Chapter 4 #2
This is mainly my fault anyway. A grand gesture of love gone wrong. Mom and Marge always talked about buying this place and growing old in it together. The idea was one of those future fantasies they’d tease each other about after a few glasses of wine.
“We’ll buy that cute house. Spend our days fixing it up. Build a greenhouse and plant a huge garden. The townsfolk will think we’re witches. Maybe we can start casting spells…” They’d cackle, and I’d smile while coming up with dreams of my own.
Then Mom felt a hard lump in her breast. When the doctors figured out what was wrong—when they put a timeline on my mother’s future—I saw all that joyful planning disappearing.
I called Shawn, and he came without question, picking me up from the hospital.
Actually, Shawn’s buddy picked me up, with my brother in the shotgun seat.
The guy driving was a quiet, hippie type—hair past his shoulders, van painted to look like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine, and smelling like pot.
Not that I cared. All I wanted was a ride to this house.
To my mother’s dream that I refused to let her leave life without achieving.
I took the For Sale sign off the lot and called the real estate agent the next day.
Didn’t take more than a single question to get Marge on board.
A few months later, we were homeowners.
I don’t regret that wild decision, even as the mortgage melds with all the other debt to dig deep, painful gouges into my shoulders where the phantom weight of responsibility rests.
So Marge battles squirrels, and I study electrical work on YouTube, and we keep this place standing. Meanwhile, Mom tends to her plants. Dirt under her nails and a smile on her face. The same one she wears now as Marge presses a quick kiss to her shoulder.
“Have fun at the park.” I down my water, then head for the stairs, planning to change out of my work clothes and put on something that can get a little scorched if need be.
Usually, I can keep the sparks to a minimum.
I’m getting better the more I practice, and of the three of us, I have the most success with electrical work.
Helps that I now know I should flip the breaker off for whatever room I’m working in, which I pop down to the basement real quick to do.
In my bedroom, as I peel off the Cornfield Diner uniform, my mind goes back again and again to George’s offer.
Every time my heart starts to hope, I smother the flame with reality.
What if—
I don’t have the time.
But what if—
The man loathes me.
But what if—
It would cause Mom stress.
But what if this is my only chance?
Dressed in an old pair of sweatpants and a paint-splattered sweatshirt, I pause to stare at the poster I tacked up on my wall a few years ago.
It shows the cockpit of a Cessna 172, the most common training airplane.
I walk up to the image, and, like I used to do before bed every night, I tap each gauge and state the instrument’s purpose.
“Attitude indicator shows the artificial horizon. Tachometer for the engine RPM. Altimeter is the altitude. Heading indicator shows compass heading. Turn and bank indicator. And vertical speed indicator is for climbing or descending.” Well, we certainly descended fast yesterday.
My eyes track to the avionics that are apparently out-of-date on this poster.
The radio looked completely different in George’s plane.
That’s the problem with learning flying facts from old library books. I tried to absorb knowledge from reading and studying diagrams and watching videos. But things change all the time. And applying my knowledge is different in the air.
Especially when the engine stops.
My breath catches at the memory, anxiety lingering in the back of my mind despite what I’d told my mother.
“The longer you wait, the worse the fear will get.” The ghost of George’s deep voice scolds me, and my fists clench in response.
What if it takes me so long to pay off my debt that when I can finally afford flight time with an instructor, all I can remember about flying is the terror of what can go wrong? What if my joy is eclipsed by this one bad run?
What if I get in a plane with a male instructor—which is what they all seem to be within sixty miles of me—and he sees my anxiety and refuses to teach me?
I can envision it now: him calling me “sweetheart” like that flight club president did, then explaining that controlling an airplane is tough, and if I like planes maybe I should just book myself a destination vacation.
The possibility has my throat tightening as I swallow back tears of anger and hopelessness.
My hand falls away from the poster as thoughts of my mom surface. Charlotte Lundberg is a loving mother. She also spent a good part of her life full of righteous fury and dissatisfaction after what Karl Newton put her through.
My mom isn’t perfect. She had an affair with a married man—her boss.
I don’t think Mom ever asked Karl to leave his wife for her, but I also don’t think she expected him to turn on her so adamantly when she ended up getting pregnant with me.
A few months into her pregnancy, Mom left her assistant job without even a reference.
There were times during my childhood when Mom would rant about the unfairness of the corporate system and how it always favored the men in power.
How she’s glad she never got her MBA, because what good would it have done her?
Then there were days that she would come home excited about a new job in a new company with great pay and benefits and health care.
She’d thank Sally and Sam for their help, hand in her resignation, and promise to stop by the diner occasionally for a meal and to say hi.
Then a few weeks later, she’d be at Cornfield’s, asking for her job back.
Something about working in an office with a male boss would flip a switch in her mind.
Even if her immediate supervisor was a woman, the knowledge that somewhere, a couple positions higher, there was a man who held her fate in his hands, would dig at her.
Mom’s one terrible experience stole her ability to function in the corporate world she once wanted to climb to the top of.
Eventually, she stopped applying to those jobs. She never talked about working anywhere other than the diner. Instead, she chose smaller, more manageable dreams to focus on.
Like saving up enough money to buy this house.
Moving in with the woman she loves.
Selling the plants she grows at a farmers market.
On the way to the bathroom, I grab my toolbox, heaving the bulky container with two hands as I shuffle down the hall.
Once I set it down on the outdated tiled floor, I seek out my headlamp, because the problem I’m working on is a faulty light.
Dorky headgear in place, I set to work. With steady hands, I unscrew the light switch cover while trying not to compare myself to my mother.
I don’t want a switch in my mind. I don’t want this one bad instance to ruin my dream of becoming a pilot.
So…what if I go up just one more time?
My hands pause on the wires.
Could I go up one more time?
“Just to make sure I’m not afraid.” When I speak the idea out loud, a quiet murmur to myself, it sounds perfectly reasonable.
I could manage to find the time and deal with a guy who thinks I’m annoying in order to be sure the possibility of becoming a pilot is open to me when I finish paying Shawn back. To be sure I don’t freeze up and become the girl who can’t handle the pressures of flying.
Just one more time.
Excitement thrums through me at the thought—at the permission I’ve given myself to be a touch selfish. Guilt follows soon after at the self-centered reasoning, so I force myself to focus on the electrical work, which luckily is a simple loose wire that needs to be screwed back into place.
After packing up my tools, stowing them in the hall closet, and turning the power to the bathroom back on, I grab my phone and shut myself in my bedroom.
Over the years, I’ve made the space mine, peeling off the patchy wallpaper and painting the walls a light blue that makes me think of the sky.
The furniture is from yard sales and flea markets, but I picked each piece myself.
And the single bookshelf has my annotated book club novels next to memoirs and biographies of some of the best pilots ever to have lived.
I never strove to be some famously talented flyer.
All I’ve wanted is to simply be a pilot.
Just one more time.
My uniform still hangs off my laundry hamper, and I dig the napkin with George’s number out of the back pocket. After pondering what to say to a man who doesn’t like me but is willing to help me, I keep the text simple.
Me: Hello. This is Beth Lundberg. Thank you for your offer. I’d like to accept if any of these days and times work for you:
Then I list off the hours I’m not scheduled at the diner. Looking at those times, I’m once again queasy with shame.
I could be working then. Earning more.
I go to toss my phone on the bed, not expecting a response anytime soon, but then my phone buzzes in my hand.
George: A week from Tuesday. 10 AM.
I stare at the day and time, not fully believing that I’m seeing it. The next time I’ll be in the air.
Before yesterday, I’d only ever been in a plane once.
Some part of me was convinced if I was lucky I’d get to experience the joy every few decades.
But I’m flying again. Next week.
With George Bunsen.
My body gets hot so fast that I stride over to my window and wrench the old thing open, warped wood letting out a screeching protest at the manhandling. The cool night breeze chills the sweat on my skin.
He’s not even here, and the man is making me perspire. With lust!
Belatedly, I recall the final argument against this whole endeavor. The one I effectively ignored.
I’m hot for the pilot.
“It’s just one more time,” I mutter to the night, and probably to a few squirrels eyeing the open window as a possible entry point into the house. Reluctant to relinquish the soothing chill, I shut the window slowly as I give myself a pep talk.
You can do this. George is a grumpy a-hole. His face is only mildly devastatingly handsome. My will is stronger than any danger-inspired crush.
With a firm thunk, the window closes, and my confidence in my decision holds. I’m sure I can keep my libido in check for a handful of hours while I inoculate myself against flying fear.
After this trip I’ll focus on making money. No more flying for a while.
And no more George Bunsen ever again.