"Good," I said, though in fact for the first time since coming up with the whole headlong idea at the field I felt a little off-kilter, and scared. "Then it's settled, okay?"
"Okay, Jerry," she said, clasping my hand.
We went to tell Hal that the deal was done but he was fast asleep in his chair in the den, a wide slick of drool shimmying down his chin. Shari produced a hankie from her shorts pocket and wiped him with a deft stroke. He didn't budge. We tiptoed to the door and Shari thanked me for coming by and dealing with everything and helping them out, and I told her it was my privilege and honor to do so but that I certainly didn't believe I was helping them. And yet, all I could think of as we stepped out on the front stoop was that the rap sheet on me documented just this kind of thing, that Pm one to leap up from the mat to aid all manner of strangers and tourists and other wide-eyed foreigners but when it comes to loved ones and family I can hardly ungear myself from the La-Z-Boy, and want only succor and happy sufferance in return.
Shari and I hugged once more, but then she surprised me with a quick, dry peck on the mouth. On the mouth.
"I'm sorry," Shari said, stepping back. "I didn't mean that."
"Hey," I told her, my hands raised. "No harm done. See?"
Shari nodded, though I could tell she was feeling as if something was just done. She stood there on the stoop, self-horrified, trying to cover herself with her arms. Normally I would have begged off right then, made some lame excuse and neatly backslid to my car, but I couldn't bear to leave her hanging like that, so I wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes and kissed her with whatever sweet force and tenderness I could muster, not even pretending she was my Rita, and not sorry about it either, except for the fact that I did enjoy it, too, at least macro-cosmically, the notion of kissing a thoroughly decent and pretty woman who was another man's wife and not needing to push the moment a hair past its tolerances. And I think that it was in this spirit that Shari perhaps liked it, too, or appreciated the squareness of it, its gestural, third-person quality, whatever or whatever, for after we relented and let each other go she broke into this wide, wan, near-beatific smile, and then disappeared into the house. I waited a second, then got into my car and backed out of the driveway, when Shari came out again. She handed me two sets of keys to the plane.
"But I haven't paid you guys yet."
"I know you will," she said. "Just promise you'll look after it and keep it safe."
I told her I would. And then the awkwardness of the moment made me say that if she ever wanted to fly in the plane again, she could call me.
"I don't think so," she said. "But thank you. And don't forget what Hal always says."
"What's that?" I asked.
" 'There's no point in flying if you can't fly alone.' "
SOUND ADVICE, I believe, which I have tried to take to heart.
So here I am, afloat in the bright clear, surveying the open sky, measuring only what I fancy. I could go around again, which I sometimes do, swing back west past the spired city and over the leafy hillocks of northern Jersey, and if I desired make a quick landing at Teterboro and take a taxi to the taco stand in Little Ferry for an early dinner of chili verde and iced guava juice, then get up again and head south past the petro-industrial works of Elizabeth (not unbeautiful from up here), swing up the harbor and check the skyline for where the Twin Towers used to be, and then fly right along the pencil strip of Fire Island before I'd bank again, to head home for MacArthur. It's the grand tour of the metropolis I'd give if I ever did such things, or even fly with anyone else, which I rarely do anymore, and I doubt I will again. Indeed it turns out I'm a solo flyer, for a number of reasons I won't get into right now, but just say that it makes sense to me, and did right from the start.
Still, sometimes I wish I could bring Rita up here again, fly with her the way I used to on the clearest days to Maine or Nantucket, where we'd split a big lobster and bucket of steamer clams on the bleached sundeck of some harborside restaurant, browse the handicraft and junktique shops, maybe buy a bag of fudge or saltwater taffy, then fly back on buffets of just this kind of light, not talking much at all on our headsets save a name and then nod to whatever not-quite-wish-fulfilling town we happened to be passing over: Providence. New Haven. Orient Point.
I'd land us as smooth as I could (touchdown the only part that scared her), then drive us back to the house with the top down in the old emerald Impala, our positions just the same, almost preternaturally so — man and woman in fast-moving conveyance — and we'd shower together and maybe make love and then nap like unweaned pups until the darkness fell, when we'd arise for a few hours to straighten up the house before the workweek began again the next day.
Now, I bring in my ship the usual way, making sure I fly over my house, which I can often spot without much trouble but is forever unmistakable now, ever since right after buying Donnie I had a roofing contractor lay in slightly darker-shaded shingles in the form of a wide, squat X. You can only see it clearly from up here, which is good because most of my neighbors would probably report me to the town if it were obvious from the street. I had it done for Rita, in fact, for she always asked me to point out our place from the air, which I did but to no use, as she could never quite find it anyway. I must say the sight still always warms me, not just for the raw-meat feeling that I've marked my spot, but for the idea that anyone flying or ballooning over head might just wonder who was doing such a thing, this mystery man calling out from deep in the suburban wood.
Which would be somewhat ironic, because increasingly it seems I'm not a mystery to anyone, the very fact of which, as has been made more than clear to me on a number of occasions, is part of my so-called life problem. This from Theresa, mostly, though also from Jack (in Surround Sound silence), and from my once-loving Rita, each of whom holds to a private version of the notion, furious and true. The only one who seems unable to fathom my evidently patent, roughshod ways is my ailing father, who continues to misread my every motive and move, with the resulting accrual of enmity and suspicion steadily drowning out the few remaining vitalities of his mind (yet another mirth-less progression to be considered and acted upon, and alarmingly soon). If anything, I'm afraid, he and I are long-steeped in a mystery without poetry, a father-son brew not just particular to us, of course, though ours is special recipe enough, and like the rest warrants further parsing, which I must try, try.
And as I aim my sweet ship in line with the field, I can just barely glimpse the X in the distance, faded enough from these brief seasons that it reads like a watermark on the broad, gently pitched roof of my ranch-style house, and the temptation is to interpret this muted-ness as muteness, my signage ever faint, and disappearing. This is probably true. I am disappearing. But let me reveal a secret. I have been disappearing for years.
two
FOR MOST OF MY LIFE I worked in the family business, Battle Brothers Brick & Mortar, a masonry company that my grandfather started in the Depression and that my father and uncles gradually turned into a landscaping company that I maintained and that Tack has plans for expanding into a publicly traded specialty home improvement enterprise to be re-named Battle Brothers Excalibur, L.L.C. (OTC ticker symboclass="underline" BBXS), replete with a glossy annual report and standby telephone operators and an Internet website.
The family name was originally Battaglia, but my father and uncles decided early on to change their name to Battle for the usual reasons immigrants and others like them will do, for the sake of familiarity and ease of use and to herald a new and optimistic beginning, which is anyone's God-given right, whether warranted or not.