Flight (20 page)

“He was malcontent,” she says. “And he dragged my mother along with him.”

Kit gazes out at the miserable homesteads, the rain-battered corn drooping in saggy rows. “I guess it looks better from above,” he says.

The country club is on the outskirts of Kalamazoo. As they near it, the fields drop away, and the landscape begins to look more suburban. There are neighborhoods with curving streets and boxy new homes on large lots.

“All of this used to be farmland,” Leanne tells Kit, “but farmers have been selling their land in small parcels. It’s worth more as residential real estate than it is as agricultural land.”

Kit nods. “Tough luck on your dad,” he says. “I guess you really can’t go home again.”

Surprised, Leanne nods. She’d never thought about it that way.

A long driveway through a sloping lawn heralds the entrance to the club. The building itself is old, probably built in the sixties, in the faux-colonial style that was current then. Behind it there’s a small lake. The golf courses are to the left. They pass a small bank of tennis courts and park as near the door as they can.

They are given a cheerful midwestern welcome. The events coordinator introduces herself as Lori, an energetic blonde a bit younger than Leanne. They follow her around, nodding in acquiescence to all of her plans: the tables laid out in a circular pattern, the bridal table here, the cake table in the corner. Her energy is so enormous, her manner so confident, that to suggest any changes—a little less frippery for the cake, a smaller bridal table—would be trying to derail a speeding locomotive.

They go outside to see her layout for the ceremony itself, Lori grabbing one of the club’s golf umbrellas from behind the main desk.

“Here,” she says, “one of these is plenty big for newlyweds-to-be!”

Kit holds the umbrella. Leanne takes his arm awkwardly. It’s like they’re becoming the bride and groom on top of the cake. It makes her feel all the more uncomfortable for the false pretenses under which she’s here.

Lori shows them the strings in the grass where she has measured out the space for the chairs. “Now, don’t you worry about that,” she says. “They’re all safe and dry in the basement, and our boys will set them up just before the ceremony so they don’t get wet. Not that it’s going to rain! I’m sure you’re going to have a
perfect
day!”

She leads them to the trellis arch where the minister will perform the ceremony.

“We’re ready for anything here,” she says cheerily. “Big Catholic weddings, little private ceremonies with a justice of the peace. Yours is easy. Our last couple was Latvian. Russian Orthodox! Boy, did they have a complicated ceremony! But we had everything they needed. We even have a chuppah for Jewish weddings!” She beams at them, pleased to have such a tangible expression of the club’s open-mindedness.

How about an imam?
Leanne wants to say.
We’re Muslim, you know.
It would amuse Kit. In fact, she realizes, it’s something he would say, not she. She glances at him sidelong. He’s looking at Lori in a genial way, absent all his usual archness.

The grass is sodden, and Leanne’s feet sink into it as they walk back toward the building. Its squishiness mirrors how she feels.
What are we doing?
she thinks. Kit is clearly playing the good bride-groom to make Leanne feel better, but it’s only making her feel worse, as if the dry, witty man she loves has had his brain rewired by earnest midwesterners. Maybe he doesn’t even want to go to Mexico anymore. Maybe he just wants to go back to Cold Spring and be a video editor. She glances at him again. No, this is Kit, the real Kit. He really does want to be married.

But that’s only because he doesn’t know her. He thinks she’s good wife material, a sweet, crafty girl who has had the ambition
and energy to go out and start her own business, when she’s a self-destructive, lazy girl whose mother bailed her out and set her up in a store to keep her from being a total loss. He thinks she’s going to walk cheerily down the aisle and become a nice wife who will run her little store and keep him company while he zips around making prizewinning documentary features. And why shouldn’t he expect that? He has been completely clear from day one about his hopes and dreams. He’s like everyone else in her family.

How can I be sure I want to do this?
she wants to scream at Kit as he climbs the wooden stairs to the country club’s porch, looking solid and confident and calm.
How can I be sure of anything?

“Now,” Lori says, relieving them of their umbrella when they get inside, “the caterers are here with some samples, and boy, I can tell you one thing! You’re in for a treat!”

Wheel disk, post-hole digger, sickle mower. A neat row, like birds on a telephone wire. The three pieces of equipment have been sitting in front of the barn for the last three months. Carol has asked Will to put them in the barn several times, and every time he has said okay, then promptly forgotten. He knows this drives Carol crazy, but he doesn’t do it, as she seems to think, on purpose. He just forgets, because in the end, it’s not clear to him why moving them should be so important.

But that’s not entirely true, he tells himself as he heads out the back door toward the barn, pulling up his sweatshirt hood against the light rain. He understands all too well. Carol doesn’t want anyone looking out back and being reminded that this is a farm.

He stops and contemplates the three hunks of metal, figuring out where to start. They are unsightly, he has to give her that. The post-hole digger looks like an oversize corkscrew, and the wheel disk squats on the grass like a discarded set of false teeth. The sickle mower is downright frightening, with its sawlike blade sticking up in the air as if waiting to drop down on some toddler’s unsuspecting head. Carol is right, they should all be in the barn. It’s better for
them, anyway. The wheel disk is going to start rusting if it sits out in the rain much longer.

He starts with the post-hole digger, because it’s the smallest piece. He gets himself under the tall end and drags it toward the barn.

“Damn it,” he says as he gets to the barn and realizes he hasn’t opened the door. He sets the digger down and gets his foot in between the doors, shoving the right door aside. It roars on its track. His father’s barn door made the same sound. It’s almost a surprise to see the interior of his own, larger barn instead of the small one he grew up with. He looks inside, letting his eyes adjust to the light. He should probably move some things around, make enough room for the three pieces of equipment. They’re awkward and oddly shaped. He shoves the flatbed wagon backward a few feet, then moves some large spelts barrels to the side.

He goes back out and gets under the post-hole digger again, giving it a friendly pat as he does. He’s always appreciated equipment. His father taught him how to fix a tractor when he was barely seven. Will liked knowing how one part led to another part, how the fuel worked its way through and caused the small explosions that moved the machine forward. It made his first Air Force job in the motor pool easy. He felt even stronger about airplanes. Up until the 767, he got excited every time the airline ordered new planes. Just three years before ceasing to exist, TWA put in its largest aircraft order ever, 717s and Airbuses. It was an optimistic moment. They had finally gotten rid of Carl Icahn, who had been milking TWA dry to line his own wallet. The airline was employee-owned, and a pilot had been named CEO. Customer service and on-time performance had improved, because the employees were giving it their all. Will thought then they were finally going to make it work. Shows how much he ever knew.

“Hah,” he says, shoving the post-hole digger into the spot he’s made for it.

He goes back outside and starts at the sight of Margaret, standing in the rain, her hands in her pockets and her shoulders shrugged up close to her ears.

“I thought I’d give you a hand,” she says.

“Well, okay.” He wonders if Carol sent her out.
Go make sure your father gets those things inside.

“Let’s get this disk in the barn. I can pull it around by the hitch and get it through if you can open the door a little wider.” He expects her to object, to insist on helping drag the thing, but she only nods and goes to the door. There’s something stiff and anxious about her bearing. Maybe it’s just the rain.

Luckily, the disk rolls easily when Will pulls it. He goes in a large circle to get it lined up straight on with the door, then ducks his head and pulls it quickly inside.

“Look out!” Margaret grabs on to the frame from behind to help slow it down and keep it from crashing into the flatbed wagon. It pulls her a short distance, the soles of her shoes scuffing as they slide across the cement floor. She laughs, looking for that instant like a child again. Will’s heart lightens. He brushes raindrops off his sleeve.

“I’m getting wet,” he says. “I’ve got a jacket in the tack room. I’m going to go put that on.”

The tack room hasn’t been used for tack since Leanne sold her horse and moved to New York. Will used to love the way it smelled, the saddles all soaped and shiny on their sawhorses, bridles and leads hanging on the walls. It was like the girls’ clubhouse in those years when their world centered on horses; they hung ribbons from horse shows and pictures torn out of horse magazines on the white walls.

Now there are only a few leads left, hanging forlornly on the wall. The saddles and bridles have all been sold. At some point Margaret pulled down all the ribbons and stored them away somewhere, but the magazine pictures are still there, brittle and yellow with age. Will has been using the room to store random items. He wrestles his sweatshirt off, tosses it over one of the sawhorses. He takes his work coat from one of the pegs and shrugs into it.

Margaret is outside surveying the sickle mower when he comes back. “This thing looks lethal,” she says. “But I think if you pull on
that side and I guide it around, there’s a small chance we can avoid decapitating ourselves.” Will nods and leans over to grab his side of the frame. Slowly, they rotate the mower without moving the blade.

“So what do you think of Kit?” Margaret says as they begin shoving the mower toward the barn door. Will is surprised. Is she just making small talk, or does she really care what he thinks? Maybe she’s trying to open a conversation about something else, something that relates to her.

“I don’t know,” he says, grasping for the right answer. What does he think of Kit? The kid seems sure of himself, but that’s just youth. If there’s anything about Kit that bothers Will, it’s that he seems to watch and listen more than other men his age. It strikes Will as somehow cautious, and that makes him suspicious. Then again, it could be a good quality, couldn’t it?

“I don’t know,” he says again. “Seems nice enough, I guess.” It’s what his own father would have said, he realizes upon hearing it. Margaret glances up at him, and he wonders if she heard that echo, too. She stands up and brushes her hands together. The mower is lined up with its buddies.

“Okay, then,” she says. “It’s all inside now. That should give Mom about ten minutes of satisfaction.” She smiles at him and he grins back, accepting the brief moment of complicity. Then it’s over, and she puts her hands on her hips. “I’d forgotten about this barn,” she says, surveying the place like a real estate agent. “It’s funny to think how much time Leanne and I spent out here. Those long summer days. Where’d all that time go?”

“It comes back to you,” Will says. “As you get older. You start getting it all back.”

Margaret’s gaze comes back to him, and she stands there taking him in. Her eyes narrow with thought. After a moment, her face softens, as if she remembers she’s seeing her father, someone she need not figure out.

“You think so?” she says, and a light smile touches the corners of her mouth. “Well, I need to get into the shower, or I’ll never be ready to help with the cooking. See you inside!” She lifts a hand
toward her face, a funny half salute, then turns and heads back outside, but pauses at the open doors. “Don’t forget your sweatshirt,” she says.

Will stands alone in the barn, next to his mower. The only illumination comes from the open doors; the day’s gray light is too weak to penetrate the dusty haymow windows a level above. He feels oddly abandoned. Here he stands at the center of his domain, yet no longer at the center of anything. He’s a king, Lear in a brown Carhartt coat.
Who loves me best?
He opens a hand and examines it.
Here I am, a living, breathing creature. Taking up space in the present.

The barn smells dank and metallic, more like oil than animals. Will closes his eyes and summons his father’s barn, the way it smelled when, as a boy, he slid the door open on a summer day. There was first the cool, muddy smell of the concrete floor, then the sweet pungency of the hay, and then the musky, manure-like smell of two pigs and two cows. Behind that was the sweeter, sweaty smell of their solid old horse and the acrid smell of chickens in the attached coop. He can smell all of it, right here, standing in his own barn, a barn that hasn’t seen an animal in fifteen years, except for mice and swallows. Those old smells are as real to him as anything he can smell today. And what, he asks himself, does that say about the present, about its bossy assertion that it, and only it, can be here now?

Margaret is in the shower when the phone rings. She’s already exhausted. After her mother had her bring a ton of things up from the basement, she asked Margaret to go out and take the padding off all the deck furniture and hang it in the garage in hopes that it might dry out. With Kit and Leanne off at the country club, Carol had become obsessed with the yard.

“Mom, it’s going to be dark,” Margaret said. “No one will be able to see it.”

“They will at the beginning,” Carol said. “They’ll all be wandering
around looking out the back windows at the beginning, and it will still be light outside. I know. You act like I’ve never had cocktail parties here before.”

Margaret sighed and went out to weed the flower beds, as her mother wanted, but that didn’t take long, because there were hardly any weeds. When she walked around the house to check the backyard beds, she saw her father lugging the old, unsightly pieces of farm equipment into the barn. Something squeezed her heart at the sight of him, hunched over in the rain like an old man. She went to help. By the time she came back into the house, it was time to eat lunch. Will was fed a sandwich and sent to Kalamazoo to pick up his tuxedo and more groceries. Margaret collected Trevor from the playroom, and the two of them sat down with Carol for some canned tomato soup.