Just Fly Away

by Andrew McCarthy

  I told him about my great-grandmother, whom I was named after, who ran away from home with a vacuum cleaner salesman.

  “That must be it.” Grandpa nodded his head and laughed again.

  He had a good strong laugh, stronger than you might have thought if you just looked at him. I hoped to hear plenty more of it.

  15

  My grandfather’s house was a lot like I remembered it. It had a gravel driveway that started in one corner of the yard, swung up to the house, and then swooped back down to the other corner of the yard, so you never had to back up to go in and out. Davis stopped at the top of the U, right in front of the door. He tossed the keys to my grandfather across the hood of the car and headed over toward his apartment above the garage.

  “Good to meet you, Lucy,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Not if she sees you first,” my grandfather called after him.

  “You’re welcome, old man,” Davis yelled back at him without turning around. He swung open the metal screen door and I could see stairs right inside. I hadn’t even noticed there was an apartment with someone living there the last time I was here.

  “Angela is away in Germany visiting her sister, so it’s just us,” my grandfather said as he reached to open the door.

  “Oh, when is she coming back?”

  “Another eight days; she’s been gone nearly a week.”

  I followed him through the small dining room where we had all split one tiny chicken when we were here. In the kitchen it was clear right away that my grandfather was home alone. Dishes were piled up in the sink. A Wheaties cereal box sat out on the counter with its top open, a carton of rice milk beside it.

  The room was a typical kitchen, although very old. Over the white stove was a clock with the face of the moon painted on it. Above it, protruding from a plastic stick, a cow swung back and forth keeping the seconds. I remembered loving that clock the last time we were here. I’d forgotten it—the cow jumping over the moon, very childish; but so what, it was cool.

  My grandfather looked around the room. “I was just about to have a bite to eat when you called,” he said. “But now that you’re here, I suppose we ought to celebrate with something a little nicer than cereal.”

  “Cereal is fine,” I said.

  “No, no. I can’t tell your father that we had cereal for dinner on your first night. He already thinks little enough of me as it is.”

  “We don’t have to tell him I’m here,” I said softly.

  My grandfather stopped looking around and stared at me; then he nodded. It seemed like he was nodding more to himself than to me. He walked right past me out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the way we came in.

  “Coming?” he called over his shoulder.

  Town was a block and a half up the hill to the left. On the corner, beneath Main Street’s lone traffic light, was a family-style restaurant with large windows. It was the only place to eat except for a Chinese restaurant and a fish and chips place, which were across the street from each other down at the end of town, two blocks away. I had eaten breakfast at the family place once before. They had very good chocolate chip pancakes, so I figured their dinner would be good too.

  It was. We both had the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. It was exactly what I needed. The food landed hard in my stomach and stayed there.

  The restaurant had about twelve tables in the middle and four booths against the wall. We were in a booth with a green tablecloth. The only things on it were a small, unlit candle in a clear glass holder and a tiny vase with a daisy sticking out. It was still kind of early, so only two other tables had people at them. Grandpa said hello to a few folks who came in after we were seated, and introduced me as his granddaughter Lulu.

  I didn’t know what we were going to talk about, but actually conversation rolled quite easily. He asked me about school—but not too much.

  “An’ how’s that sister of yours getting on?”

  “She’s okay,” I said. “I haven’t really seen her around much lately.”

  “Where’d she go off to?”

  “No, she’s around. She’s doing one of her plays, as usual. I just meant . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Mostly my grandfather rambled on about life in the town: the fishing boats and the lobstermen. And he talked about the bread delivery truck he used to drive for a few years until about six months ago when his eyes got too bad. He got up at three in the morning and had to go to this bakery-type warehouse to pick up bread and drive it all over the place, delivering to stores and restaurants for the morning. Apparently, he covered a lot of territory while everyone slept.

  “Didn’t think I would enjoy that job, driving around in the middle of the night like that. But there was something about it. Yes siree, real peaceful.”

  “It sounds kind of spooky. Those dark, winding roads all alone every night.”

  “Yeah, and what if I’d got a flat tire or something? Big Foot might have come out of the woods and eaten me.” He laughed that laugh of his. The one that showed half his teeth were missing. It was a very satisfying laugh.

  “Some nights Angela would come with me. I enjoyed that too, but honestly, I think I preferred it alone. Gave me time to think.”

  “About what?” I asked him. I was very curious what my grandfather thought about while driving around in the woods all night long, all alone.

  “Life.” He grinned and rubbed the palms of his hands together, like he had been hatching a master plan for the universe.

  We both laughed.

  When the lady cleared our plates my grandfather asked me if I wanted dessert. “They have pretty good ice cream here. Not the best, but not bad.”

  “Thanks, Harold,” the waitress said. I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not.

  “Just calling ’em like I see ’em, Shirley.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What flavors do you have?” I asked.

  “Vanilla. Chocolate. Strawberry.” She was kind of a tough lady.

  I ordered one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of vanilla. The waitress looked at my grandfather, and he shook his head.

  “I thought you liked ice cream,” I said once the waitress was gone.

  “Not like—love,” he said. “But my doctor told me I had to cut out dairy. I’m not really sure why at this point, but them’s the orders.”

  When my ice cream arrived, the waitress had added some whipped cream and a cherry on top. I don’t know if it was the cherry that did it, but as she was walking away, my grandfather called after her.

  “Shirley, I’ll have the same!”

  I looked up with a mouthful of ice cream. “But I thought—”

  “Rules are for fools,” my grandfather said. “Never forget that.”

  I knew it was bad for him, but I was really happy that he ordered the ice cream. On the bus ride up I had been hoping we’d go back to that ice cream stand where we went the last time. If we couldn’t do that, I at least wanted to share some ice cream somewhere.

  My grandfather watched while I ate half my bowl, until his arrived. We didn’t speak while we ate. When he was finished, my grandfather wiped his mouth with a napkin. “De-li-cious,” he said, as if it was three words. He had missed a spot with his napkin, just like he did that last time, but I didn’t say anything.

  When we left the restaurant, the traffic signal was blinking red in one direction and yellow in the other. Quiet was not the word for this place—more like silent. We walked home, my grandfather chatting happily the whole way with a smudge of chocolate on his face.

  It seemed my visit had perked Grandpa up a bit. As I was getting ready for bed, he was whistling and doing that huge pile of dishes that had clearly been gathering in the sink all week.

  My room had a big, old wooden sleigh bed in it with a bunch of old quilts on top, even though it was not cold at all. There was also a cool-looking old telescope standing by the window. As
I was falling asleep, which was happening a lot faster than I thought it would in a strange place, I started to hear thunder. I’m generally not a huge fan of thunder and lightning. I once heard about a guy who was hit by lightning and lived but then couldn’t ever remember anything new that happened to him afterward. He remembered things that had happened twenty years earlier, but he had no idea what he ate for breakfast that morning.

  Given the weight of some of the things that had been looping around in my mind over the past few months, starting every day over with only happy old memories didn’t sound like such a bad way to go through life. In any case, I felt quite safe and sound under all those quilts and covers. It seemed not much could trouble my mind here in Maine.

  When I awoke in the morning, the sun was shining and birds were singing, literally. Birds were right outside my window. When I looked out I could see a bright red cardinal singing his lungs out on a branch five feet from the glass. I slipped into the bathroom and had a quick shower, which felt awfully nice after such a trip. There was a huge crack in the shower wall. It was taped over but didn’t seem like it would hold for long, so I tried not to splash it too much.

  I jumped into the same clothes I had been wearing since I left home almost two days earlier—even this did not dampen my mood. The only thing I missed was Simon. As I made my way down the creaky stairs, I was thinking that he and Grandpa would like each other a lot. They both had that slightly devilish sense of humor.

  “Good morning, Lulu,” Grandpa called as he heard me coming a few steps before I hit the kitchen. You certainly could not sneak up on anybody in this house to commit a murder—everywhere you went, the floor announced your arrival.

  “Morning, Grandpa.” The kitchen smelled like cinnamon. “Is that French toast?”

  “Your favorite, I believe.” He had on an apron that said Queen of the Kitchen across the chest, with a big crown sitting on top of the Q.

  I leaned up against the countertop beside the stove where he had two thick pieces of bread turning golden brown in a frying pan, creating that succulent aroma.

  “Is that Grandma’s apron?”

  “What gave you that idea?” He was concentrating pretty hard on the French toast. His tongue was curled up on his lip in exactly the way I had noticed Thomas doing when he was cruising on his skateboard.

  “Grab the syrup in the door of the fridge,” Grandpa said as he dished up breakfast. I took a seat beside him at the table and looked out the window over the front lawn, which needed mowing, as I chewed.

  “How did you know French toast was my favorite thing for breakfast?”

  “I asked your mother when I talked to your parents last night.” My grandfather looked up at me with a big piece of French toast puffing up the left side of his mouth, the side with teeth where he could chew. “I figured they might have been concerned,” he said through the food.

  “What did they say?”

  “They were very relieved to know you were safe,” he said, still chewing as if this conversation meant nothing at all.

  “I sent them an email,” I said quietly.

  “And they were very glad to get that. They had just called the police.”

  “I was afraid of that.” It was hard to believe that I had been gone less than two days.

  My grandfather took another big bite of his breakfast. “I told them we had meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner, and I asked what your favorite thing for breakfast was.”

  “Oh.”

  “They also wanted to know if I was sure it was you since they had never known you to eat meatloaf before.”

  “I eat it at school sometimes,” I mumbled. I was staring down into my plate. “They don’t know everything there is to know about me.”

  “Your father was going to come up today and get you—”

  “Oh, no—”

  “—but I asked him to give us a couple of days. I was just getting to know my granddaughter, I told him.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He said he’d call tonight, and we’d see.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Grandpa got up for more coffee.

  When he had finished refilling his cup he came back and sat down again. I could smell his coffee breath from across the table. My American History teacher had the worst coffee breath on the planet. I think it’s what made me dislike history class so much. But since this coffee was still pretty fresh, and since I liked my grandfather a great deal, I didn’t mind it at all. It smelled kind of exotic. Why is it that the same thing that can drive you crazy or disgust you about one person can seem really interesting or worldly in another?

  “So you ever going to tell me what brought you all the way up here all by your lonesome, causing your parents all sorts of panic?”

  Part of me wanted to tell him about Thomas, but another part felt I shouldn’t. I wasn’t the one who had done something wrong, but still, I just couldn’t say anything—at this point anyway.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Just needed a break, I guess.”

  My grandfather looked at me for a good long while. Then he nodded his head. “Oh, I think I can understand that.”

  16

  My grandfather and I cleaned out the gutters. Actually, I held the ladder while he climbed up and pulled out dead leaves and all sorts of gunk from the metal drains that clung to the edge of the roof. I had to do this once at home with my father, but for some reason it didn’t bother me as much in Maine.

  “Look out below,” my grandfather called every time he was about to drop another handful of mucky glop he’d dug out from those disgusting things. He was seeing how close he could get it to me without hitting me. It was actually pretty funny. One time he misjudged, and it went all over my shirt.

  “Hey!” I screamed at him, laughing. “Watch out or I’ll tip this ladder over.”

  He laughed, too. “Well, that shirt was so dirty already I can hardly see the difference.”

  When we had finished the gutters along the front of the house he climbed down. We raked the little globs into several piles and then my grandfather threw down the rake, tossed back his shoulders, and shouted, “Lunch!” As he opened the screen door he glanced over his shoulder at me. “We’ll do the back tomorrow.”

  Once inside, he went upstairs and came down with a T-shirt that must have belonged to Angela. It was more of an old-person T-shirt than a regular T-shirt, if you know what I mean. But it wasn’t bad; it was black with a sparkling picture of the Eiffel Tower on it.

  “At least it’s clean.” Grandpa smiled as he tossed it to me. It even kind of fit.

  There wasn’t a lot in the fridge, but we found enough for grilled cheese. When we were finished, Grandpa pushed his chair back. “Now,” he said, “nap, then bowling.”

  I wasn’t in much of a napping mood, since I had slept so well the night before, so while Grandpa slept I wandered from room to room. The place definitely had an old-person smell about it, which I was actually enjoying. On the bookshelf in the den I found an old high school yearbook that belonged to my dad. I couldn’t believe it. Last year when I got my high school yearbook for the first time, my dad had tried to find his senior yearbook and couldn’t—here it was.

  I hated to admit it, but his page was actually pretty cute. There were two photos on it. In one his hair was long, and he was looking just past the camera. It was a pretty stiff, formal shot. But in the other photo he was with a friend, and they were both smiling directly at the camera—they looked so young and happy. I’d never seen my dad look so carefree.

  There was also a quote on the page. Most of the kids had quotes from rock songs on their pages, but my dad had lines from a poem by Robert Frost. “. . . I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.” It seemed fitting for my dad. Responsible.

  I was about to flip the page when I noticed something down on the bottom right corner, tucked away, as if it was hiding
there, clinging to the edge of the book. It was another quote—“But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn’t that be nice.” Beneath it, the quote was attributed to B. Springsteen, who I knew my dad liked from his classic rock radio station, so it was no accident that it was there. If dreams came true, oh, wouldn’t that be nice? So true, but so unlike my dad. So wistful. I stared and stared at that quote.

  Eventually my grandfather came downstairs singing some song about it being a long way to Tipperary, wherever that is.

  “Let’s go, Lulu,” he called out.

  I shoved the yearbook back on the shelf and chased after him out the door. Davis was already waiting by my grandfather’s car.

  “Friday is bowling day,” Grandpa said as we piled in. The bowling alley was a few miles out of town down the main road in a low white building with a red roof, standing by itself in a parking lot. It actually looked like a very, very long trailer home, with that kind of metal siding that looks sort of temporary, but isn’t.

  There were more lanes inside than I thought there could be, about twenty or so. The ceiling was low, the place was pretty cluttered. Trophies were sitting haphazardly up on shelves, a banner on the wall proclaimed Mid-Coast Regional Finals 4th Place 1998, an old pinball machine with a mermaid theme had been shoved into a corner, and of course there was a big rack of really used-looking bowling shoes for rent. It was an old movie come to life.

  But what was really bizarre was that the bowling was something called candlepin bowling, which is totally different from regular bowling. Not that I’m a big bowler—in fact, I’ve done it maybe a dozen times in my entire life—but I had never heard of this before. The ball was much smaller and the pins were tall and skinny.

  “That’s the way we do it up here in God’s country,” my grandfather said.

  “I think it came from Canada,” Davis said as he was leaning over tying his shoes.

  I liked it a lot better than regular bowling. First, you got three chances each time instead of two, and since the ball was so much smaller I didn’t have to twist out of the way or smash it into my thigh like I always did with regular bowling. I almost broke 100 in the first game, which would have been a personal best.