The Art of Crash Landing

by Melissa DeCarlo

  I’m sure it all happened quickly, but when I think back on the moment, my memory is in slow motion. My mother brought the bat past her right shoulder and then, with a wide smile on her face, she swung a clean arc, catching Dewayne’s elbow with a resounding crack.

  He cried out, falling to his knees, his left arm hanging limp. Eyes wild and watering he shouted my mother’s name and came to his feet, taking a lurching step toward where we stood. For a second I thought he would keep coming for us, but after that one step he seemed to finally focus on the situation. He froze, staring at my mother. She stood in the center of the room in a loose batter’s stance, the bat raised and ready.

  “One more step and it’ll be your head,” she told him.

  Without a word he turned and left.

  My mother shut and locked the front door then turned around, laughing. “All-Star Softball team, 1977.”

  “You could have killed him,” I said.

  She nodded. “If I’d wanted to.” And with that she tucked the bat back under the couch and said, “Now stop crying and get ready for bed.”

  Until she said that I hadn’t even noticed I was crying. I wiped at my damp cheeks.

  “I didn’t even know you played softball.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she said.

  CHAPTER 19

  Back at the library, Tawny is sitting at the circulation desk, her head resting on her arms. As good as a nap sounds, it’s probably a bad idea for me seeing as how it’s my first day on the job. So since I’m not sure what my duties are for this afternoon, I look around for Fritter. I find her in Reference. She’s scanning the shelves, shaking her head.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  She points up at a gap in the Book of Knowledge series. “K through L is still missing.”

  “Maybe somebody checked them out.”

  “It. One volume, two letters.”

  “Maybe somebody checked it out.”

  “It’s reference, it doesn’t leave.”

  “Well, it has to be around here somewhere.”

  “Then where is it?” She stares at me as if she expects me to pull the missing book out of my ass.

  “I don’t know, but who would steal it? Nobody reads encyclopedias.”

  “They most certainly do.”

  “Name one person you’ve seen using these in the past year.”

  She frowns, but doesn’t answer.

  “And why K through L?” I ask. “They’re boring letters.”

  “Boring?”

  “Come on, they got both letters into one book, right? Name something interesting that starts with a K or an L.”

  She frowns a little harder.

  “See?” I ask.

  Fritter takes a deep breath, shakes her head and smiles, yielding, obviously, to my superior line of reasoning.

  “How was your lunch date?” she says.

  I hesitate before answering. From the emphasis she just put on the word date, I’m pretty sure that when I talked to her about lunch at the church this morning, she knew exactly what it really was.

  “Fine,” I reply, hoping she’ll get the hint and drop the subject.

  There’s a gotcha twinkle in her eyes, but she plays along. “Now that you’ve returned, I’d like you to clean all the tables, restock the pencils and papers, and place any unshelved books on the cart next to the circulation desk. And while you’re at it, please be on the lookout for poor K through L, even though it does cover an exceedingly dull portion of the alphabet.” She pauses to gesture overdramatically at the two-inch break in the row of books. “Its absence leaves such an unsightly gap in these useless resources . . .”

  Sarcasm is not as attractive in the elderly as it is in someone, say, my age, but rather than point that out, I promise to search for the missing book.

  She turns away but I stop her before she walks off. “Can I ask you something?”

  “I’m certain that you can,” she replies. “Are you asking if you may?”

  Wow, this woman is tiresome. “May I ask you something?”

  She nods.

  “You knew my mother, right?”

  “It’s a small town,” she tells me, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  “I’m staying at my grandmother’s house, and my mother’s room is totally full of her stuff. Her drawers and closet are full of clothes, her suitcases are still here, her bookshelf is full of books—”

  “If you’d like to donate the books to the library we would be happy to oblige. The hardbacks, anyway. We have to be selective with paperbacks—”

  “No. I mean, okay. But what I’m asking is—don’t you think it’s weird that my mom left everything here?”

  “Well, she went back to college—”

  “Without any of her clothes? Her luggage?”

  Fritter blinks a few times and then smiles. “Hmmm. There might have been some nice young man back east.”

  “But still, surely she’d pack up—”

  “People do impulsive things. I suspect you have some experience with that.”

  From her intonation and the look on her face, she’s trying to bait me for some reason, but I’m not taking it. “But my mom had a scholarship. It’s strange for her to just give that up, right?”

  “She must have had a good reason,” Fritter says, taking my hand in a dry bony grasp. “But I have absolutely no idea what it was.” Her voice is breathless, hurried. “Now if you’ll excuse me . . .” She gives my hand a squeeze, just hard enough to hurt a little, and then she hurries away.

  As I stand here, watching the old woman’s retreating back, I realize that I can think of one interesting word that starts with the letter “L.” Liar.

  I don’t like being lied to—who does? Yet at the same time, a tiny voice deep in my secret heart has started to sing. I think something did happen to my mother when she lived here—something bad. And I think Fritter knows what it was. Beneath every lie, a buried truth is hidden. It’s time to start digging.

  I make a show of obedience; I wipe down a few tables and make a perfunctory pass through the main room, collecting loose books and putting them on the cart. I even help an elderly man wearing green Sansabelt pants print out his receipt for the two cases of fiber-bars he’d just purchased online. I’m a disgruntled employee, not a total jerk.

  A few minutes before five, I wander back to the Reference section. I like the blocks of uniform colors and shapes, the size of the books, the way that when I’m back here, nobody can tell that I’ve taken off my shoes because my feet are killing me. On the bottom row, I notice a sequence of yearbooks. I pull out the Gandy High School 1977–78 volume.

  At a table I sit down and flip through the book. I find my mother in the senior section, near the end of three pages of young men and women with collars peeking out of identical black robes. Although the photo is black-and-white, I fill in the colors. The upper edge of the collar sticking out of my mom’s gown doesn’t look white, I’m betting it’s blue, her favorite color. She’s blond in the picture, of course, and has done her best to tame her wild hair; it’s center-parted and hanging in two wavy sections on either side of her face, but you can tell that it’s fighting her efforts. I would bet that within an hour after that photo was taken, her hair had lifted and re-formed into a bramble of curls. She’s looking at the camera, at me, with an openmouthed smile on her face, as if she’d just been laughing. As if we had just been laughing together.

  I find the athletics section and there’s the softball team with my mother in the front row. She’s got her arm thrown over the shoulder of the dark-haired girl standing beside her. I check the names under the photo. Karleen Harden is the girl’s name.

  I turn back to the portraits and find Karleen. She’s pretty, with a Mona Lisa smile and a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. I can tell from the upturned nose and the arched brows that this girl is the woman I watched serve meat loaf today. But I can’t imagine this girl calling anyone “hon.”

  Go
rdon Penny is in the book, too, with the sophomores. His rounded features are unchanged. I go through the book looking at everybody whose name starts with a J, but there is no one who resembles my surly neighbor, JJ. Of course it’s been over thirty years, and I’m not sure I’d recognize him if I saw him. I grab the 1976–77 book and flip through it as well.

  The library closes in just a few minutes, so I take the yearbooks up front and give them to Tawny.

  “Do I need to fill something out to get a library card?”

  Tawny passes back the books shaking her head. “These are reference.”

  “Shit. Do you suppose if I ask Fritter she’ll—”

  “No exceptions.”

  I sigh. I don’t even know why I wanted to take them home to look at them. It’s just . . .

  “For God’s sake,” Tawny interrupts my reverie, taking the yearbooks from my hands. She rubs them across a metal plate on the desk and then opens the backpack at her feet and slips them in.

  “I don’t think you should—”

  “I didn’t have you pegged as a Goody Two-Shoes,” she says.

  “That’s good, because I’m not.”

  “Getting your panties in a wad about lifting some lame books nobody has looked at in a hundred years?”

  “My panties are not—”

  “Spending your lunch hour, feeding the homeless . . .”

  “Hey, I had an ulterior motive for that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Have you seen Father Barnes?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Get your stuff, we need to go.”

  “We?”

  “Apparently, I’m now your chauffeur.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Yes I do. Fritter told me to do it, so I’m doing it. You want a ride or not?”

  “Okay, hang on.” I hurry to the back room and get my purse. When I call Luke to tell him I don’t need a ride home, he sounds a little disappointed, but that’s okay. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s better off not having to deal with me.

  Tawny and I walk out the back door to the parking lot, but there’s no sign that Fritter is leaving. I ask Tawny and she tells me that Fritter often stays late.

  “In the summer anyway,” she adds. “Probably not in the winter. She won’t drive in the dark.”

  “People get that way as they get older,” I say.

  Tawny raises an eyebrow, looking at me.

  “I’m not there yet,” I tell her.

  “Whatever. Anyway, she gets home in time for supper. Except for Wednesdays and Fridays when she goes to see her brother in the nursing home. She stays and eats with him, so those days I don’t have to make her dinner.”

  “You cook?”

  Tawny explains the conditions of her summer employment. She gets a steady job, free room and board, but she has to cook dinner five nights a week and clean the bathrooms.

  “Not bad,” I tell her.

  She shrugs. “Could be better.”

  I follow her out to a mostly primer-colored truck that I think was green in a previous life, except maybe the hood, which might have been black. It’s a piece of shit on the inside, too, trash on the floor, upholstery shredded. There are keys dangling from the ignition and a large book on the driver’s-side seat. Before Tawny settles her ass on the book, I’m pretty sure I see K–L printed on its spine.

  The truck’s transmission is a three on the tree, and the girl struggles to keep a foot on the clutch as she muscles the gearshift into reverse. Even perched on the book she’s almost too short to see over the steering wheel.

  “Are you okay driving this?”

  She slams it into gear and gives me a look I recognize. It’s a you’re-not-worth-the-trouble-it-would-take-to-say-fuck-off look. I think we’re bonding.

  “Never mind,” I say, trying to settle in. I have to shuffle my feet to find a spot for them in the pile of trash on the floor, and the bench seat is pulled so far forward that my knees bump the glove box. I fish around for a few minutes looking for a seat belt, before I realize there isn’t one.

  Tawny shifts the truck into first and we lurch over the curb and into the street. My knees ram into the glove box, and I take a moment to give Tawny some constructive criticism of her driving skills. When I’m finished she takes the opportunity to share her opinion of my critique. It’s surprising, really, how many four-letter words we know between the two of us.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” she adds. “I’m an excellent driver.”

  “Have you considered . . .” I put one hand on the dash and one on the door, bracing myself as we approach a pothole. “That I might not be wearing any panties?”

  She shoots me a dark look. “Gross.”

  CHAPTER 20

  When Tawny and I pull up outside the house, I’m pleased to note the absence of JJ’s truck next door. Maybe he’s out harassing someone else. Maybe he’s in his shop fixing my car for free. Maybe he’s finally run one stop sign too many and is in the hospital in traction. Hey, a girl can dream.

  “You got those funny dogs inside?” Tawny says.

  Surprised, I look over at her, but she doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Yeah. Want to come in and play with them?”

  Still looking away, she shrugs, saying, “Whatever.” She hesitates, probably weighing the ramifications of letting me see her be friendly, and then finally she turns off the truck, grabs her backpack, and hops out.

  “The keys . . .” I say.

  “Who’d steal it?”

  The dogs are thrilled to see her, ecstatic. Thing One hops up and puts his front paws on Tawny’s knees as she leans down to ruffle his ears. Thing Two spins in circles stopping every third turn to nudge the girl’s hands. They like me okay, but they love her. Of course they also love to lick their asses, so I’m not sure how much to read into this display of affection.

  “They love me,” she says.

  I reply, “Whatever.”

  I excuse myself and go upstairs to change out of my librarian costume. Barefoot, in a T-shirt and jeans, I return to the living room dressed as myself. Tawny is sprawled on the sofa with both dogs in her lap. She is holding a beer.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “In the fridge,” she tells me.

  I don’t remember seeing beer in the refrigerator, but I didn’t exactly look for it. I’m trying to visualize my grandmother—her closet filled with tweed—tossing back a longneck.

  I sit in the chair next to the sofa. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough,” she says, effectively telling me that she is not of legal drinking age. I decide not to respond—I’d like to keep the conversation away from the wadded or unwadded state of my underpants.

  The girl reaches in her bag, brings out the yearbooks and sets them on the coffee table. Then she pulls out a pack of Marlboros. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes.”

  With some eye rolling she returns the cigarettes to her backpack. It’s almost physically painful to watch her heavy-handed efforts to be cool.

  “So you’ve been here before.”

  “Why would you say that?” She’s petting a dog with each hand.

  “You knew the dogs—”

  “I knew of the dogs.”

  “You knew how to get to the house without any directions, you knew there was beer in the refrigerator . . .”

  We stare at each other for several seconds. I win.

  “I came once with Fritter when your grandmother was sick.”

  This brings up a question I’ve been wanting to ask someone. “I was wondering . . .” I try to keep my voice casual. “Did my grandmother die here? In this house?”

  Tawny grins. “Scared of ghosts?”

  “Just curious.”

  I lean over and pick up her beer. It’s cold all right, and it looks untouched. I wonder if Tawny only opened it to bolster the I-belong-in-juvie image she’s going for. I take a tentative sip. Fuck. It’s awful. I scoot a coaster over and set the s
weating bottle on the cork.

  Tawny puts her feet up on the coffee table. The smaller, stinkier dog takes the cue and walks out onto her legs and lies down, facing the table.

  “You’ve got the wrong end of that dog pointed at you,” I tell her.

  She reaches out to scratch him just above the tail. He squirms with delight and stretches his back legs further out.

  “About that room upstairs with the orange light . . .” Tawny says.

  “The darkroom.”

  “It’s for making pictures, right?”

  I nod. “My mom must have set it up when she lived here. She was a photographer.”

  Tawny gives the dog’s rump another scratch. “What does she do now?”

  “Nothing. She’s dead.”

  Tawny picks up the beer. I watch her face as she tips it back and takes a swallow. She grimaces.

  “So we have something in common,” the girl says, setting the beer on the wood, not on the coaster. Her look dares me to move it back to the coaster, but I just smile and lean back in my chair. What the hell do I care?

  “Your mom died, too?” I ask.

  “No. But she does nothing. I wish she was dead.”

  A small space opens up in the conversation. Tawny pets the dogs, the beer sweats on the table, and I think about how much I loved my mother and how much I hated her. How much I wish I could go back and do things differently. I could try to explain it to Tawny, tell her how it feels from this side, but I won’t. People like Tawny and me never understand anything until it’s too late.

  “The photography thing is cool,” Tawny says. “In the old movies where they swish the paper in the water and pictures magically appear.”

  “There’s no such thing as magic,” I tell her, and it’s the truth.

  She keeps a casual tone in her voice, but it’s obviously forced. “Do you know how to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  I can think of nothing I would rather not do. “First you have to take pictures with a regular camera that uses film, not a digital one.”

  “Do you have a regular camera?”

  Upstairs, in the corner of my mother’s room, sits the camera bag I brought with me. One of the things inside that bag is my mother’s old 35mm Nikon.