What Nora Knew (20 page)

We were waiting for the salesman to return with a
receipt and the blue box. Deirdre was busy straightening her wallet, arranging twenties with twenties, tens with tens. There no longer seemed to be an opportune time or clever segue to bring up my column. I’d blown my chance. Should have gone for it in the taxi when she was a captive audience. “Didn’t you want to see me about something?” she asked, zipping her wallet shut. So there I was at Tiffany’s talking about brand values and unique properties, tossing out whatever buzz words my sister had prepared me with, doing my best to convince Deirdre that a column called MyEye was an edgy, yes, daring concept, an advertisable proposition unlike anything
Gawker
offered; maybe I could even start it with my Thursday assignment; what a perfect example that would be! Of course, I’d need a headshot taken because columnists need headshots, but that could be arranged.

“I know it’s a great idea,” I said. “I know it like a good melon.”

*  *  *

Thursday I jumped out of an airplane. It was an assignment, of course. I’m not someone who does that sort of thing casually.
Gee, there aren’t any good movies this weekend; I think I’ll leap from a large airborne vehicle.
But what better way to demonstrate my column-worthy daringness; and if things didn’t go well, I could always write an obituary column.

The previous week Deirdre had left a note on my desk:
This has potential!

For whom?
I wondered.
A funeral director?

Along with her note was a Groupon and an article torn from the
Post
about the booming interest in skydiving—3 million US jumps a year. No mention of how many US fatalities. A photograph showed two people wearing helmets and goggles and the kind of jumpsuits you usually see on gas-station attendants and prisoners. The people were strapped to one another with a harness that looked no sturdier than the straps on a backpack, their arms stretched out, their legs stretched out, like they were in the midst of doing jumping jacks when they happened to fall out of a plane one on top of the other, pancake-style. The image of a pancake is the main reason it had never occurred to me to go skydiving, the image of
me
as a pancake.

The Groupon was for a company called Manhattan Skydive, so already I knew I couldn’t trust these clowns. If there’s one place in this world you won’t find a soft landing, it’s New York City, unless the sunbathers in Central Park don’t mind your landing on their towels. I checked out Manhattan Skydive’s website. I read about jumping from ten thousand feet and free-falling for four thousand feet. I read about not being allowed to wear sandals or high heels; they recommended running shoes. Made sense. Good for running away at the last minute. Drinking alcohol beforehand was also not advised. For me, it was going to be mandatory. When I made my reservation over the phone, I asked just how a company seventy miles outside Manhattan got off naming themselves Manhattan anything. The chirpy young woman—who was more interested in recording my charge-card number than
answering questions—informed me that Manhattan Skydive did not refer to the location, but was meant to evoke the thrill and excitement of Manhattan. “Then maybe I should just stay in Manhattan,” I said.

I rented a Zipcar for my seventy-mile drive. While driving through small towns and villages, past farmlands and cows, I imagined my funeral and my unusually flat, custom-made coffin with the one-of-a-kind lining supplied by Hallberg upholstery. My sister Lisa would fly in from Atlanta with the twins, making excuses for her husband, who had an emergency pool-equipment meeting in Asia. Jocelyn would keep checking her watch, complaining that the service was running long. My grandmother Shirley would carp about the folding chairs hurting her ass. Pammie would be busy rearranging her Memorial Day guest list, wondering who should get the Daisy Room next year.

Maybe Russell would deliver a woe-filled eulogy on how he tried to put my bones back together but they were in too much disarray. As an apology, he’d hand out business cards offering one free neck crack per mourner. Deirdre, dressed in black with inappropriate cleavage, would be unable to speak through her tears of regret, having come up with the assignment in the first place. “I was about to offer her a column!” she’d blubber through her sobs.

The entire
EyeSpy
staff would attend—publication suspended in my memory—the employees all thrilled to have a free day off; Emily Lawler in the front row snickering, and Kristine and Angela in the back row making out with their
boyfriends. And afterward my father would grill burgers for all the guests, and my mother would distribute memorial plaques with my decoupaged face. The thing is, throughout my entire imaginary circus, I could picture Cameron Duncan standing off in a corner, sad, alone, making a rose out of a paper napkin and crying genuine tears.

When I arrived at what looked like the middle of a mowed-down cornfield, I walked into the aluminum-sided Manhattan Skydive office that looked a whole lot bigger in the website photo than in real life. Damn fish-eye lenses. The first thing I did was fill out paperwork, most of which boiled down to “I won’t sue you, I won’t sue you, I won’t sue you.” On the last page was the line
Skydiving can kill you. But on the bright side, that’s rare.

Way to go, optimists!

My class was small, only six of us, so already I was nervous. Why weren’t there more people here? Where did the smart skydivers go? We sat on a bench in the back of a hangar, one plane in the hangar, two others parked out on the runway. We watched a video for all first-time jumpers. It was like a Disney cartoon, except instead of singing chipmunks and birds we got happy people flying through the air. Our instructor, an upbeat young man named Haywood with reassuring broad shoulders and a jutting jaw, informed us that he’d personally logged over four thousand jumps. He asked us to go around and introduce ourselves, say what brought us to Manhattan Skydive. The woman next to me was celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday along with her fidgety friend,
who was celebrating her thirty-eighth birthday. Dickie and Patty were celebrating their engagement, and a gung ho sort who introduced himself as Denby was celebrating his divorce. I felt bad not having anything to celebrate, so I said I was celebrating my rich aunt’s dying and leaving me money in her will with the one condition that I try her lifelong passion, skydiving.

Haywood ran us through twenty minutes of ground training before suiting us up and assigning us to our planes and our jump buddies. Denby’s jump buddy was a statuesque young woman with a sexy mole above the corner of her top lip. He was pleased, but not as thrilled as I was to be paired with Haywood and his four thousand jumps. The birthday girls were assigned to the first plane on the runway, the engaged couple to the second plane on the runway. I was happy. It could take hours to pull my plane out of the hangar. Then Haywood and I were assigned to a new contender, a plane that appeared out of nowhere—well, out of the sky—and swept in on the short runway, landing amid a flurry of noise. I worried it was low on gas.

I boarded last, stepping up onto the strut and ducking into the low doorway. “What? No stewardess?” I said. The pilot directed me to strap in. He wasn’t wearing a parachute, a good sign. He turned a key to start the plane.
A key?
Even the engine sounded picayune. I gripped the sides of my seat until we were airborne. By then I had to holler to be heard over the noise. “Has anyone ever chickened out!” The plane was so cramped my knees were bumping against all the other
knees, Denby’s knees and mine shaking in unison. Haywood shouted for us to remember to hold the straps, bend our feet back, keep our eyes open, and look at the canopy.

All I cared about was remembering to pull the rip cord. Haywood and I were jumping first. He opened the door to a blast of thundering noise and cold air in my face, checked my harness, and hooked his front to my back. Having to choose between the fear of jumping and the indignity of riding back down in that tiny plane, stepping off onto the runway with my parachute and Haywood still attached to me, was reason enough to plummet forward.

I jumped. We plunged. I don’t remember much between that point and the ground. I was floating in a wind tunnel, almost unaware that Haywood was lashed behind me. It was beautiful. Then scary. I pulled the cord. Felt the lurch and jolt of the chute’s opening and tugging us upward, until we glided earthbound and free. I loved it. I fell in love with it. If only falling in real life love were this easy. Take a big breath and open your eyes.

Russell showed up after a day of Saturday appointments, sniffling and blowing his nose, unable to get through half a sentence without a
ker-chew!
“Why’s the TV so loud?” he asked.

“Kevin and Lacey.” I pointed to the wall. I listened. “I think they’re done.” I turned off the television.

Russell sneezed. “Damn ragweed,” he said.

“Ragweed season’s not until August.”

“That’s in two days.” He sat on the sofa, loosened his tie, and complained about his watery nose, his scratchy eyes, and his enlarged tonsils.

“You still have tonsils?” I sat next to him, held his hand, then remembered he’d sneezed into it. “What did your patients say while you were sneezing all over them?”

“They have allergies, too.”

“All of them?”

“One out of five Americans do.”

“And four out of five of us don’t. Did you take an antihistamine?”

He nodded yes. “You know, mosquitoes breed dengue fever.”

“And you should worry about that why?” My solid, dependable, more-or-less-member-of-the-medical-community boyfriend was not demonstrating impressive behavior. Evan was the same way. Toss him into court with a jury for an audience, a demanding client, and a hanging judge to boot, and he’d manage to rip the opposition’s net worth and self-worth to shreds. But at the first hint of a head cold, the man crumbled. I suppose I should muster up more sympathy for the ailing man-babies in my life, at least offer to fulfill a sexy nurse fantasy or two, but my mother never fussed when any of her daughters claimed poor health. She’d hold palm to forehead and say, “Yep, a little warm. Now throw some clothes on and don’t be late for school.” She seemed to honestly believe that looking illness straight in the red, itchy eye built character. Even if you did stay home, there was no upside. We’d have to help vacuum and dust, iron our sheets. My sisters and I developed strong immune systems early in life. There was no point not to.

Russell sneezed.

I handed him a fresh Kleenex. “We better not go to the movies,” I said.

“But I want to see
Cowboys and Aliens
.”

“How do you think the other patrons will feel after they’ve
forked over thirteen bucks for a ticket and you’re sitting next to them spewing mold spores?” I maintained that common courtesy required sneezing people to sacrifice their own pleasure for the good of the majority. Russell pointed out the extenuating circumstances; it was opening weekend.

“What if you take a nap, a short one?” I said. “Not one of those naps where you wake up two days later and say, ‘I can’t believe I slept so long,’ but just long enough to make sure you feel okay and then we’ll go. The nine o’clock show instead of the seven? You can wait that long, can’t you? While you rest, I’ll go online and order tickets in advance.” That was a lie. It galls me to pay an extra $1.75 handling fee on ticket prices that are already offensive. We’d buy them at the theater at the regular offensive price, instead of the really offensive price. “A power nap,” I said. “You’ll take a power nap.”

Russell agreed to my plan as soon as I said the word
power
. I followed him into my bedroom. He removed his loafers, lining them neatly at the foot of my bed, unbuttoned his shirt, and draped it on the back of the upholstered chair. He took off his watch and set it on the nightstand next to the clock radio, a copy of
The House of Mirth,
and the paper-napkin rose that Cameron had made. “Are you sure we don’t have to set the alarm?” Russell asked.

“I’m your human alarm. Do you need your sleep mask?”

“Not for a power nap,” he said.

I pulled back the covers and he climbed in, sneezing twice before drifting off. I curled up on my chair and
watched him sleep. Some men look sweet and innocent when they rest; sleeping brings out a tender boyishness in them. I once dated a man for months longer than I should have because I confused his sleep face with his awake personality. But Russell’s jaw hangs loose, his face goes slack, and his tongue hangs out; it’s not what you’d call his most attractive time of day. He wheezed, grunted, and rolled over.
You have many fine qualities, Dr. Russell Edley,
I thought.
You really do. And you deserve to be loved for them, not just appreciated; adored, not just accepted.
In the back of my closet a pair of brown leather boots had been taking up residence for years. They were never quite right. Not from day one. While shopping, I tried them half a size larger, half a size smaller; something about the cut was off. But they’re lovely to look at with many attributes—water-resistant, midheel, rubber-soled bottoms—so I ignored the way they pinched and bought them anyway, hoping that one day I’d slip them on and discover they magically fit.

I woke Russell at 8:15, asked if he felt well enough for the movie. He insisted he was fine. He coughed. Then sneezed. He picked up the paper flower on my nightstand and used it to blow his nose.

*  *  *

The movie theater was at Eighty-Sixth and Third, an easy walk if you don’t count the time navigating sidewalk vendors, garbage cans, bus-stop lines, newsstands, baby strollers, dogs, chaos, tree guards, and pedestrians. Russell was upset
with me because I forgot to buy the tickets. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” I said. “The reviews were terrible. There’ll be plenty of seats.”

As we came around the corner, we could see a line formed outside the theater.

Russell walked up to a woman wearing one of those wide headbands like Hillary Clinton wore in the nineties. “Is this the line for buying tickets or the line for people who already have tickets?” he asked.