Time Flies (4 page)

It was a huge show, and with luck it would lead to a sale, and maybe even some commissioned pieces to grace the over-the-top gardens of wealthy Atlantans. I’d once made a ten-foot copper toddler that peed into a preexisting moat stocked with live white swans. You accessed the wannabe mansion by driving over a drawbridge wrapped with miles and miles of white lights, all completely visible from the main road. It looked like a year-round Christmas display, but it also made me remember my grandfather singing “Way Down Upon the Swanee River” to me when I was a
child. Years later I realized the river was really the Suwannee, not
Swan
ee, but I still pictured fluffy white swans paddling downstream whenever I thought of it.

The piece that made it into Art in the Park was called
Endless Loop
, an abstract I’d made with rusty metal loops from two dilapidated whiskey barrel planters I’d salvaged at the dump. Circle welded to circle after circle after circle. I’d hidden a fountain pump in the center, attached an old rain showerhead I’d also found at the dump, and snaked a hose up to meet it. Properly installed with the pump turned on, you’d swear you were watching the patter of real rain on halos of rusty metal. And if the sun hit it just right, you could see a rainbow in the watery mist. I’d described all this in detail on my application. I hoped the powers-that-be hadn’t placed me under a tent and that I wouldn’t have to fight to be moved into the sunlight, near a water source.

There was a small link for driving options on MapQuest that I’d never noticed before. I clicked on it and a series of choices popped up. Wow, you could actually check a box to avoid highways. And not only could you avoid highways, but there were also boxes to avoid country borders, tolls, seasonal roads, ferries, and timed restrictions, whatever they were. Was it possible to be afraid of seasonal roads?

The strangest part about my driving issue was that not long after Kurt left, just to cheer myself up, I made a list of all the things I wouldn’t have to do anymore. Mostly petty aggravations like listening to him gargle for what seemed like centuries, lap his ice cream, scrape his teeth on his fork. And watching him yell at the television like a maniac, as if he had the power to influence the outcome of some football game. And trying to ignore the repulsive
way he looked at the tissue after he blew his nose—every time—and left his dirty clothes on the floor
beside
the hamper and his disgusting toenail clippings wherever they landed. But at the very top of the list was this: I’ll never have to ride in the car with him again.

From our first date, Kurt always had to be in the driver’s seat. He was a skilled, decisive driver, but he was also an angry one.

“Right on red, you idiot,” he’d yell.

“We have plenty of time,” I’d say. “The movie doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.”

“That’s not the point.”

It took me years to figure out what the point actually was, but eventually I realized that Kurt simply thought the rest of the world should see driving the way he did: It was a game of skill, and the first one who got there won.

“Slow down,” I’d beg. “For me.”

“Relax. I just have to get around this bozo playing with his radio.”

“Stop playing with your radio, bozo,” Trevor would yell from the backseat.

“Yeah, stop pwaying with you wadio, bozo,” Troy would parrot.

“See what you’re teaching them,” I’d hiss.

Kurt would look into the rearview mirror. “Boys, there are a lot of jackasses on the road. And no matter what your mother says, when you drive, you will not be one of them.”

I’d bring it up after the boys were in bed. About presenting a united front and treating each other with respect in front of them. And that even if Kurt looked at things differently, he should want
to drive in a way that would make me comfortable riding in the car with him.

“Sometimes I’m really afraid,” I’d say.

“Jesus, Mel. I mean, how many accidents have I been in since you’ve known me? I’m an excellent driver.”

“That’s not the point. You can’t control the other drivers on the road. And you’re so full of rage I don’t want to be in the same car with you.”

“That’s not rage. That’s how I drive.”

Sometimes I’d just give up. I’d look for excuses to take separate cars or offer to drive the boys to their sports clinics on the other side of the city myself. I’d feel footloose and fancy-free as I drove off to a master sculpture class at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Other times I’d keep pushing until I got Kurt to promise to take it easy the next time. But by the next time he’d have forgotten. It was the endless loop of a long-term marriage—the same fights playing over and over again, until one of you broke free.

And when Kurt finally did, I thought, well, at least I’ll never have to ride in the car with him again.

But in one of the biggest ironies of my life, that’s when my own driving problems began.

Art in the Park wasn’t far from the hospital where Troy worked, so the plan was that he’d help me install
Endless Loop
at the show and then we’d have lunch. He had a great job in the apparently hot field of Health Internet Technology, and did something with
databases that made him a lot of money. Beyond that, I hadn’t a clue what my younger son did for a living.

The whole way here I hadn’t been able to shake a kind of low-grade worry that MapQuest might be wrong about being able to avoid highways. And even if it could avoid them, what if there were roads that looked liked highways and felt like highways but weren’t technically highways? But the directions had taken me first down Powers Ferry, and then I’d followed Northside Drive practically the whole way here. Now I felt relieved and empowered that I’d found a workaround. I mean, so what if it had taken me an extra half hour, mostly waiting at red lights, to get where I was going. At least I got here.

Troy was already waiting just outside the entrance tent, wearing jeans and a deep teal short-sleeved buttondown shirt. He ran one hand through his hair and grinned when he saw me. I hurried over to him and we gave each other a big hug. Then I pulled back for a quick mom-check: no smell of smoke, no bloodshot eyes, healthy weight, good hygiene, clean clothes, recent haircut, direct eye contact.

“It’s so good to see you, honey.”

“Yeah, you too, but it’s only been a week.”

We retraced my steps, and Troy opened the back door of the Element.

“Wow. Cool piece, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey. Okay, you grab that side and then we’ll wiggle it out like this.”

The installation went pretty smoothly once we found the water spigot behind the arts pavilion on the outside wall of the restrooms. Troy and I set up my trusty old collapsible wooden
display stand that looked like an oversize easel. Fortunately I’d brought an extra hundred-foot hose, too, which we snaked discreetly through one of the tents. A few people gave us dirty looks, but we both ignored them. Troy had his father’s quick, decisive confidence. And his eyes. How could you ever shake off a husband when every time you looked at your kids, he was right there looking back at you?

I hammered in one more nail and tucked a couple of squares of heavy-duty stick-on Velcro behind the bottom circles just to be sure they wouldn’t shift.

We both took a few steps back to get a better look.

Troy gave me a thumbs-up.

“Thanks.” I tucked a clump of hair behind my ears. “Okay, you stay here and keep an eye on it, and I’ll run over and turn on the water.”

His phone made the triple beep of a text landing. He pulled it out of his pocket and smiled. Not that I was counting, but it was the third smile-producing text in the last five minutes.

“Is that Ashley?” I asked.

“Mo-
om
,” Troy said without looking up. It was the same answer he’d been giving me since his first girlfriend, Katie Dougherty, in sixth grade.

I watched for a minute, happy to see Troy so happy, even if I might never get any details. Possibly until the wedding. I was fairly sure my younger son would at least give me a heads-up before my invitation arrived in the mail. I had a sudden vision of the wedding, big and Southern, at a manor called Lady Something. Everyone would be blond and call me ma’am. And they’d all be named
Crissy
.

And the real
Crissy
would be there. She’d be blond and Southern and her family would have owned Lady Something Manor since before the Civil War. And she’d have offered to let Troy and Ashley use it for the wedding, along with the servants and the caterer. So as much as Trevor and Troy didn’t want me to see them being nice to her, I mean, who could blame them. Kurt would be in his glory, and even though I knew,
I knew
, I was so much better off without him, I still wanted to punch his lights out for taking the beautiful day this could have been away from me.

Troy looked up from his cell. “Mom? Are you all right?”

I blinked my way back to reality and smiled. “Of course I am. Be right back, honey.”

I traced the hose through the other exhibits to the restrooms, making sure there weren’t any loops that might trip somebody or, worse, impede the flow of water to my sculpture.

Once I turned on the faucet, I retraced my steps as quickly as I could. Artists and show organizers and food concession people were milling around everywhere now, and I could taste the pre-show electricity in the air, as if it were scorched steel.

The excitement of fully imagining something in my head and then translating it into metal just never got old. But as incredible as that process was, it was as if one of my pieces didn’t fully exist until it was on display and other people could see it, too.

As I cut through the tent, I took the time to check once more for kinks in the hose, and to make sure it was tucked as far out of the way as it could be. Back when my first pieces had started getting accepted for exhibit, it was all I could do not to camp out and babysit them round the clock for the duration, just in case something went wrong. But I’d since learned to check and
double-check and even triple-check during the installation, and then let it go.

I walked out of the tent and turned the corner.

A split second later the hose detached from the sculpture. It started spraying water everywhere, a vinyl boa constrictor gone wild.

A few people yelped as the cold water hit them. Troy lunged for the hose. It danced away, spraying two women and a display of dolls with carved and wrinkled dried apple faces.

The women screamed.

“Do something,” a man roared. He jumped in front of an assortment of ornate doghouses and spread his arms wide.

I dove.

CHAPTER 5

I took a sip of iced tea. “Sorry about that, honey.”

“No problem.” Troy grinned and reached for his napkin and gave his forehead another wipe. His gelled hair had gone flat on the top and was sticking out in little points on one side.

“Next time I promise I’ll bring you an umbrella.” I leaned forward in the booth, hoping to camouflage the dried mud, laced heavily with red Georgia clay, on the front of my T-shirt. At least it was black and not white. “I can’t believe you talked me into coming into a restaurant looking like this.”

Troy shrugged and reached for his sweet tea. “I gotta hand it to you, Mom, that was some save you made.”

I shook my head. “The high stakes of using sprinklers found at the dump. And I know better—one more turn of the wrench
on that hose would have done it. Do you believe that doghouse guy tried to get them to cut off my water supply?”

“What a jerk,” he said as he put his glass down. “The apple doll ladies were cool, though. Don’t worry, I’ll walk over after work and make sure everything’s copacetic.”

“Thanks, honey. Between the extra wrench action and the duct tape, I think we’re okay, but that would be great if you wouldn’t mind double-checking.”

Troy’s cell triple-beeped. He looked at it quickly, smiled, and then put it back in his pocket.

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “At least your cell phone didn’t drown.”

Troy grinned. “Always tuck your phone under your armpit before you attempt a water rescue. I learned that back in college.”