The Art of Crash Landing (32 page)

S
ometimes it's tempting to overestimate the importance of the past when predicting the future, to think of yesterday and tomorrow as two points connected by a straight line with a beginning and an end.
Well begun is half done
, Queeg would tell me.
A bad beginning makes a bad ending
. But I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and I'm not so sure. Sometimes
well begun
never has a chance to finish, and every once in a while, a
bad beginning
turns out okay.

B
efore I went to bed last night I turned on the heat, and its burned, dusty smell is the first thing I notice this morning. On my way down the stairs I'm careful, leaning, maybe just a little, on the banister. My knee still aches most of the time, but if you didn't know about the accident you probably wouldn't even notice my limp. It won't be much longer before I'm back to normal—the doctor's words, not mine. What the hell is
normal
, anyway? Queeg always said that normal people are just people you don't know very
well, and as far as I can tell, he was right on the money with that one.

I slip outside and scuttle through the cold wet grass to Trip's yard; the only thing smarter than subscribing to the newspaper is living next door to a subscriber who sleeps later than I do. After I dump kibble into Winston's bowl and Cheerios into mine, I flatten the paper out and flip to the obits page to check the times listed for today's funerals.

About halfway through breakfast my phone rings. I pick it up and say, “Good morning.”

“The service is at ten o'clock.”

“I know,” I reply. “I'm looking at the paper right now.”

“You take the paper?”

“Nope.”

There's a pause and I smile, waiting to see if that was enough to change the conversation to newspaper subscriptions, or if she'll manage to stay on her original subject of today's funeral. If there's one thing I've come to know about Karleen, it's that her train of thought is easily derailed.

“What are you wearing today?” she says, successfully staying on track.

I consider the question. I'd planned to wear jeans since the only maternity clothes I own are T-shirts, jeans, and a swimsuit in a pastel swirl pattern that makes me look like a giant Easter egg.

“You can't wear jeans,” she tells me, putting a wrinkle in my as yet unvoiced plan. I feel pretty sure a swimsuit is out as well.

“Is that some kind of city ordinance? Or just a fashion tip?”

“I saved a couple of my old maternity dresses,” she says. “You want stripes or shoulder pads?”

I consider the options, which sound a little like: Brussels sprouts or cauliflower? Leprosy or gangrene?

“Stripes, I guess.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Make it thirty,” I reply, but she's already gone.

I
carry my dishes to the sink and put away the milk. On the refrigerator, tucked under a magnet, is a postcard. On one side, in my mother's handwriting, it says,
Having a wonderful time with my beautiful daughter. Wish you were here
. On the other side is a photograph of an empty beach. It could be anywhere, but I like to think it's Fort Pickens. Sometimes I put it where my mother's writing is facing out, but today it's turned to show blue sky, water, and sand. I think there are some white spots in the sky that could be gulls, but the picture is too faded for me to be sure.

T
hree of the longest days of my life were spent in Gandy Community Hospital, and I don't make that statement lightly. I once spent three rainy days sick with the flu while camped on a sidewalk waiting to buy Pearl Jam tickets.

The official litany of my latest suffering included a concussion, a grade-one splenic laceration, cracked ribs, a bruised ankle, torn ligaments in my knee, and as ridiculous as it sounds, hip bursitis from the impact. My time in the emergency room has blended into a blurred memory of too much light, too much noise, and not enough pain medication. I can't even tell you if it was one hour or eight spent in that bright misery, but I do remember the blissful dimness and quiet of the private room they gave me, and how I almost cried with gratitude when a nurse finally brought me something for pain.

The morning after my accident a doctor wearing blue scrubs came in and sat on the edge of my bed. He took my hand. “Matilda—”

“Mattie,” I said, correcting him.

“Mattie,” he replied. “We need to talk about your baby,”

In that beat, in his pause before his next words, I realized two things. The first was that in those pain-filled hours and the drugged sleep later, I had completely forgotten about being pregnant. The second thing was that the accident had surely been too much for it to survive. What stands out in my memory was how gently the doctor held my hand and how surprised I was to feel a push of sorrow in my chest rather than relief. It's not the same, I suppose, to have something taken away as it is to throw it away.

“The baby will probably be fine,” he continued. “But we had no choice but to run radiological studies.”

At that point he must have read my silence as anger about the X-rays, rather than the surprise it actually was, because he added, “The man at the accident site didn't tell the EMTs that you were pregnant.”

It takes me a second to figure out that he must be talking about JJ—oops, Trip. I remember wondering if I would ever get used to thinking of him by the correct nickname.

“He didn't know. Nobody knows.”

“He knows now,” the doctor replied. “Mr. Jackson informed us that he was your closest relative, so we've involved him in your medical decisions and updates.”

“Did he also inform you that he was the one who hit me with a truck?”

The doctor smiled. “From what I hear, he's the one who saved your life. He climbed down the embankment and fished you out of the water, and then he called 911.”

“I hit the water?”

“No, you landed on some rocks, but you kept rolling.”

“I was aiming for the water,” I said.

He laughed softly and gave my hand a squeeze. “We don't always end up where we're aiming, Matilda.”

I
should have found a way to charge admission; everyone came to gawk at the invalid. Tawny, Luke, Father Barnes, Trip, Karleen—she brought flowers, daisies dyed such a lurid purple that I laughed when I saw them and then moaned, holding my ribs. As it turned out she'd fallen asleep on the couch in Father Barnes's office the night of the accident, and when she woke up and went home the next morning, she found Orten at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. That day in the hospital, she acted like things were just fine at her house, and she's kept that act up ever since. I wish she'd leave Orten before they end up killing each other, but my wishing won't make it so. Like Luke said, needing to change your life isn't enough. You have to want it, too.

It wasn't until the morning I was scheduled to be discharged that Fritter came to see me. She stepped inside, silent in her rubber-soled shoes, and then carefully shut the door. We've all seen it in the movies—where the villain creeps into the hospital room, holding a pillow or a syringe full of air. Every one of those scenarios flashed through my mind as she approached the bed. Thankfully, I was conscious, and even with my injuries, pretty confident I could take the old woman if it came down to hand-to-hand combat.

But Fritter had confession, not homicide, on her mind. With only a nod for a greeting, she perched on the edge of my hospital bed and started talking.

“Eugene had been in the ground for just over two months when Tilda showed up at my door,” Fritter began. “She told me she was pregnant and that the child wasn't Gene's; it was my brother Jonah's. He was away at school at the time, and Tilda asked me for his phone number. Instead of giving it to her, I offered to call him to smooth things over, pave the way for her to break the news. She seemed relieved. She thanked me.”

Fritter kept her eyes focused on her hands, and I was glad.
The look on her face was painful enough without having to meet her gaze.

“I thought about doing what I'd promised . . . I almost called him. But I didn't. The next day, however, I told Tilda I had spoken to Jonah, and that he had denied everything.”

“Wow,” I said, and she nodded in a sad acknowledgment of her appalling douche-baggery, although I suspect those might not be the exact words she would have chosen to describe her actions.

“So what did she do?”

“What could she do?” Fritter replied. “She was distraught, of course, but I had it all figured out. I told her that her only option was to claim the child was Eugene's. She and Eugene had been affianced, after all. Allowances would be made. Besides, with such a tragic story, the shame associated with a child conceived out of wedlock would be overlooked by most. I didn't have to work very hard to convince her. What other choice did she have?”

Fritter shifted her position on the bed and then reached out to carefully smooth the sheet where it had wrinkled. “By the time my brother heard of Tilda's pregnancy it was common knowledge that the child was Gene's, and I'm sure my brother just assumed that was true. After all, if there had been any possibility the child were his, Tilda would have contacted him, rather than accept the burden of single motherhood.” Fritter shrugged. “Jonah moved east after college, married, and had a family of his own and then later divorced, and still I never told him the truth about your mother. He never suspected a thing until he came to visit Trip that summer. Genie's blond hair didn't fool him for a minute; one look at her face, and Jonah knew. He came to me and confessed his brief affair with Tilda and shared with me his certainty that Genie was his child, not Eugene's. And God help me, I lied again. I pretended that it was all news to me. I acted shocked.”

Fritter's discomfort was obvious. “What else could I do?” she said. “It had gone on for too long. Your mother was an adult, and there was nothing to be gained by telling the truth then. That's what I told Jonah anyway: that your mother was better off not knowing. And that your grandmother might well believe that the child was Gene's, and that telling her otherwise would be cruel. I convinced my brother that everyone would be better off with the secret unexposed.”

With a deep sigh, Fritter looked me in the eyes for the first time that morning. “I was scared. If Jonah found out that I'd known all along Genie was his child, he'd never have forgiven me. And Tilda, if she discovered that I'd never even told Jonah . . . well . . . she'd never forgive me either. I'd created this monster of lies, and I had no choice but to keep it alive.”

“But then my mom figured it out.”

Fritter nodded. “She did. Tilda came to see me, in fact, right after your mother disappeared. She told me how the photographs had exposed the truth, and I urged her to get rid of the evidence. I assured her that Genie would come back home, and that no good could come of having those photos lying around, reminding everyone of the unpleasantness. I think Tilda did throw out the pictures, but she wouldn't touch anything else in the darkroom or your mother's room. She wanted everything to be there for Genie when she returned.”

Fritter and I sat quietly for a minute. I suspect both of us were thinking about those rooms so carefully preserved for a girl who would never find her way home.

“And then like a bad penny, I turned up,” I said.

Fritter gave me a rueful smile. “And then Tawny comes home one evening and tells me that the two of you were going to develop some old negatives . . .”

“So you sent her to steal them.”

“
Steal
is a strong word. I sent her to recover items that didn't belong to you.”

“They didn't belong to you either.”

Fritter nodded, gently placing her cool hand on my forearm. “The long and the short of it is, I am deeply sorry for the role I played in all of this, and I wanted you to know the whole story. But I'm hoping you won't use this information in a negative way.”

“Such as . . .”

“To sully any reputations.”

“Sully?” I smiled. Who uses the word
sully
?

“Besmirch. Tarnish.”

“I know what
sully
means,” I said.

She looked down at her hand, still resting on my arm. “I'll always wonder how things might have turned out differently. You know, Jonah's marriage wasn't a happy one. If he'd known that Tilda was carrying his child he would have married her. Perhaps they would have been happy together.”

Fritter shook her head and sighed, her little rounded shoulders even more slumped than before. “To this day I don't understand why I didn't make that phone call.”

“I do.”

She looked at me, puzzled.

“You were angry and hurting, and looking for someone to punish. I probably would have done the same thing,” I told her, and it was the truth.

She nodded and smiled, but it was a small, pained smile. Perhaps using me as a comparison was setting the bar a little too low. And then she said, “If there's ever anything I can do to make it up to you . . .”

To which I replied, “As a matter of fact . . .”

Fritter and I reached an agreement in which I promised to refrain from sullying, besmirching, or tarnishing and she promised
to issue a library card to Richard Hambly. Fritter scowled her disapproval at his name, but reluctantly agreed. Getting her to bump up his maximum checkout number was harder. She relented, however, once I reminded her that the more books he took out at a time the less often he'd come in. I'm guessing that Mr. Hambly should never expect a Christmas card from Fritter.

Before she left, I asked for one more favor. I had her open the little closet by the door and get me the plastic bag that held the clothes I'd been wearing when I was admitted. She stood next to the bed while I slid out the jeans, crusted with mud. I checked the pockets. Empty. I pulled out the T-shirt, and when there was nothing left in the bag, I stuck my arm back inside and felt around at the bottom. There, in the lowest corner, in the accumulated sand, I felt a small hard object. I lifted it out and reached back in, but the other one was gone. Looking down at the single tiny white piece of plastic cupped in my hand, I smiled.

“What is that?” Fritter asked.

“It's a little bird.”

She leaned in to study it closer. “Doesn't look like much of anything.”

“I know,” I replied.