by Rand, Naomi;
Virgil nodded. “I felt the same way.” He smiled. It was a genuine smile, full of commiseration and affection. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that gun you mentioned.”
She froze. Why did I tell him, she wondered. “Yes,” she said quietly, “That.”
“Did you turn it in?”
“Of course,” she said too quickly.
“Ah.” Don’t kid a kidder, she thought. He knew the lie.
“I will,” she said.
“No time like the present.” And just like that he stood up.
“You mean now?”
“We can go by and get it.”
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t want to bother you about it.”
Virgil said firmly, “No bother at all.”
She looked around. The store was crowded. He only had the one assistant. Surely he wasn’t going to do this. Surely he wasn’t going to insist.
“Bob, watch the register,” Virgil said.
Muriel floated along after him, out the back of the store, past the dumpster where they threw the empty cardboard boxes that had the names of the publishers stamped on them. Virgil opened the passenger door of his car and held it for her. Muriel slid inside and he went round.
“Don’t forget to buckle up,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“Funny man.”
“I do my best.”
Muriel clicked the metal fastener shut and set her handbag on her lap.
Virgil drove down the alley and out onto the main street. He jiggled the radio till he found a jazz station.
“I can’t,” she said, thickly.
“What?” Virgil asked, lowering the volume on the radio. “What can’t you do?”
“I can’t get rid of any of it.”
He nodded. He knew.
“When did you finally do it?”
“After the funeral,” Virgil told her. “I had her friends come and take what they wanted, then I put all the rest of her things into bags and gave them away. I’ll tell you what’s odd. A girl came into the store a few weeks later wearing Laura Lee’s favorite sheath dress. It had this print of palm trees on it. The girl was maybe seventeen but it fit her perfectly. I took one look and started crying. She must have thought I was crazy. But you know, it makes you crazy, losing someone.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“They were all her friends you see,” Virgil said. “Me, I’m great at talking to people. But getting close to them, that’s a whole lot harder. I let her do all that, all the socializing, all the planning. She was good at that. I was good at pretending to be everyone’s best friend. But I only had one best friend, as it turned out.” He pulled over to the side of the street. There was her house, staring at them.
She didn’t want him to come inside. She couldn’t bear it.
“They were the ones who planned everything for her. They figured out the service, the wake. You saw how it was. All of them getting up and talking about my Laura Lee. All of them telling stories, all that love. They missed her. They didn’t see how they’d manage without her. They came through the house and it was all about them, Laura Lee and them. They would tell me they knew just how I felt but they didn’t know a thing about it. Then you showed up. You weren’t friends with her. You knew me from the store, I guess, from the church. I thought you’d do what the rest of the acquaintances did. Set the dish down in the kitchen and go. I had so many of those dishes in there. I wasn’t eating. How could I eat? But you heated it up and you talked to me like I was a human being. You didn’t talk about her or how I must feel. You cleaned up just enough to make me feel human. We watched TV together. That was what you did for me. You treated me like it was just another day and there would be another one after it.”
“I didn’t want to presume,” Muriel said.
“Which was what I needed.” Virgil had kept the engine running. It was cold outside and the windshield was fogging up.
“I’m not ready,” she said.
“It’s okay.” He rubbed his hand against the glass on the side window, clearing a hole. “It’s peaceful in here, isn’t it? A little world all its own.”
A world between worlds, Muriel thought, here in the car with the radio humming.
“I think you’re the kind of person who looks out for everyone else,” he said. “It’s a gift, being like that. But then when you don’t have anyone left but yourself to look out for, you might find you don’t know how to look out for you.”
“Albert kept telling me I had to get on with things.”
Virgil nodded.
“You and Laura Lee never had children,” she said.
“We tried. Then when it came down to it, she decided she didn’t want to adopt. I don’t pretend to know how she felt. It would be insulting.” He touched her arm lightly. Then dropped his hand. “I’ll be looking for you tomorrow.”
“Now you’re my keeper,” she tried.
“You don’t need a keeper,” he said firmly.
She had serious doubts about that. Still, she said goodbye and walked inside her own, still house. Then back to the office. There, on the desk, her latest effort. Amelia hung overhead, her lips wreathed in that infuriatingly cryptic smile.
“Why don’t you write the damn talk for me?” Muriel demanded, “Clean out the house, too, while you’re about it.” As if.
The dead were useless for grunt work.
She sat down, then swiveled in the desk chair, once, twice, a third time round. Her kids would spin each other in it. Back when. Back then.
“It’s like flying,” her son used to say.
Don’t. Don’t think about him. Don’t let yourself sink like that.
Think about flying instead.
Yes, going up and up and up and away.
She’d lied in those interviews, said she never cared for air travel. Why not? For obvious reasons, her own sister had crashed and burned. Why tempt fate twice? They never pressed but there was a different story, a truer story. Once they’d gone up in a plane. What flight could ever match that one?
AFTER GRADUATION FROM Smith, Muriel had gone home, riding west on the train. The darkened stations looked like stage sets, empty platforms with unclaimed luggage stacked on carts. Dozing, she’d woken to the desert, cacti saluting with pitchfork arms. Their parents had reconciled and moved in together in Los Angeles. Amelia met her at Union Station. They drove up to the canyon, to the new house. But some things hadn’t changed at all. Inside, you could cut the tension with a knife. It was a miserable place, with those two, miserable people whose reconciliation had foundered. By the time Muriel arrived, they were no longer speaking to each other.
She’d purposely found a teaching job that took an hour to get to, just to escape. It was peaceful on the bus, Muriel grading papers and going over her lesson plans. After work, she spent time with friends or co-workers or with Amelia and her lover Samuel Chapman. Ironic, how Amelia had met him. Samuel rented an upstairs room from their parents. So they were unaware of what was going on, literally, above their heads. But then, Muriel thought, their parents had always worn blinders. It was the only way to account for their decision to make one last attempt to save their clearly extinct marriage.
“Are you ready? Let’s go.” Amelia was always ready first, impatient for Muriel, who spent way too much time perfecting how she looked. Muriel had no steady boyfriend. She felt it was important to make a good first impression at the parties, or picnics, or dances. Muriel liked to catch someone’s eye and flirt with him. But she purposely dressed down for the political meetings. Politically minded men were dull. Samuel Chapman was an exception to that rule. Dark. Handsome. Intense and intensely interesting, a chemical engineer by profession, born and bred back east in Marblehead. He was a staunch progressive. It fit in neatly with Amelia’s world-view. Muriel agreed in theory, but she could have done without those interminable, testosterone heavy meetings. All the men seemed to want to be the top progressive dog. The few times Muriel got a word in edgewise, they rolled
on, ignoring her contribution. She only kept going because the two of them were such enthusiasts. Amelia. Samuel. They believed that there was a better world coming. It was being young, Muriel thought, you had the heady notion that you were part of the vanguard of real, lasting change.
The long winter passed. Then came spring and with it, a riot of red and purple flowers, the hillsides suddenly verdant. The International Workers of the World called for a strike in support of the dockworkers, meaning to make a stand for a living wage with benefits. To the surprise of everyone, including the IWW, the strike caught on. By May, ninety ships full of cargo were stranded in Los Angeles harbor. There were daily protests in support. The police went wild, clubbing protesters indiscriminately and sticking them in outdoor holding cells in Griffith Park. A huge rally was organized, yet whenever anyone tried to leaflet, they were arrested. How best to get the word out?
“We could drop them from the sky,” Amelia suggested at a meeting.
A woman spoke, thus no one listened.
“I said, we could drop them from the sky!” Her voice rang out, impossible to ignore.
“From the sky? Like a miracle?” a man mocked.
“No miracle necessary. I have a plane.” She certainly did. It was lodged in a hanger just outside the Los Angeles city limits. Muriel had gone in on the purchase with Amelia. Their father had tried to warn her away from taking flying lessons, but she’d ignored his entreaties. Once airborne, she fell in love with it. And once Amelia set her mind to something, there was no standing in her way.
“You have a plane?” He was incredulous.
“Why would I suggest it otherwise?” Amelia demanded.
“And you intend to fly it?”
“Of course I intend to fly it. I fly every weekend. Why would I own a plane otherwise?”
It was delicious to watch the man’s expression mutate as he tried to find something clever and demeaning to say. Instead, his mouth gaped open.
“That could work,” Samuel noted into the ever-expanding silence.
So the three of them painted the fuselage red, it was homage to the IWW leadership who’d fled to Russia, or been deported. It was a small plane with room enough for two, Amelia would pilot as Samuel dropped the leaflets.
They worked on through the night, and then Samuel went to get their cargo, hot off the press. Coffee bubbled, the pot set on a fire built from dry sage. It was bitter, triple strong. As day broke, the landscape emerged showing distant mountains with snow frosting the peaks; closer in, arroyos cutting hard lines. To the east, the light pushed aside the inky blue, and the sun rose up, serene, queen of a cloudless sky.
Amelia had lit a cigarette. “Want one?” she’d asked.
“All right.” They’d smoked in companionable silence. Stubbing hers out, Amelia looked squarely at Muriel. “I’m taking you up with me.”
“No, Meely. Samuel wants to go.”
“And I want you with me. Are you afraid?” Amelia was daring her; nothing new in that. Yes, she was afraid, who wouldn’t be?
“He’ll be disappointed,” she’d said, playing for time.
“He’ll live with that. It’s my plane, my choice,” Amelia insisted.
She gave in, who could ever resist? She climbed the ladder and sat in the passenger seat. Amelia reached round her to slam the metal door shut. The engine coughed, then sputtered. Muriel wished it would fail but of course it roared to outsized life. Amelia waved to Samuel. He backed away, shading his eyes as the dust kicked up. Then the plane rolled out of the hangar and onto the firmly packed desert floor.
Inside that noisy cockpit, Muriel shut her eyes and tried to find an oasis of calm. She opened her eyes and saw Amelia pulling back hard on the throttle. The plane bucked, resisting, clinging to earth. Muriel gripped the leather cushion on the seat with both hands. The plane’s nose tipped up, the wheels followed, the body lifted whole off the ground.
They dipped.
They rose.
They dipped again, her stomach dropping out of her.
She wanted to scream. And found she couldn’t. Someone had absconded with her voice. Her stomach lay on the cockpit floor. But then the terror passed. She noticed that there were white threads of clouds directly in front of her, adorning a blue backdrop. The plane cut a swathe right through to the other side.
“Look.” Amelia pointed out of Muriel’s side window and there, right beneath them was a patchwork of stray roads and canyons. Beyond that was the Pacific, stretching forever, bold breakers riding the shoreline and white curls frosting a cerulean blue.
“Isn’t it incredible?”
It was indeed, the plane cruising over the mountains just north of Los Angeles. Beneath them canyons were covered with green foliage, lush from the spring rains. The engine thrummed. The mother ship rode steady. They flew in above the San Pedro Docks. Beyond them, Liberty Hill and the courthouse.
“Are you ready?” Amelia asked.
Muriel tugged the top of the box open. She took a handful and shoved back the passenger side window. The wind whipped hard, blowing her hair into her mouth. She spit it out as the plane dipped. The ants below turned human, lines of strikers picketing. She dropped what she held in her hand and dug for more. When that box was empty, she reached for the next while paper rained down on the city of angels.
Afterward, their mission accomplished, they circled back. “There’s the old homestead,” Amelia said, pointing at their parent’s house.
Muriel spotted it, so tiny from above, the yard thick with apricot trees.
“Who do you think is torturing who now?” Amelia asked.
She said it gaily. Muriel saw why. Up here, you were so far away. Up here, none of it mattered; none of it touched you. Up here, you could finally breathe and be yourself.
Down below them, their parents continued the war of words and worse than that, pregnant silences. Amelia headed dead north above the cloud cover, white puffs of cotton sewn together to make a luxurious aerial carpet.
“I’m glad I brought you,” she said.
“Me, too,” Muriel agreed, and this time she was the one reaching over to put her hand, reassuringly on her sister’s, lacing the fingers through.
“Red Plane Buzzes City”was the newspaper headline the next day. They had alerted everyone to the rally; leaflets had even fallen into the open air holding pens at Griffith Park. No one ever knew who’d done it. No one ever learned the truth.
Muriel had kept that secret all these years, held it close to her heart.
“OH,” MURIEL SAID aloud. Once they’d thought their luck would hold. But luck gave out, inevitably.
One flew away, the other didn’t.
“Courage is the price,” Amelia had written. It was an oddly enigmatic line. They all said Amelia was brave because she’d risked her life. It was true. She was brave. She’d flown off over the Atlantic, then over the Pacific and finally disappeared over the rainbow. It was horrible, imagining how she’d died. But in the end, Muriel decided that Amelia might have had it easier. She hadn’t lived long enough to have to endure being abandoned, again and again. How many days had Muriel punished herself, wondering why she was the one who kept on breathing? To go on, to find some reason to get through the day, that took a whole different kind of courage.
13
Amelia
November 1980
GRABBING ONTO HIS shoulder, Amelia felt a mixture of relief and chagrin. So this was it. This was why she’d come.
“You can’t mean it,” Winston Manning had insisted.
“I don’t love you anymore,” she’d said coldly.
She hadn’t meant it then. She could tell him that now. If she did, would everything change? Was that why no one knew her here, because to be here meant to be anonymous, having given it all up?
The boy turned and Amelia saw her mistake. He was a stranger.
“No good deed goes unpunished?” he asked.
He was in his early twenties and had a thicker nose than her Winsto
n, a higher forehead. “Well?” he asked.
“I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? For that?” He craned his neck past her, looking into the oncoming traffic.
“Are you waiting for someone?” she asked.
“My ride.”
He dug into his pocket and extracted a crumpled pack of cigarettes. After sticking one in his mouth, he pulled out a lighter and clicked it open. Gold. Delicate engraving on the side, showing roses, intertwined. She peered at it and knew it. His, her Winston’s own. There were the initials, carved into the intricate floral display.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded.
“Get what?”
She stuck her hand into her own pocket, meaning to extract its twin. It was gone. Only the money was there. What a mad, mad world this was.
Hers had had an AE; his, WM. She’d bought his for him in a shop off of Bleecker in the West Village and had it engraved. Next time they saw each other, he’d produced its twin, giving it to her.
Now the boy slid it away as if she might try to steal it from him. He had used it to light his cigarette. Amelia recognized the sickly sweet odor of maryjane. Musicians swore by the stuff. Was he a musician? He had no instrument with him. A passing car braked to a stop directly in front of him.
He reached for the passenger side door.
“Wait!” Amelia tried to think of what to say to detain him.
The boy looked askance, as though he thought her some kind of lunatic. She was indeed a desperate lunatic.
“I don’t know your name,” she blurted out. “For the reward.”
“Are you shitting me?” He shook his head, one foot already in the car. “Is this being filmed? Am I on Candid Camera?” He swung round, searching for something, dropping the illicit cigarette instinctually.
“I’ll need to get in touch,” she insisted.
“I don’t live in Boston,” he said, still searching the street.
“How can I contact you?”
He was clearly nervous. “Wow, you can’t show this, you know. Not without a release. You have to have my permission.”