34 Seconds (13 page)

Chris waved and pulled the car door shut. “That was nice,” he said. I couldn’t read his tone.

“Yeah, I guess it was. It was weird in some ways. You know, he sounded so frantic on the phone. Like he had to see us. Like he’d never see us again or something. It was weird. I was almost expecting news of some sort when we got there, but I guess they just wanted to hang out.” I paused thinking to myself. “Or maybe he really wanted me to get to know Rebecca a bit.”

“If you ever tell me you want to move to Deltaville, please never try to sell me on this road,” Chris said taking the third of many mountain high speed bumps.

I just laughed. I didn’t think I’d ever want to live here again. Odd. For years, I saw myself on that very road, in that very house, with that man back there. Things sure did change over the years.

Chapter Seven

Leaving Virginia was hard, as it usually was. It seemed to take hours to get our things together and out the door to head back to the airport. With the rental car to return, car seats and luggage to check, and kids in tow, we tried to give ourselves extra time and left really early. Saying goodbye to Dad and Nana was very difficult and sad. I knew the next time I saw them they would be older, as would I of course, but with children to keep me young, or on my toes at least. But we gave lots of hugs, promises for long talks over the phone and visits to come more than once a year, and drove away with me in tears and the girls wondering why Mommy was crying. Once we got to the airport and managed our way through security without soft blankie and Goon Goon in our daughters’ hands, we learned our first flight was delayed. One thing Chris was really good at was fixing problems. He left us at Applebee’s while he went to rebook our tickets going through Dulles instead of Chicago. As a mother, I knew my girls would be disappointed to miss all the lights the tunnels in O’Hare had to offer, but I also knew a short trip to Dulles might possibly mean a long nap on the plane to Denver. Or four hours of whining, other passengers looking at us like we are either the worst parents in the world because our children spoke, or like we are the purple people eaters just waiting for a moment to devour them and their suits and laptops the second they turn away from us.

“Mommy,” started Emily. “Can I make the airpane fly?”

“Airplane, honey, and sure, I’ll show you the button to push to make the plane fly and when it’s time to push it. No, Bella, no sugar, please. No, Sweetie, please don’t open the sugar.” I said while taking three sugar packets from Bella’s little hands. She made it clear she wasn’t happy without them. As her mother, I struggled for a moment with allowing her to have the three things in her life that would bring her joy and giving into her wants simply because we were in public, and she wanted everyone around us to know just how unhappy she was without sugar packets. I went for option number three: to lecture. It’s the one thing I knew I shouldn’t do, but did anyway. And once I started with my children, I couldn’t stop. But as often as it didn’t work, it also shut them up, even if only because they couldn’t get a word in.

We sat there for about fifteen minutes discussing why Bella couldn’t eat straight from the sugar packets, and I learned all sense of logical reasoning was long gone. This was going to be a long travel day for all of us, no matter which airport held our connection. My mind crawled in circles; Will getting married, Nana aging just as much as the area, and Dad’s house covered in a thin layer of green moss and years of cigarette smoke on the walls, leaving home again and questioning the strength of Chris and me and how well we fit together those days, I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy even the most pleasant trip home.

Bella had two sugar packets open and she and Emily were dipping their fingers in the sugar, eating, and then painting it on the table. So much for listening to Mommy. Chris walked up just as I was about to wipe all the sugar from the table and gave me our new flight information.

“The plane leaves in forty minutes, so we’ll have time to grab a quick snack, but they’ll be boarding in about ten minutes,” Chris told me.

“I don’t need to eat, but we should skip Applebee’s and grab some fruit and plane snacks somewhere for the girls.”

We decided I would do a bathroom trip with the girls, change Bella’s diaper, and try to get Emily to understand she needed to try to go. We needed to get through those moments when we couldn’t get up and rush to the potty on the airplane. Chris grabbed snacks and drinks to get us to Dulles.

We met at the gate just as they were boarding the second zone. Chris took the stroller from me, took Emily’s hand, and jumped in front of the bunch of people. I’d always been undecided about the early boarding, which we missed, for parents. If we got on the plane early, the kids had much longer to sit still, which was next to impossible, but if we got on later, we tended to lose space for all the stuff we parents thought we just might need on an airplane, and we also had to walk down the aisle of shame. Everyone watching with looks that say, “Oh, great, kids on the plane, fan-fucking-tastic. This won’t be a fun ride, and it’s entirely your fault!” I once told a man next to me in First Class when Emily was three months old that it was three hours of his life, and he could suck it up or move to the back of the plane. I was certain he was just angry because he thought my infant didn’t deserve to ride in first class. On the flight I learned to keep her close to my breast and each time she cried, I’d nurse her to sleep. I spent those entire three hours with my boob hanging halfway out, but also with my child sleeping. At the end of the flight the man next to me gave my daughter quite the compliment, something about being such a great baby and handling the flight so well. I was sure he enjoyed the view, because he certainly got a glimpse of my boob at one point or another. Now when I was on a plane with my girls, I had to tell myself it was only three hours of my life, and there would be thousands of hours that would be tougher for me as a mother.

Chris dropped off the stroller and grabbed his carryon bag, leaving me with my backpack, the girls’ shoulder bags stuffed with their lovies, books, crayons, the iPad, and the girls and found our seats for us. We weren’t all together, but we at least had two seats together in the same row, opposite sides of the aisle. This meant two things to me; one adult per child, and one child with the iPad. The good and the bad of travel; there was always give and take with children.

The flight to Dulles was pleasantly uneventful and after barely making our connection, we settled onto the larger plane where all four of us sat together in one row, Chris and I on either side of the girls, with our books, crayons, iPad, Goon-Goon, and soft blankie all in between us. We were ready for the four hours to Denver.

The first thirty minutes of the flight were filled with passing out snacks, picking up dropped crayons from the floor, teaching how to share headphones so they could listen and watch the videos they wanted to see, and keeping them happy and somewhat quiet. There was one child a few rows behind us who kept screaming, and I could tell the mother was at the end of her rope before the plane even left the ground. I was ready to toss her a few books but imagined she was just as prepared as we were, but wasn’t having the bit of luck we were having with our girls. After about forty five minutes, Emily settled down with her head on the arm rest and Goon-Goon in her hands and fell asleep. Within a few more minutes, Bella followed her sister to dreamland. Chris and I glanced at one another with unspoken accolades as if we had accomplished something Nobel Peace Prize worthy, and I watched Chris tip his head back and close his eyes. He would and could sleep anywhere without worry or the time needed for the sandman to sprinkle magic sleeping dust or sheep to count. I put my head down close to Bella’s and snuggled close to my babies. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping on this flight, mainly because the irrational mother inside me wouldn’t allow me to drift off with my children left unwatched. I wasn’t sure what could happen to them or who could steal them with all of us thirty five thousand feet in the air and with Chris and me on both sides of them, but I was unrelenting when it came to my children. One day I would sleep, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon, I was sure.

I did manage to close my eyes and, though I was sure I wasn’t sleeping, I found myself in a dreamlike state with visions of Deltaville while growing up. The water, the beaches, and the big rocks I would climb up. From the sandy beach to the dirt surface where The Old Red Barn used to sit. When I opened my eyes and looked at my watch, twenty minutes had passed. Maybe I had been sleeping, but I wouldn’t let it happen again. I did close my eyes again and allow myself to think of all those images my subconscious brought up. Growing up in such a small town was tough. As a kid, there wasn’t much to do, but we managed to do it all. We’d fish, drop crab pots, climb trees, dance on the beach, build bon fires, and play from sun up to sun down without our parents ever knowing where we were. When the sun went down my dad would whistle, and no matter where we were in town, we’d come running home. I felt my eyes well up with tears. Not only could I not go back to being a child, but the day was coming when I wouldn’t even be able to hear my dad’s whistle, and my own children wouldn’t know the freedom of growing up in a small town. We have a great life in Boulder, but in such a large city, even with its beautiful neighborhoods, great family life, and endless things to do, I felt so vulnerable when it came to my children. They wouldn’t grow up playing around town all day by themselves. They would grow up doing family things with Chris and me. As I sat there, I realized it was not the life my children would have that made me sad, it was the life I no longer had. I’d moved a lot, started over a lot, but would never actually go back “home” to stay, and that was proving difficult to face. I knew when I was just over twenty years old and left an area where I would never return to live, to love, and to raise a family, but I was a mother, approaching my mid-thirties, and I was starting to realize what my decision truly meant so long ago. Each time I went back, it was only going to age more, just as I would age. With time passing, I would go back to my Nana gone, another family living in her home, my sister divorced from a man I knew as my brother, and, one day, even my own father and our childhood home would be gone and not accessible in my life. Once my father was gone, and my sister had her new life, with a man I wouldn’t know, or once her children were grown and living their lives, my connection to my hometown would be gone. A tear left my eye and fell on Bella’s head. My whole life I had put various pains and heartbreaks, heartaches, questions, and problems in neat little boxes and stored them away like old China you know you’ll never need again. I felt my attic getting full. I had to learn to process some of this clutter in my head. I had to wish Will and his new bride a happy life filled with love, joy, and laughter. I had to enjoy my family while I still had them in my life. I had to figure out what wasn’t right with Chris and fix it. Right then.

The flight attendant interrupted my thoughts when she offered snacks and beverages. I declined for all of us. My hope was everyone would stay asleep, and I could just stay there with my thoughts for the rest of the flight. Maybe I could start opening some of those boxes I’d stored in my mind’s attic and start tossing the old crap to make room for new hope.

The night Will and I broke up the first time, we were sitting in his old Camaro on the same beach where he just recently vowed to live the rest of his life with, well, with someone else. His father had just passed away and he was feeling numb. Numb because he never really knew his father, but he’d always had a picture of him around the age of two and his dad sitting under an old oak tree framed in his bedroom. He never talked about his father much, but that night, he told me everything he knew. The man was an alcoholic, verbally abusive, and never wanted children, but he fell in lust with Will’s mother. She got pregnant, and he tried to do the right thing. Whatever it was for them, it only lasted about two years, and he left Will and his mother, saying goodbye just before heading to work one morning. He never came home that evening and, after five days, he called Will’s mother to let her know he was alive but not coming back. Will always said she never healed. He didn’t remember his father, and he never remembered his mother when his father was around, but he knew she never got over him or the way he left. She would often talk to herself as if he was still there. Will recalled a time, while we talked on the beach, when he was about ten years old when his mother was in the kitchen screaming when he got home from school. He thought someone was there with her, but he walked in for his usual after school oatmeal cookie, and she was screaming and throwing dishes. He silently walked out of the house and went to a neighbor’s house. After about an hour, he called her to tell her he had just gone to a friend’s house after school. She yelled at him for not coming home and told him to get home right away. As he walked down Sleepy Hallow Lane, he could see her walking to her car. When she saw him, she told him to get in the car. That night they ate at McDonald’s, words left unspoken, and bought new dishes at Montgomery Wards. When they got home, she told him to do his homework and get to bed. They never spoke of that day, and he assumed she never knew he saw her breaking every dish in the house that afternoon.

***

“My dad never wanted children. And my mother knew it. Dad had this…” He sat for what seemed like hours in silence.

“He had this what, Will?” I asked.

“Nothing, never mind.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, ever the caregiver, assuming he needed and wanted to be touched. He pulled himself away and hugged his car door.

“I wrote a poem that day after Mom broke all the dishes. It was called Dying Red Moon. ‘In the light of day, I saw her red, I saw her sway, the strength you took away left her dead, left her, a dying red moon. In the dark of night, I heard her cry, misty sobs and sighs from her bed, you left her, a dying red moon.’”