Taking Off (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

M
uch nicer than the bus!” I said, slipping into the seat, welcoming my ride to school. “You are the best boyfriend.”

Mark gave me a kiss, smiling and looking into my eyes for a moment. He grabbed my hand and backed out of the driveway.

“It’s nice getting into a warm car on a cold morning,” I said, unbuttoning my coat.

Mark smirked and shook his head. “It’s probably fifty-five degrees out, Annie.”

“That’s cold!” I ignored him. He and I never agreed about the weather. “One more day until Friday, and then finally the weekend will be here. Yes!”

“We’re early. Want a doughnut?”

“Doughnuts and coffee!” I’d been drinking coffee since my grandmother had been sneaking it to me.

The radio was on, the volume low, but I could still make out the song “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” coming out of the speakers. Mark switched to another station.

“Hey! I like that,” I told him.

“Since when have you liked the Beach Boys?” But he flipped the song back on. I started singing along to it. I had the most awful singing voice in the world. You know your boyfriend loves you when he lets you sing songs he doesn’t care for sung in an off-key voice, first thing in the morning.

I belted out the chorus, glancing over at him with a smile.

He laughed. “Remember when we used to talk about getting married and how we’d live in Hawaii and I’d surf and you’d read while I surfed?”

“And we would work here and there for a little money?”

“And just go from beach to beach, until we’d seen them all?”

“And then we’d start all over again,” I said.

He nodded.

“Hey,” I asked, pulling my stolen copy from my purse, “you want me to read to you from
People
magazine?”

“Since when have you started carrying
People
around with you?”

“This article about Christa McAuliffe is fascinating.”

“It must be. You’ve been talking about her for days.”

“Have I?” I asked. “You would like her, Mark. It says she’s interested in how ‘the common people lived through the ages.’ ” I looked up at him. “Are you listening?”

“Hey, we’re here. What do you want?”

We ended up getting two coffees and two dozen doughnut holes.
Sugar and oil
,
almost as good as salt and oil
, I thought. The doughnuts were warm and sweet, and the coffee was hot and milky and sweet. We’d finished the doughnuts off by the time we pulled into the school parking lot.

Lea ran toward us as we walked toward the building. “I’ve been waiting for you two!” She broke our hands apart and got in the middle of us, throwing her arms around us both. She touched Mark’s cheek with her hand and he jumped back.

“Get some gloves, woman. Make her some, Annie.”

“No way,” I said, tugging at my own black ones. “She would just lose them.”

“I would,” said Lea, nodding.

“But you’re rich,” said Mark. “Your parents would buy you more.”

Lea started hitting him on the shoulder.

“Ow. Ow.”

“Stop being that way!” Lea told him. “Stop it now!”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” asked Mark. “Want to be tickled?” He knew how ticklish I was; just the thought of it made my skin laugh somewhat madly.

“No, no.” He reached across Lea and kissed me. His lips were sweet from the doughnut sugar.

“Okay,” said Lea, “I’m gone.” She started walking backward. “My house, Saturday night, Annie?”

“Yes!” I yelled as Lea ran off. I looked up at Mark and saw his face. Not again. “Mark, what’s wrong?”

“You’re going to her house on Saturday?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you Friday night. And all day Saturday.”

“At work? You’ll see me at work?”

“Mark—”

“I gotta go, Annie.” And then he was gone, and I was staring at his back moving away.

Ducked head. Hands in pockets. My jealous boy.

I wouldn’t call him back. In a way, it was a relief not to have to argue with him. He was probably hurt Lea hadn’t invited him over too. Sometimes I felt torn between the two of them. When the three of us were together, I couldn’t make either one of them happy.

But a guilty thought needled at me. Mark hadn’t always been this insecure about us. It was partly my fault. Senior year was making me withdraw, not just from Mark, but from others too. My friends were looking to the future. And I wanted to cocoon in my house.

I liked my little house, my life with Mom. I liked that my dad hung out there. It felt as if we were still together in a way.

At least I was getting out of the house on Saturday to meet Christa McAuliffe. I had this feeling it was important for me to go. I wanted to know what kind of person went from teacher to teachernaut. I’d always seen teachers as practical people who wanted their feet on the ground.

Of course I was nervous about meeting her. I didn’t think I had it in me to get strapped into a seat in a rocket to be hurled into space. It didn’t seem real. That was probably why all these conspiracy theorists thought the moon launch was faked. To them, that level of deceit was a more likely possibility.

I walked slowly. I enjoyed the quiet of the parking lot now that most everyone was already inside, driven in by the cold and the lateness. The wind felt good. It was cold, but not bitterly so, and blew gently, like whispered tiptoes against my ears.

I envied the wind: moving, but with stillness at its center. But of course, the wind couldn’t be moving and be still. So I wasn’t sure what I meant. Maybe that stillness was a sense of peace, or a certainty—stillness in purpose. I couldn’t find the right words. I’d try to capture the feeling in a few lines later.

I didn’t tell anyone I wrote poems. People thought poetry was a waste of time. It was no longer popular, not practical, and to some, as elusive as a moon landing.

Most likely, though, they’d think I didn’t have the talent. That was what I thought. Poetry was for the Walt Whitmans, the Ezra Pounds, the Marianne Moores—not for a regular girl living in Texas. One of the masses, one of the millions. You either were born with the gift or not.

And there was something else too. A poet couldn’t keep herself at a distance from her own poetry—at least if her poems were to say something new. Van Gogh felt paintings came from a painter’s soul. I wondered if he’d felt he was leaving behind pieces of Vincent on each of his canvases.

I thought it must take courage to be that kind of painter, that kind of poet. It was a different kind of courage than launching into space. But it was still courage.

CHAPTER 5

A
fter school, I came home to an empty house and went straight for the kitchen. I pulled out the potato chips, opened the bag, and crunched into their yummy saltiness.

I wanted to have them finished before Mom got home to complain about the weight I was gaining. She didn’t have to nag me about it. I knew I was gaining. I couldn’t help it that salt and oil was such a delicious combination. And she didn’t make losing weight any easier by baking all the time.

Grabbing a blanket, I settled onto the couch to watch cartoons. The screen was fuzzy, but not too bad. After that show ended, I grabbed the pliers to change the channel. Dad had broken the knob last year when he was over, and we’d never repaired it.

I watched reruns of
MASH
and
WKRP
, finishing off the chips and licking my fingers. What could be better than this? It was getting a little chilly now that the sun was sinking, so I flipped on the heat.

The front door swung open. My father burst in and plopped down in the chair with the stuffing hanging out. He thought of it as his chair, even though this wasn’t his house and that wasn’t his chair. “Hi, Annie.”

“What’s up, Dad?”

“Any chips left?”

I peered in the bag. “Not a one. Not even a crumb.”

“You’re a heartless girl.”

“But full,” I said, patting my stomach.

“Where’s Mark?” he asked. “I’m surprised he’s not here. He’s always here.”

He’s
always here
? I thought. “He’s got basketball.”

Dad studied me. “You two are getting awfully close.”

I looked away. “Mm-hmm.”

“I mean, have you even dated anyone else? Ever?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I don’t think you should settle down right away.”

“I’m not settling down,” I said, peeved. I didn’t need relationship advice from my divorced father.

“Humph. I wouldn’t be surprised if that boy buys you a ring for Christmas.”

“Oh, Dad,” I said, but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“It’s true. That boy’s smitten.”

“Subject will be changed now, please,” I said.

“You should date more. There’s this guy, Tommy, at the plant—”

“I thought you liked Mark,” I interrupted.

“Sure, I like Mark. But what do you two have in common?”

“Let’s not do this, all right?” I turned back to the TV.

“Your mom’s not home yet?”

“Nope.” Dad had a job at a chemical plant and had for years, but he worked odd hours. He didn’t understand the routine structure of office work.

He didn’t answer, just stared at the screen. He got up, went through the swinging door into the kitchen, and came back with some cold chicken.

“Mom’s not going to like you eating that.”

“We’ll tell her you ate it,” he said, grinning. He pointed a chicken leg at the screen. “Find something good on.”

I was a little irritated. Today, I’d wanted to be alone, just me and the TV. “Don’t you have some place to be, Dad?”

“Hey, look,” he said. “There’s that teacher from Concord.”

“What?” I asked, my head whipping around. “Oh, shhh,” I said, running to the set and turning up the volume. I sat down on the floor in front of the TV so Dad’s talking wouldn’t keep me from hearing. Christa McAuliffe was being interviewed by a local television reporter.

There was a knock at the door. I barely looked up. Christa was in the middle of a sentence.

“Come in!” Dad yelled.

I glanced up from the TV. “Mark!” I said. “I thought you had basketball.”

“Canceled,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Hey, Jesse.” He sat on the floor beside me. I looked back at the TV. They were replaying a shuttle launch.

“Look at that shuttle go,” Dad said. “God, it’s beautiful.”

Orange fire, blue sky, rising white.

It was a familiar sight, at least on TV. The reporter was saying that Christa’s mission in January would be the twenty-fifth flight of the shuttle. I leaned in to watch the shuttle roll over on its back as it climbed in the sky and wondered why it did that.

And for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to actually be in the shuttle. What did the astronauts feel? What did they see? What were they thinking? I couldn’t even imagine it.

“What’s the thrust of those engines, Mark?” Dad asked, a kidlike grin on his face. Dad really got excited about things. I liked that about him.

Mark fingered my new charm, now hooked permanently to my bracelet. “I’m not that interested in the space program, Jesse. I have to be around those NASA kids all day. They’re full of themselves.”

“Lea isn’t,” I said defensively.

“Lea’s different,” said Mark. “But a lot of them don’t like hanging out with blue-collar kids. To them, you’re not as good as they are if your parents didn’t go to college. You didn’t go to college, Jesse. You didn’t need that.” Mark glanced at me, like he was checking for my response.

“Damn, Mark, I
am
an idiot,” Dad said, letting out a loud laugh.

“You’re not either,” I said, irritated with both of them. “You can tear up a car and put it back together. You can fix anything that breaks at all. That’s not stupid.”

“Well, thanks, Annie,” he said, looking pleased.

“And your art car is very cool, Dad.”

His ears blushed pink, and he gave a shy grin to the floor.

My dad was an odd combination of Texan and beatnik hippie. He fished, he hunted, he read Beat poetry, and he’d protested against the war. He loved the poem “Howl,” which many labeled profane, but he didn’t like women swearing.

I heard the jangle of keys.

Dad’s eyes swung to the door. “Uh-oh.”

He said that, but I knew he could’ve left a while ago. My dad was still hung up on my mom. She’d wanted the divorce, not him. But I knew from my aunts that he’d run around on her.

In some ways, he’d never really left, though. With his odd work schedule, he’d been able to look after me when my mom or my grandma couldn’t, keeping me company after school.

Mom stopped in the doorway, wearing the high heels and nylon hose she hated, looking at Dad. She hadn’t seemed to mind him hanging around all these years, until recently. Donald was bringing lots of changes into our lives.

“Hi, Mags,” Dad said, gazing at her warily.

“Hi,” Mom said, clutching a bunch of purple tulips in one hand.

Good
, I thought.
Flowers usually cheered her. Maybe she wouldn’t get annoyed with Dad
.

She threw her keys on the table by the door. “Nowhere to be, Jesse?”

“Just visiting with my daughter,” Dad told her.

“And eating my food?” she asked, glancing at his plate.

“Gotta go.” He stood. “See ya, Annie.”

“Bye, Dad,” I said.

The door slammed as Mark yelled out a good-bye.

“It’s so hot in here,” Mom said. “Annie, turn the heat down. I can’t afford to pay for beach weather. And put these tulips in water, please.” She laid them down on the coffee table.

I didn’t like being ordered around, so I waited an extra two beats before getting up and grabbing the flowers.

“Start peeling potatoes,” Mom yelled from the hallway.

Mark followed me into the kitchen.

I chose a ceramic glazed vase from the many under the sink and began filling it with water. Mom used to make ceramics in the garage, hoping to escape secretary work by opening up her own business. She just ended up exhausted.

“What’s with your parents?” Mark asked quietly. “They’re usually friendly.”

I shrugged. “Things change.”

I put the vase on the table and the flowers into the vase. Mom was right. Fresh flowers did brighten the kitchen. Mark sat down while I arranged the tulips.

“Was basketball really canceled?” I asked, rubbing one of the petals, so pretty, the purple so rich. “Or did you skip again?”

He gave me a look.

“You’re going to get thrown off the team,” I told him. He didn’t say anything. I stared at him. “You
want
to get thrown off the team, don’t you?”

“What does it matter?” he asked.

I sat down beside him, taking his hand. “But you love basketball. You’ve been on the school team since, what, the seventh grade?”

“Sixth.” He shrugged. “I don’t like sitting on the bench.”

“But, Mark, it’s your senior year. Don’t you want to stick with it, finish it out?”

“I don’t have time for it.”

“That’s because you’re working too many hours at the theater.”

“I need the money. Bill and I want to take another surfing trip.” He grinned. “Costa Rica.”

“That’ll be fun,” I said, wondering why I was so disappointed. “Expensive.” I got up, pulled out the potatoes.

“That’s why I’m saving up,” he said, coming over to me at the sink. “I’m thinking about getting a second job, maybe as a mechanic.”

“A second job. Wow.”

“What’s wrong, Annie?” he asked, tucking my hair behind my ear and looking into my face.

“I don’t know. It’s the basketball. I wish you wouldn’t quit.” I realized I was disappointed he could give up something he loved so easily. I couldn’t give up writing that easily.

He leaned against the counter as I washed the potatoes. “I didn’t know that basketball was that important to you.”

“It’s just that … I liked that you liked it so much. You’re so happy when you’re on the court. You like … glow or something.”

He grinned. “I glow?”

I laughed and wrapped an arm around his waist. I liked the way we fit together. He squeezed me tight, lifting me up off the floor.

“Whooaa,” I said. When he set me back down, I looked up at him and we kissed. His lips felt warm. I cuddled in closer.

“You know, Annie,” he said in my ear, “people sometimes still end up together.”

I leaned back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, people sometimes fall in love in high school and get married after.”

“And love each other forever?” I asked.

He answered with a lingering kiss.

Part of me really wanted this.