Something New (33 page)

I haven’t heard from Jonah today, which is fine with me. For the first time in my marriage, I realize that I have absolutely
nothing to say to him, with neither love nor anger. I feel as though our marriage is an ocean, and for a long time now, we have both been sitting in separate life rafts, floating aimlessly along on the whim of the tide. Up until now, the currents have been moving in the same direction, but a huge swell has surged between us and is pushing us apart. I don’t know whether this comparison was influenced by my aquatic hijinks yesterday, but it seems right on the mark.

I was never one of those women who suffered from the delusion that marriage is forever and that love lasts a lifetime. I come from divorced parents, after all. But I did believe that making it all the way to old age with one person, persevering through troubled times and surviving the unavoidable ups and downs of married life, would give a person a mighty sense of accomplishment, akin to climbing Mount Everest. But my opinion of marriage has changed along with my views on mountain climbing. Both are too damn much work. Just the thought of attempting to have a conversation with Jonah exhausts me.

I take my beer into the living room and park myself on the couch, grabbing the new edition of the
Ladies Living-Well Journal
. I ended up reading Jill’s March issue cover to cover, and although the contest isn’t over yet, I figure I should familiarize myself with the content. Just on the very way off-chance that I win. Not that I honestly believe that is a possibility, and not, believe me, that I care a great deal about it. But should the impossible become the actual, I want to be prepared.

The April issue has an interview with Sandra Bullock and I skip ahead to that page. I like her, I really do, but when I look at the picture of her next to the article, I think,
Sandy, what have you done to yourself?

I am squinting down at her image, trying to find a single
wrinkle on her forty-eight-year-old face, when I hear the slam of a car door out front. My first thought is that Jonah has already had too much quality time with his parents and the kids and has come home early. But I quickly dismiss the thought, knowing full well, from my daughter’s loquacious ramblings this morning, that Jonah is finally making good on a promise he made to the kids three years ago. He is taking them to see Meteor Crater.

Thinking the car outside must belong to a neighbor’s friend or a meter reader, I return my attention to the magazine, only to be interrupted by the doorbell.

Frowning, I get up and head for the door, casting a quick glance out the front window to see a plain black sedan sitting at the curb in front of my house. I don’t recognize the car, but when I open the door, I recognize my guest, and I have to swallow the lump that immediately rises to my throat.

Ben Campbell stands on my front porch, dressed in slacks, a sport coat, and a conservative blue-and-gold tie.

“Hi,” he says, looking as awkward as I feel. When I say that I am not dressed for visitors, I mean that I suddenly wish an earthquake would hit Garden Hills and tear a gaping crevasse right through the baseboards of my foyer that would swallow me up, tattered painter pants,
Flashdance
-style collarless T-shirt, and all.

“I tried to call your cell,” he explains, “but you didn’t answer. I thought I’d just come by.”

Suddenly I am thankful that our house is situated at the end of the block. There is no one on our right and no one across the street, just my neighbor to our left, Vivienne Dulac, an eighty-seven-year-old woman from France who doesn’t hear very well and pretends not to speak English even though she has lived in the States for forty-two years. Even if, perchance, she caught sight of a strange man entering my house,
Jonah would never be the wiser because he doesn’t speak French.

“Come in,” I say, drawing the door open, but he shakes his head.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d come with me. I have kind of a surprise for you.” When I don’t respond, his expression falls. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad time. I shouldn’t have just dropped in on you. How rude. Sorry.” He starts to turn away, but before he can reach the steps, I reach out and grasp his sleeve.

“Just give me a minute to change, okay?”

The
inside of the sedan is as unremarkable as the outside, if you don’t count the shotgun mount between the seats, the squawking CB radio, and the mesh grate that separates the front from the back.

“Nice car,” I say with a grin, and Ben winks at me.

“Courtesy of the GHPD.” He has relaxed completely since I accepted his invitation, even went so far as to loosen his tie and remove his jacket. I, too, feel relaxed. Although Ben’s side of the conversation on the phone last night was cryptic, he did manage to give me clarity on one subject. He thinks of us as friends. Just friends.

Suddenly, Billy Crystal’s voice pipes up in my head.
Men and women cannot be friends because the sex always gets in the way.

I mentally tell Billy to fuck off.

“So where are we going?” I ask, trying to change the course of my thoughts.

“You don’t like surprises?”

“No, I do,” I assure him. “As long as they don’t require me to wear a wet suit.”

“Ah, but you had fun!”

“Yes,” I agree. “But I’m still trying to warm up.”

“I promise, no ocean adventures today.”

As he aims the car toward downtown Garden Hills, I gaze out the window, taking in the shops and restaurants and local landmarks as we pass them. I am struck by the odd realization that I am very rarely a passenger in a moving vehicle, and that when I am, it is usually at night, on a date with my husband. It’s fun to see the streets of my hometown in broad daylight, and I notice things for the first time, like the way the light posts in the civic section are made to look like gas lamps, or how the top scoop on the sign for the Garden Hills Ice Cream Parlor magically falls off, then reappears seconds later, or that the roof tiles on Casa Mexicana have letters painted on them that spell out
comida buenisima
over and over again. These things are all new to me, and I smile to myself as I drink them in.

When we reach Police Plaza, Ben turns into the parking lot and weaves past several buildings before coming to a stop in a slot designated for civil servants. He opens the door and gets out, and I follow suit, giving him a questioning look over the top of the sedan.

“You’re going to give me a guided tour of the jail?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.

He laughs. “No. But I’ll let you try out my handcuffs if you’d like.”

Gulp.
Just friends. Sure. Yup. Friends say things like that to each other all the time.
Billy Crystal snickers at me in my head.

Ben comes around the back of the car and holds out his hand to me. Without thinking, I grasp it, and he yanks me in to him as though we are doing a tango on
Dancing with the Stars.
A surprised laugh escapes me as he clutches me to him. For a microsecond that seems to last a year, he stares intently
into my eyes, and I allow myself to stare back. Then he twirls me out to arm’s length and lets go of my hand.

“This way,” he says, gesturing toward the redbrick structure in front of us. Instead of heading for the double doors, he gives the entrance a wide berth and heads around the side of the building, and I trot to keep up with his long strides. When we reach the back courtyard, I freeze in my tracks and suck in a quick breath at the sight before me.

A helicopter sits smack-dab in the middle of the helipad adjacent to the courtyard. I feel my jaw drop and my eyes go wide, and I know that I must look like a gaping idiot, but I can’t seem to pull my teeth and lips together. Any moment, drool will start to leak out of the corners of my mouth. I glance over at Ben, who is sporting a Cheshire grin. He takes hold of my elbow and ushers me toward the forest green flying machine, talking as we go.

“We share this with two other police departments,” he says. “The pilot’s a buddy of mine from up north, moved down here a few years ago.” As if on cue, a tall, trim man in his late thirties, with close-cropped hair just going silver at the sides, steps out of the helicopter and walks purposely toward us. He grasps Ben’s hand and gives it a hearty shake, then smiles at me and puts out his hand.

“This is Sergeant Fred Walker,” Ben says. “He’ll be our pilot today. Fred, this is Ellen Ivers.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say as I withdraw my hand from his Wolverine-like grip and flex my fingers open and closed just to make sure they still work.

“She’s all fueled up and ready to go,” the pilot says with a nod to the helicopter. “Just climb on board and fasten your safety belts. I’ll be right there.”

He walks over to a small booth where another officer sits.
The officer hands the sergeant a clipboard and a pen, and Walker starts checking things off.

I look at Ben, feeling something close to awe. “You arranged all this?” I pause, then clear my throat. “For me?”

He smiles. “I figured I owed you.”

I am so overwhelmed I don’t know what to say. No one—not my husband, not my parents, nor any of my friends—has ever executed a surprise as magnificent as this. I am beyond touched. I am undone. This is like a fairy tale or fantasy or a really good romantic comedy. And though I am well aware that there will be no happily-ever-after in this story, at this moment, I don’t care a damn. I am going to take this ride, both literally and metaphorically, and if I crash and burn, so be it.

“Thank you,” I say quietly, and the intensity of my gaze causes Ben to look suddenly serious. He glances past me, I assume to make sure the two officers are not looking in our direction, then slowly bends down and kisses me tenderly on the lips.

I am thirteen, and Sean Goldman is awkwardly grasping my shoulders and pulling me toward him as my knees turn to spaghetti. I am seventeen, and Kyle Krauss is revealing his newfound talent for French kissing behind the gym during fourth period. I am twenty-three, and David Carlson is clutching my hair with his fingers as he presses his lips against mine, leaving me breathless and inspiring in me a yearning that persists long after he breaks my heart. I am twenty-eight, and Jonah is hungrily crushing his mouth over mine, demanding my tongue, sending heat all the way to my groin.

It lasts only for an instant, but Ben’s kiss will now be archived among my greatest hits.

“You’re welcome,” he says, his face an inch from mine. He
lingers a second or two, then straightens up, takes my hand, and leads me to my seat.

My seat in a fucking helicopter.

There
are four seats in the chopper, two in the cockpit and two behind. Ben and I sit in the second row and strap ourselves in with safety belts so cumbersome and complicated that it takes me a few minutes to get mine in place. Sergeant Walker leans in, eyeing my belt to make sure I am tightly restrained, then climbs in and takes his seat in front of the console, donning a large white headset. He punches some buttons, and immediately the helicopter comes to life. A low hum sounds, slowly gaining volume and coupled with a deep vibration that shudders through the aircraft.

My heart beats crazily in my chest, and I feel like I am a child about to take her first ride at Disneyland. Ben looks over at me, and his grin falters.

“You okay?” he asks, and I realize I must look scared shitless instead of what I really am, which is so excited I might not need an aircraft to take off.

I shake my head. “I’m
not
okay. I am fantastic!”

He smiles, relieved. “This is a Eurocopter EC 120 Colibri,” he explains. “The wide cabin design makes it perfect for law enforcement, and the tail rotor makes it fairly quiet in comparison to other types of choppers.”

As the rotor blade starts to churn, I realize that
fairly quiet
is a subjective phrase. A high-pitched, rhythmic whine fills the cabin as the blade picks up speed. I watch Sergeant Walker flick a few switches and depress several buttons before reaching for the joystick. The helicopter lurches slightly, and then I feel the kick as we ascend, a few feet only, then higher and higher until we are hovering about thirty feet over
the helipad. Sergeant Walker is speaking into his mike, his words unintelligible from where I sit. He glances back at Ben and me and nods, and five seconds later we are airborne, hurling toward the Pacific Ocean.

I feel like I am going to burst through my own skin. Never before have I experienced such sheer exhilaration, all of my senses on hyperdrive. We sail over the long stretch of beach, right along the shore, and from our perspective the deep blue-green water sparkles with a million sun-made diamonds. From the height of an airplane, the ground seems disconnected, and when I fly, I always feel detached from life below. But from the far closer vantage point of a helicopter, I feel completely connected to, almost reverential toward, the vista below me.

Conversation is made difficult by the buzz of the blade and the wind whipping through the open window, but I wouldn’t want to speak anyway. I just stare, wide-eyed, as we move inland along the nature preserve, wind up over the cobbled streets of downtown, past the huge expanse of Garden Hills Buffalo Park, where half a dozen dancers in colorful garb are giving some kind of performance on the grassy knoll. We zoom over the soccer field, empty today save for a few kids breezily kicking around a ball, then up we go, the helicopter picking up speed along with my racing heart, and head for the reservoir. Along the concrete planes of the faux river, Sergeant Walker seems to put his pedal to the metal (yes, I know there is no gas pedal) and we whoosh back toward the ocean.

I have been so focused on the sights below me that I have almost forgotten that Ben is seated beside me. When I feel his fingers intertwine with mine, I snap my head around and flash him a smile of sheer joy. He smiles back and rests our interlocked hands on my thigh. I don’t pull away, have no
desire to. I expect a voice in my head to whisper a warning, or an angel to appear on my shoulder and tell me to be good. But perhaps both the voice and the angel are on vaycay. Perhaps they realize that I am too content at this moment to pay them any heed. Perhaps they are well aware of the fact that I would tell them both to get lost. For the rest of the ride, down the river, south along the coast and back to Police Plaza, our hands remain there, and only when the feet of the chopper hit concrete does Ben finally release me.