesn't strike me as someone who'd want to cruise through suburban neighborhoods unless it were to case them for later criminal activity. When we pass the trailhead where I crossed last night getting to and from the park, I see a small dark lump in the middle of the road.

“Wait, slow down,” I say. “Stop.”

She slows marginally.

“Stop!” I say. “It's Mr. Newcomb.”

She pulls over, looking at me like I'm crazy. The truck is still rolling when I hop out, check both ways and trot out to the turtle, only to discover that meaty flesh bulges from a crack running through his shell. Ants swarm everywhere. I leave the turtle where he is and hurry back to the truck.

“Too late,” I say, climbing back in. My voice sounds a little thin and high.

Tawny glances over at me, puzzled. I clear my throat as if that had been the problem, and return her stare, trying really hard not to look like the sort of crazy loser who'd cry about a turtle.

Tawny shakes her head and tosses her half-smoked cigarette out the window. “That was a snapper,” she says.

“I know.”

“Mr. Newcomb?”

“Long story,” I tell her.

She wrestles the gearshift into first. “I would never help a snapper,” she says. “They're mean.”

Twisting in her seat to watch for a break in the traffic, she grips the wheel with both hands, rising partially off her encyclopedia booster seat. It's easy to imagine her without the piercings, her hair its natural color—which I'm guessing is strawberry blond—in a Hello Kitty shirt that doesn't feature a noose. All her studied fierceness seems so carefully constructed that I'd be willing to bet she practices it in the mirror. Tawny is still a girl, an innocent. She isn't yet a disappointment to herself. She hasn't spent years sleeping with forgettable men, waking up every morning in a cold sweat, head and heart pounding, mouth dry from the booze or the drugs. She hasn't lived long enough to understand the downhill tumble of a disturbed stone, how each mistake leads inexorably to the next. She still thinks the choices she makes are her own.

“It's their nature,” I say. “They can't change what they are.”

She glances over at me, and from the look in her eyes I think she understands I'm not really talking about turtles.

“Fuck 'em,” she replies.

W
hen Tawny and I arrive at the library, Fritter gathers us into a huddle for a quick rundown of the things to get done this morning. Number one on the list is to find volume
K–L
.

Before she continues to the next item I say, “Tawny and I were just discussing that book.”

Fritter looks at me, surprised. Tawny scowls.

“She thinks it could be misshelved over in the Children's section,” I say. “And she was hoping you'd let her reorganize that area today . . . you know, take everything off the shelves, clean up the books a little . . .”

“That's a terrific idea,” Fritter says, beaming at Tawny.

“And I can check Periodicals,” I offer. This not only allows me to dawdle out of sight and read magazines, it's close to the bank of computers and their clueless users. Yesterday, I heard one man ask another if the past tense of
tweet
was
twat
.

Tawny is pissed, but doesn't dare argue. Once Fritter is out of earshot, the girl whispers, “I can't believe you did that.”

I shrug. “It's my nature.”

“God, you're such a dickbag.”

I laugh and watch her sulk her way toward the sticky mess that is the Children's section. First
fartknocker
and now
dickbag
. Working in a library is certainly enriching my vocabulary.

A
fter spending an hour catching up on my magazine reading, I decide it's as good a time as any to start poking around the edges of Fritter's knowledge of my family. If I can figure out what she's willing to talk about and what she isn't, it might help me decide what to do next. I get the photos from my purse and take them to the circulation desk behind which Fritter sits, assessing some damp, slightly rippled books.

“I didn't find K through L in Periodicals, sorry,” I tell her. “But can I ask you something?”

She pauses her tut-tutting over the book in her hand. “I don't know.
Can
you?”

Here we go again. “
May
I?”

She nods.

“Who are these people?” I hold out the photo of the elderly couple.

“Burneel and Carter Wallace,” she tells me. “Eugene's parents.”

“My great-grandparents.” I look to her for confirmation, but she's returned her attention to the book in her hands.

“It looks like the picture was taken in front of the house I'm staying in.”

“That's because it was their home. When Tilda turned up pregnant, her parents disowned her. Burneel and Carter took her in.”

This is an unexpected development. “My grandparents weren't married?”

She raises one eyebrow. “Your mother never told you that she was born out of wedlock?”

“My mother never discussed her past.”

Fritter pauses, seeming to consider the implications of that statement. “Interesting.”

“Is it?” I ask.

She clears her throat, but doesn't reply. She's looking at my hand, at the next picture, the one with the young man standing by a car.

“Is this my grandfather?”

I pass the photo to her and she sets it in her lap. Her mouth curves up a bit at the edges, a small smile.

She nods. “Wasn't Eugene handsome? All of us had our caps set for him.” She's quiet for a few seconds, still looking at the photo. I bite my lip to stay silent, hoping she'll say more, and finally she does.

“It drove a wedge between us, you know, Tilda and me. It's not easy for friends to share a crush.”

“So what happened?”

“He chose Tilda, of course.” The old woman shrugs her rounded shoulders. “She was beautiful—blond curls, big blue eyes. She sang like an angel and played the piano like it was on fire.” She hands the photo back to me and picks up a book, fanning through it as if searching for her next words. “I grew up next door to Gene; he and my older brother Jonah were friends. I spent my
childhood tagging along behind the boys, but summers of playing hide-and-seek don't count when everyone starts falling in love. I had no claim on Eugene at all. None of us did.”

Fritter slams shut the book in her hands, and I jump at the sound. Lifting it up to inspect the spine, she says, “I guess I was the lucky one. Being an unwed mother in 1959 was no fun.”

“So Eugene just knocked up my grandmother and left town?”

“No.” She sets the book down and picks up the next. “He died.”

I watch as her age-speckled hands move around and around on the book, and I take a minute to consider what she's just told me. My mother never met her father; he died before she was born.

Fritter seems not to notice my surprise, or perhaps she's giving me a moment to recover, because she pointedly keeps her attention focused on the book in her hands. She must find some moisture in it as well, because she puts it with the other damaged ones. When she shakes her head and says, “A terrible tragedy,” I'm not sure if she's talking about the book, or my grandfather's death.

“So what happened?” I finally ask.

“Your grandmother did the best she could in the circumstances. She moved in with Gene's parents and raised your mother in their home.”

“And named her Genie.”

Tilda nods. “That was a kindness. Burneel and Carter had lost their only child. I think your mother growing up in that house helped to mend their broken hearts.”

“So what happened to them?”

“What happens to everybody. They got old and died.”

I think of Eugene, who must have died in his twenties, and of my mother, who died at fifty. Not everyone gets old.

Fritter holds her hand out for the last photo, the group shot of my mother with friends. She touches one face with a bony finger. “That's your mother.”

I nod. “Her hair looks blond.”

“Your mother was a blonde.”

“She bleached it though, right?”

The old woman shrugs. “It's certainly possible. She dyed my dog.”

“Excuse me?”

“I once made the mistake of asking your mother to watch Frida, my miniature apricot poodle, while I was away for a weekend.”

The scowl on Fritter's face is the only thing keeping me from laughing at this point.

She continues, “I came home to an animal with irritated skin and sickly yellow fur.”

I swear I don't laugh or even smile, but something in my eyes must reveal my struggle to keep a straight face.

“It's not funny, young lady,” Fritter says to me. “She was so ashamed . . .”

“My mother?”

“Frida.”

At this I do smile. To my relief, Fritter smiles a little, too.

“Oh, I was so angry. I don't know what possessed your mother to do such a thing, but I do know that Harden girl was also in on it.” Fritter taps the photo again, this time pointing to the girl standing next to my mother. “That young lady was trouble on a stick.”

“She's Karleen Meeker now,” I say. “I met her at the church yesterday.”

When I tell Fritter this, she glances up at me. She looks alarmed, but trying to hide it. “I should have known she would frequent a soup kitchen.”

“No, no,” I'm quick to explain. “She works at the church.”

“Regardless of employment, trash is trash.”

“She seems nice enough—”

“Stay away from that woman,” Fritter says, perhaps a bit too forcefully. She must sense that she's gone too far, because her tone is now one of feigned nonchalance. “I don't know if you planned to go back to that soup kitchen, but I think it's best if you don't. You ought to associate with persons of a higher class. Besides, you can't take such long lunch breaks. If you're short on food, I'll have Tawny pack you a lunch tomorrow.”

I have a feeling I'd end up with a lugie sandwich so I refuse the offer, but I do agree to stay away from the church. It's a promise I'm reluctant to make, not so much because I enjoy dishing up slop, but because Fritter's weird insistence that I stay away from Karleen makes seeing her again irresistible.

Apparently satisfied with my sincere-sounding assurances, Fritter lowers herself off the high stool, and then gathers up the stack of damaged books.