Time Flies (10 page)

CHAPTER 10

To:
Melanie

From:
B.J.

Subject:
It’s Never Too Late to Make a Reunion Time Capsule!

Do inform your classmates in advance so they can bring an item that represents an important memory. Think: never-returned textbooks, old report cards, record albums and 8-track tapes, as well as condoms (unused only, please) and other prom memorabilia.

Don’t overlook the importance of choosing the right container for your time capsule. Even you and (most of) your aging classmates will hold up longer than a flimsy cardboard box. Should one of you have a professional connection, a simple casket works perfectly. Leave open and place in a prominent location at the reunion.

Instead of dreaming about Finn Miller, I dreamed about artist and former nun Corita Kent, who created the famous
LOVE
postage stamp. In high school, or maybe it was junior high, she became my hero when she designed the rainbow of swashes that was painted on one of the enormous storage tanks along the Southeast Expressway and changed the commute to Boston forever. Not only was it pop art and the coolest thing
evah
, but rumor had it that she’d snuck the profile of Ho Chi Minh into the blue swash as a protest against the Vietnam War.

She died when Trevor and Troy were still little, but in my dream she showed up at my house in Georgia and asked me to touch up the tank for her.

She was wearing her nun’s habit again. I wondered if it was a last-minute religious reconversion before she died, but I didn’t ask in case it might be rude. Her headpiece was too wide to fit through our front door, so I stepped out on the stone front steps to talk to her.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” I said. “But I couldn’t possibly touch your work.”

She smiled a beautiful smile and I wished she weren’t a nun because then maybe she could be my mother. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s a storage tank.”

“But I’m not a painter.”

A gust of wind caught her rosary beads and she smiled again. “We’ll give you a metal paintbrush and metal paint, and you’ll be just fine.”

“But I’m afraid.”

“Of course you’re afraid. We’re all afraid. There are only two choices: afraid and boring.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s okay. If you knew it, I would have asked someone else.” She reached into the pocket of her habit and pulled out a child’s eight-color watercolor paint set.

I held out one hand and she placed it on my palm. It was lighter than air. “That’s it? That’s all I need?”

She was starting to levitate. “Yes, there’s a metal ladder built onto the side of the tank, so hold on tight and just don’t look down. And make sure you get Ho Chi Minh’s nose right. It’s the blue one.”

My heart did a double beat and the baby elephant sat down on my chest. “But I’m afraid of heights. I can’t even drive over a bridge. And how am I going to get to the tank anyway? It’s right on the edge of a
highway
.”

Corita Kent was fully airborne now, and for the first time I realized that Sister Bertrille from
The Flying Nun
had been up in the sky waiting for her all along.

“Boring,” they both yelled. And then they giggled and flew off together.

When
The Flying Nun
came out, my sister, Marion, and I watched it religiously every Thursday night at eight. We even talked our mother into cutting our bangs so we’d look like Sally Field.

It was all fun and games until Marion decided to make me
fly. She was four years older so she should have known better, but one day she wrapped me in a sheet and helped me climb up and stand on my bed. It was an iron cottage bed that had belonged to some old dead relative, and it was painted a shiny white. Marion stood on the bed and gave me ten fingers to stand on the slippery footboard, which seemed a hundred feet high.

I was trying really hard not to cry. “I don’t think I can fly,” I whispered. I twisted around to keep from falling forward and ended up mostly on the bed. My head hit the edge of the metal frame. When Marion dabbed at my face with a corner of the sheet, it turned really, really red.

“Don’t tell Mom,” she hissed, so I started to scream. Then Marion started to scream as if she were the one bleeding, so I screamed louder. When our mother came running in, she screamed, too, then ordered us both out to the car. My mother hated blood and she hated to drive and money didn’t grow on trees. By the time we found the hospital, the six stitches and one lollipop I got from the doctor was practically the best part of the day.

I ran one finger along the tiny raised scar near the top of my forehead. It had started out just above my eyebrow, but as my face grew it had moved up, just like the doctor promised.

In honor of my dream I was watching an episode of
The Flying Nun
that I’d found on my laptop and sent to the family room TV via the wireless thingee Trevor and Troy had configured for us last Christmas. I was stretched out in Kurt’s former recliner that I’d sprayed with Febreze so it wouldn’t smell like him.

The episode was called “The Candid Commercial.” The gist of it seemed to be that the convent washing machine breaks down, forcing Sister Bertrille to take all the nuns’ laundry to a Laundromat.
In a pretty big coincidence, a producer and cameraman just happen to be there filming a candid commercial for a laundry detergent called Delight.

I sighed. Back when Kurt and I were living in our first little rental apartment, we used to go to the Laundromat every Monday, since it was the slowest night. I’d bring our economy-size jug of Wisk detergent and pour it carefully around the neck of each of Kurt’s and my shirts, hoping to avoid the “collar soil” that would result in the heinous “Ring Around the Collar” described in the Wisk commercials.

Kurt would have taken over the entire length of a folding counter to sort the change we’d saved all week, pocketing the quarters for the evening’s dinner, filling the coin-operated washers and dryers with the nickels and dimes, and rolling the pennies in orange wrappers we’d store in a shoe box until we had enough to take to the bank.

As soon as we got our two jam-packed washing machines going, one for colors and one for whites, we’d stop in at the local pizza place, put in a to-go order, take a walk, then circle back to pick up the single cheese pizza we could afford. On nights when the timing worked out just right, we’d walk into the Laundromat with our dinner as the spin cycle was winding down.

We couldn’t wait until we could afford to buy our own washer and dryer. When Kurt’s parents finally upgraded and handed down their old Harvest Gold Kenmore set, we christened them with a champagne toast as if we’d won the lottery.

Who knew those laundry-and-pizza dates would turn out to be some of the best times of our marriage.

To:
Melanie

From:
B.J.

Subject:
Why Not to Go to Your Reunion on an Empty Stomach

GOLDFISH GET-TO-KNOW-YOU REUNION ICEBREAKER: Ask class officers, cheerleaders, potheads, and other formerly prominent classmates to carry a large bowl of Goldfish snack crackers to each table, instructing everybody to take as many as they wish but not to eat a single one yet. After everybody has a handful, pause a dramatic moment, then inform the crowd that they have to take turns sharing one personal fact with their tablemates for each Goldfish they took.

To:
Melanie

From:
B.J.

Subject:
5 Reunion Don’ts

1. Junior sizes (even if you can still fit into them)

2. Pantyhose

3. Matching spousefits (outfits for spouses)

4. Mirrored sunglasses

5. A case of water bottles labeled with your business logo that just happened to be in the trunk of your car