The Art of Crash Landing (6 page)

I wait for the feelings of disappointment, frustration, regret—the trifecta of side effects that I have come to associate with most of my leaping-without-looking escapades. I inhale, exhale. And again. The trees outside the window wave, and above them there are birds circling, waiting perhaps for the wind to ease and the branches to settle to make for an easier landing. The air conditioner in the room cuts on with a hum, Luke Lambert shifts his papers an inch to the left, an inch to the right and yet . . . I feel . . . Nothing. I feel nothing; I'm completely numb. Surely it's the exhaustion. It's hard to believe that at thirty years old I'm already permanently out of give-a-shit.

It dawns on me that it's my turn to speak. “So, is that the bad news, Mr. Lambert?”

“Luke,” he corrects me. “And no, three months is good actually. Probate often takes over six months.”

I nod and he nods and we both smile. I think his is a polite smile, but I'm not sure what mine is. I mean, my teeth are showing, but it doesn't feel like a smile.

“So, what is it?” I ask.

“What is what?”

Wheelchair or no wheelchair, this man is making me cranky. “Well, usually, when someone says,
the good news is . . .
it means that means there's also bad news.”

“Oh . . .” He busies himself with the papers on his desk, lifting them and tapping the ends to straighten the stack. “Well, I wouldn't exactly say
bad
news . . .”

“Spill it, Howdy.”

He looks up at me, surprised. “Did you just call me
Howdy
?”

“Sorry,” I say, but I'm not sorry, and I think he can tell.

He shuffles through his papers until he finds the one he's looking for. He studies it for a second and then looks back up at me. “There are several claims against the estate, and more creditors will probably surface after we publish the combined notice.”

“So that means what, exactly?”

“Your grandmother has outstanding bills that have to be paid out of the proceeds of the estate liquidation.”

“And I'll get what's left.”

“That is correct.” He clears his throat and picks up his papers, repeating the tap-and-straighten process. There's more, I can tell, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to like whatever it is.

“Is there going to be anything left?” I ask.

He frowns and looks back down at the paper. It looks to be a list—a long list. “There are quite a few creditors who have filed a claim, but I think there'll be something remaining,” he says. “She did leave a house.”

“She left me her house?”

“Technically she left it to your mother. But as the surviving heir it goes to you.”

“A house.”

“Yes. Her house and the Winstons.”

“Cigarettes?”

“Dogs.”

I pause, certain that I have lost the thread of this conversation somewhere. Luke is watching me with a strained expression on his face. Perhaps
this
is the bad news. “Did you say,
dogs
?”

“Yes.”

“Let me get this straight . . . she left me more than one dog and a house?”

“Two,” he replies. “Dogs, I mean. Just one house.”

“A nice house?”

“I don't know. But I've met the dogs. They're nice enough.”

I pause to let this sink in. Luke seems perfectly happy to sit quietly and let me think.

“So, we sell the house . . .”

“Yes. After the court hearing you'll be named the executor, and you'll liquidate the assets and clear the liens against the estate.”

“And keep whatever is left.”

“Correct.”

“And there will be something left,” I add.

He pauses, doing a little maybe-maybe-not thing with his head and then says, “Probably.”

“And the dogs?”

He shrugs. “They'll be yours.”

“Probably?”

“No. I'm certain you'll get to keep them.”

Luke is still smiling, and I'm grinning right back at him, with a real smile this time. I can't help it. Sure my life is in the crapper, and this turn of events feels a lot like somebody pressing the flush handle, but at the same time this seems like the funniest joke ever. How can I not appreciate its flawless execution?

I flip through the stack of papers in my lap; the will is dated seven years ago, two years before my mom died. I wonder if my grandmother considered redoing it when Queeg called and told
her about her daughter's death. Surely he told Tilda about me. Maybe she left it as it was, knowing that it didn't matter, that they'd find me, and I'd be sitting in this chair. Or maybe she was like me, and she waited and waited until one day it was too late to change anything.

“The dogs are both named Winston?” I ask.

He nods. “To the best of my knowledge.”

“Why do you suppose she did that?”

“Well, the simplest explanation would be that your grandmother really liked the name Winston.”

“But do you think that's why?”

He takes a moment to slide his papers back into their file. When he looks up at me his expression is serious. “It's been my experience, Ms. Wallace, that when it comes to human behavior, the simplest explanation is rarely the correct one.”

I notice that the branches on the trees outside are still shifting to and fro, but the birds are gone, having either landed or given up. My throat aches, and the hollow feeling in my chest is back, so I pick up my iced-tea glass and take a big gulp. Not bad. Not bad at all.

T
he memories of all my childhood beach vacations have, for the most part, melted into a slurry of heat and grit and the smell of Coppertone suntan lotion. We always stayed at Two Pines, we always went to the same beach, shopped at the same store, crabbed off the same pier. Always too much sun for me, too much gin for my mom. Every year we'd come back to Tallahassee dehydrated and cranky.

Of course a few events stand out. When I was thirteen and we met Queeg, for instance. Or when I was eleven, and my mother talked me into letting her use the clothes iron to straighten my hair but then accidentally left the steam on, raising painful blisters on my neck. Or when I was seven years old and I almost drowned.

The trip that summer—the summer of the near drowning—started out like the rest. On our first day at the beach my mom met a man; that year it was a tall, skinny guy named Curtis, and for the rest of the week he nipped at her heels. Every day he'd come to the trailer park and drive us to the shore in his Firebird. I'd play in the water, and they'd lie under the umbrella and flirt.
At night he'd come by the trailer to watch TV, or sometimes my mom would turn up the radio and they'd go outside and dance. To this day, anytime I hear Rick Astley promise me all the things he's never going to do, it puts me right back outside that trailer at Two Pines, watching my mother and Curtis dance. I joined in as best I could, doing the kind of silly skipping and hopping that seven-year-olds call dancing. I can still remember the feel of the gravel rolling around under my thin rubber flip-flops.

Curtis wasn't a bad guy, and it was obvious that my mother enjoyed his attention. But even if he hadn't just been visiting Florida for the week, he and my mother would have never lasted long. He was goofy-looking and nice, and she was still in the market for handsome and cruel.

T
he memory of my near drowning is clear but fragmented. Unsettling. The rule was simple: I was not to go past the first sandbar unless my mother was with me. I obeyed the rule. Mostly. But it was Friday, our last day at the beach, and I remember standing there on the first sandbar, the water calm and only up to my waist. I looked at my mother in her pink bikini, lying on her towel next to Curtis. I could hear them laughing. I turned to look out at the second sandbar where everyone else was swimming. There were lots of kids out there playing with their parents.

I started out toward the next sandbar, but that's the last memory with any clear connection to the rest. After that they're jumbled up, overlapping, out of sequence. Me on my tiptoes with the water at my neck. A wave knocking me over. Losing my footing. Finding my footing. Losing it again. Then the water was colder, deeper. Going under and back up. Again. And again. I remember scanning the beach for my mother, but I couldn't see her anymore. I wasn't far from the families playing on the sandbar,
but I could spare no arm to wave for help, no breath to cry out. Wave after wave, under and up and under and up. I looked for my mother. I coughed and gagged, the salty burn in my throat, the water always trying to fill my gasping mouth.

And then I'm sitting in the sand drinking an orange soda. The towel wrapped around my shoulders is wet, and I'm shivering even though the sun is warm. My mother kneels next to me, frowning, one hand holding back her hair, the other helping me hold the icy can. Curtis isn't there. I think he was getting the car.

On the way back to the trailer we drove with the windows down, and the air blowing in was so strong I could hardly keep my eyes open. The radio was tuned to a country station, and I remember my mother kept trying to light a cigarette in the windswept car. Nobody even yelled at me when I vomited orange soda all over the backseat.

T
he next day, when we went home to our Tallahassee apartment, my mother told me she had something to show me, that she'd been waiting until I was old enough, but now it was time. I remember understanding that this had something to do with what had happened the day before, but at the same time not knowing what, exactly.

I followed her into her bedroom and watched while she opened her closet and reached up onto the top shelf, pushing aside a couple of shoe boxes. She turned around holding a snow globe. Inside it sat a lighthouse on a rocky island surrounded by a painted blue sea. But instead of snow, it was filled with white birds that, with just the right twisting shake, would spin around and around the plastic lighthouse. First high and fast and then slower, lower, until finally gently settling back on the painted rocks and ocean below.

She explained to me that it was her most prized possession. A
gift from her father. She told me to sit on the carpeted floor, and then she sat next to me and put the snow globe carefully in my hands.

“Five times,” my mother said and then she watched as I set the birds in motion. After the birds settled the fifth time, she took the globe from my hands and told me to go get ready for bed. The next day when she was in the shower, I slipped into her room and opened the closet door. The top shelf was empty. I understood that whatever window my near drowning had opened, was now closed. She'd hidden the snow globe from me again.

A
s an adult, my
The Day I Almost Drowned Because My Mother Was Busy Flirting
story has been in regular rotation with several others, like
Shoplifting Was How I Got New Clothes
and
The Time I Had to Hitchhike to School Because I Missed the Bus and My Mother Was Already Too Drunk to Drive Me
. The stories aren't exactly tragic, but they do illustrate the climate of exhausted, boozy neglect that characterized my childhood. Quite a few people have easily trumped my little anecdotes with some seriously fucked-up horror stories about their parents, which, I must confess, always made me feel better. Other people would just shake their heads in wonder and then buy the next round of drinks. That worked, too.

Once in a while, though, when I'm lying awake at night I think back on that afternoon in the water—my throat burning, my eyes frantically searching for a mother who wasn't there—and I wish I knew what happened to the largest of the missing pieces of that story. Maybe I've put it away until I need it. Or maybe I'll never know how I got back to shore.

And then, if I'm still awake—and I always am—I think about that snow globe.

It surfaced now and then during the frequent moves of my
childhood. Eventually it came out of hiding; for years it sat on my mother's dresser between a cigar box filled with tangled necklaces and the disembodied porcelain hand that held her rings. Once we moved into Queeg's Pensacola house, it ended up in the living room on a shelf next to his bowling trophies.

The thing is, there was no need for her to have kept it hidden. I never once asked to play with the snow globe again. I suppose it's possible that I'd come to associate it with the near drowning and because of that it made me uncomfortable, or maybe once it wasn't forbidden anymore it lost its appeal. Of course, the simplest explanation for my loss of interest is that once you've shaken them a couple of times, snow globes really aren't all that much fun.

And yet, as Luke Lambert, paralegal extraordinaire, so wisely said: when it comes to human behavior, the simplest explanation is rarely the correct one. Because when I'm lying there in the darkness thinking about that damn snow globe, I feel an itch in my chest, an emptiness, as if no matter how deeply I breathe there will always be a place that cannot get enough air.

And then I'm seven years old again, feeling the carpet scratch my sunburned legs, feeling the heat from my mother's body as she sits next to me. And I can smell her perfume and her gin, and I can see the look on her face, and not once does she glance at me as I cradle the glass orb in my little hands. Her interest lies only in the snow globe and in the birds. Those trapped, circling birds.

T
he wind has picked up. On the way to the parking lot, a gust lifts my hair off my shoulders and swirls it into my eyes. I've got a key to my grandmother's house in my hand; amazingly I managed to talk Luke into letting me stay there until my car is fixed. Obviously nobody around here has run a background check on me.

A man crouches at the front of my car, attaching a winch to the frame. The other end of the cable stretches over to a tow truck so dented and rusty that it makes my Malibu look good. The words
JJ's Auto Works
are painted in a faded looping script on the door, and the flat twang of country music is pouring from the truck's open windows.

I walk up behind the man and say, “Thanks for coming out. I'm Mattie Wallace. You must be JJ.”

He straightens and turns toward me. He's tall, thin, and middle-aged, I think, but it looks like years of hard living have done a number on his face. His nose is crooked from a poorly set break and deep wrinkles run from eye to chin and across his
forehead. He reminds me of someone—Clint Eastwood? Bruce Willis? I'm not sure which action hero he resembles, but as he stares at my outstretched arm without lifting his own, I am pretty sure we're not going to shake hands.

“What's your problem?” he says, in a surprisingly soft voice.

“No problem. That's my car and I thought I ought to introduce myself. I'm Mattie.”

“With the car. What's the problem with the car?”

“Oh.” I lower my unshaken hand. “The transmission, I think.”

He nods then climbs in his truck and starts up the winch motor. We both watch as my car assumes the position.

“Nice restoration job,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“You do the upholstery?” He's talking to me, but he's looking at the car.

“My mom did it.”

“Not bad. But the paint looks like shit.” He double-checks the connection and then, wiping his hands on his coveralls, he turns to me and says, “Am I giving you a ride to the garage?”

“Yes, thanks.” I hurry to the far side of the truck and clamber in. A banjo has taken over the melody of whatever song is playing on the radio. I can practically hear gap-toothed hillbillies seducing their nieces. And nephews. Hey, I've seen
Deliverance
.

“Yee haw,” I mutter, not quite under my breath.

He gives me a hard look and then turns off the radio.

“Sorry. Turn it back on. I was just kidding around. I like music.”

He responds with only a grunt and then we pull out of the parking lot. The music stays off. He looks straight ahead, the truck picking up speed even as we approach the stop sign at the bottom of the hill.

“Stop sign! Stop Sign! Stop Sign!” I press my foot to the floorboards and frantically glance both ways while we blast through the stop. “Holy Shit! Didn't you see that?”

“I saw it.”

“Are you trying to kill somebody?”
Like me,
I think but don't say. “Aren't you even worried about getting a ticket?”

He reaches over with an arm covered in gnarly gray hair and switches the radio back on. “I work on the sheriff's car for free.”

I notice but don't comment on his lack of response to my other concern—the sudden, tragic, gone-before-her-time concern. Faster and faster we go, engine roaring through a yellow light and three more stop signs. We hit a dip and I catch a few inches of air before slamming back down on the seat. Just as I snap the seat-belt buckle, we take a tire-squealing left turn at what must be thirty miles an hour. Glancing back I see my car whipping out behind us like a water-skier hotdogging for an audience.

Before long, we reach a part of town where the buildings have boards over the windows, and the railroad overpass has inventively obscene graffiti. As we pass a house with appliances in the yard and a sofa on the sagging front porch, I notice that there are actually a few chickens strutting around the scraggly grass and into the street. JJ leans on the horn and the birds flap and scatter back up into the yard. One, the rooster, I suppose, stays on the curb and crows an admonition.

When we pass a vacant weedy lot, JJ slows the wrecker and pulls into a dodgy-looking gas station. He drives past the building, stops, slams the gearshift into reverse, and then, with a deft spin of his steering wheel, backs the car into the open bay. When he switches off the ignition and turns to face me, it's the first time I see him smile, and I'm pretty sure it's at the sight of my clammy, pale face. For a second I search for the snappy response his performance deserves, but in the end, I respond in the only manner I
am able—I put my head between my legs and vomit on the floorboard.

I apologize with a promise to clean it up and then hurry inside where, in the most vile service station bathroom I have ever seen, the Father's chocolates and Luke Lambert's iced tea finish disembarking.

P
repregnancy, I had long stretches, years-long stretches, between vomiting episodes, including some pretty impressive hangovers. I am extremely disappointed in this new sickly me. Shaking and disgusted, I trudge back out to the tow truck, slowly of course, in the hopes that JJ will have already cleaned up the mess by the time I arrive. No such luck.

Thank God for removable rubber floor mats.

I coil the hose back alongside the building and go check on my car. JJ has the hood up and already seems to have some parts taken out and lying on the cement floor.

“Well?” I ask.

“Looks like you need a new transmission.”

“Seriously? Shit.”

He rocks back on his heels and tucks his hands up under his arms. “So what I'm thinking is . . .” He pauses and chews awhile on his lower lip. I get the impression that thinking is a struggle for the man, so I don't interrupt. Of course it's possible that I'm being too judgmental. I'm sure lots of really, really smart people listen to banjo music.

“What I'm thinking is you should give me some money.”

Without being obvious, I look up and down the street. Seeing as how this neighborhood is one big cry for help I'm not sure who I think would respond to mine, but I still start measuring the distance to the closest house.

“So . . . is this, like, a robbery?”

He scowls. “Hell, no. It just looks to me like you don't have a pot to piss in, and I'm sure as hell not putting seven or eight hundred dollars of parts in a car if I'm not getting paid.”

“That's ridiculous. Of course I can pay.” I pull out my MasterCard and wave it in front of his face.

“Great. Come on in the office and we'll run it through.”

“You expect me to prepay?”

“Just the parts.”

I'm pretty sure that he and I both know things are about to get ugly, but I can't stop myself from trying again. “Don't be silly. It would be easier to pay one time. Once the work's done we'll settle up.”

“You pay for parts now, and labor later.”

“No . . . I don't think so.”

He narrows his eyes, engaged apparently, in that difficult thinking stuff again. He picks up a Styrofoam cup and spits a glob of brown goo inside. “You don't have the money, do you?”

It seems Albert Einstein here has a firm grasp of the obvious.

“I have money. Or I will have soon. I just inherited my grandmother's house.” I don't mention the creditors and I don't mention the three months.

“Miss Thayer's house, right?”

I nod.

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Thirty. Why?”

He shakes his head. “No reason.”

“How old are you?” I'm just being obnoxious; I don't give a shit how old this asshole is.

He looks annoyed. “Fifty-four.”

For all his weathered looks, he's a year younger than my
mother would be if she were still alive. “Maybe you knew my mother . . .”

JJ studies me for a second before answering, “I knew her.”

Wiping his hands again on the rag, he walks out of the garage bay and into the office. Through the window I can see him sorting through some papers scattered on the counter.

The door beeps when I push it open. “So are you going to fix my car?”

He shakes his head. “You bring me the money, we'll talk.”

“Oh come on, what am I supposed to do? I don't have the cash, but I'm good for it.”

“It's company policy.”

“What is?”

“We don't work on vagrants' cars without some money up front.”

“Vagrant!”

“Homeless. Broke. Destitute.”

I sigh. “I know what
vagrant
means, and I'm not one.”

“You've got a lot of crap in that car.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Looks to me like you're living out of it.”

“I'm in the process of moving.”

“Where to?”

“I'm not sure.”

“I rest my case.”

“Come on, what am I supposed to do without a car?”

“I need money up front to buy the parts. Company policy.”

“Show me where that's written down. I don't see that posted anywhere.”

He uses his spit cup again. “I didn't write it down,” he says, wiping his chin, “because I couldn't decide whether to put a hyphen between
dead
and
beat
.”

“Nice. Very nice.”

I'm wondering if the man is just an evil fucker or if he's smarter than he looks. I glance around the waiting area. The whole room smells like burned rubber. There are two orange chairs and between them a table piled with tired-looking newspapers. Above one chair is a framed print of John Wayne, above the other a framed print of Ronald Reagan. Perfect.

“So tow me to another shop.”

“Fifty bucks will cover the tow. Pay me that and I'll do it.”

I pull out my wallet and count bills. I count change. I dump my purse and count that change: $23.74. I look up in time to catch a smile on JJ's face. He's shaking his head.

“You could sell it to me.”

“What?”

“The car. I'll take it off your hands.”

I feel clammy, nauseated, sitting in one of the orange chairs, staring at the meager wad of cash in my hands.

Sell the Malibu?

I take my time shoving everything back into my purse, hoping the asshole can't see that I'm furiously blinking back tears. I wasn't always certain what my mother thought about me, but there was never a question about how much she loved that car. She would hate for her car to belong to an asshole. Well . . . an asshole who wasn't related to her, I should say. We're all assholes sometimes.

“I can't sell it,” I tell him, and it's the truth. My hands are shaking as I zip up my purse.

“I'll make you a fair offer.”

“Sorry.”

“Can you afford to keep it? It's going to be a couple thousand to fix this, then it's only a matter of time before the next thing goes out.”

“I know.” I lift my gaze to his and add, “But it was my mother's.”

I'm not sure what he sees in my eyes, but whatever it is, something hardens in his.

“Suit yourself.” He turns back to the paperwork lying on the counter.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “I don't see a bus stop around here.”

“Not many buses in Gandy. You could rent a car.” He doesn't look up when he says this, but there's a little smirk at the corner of his mouth.

“Tell me, is there a hyphen between
douche
and
bag
?” That gets rid of the smirk, but doesn't get me out of this smelly office.

“Well, then I guess I'll just hang out here with you.” I lean back in my seat beneath Ronald Reagan and cross my legs. “What's your sign? I'm a Gemini. I bet you're an Aries, right? All the real jerks I've known have been Aries. Or Capricorns . . .”

After less than five minutes of my sparkling conversation, he gestures for me to follow him. We walk around to the gravel lot behind the building. He opens the passenger-side door of a white Taurus.

“Where are we going?” I'm thinking that it might just be to a shallow grave in the woods.

“Back to where I found you.”

“What about all my stuff?”

He shrugs. “Not my problem.”

“Hold on a minute.” I run to my car and grab my toiletries pillowcase and shove in some clean underwear, my phone charger, Nick's guitar strap. I also grab my mom's camera bag.

I hurry back to the Taurus before the asshole changes his mind. “I'm staying at my grandmother's house.” I dig in my pocket for the slip of paper with her address. “I've got the address—”

“I know where it is. Get in.”

“Maybe I should drive.”

“Maybe you should get in the damn car.”

I climb in, fastening the seat belt before I shut the door.

“Thanks for the ride—”

“You can thank me by not spewing in this car.”

“Why are you so mean?” I ask, sounding a little whiny even to my own ears. “I thought you said you knew my mother.”

“I never said I liked her.”

He pulls out of the lot and heads back the way we came. The chickens are back out in the street and JJ honks at them again. As the car passes the flock, the rooster and I lock eyes. I have a funny feeling that Minnie might just be right this time. Maybe my chicken finally has come home to roast.