Flying Lessons

by Peggy Webb

  “You still love him, don’t you?”

  “Well…I suppose I do. See, that’s what I’m talking about. I want to be able to say yes or no and really mean it. I want to have the same kind of grand passion Irma and Ken do.”

  After I tell her about the Prices, Jane says, “That’s lovely, but rare. Most of us just settle for something in between.”

  “Why? That’s what I want to know. Why can’t we have it all?”

  That night I dream that Howard has come down to whisk me home. In the throes of a youthful lust we fling our dream-enhanced bodies onto the bed and start making these noises. With the sounds of Edvard Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor crashing around us, I unzip his pants and find the Eiffel Tower.

  Good grief. Recalling the dream over a Sara Lee muffin eaten on the patio under my favorite palm, I nearly choke. I haven’t found the Eiffel Tower down there since I went into the kitchen at midnight to get Kate a bottle, and Howard and I made love on top of the kitchen table.

  Is that what my dream of going to Paris is all about? If so maybe I ought to just get Howard some Viagra and forget about jet lag.

  Brushing the crumbs off my shorts, I go back inside and take stock. I’m out of snacks and running low on toothpaste. If I’m going to stay I’ll need those things. Staying has the appeal of cogitation without interruption, but going home makes a certain kind of sense. Two of my biggest unresolved issues are in Tupelo—Kate and Howard.

  I watch more than Ask Sue on TV. I’ve been known to quote Dr. Phil, and he’d be the first to point out that part of this process of becoming myself is going to be resolving all my issues.

  I head to Wal-Mart and grab the necessities, then on impulse decide to ditch the Mamie Eisenhower look in swimwear and select a blue two-piece suit.

  At the checkout counter I’m turned inside out by the wailing blues of B.B. King coming over the intercom. I’ve always had a visceral reaction to the blues, maybe because I grew up near the cradle and cut my teeth on the gut-punching melodies of Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker. When I directed the junior high band, I gravitated toward the blues. Nothing filled me with more excitement than hearing a mournful trumpet bear down on the blue notes.

  Could it be that all these years I’ve been laboring on the wrong song?

  And what about Howard? Have I been putting my attention on the wrong man? Have we outgrown each other, drifted so far apart we can never find our way back?

  I don’t go to the part of the beach I usually frequent because I’m a coward. After my humiliation at the piano, I still can’t face Ken and Irma. Instead I trudge to the Ice Cream Shack on the lee side of the dunes and order a single dip of praline pecan. Back outside in search of a table, I spot a vaguely familiar man in aviator sunglasses headed my way. With his tall build and thinning hair he could be my husband except for the clothes. Howard never wears Bermuda shorts, and his sunglasses are so out-of-date they look like something worn by Eddie Albert on Green Acres.

  And Howard wouldn’t be caught dead in a Hawaiian shirt. Most of them are loud, but this one is exceptionally garish—neon green, covered in huge parrots nesting in coconut trees.

  I’m just about to take my first bite of ice cream when the man removes his sunglasses. Good grief. It is Howard. My first thought is, What in the world has come over him? and my second is, I don’t have a single place to run.

  Diving for the nearest table, I turn my back to Howard and start up a conversation with a startled mother and her two young daughters.

  “My goodness, look how you’ve grown,” I say to the cherubic blonde on my left. “You’re just like my little boy, Ben, growing like a weed.”

  The little girl—about Bonnie’s age, I’m guessing—stares at me openmouthed while ice cream drizzles down her chin.

  “Here, let me help you with that.” I start dabbing her chin.

  Howard has moved down the beach now, which is a very good thing, because the young mother snatches the napkin.

  “Who do you think you are? Get away from my children before I call security.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. There was somebody I didn’t want to see coming this way. That’s all.”

  She doesn’t say a word, just starts gathering up her children and all their beach paraphernalia. Obviously this is one small family who won’t become instant friends. And who can blame her? This is not the day and age where you can let complete strangers horn in on your ice-cream social.

  Shame on me. I’m a grandmother. I should know better.

  “Don’t go,” I tell her. “Please. I’m leaving.”

  I hurry away, chastising myself. I’ve ruined a perfectly nice outing for them instead of facing the music.

  Anyhow, Howard might not have been looking for me. Why would he?

  Maybe that wasn’t even my husband. In this glare, I might have let my imagination run away with me.

  But what if it was him and he really was looking for me?

  I suppose a sensible woman would climb in her car and return to the motel to figure out exactly how she feels about this latest turn of events. A woman bent on mapping out a great future would sit down in a quiet place, make a list of her goals and the pros and cons of leaving versus staying, and then decide exactly what she wanted to do about a husband searching for his runaway wife.

  But, of course, I’m not that kind of woman. If I were, I would never have run away in the first place. Like Howard said, I’d have settled this matter at home, with all parties involved.

  Panting from exertion, my heart beating too fast, I head back to my beach towel and settle down with my latest book, Chicken Soup for the Soul; a belated attempt at self-improvement. Besides, I’m probably the only person on the planet who hasn’t read it.

  But the words “go in one ear and out the other,” as my aunt Bonnie Kathleen used to say. I’m too excited to concentrate, too exhilarated, too pumped up on the idea that I’m a woman capable of turning her conservative, stodgy husband into Romeo in a Hawaiian shirt.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Is a bad toupee better than none?”

  —Howard

  I should have bought that toupee in Columbus. At least it would keep my bald spot from blistering.

  The last time I was in Pensacola was when Elizabeth and I vacationed down here six years ago. I’d forgotten how hot it can be on the beach. But then, why would I remember? I stay cooped up in my office all day trying to earn a better-than-decent living.

  Pausing under the nebulous shade of a scrubby beach pine, I wipe sweat off my face. It won’t do to think about the negative aspects of a wife running away from a perfectly good husband who makes her a great living. If I’m going get into that mind-set, I might as well have stayed home.

  Instead I concentrate on the task at hand: convincing Elizabeth to come home. I hope I’m not on a fool’s errand. It’s not as if Elizabeth said anything in her letter to indicate she wants our marriage to work, but the mere act of writing it shows that at least she’s thinking about me, about us.

  Last night when Kate brought supper over, I showed her the letter and asked her what she thought. Now I wished I hadn’t. She cried after she read it.

  “Doesn’t Mom know how wonderful we think she is?”

  “I don’t know,” I told Kate, and at that moment I felt like a complete failure. The best advice I give my patients is to communicate. How could I have failed to do it with the person who is most important to me?

  “Maybe I just took her for granted,” I said.

  Suddenly I saw myself as a man who doesn’t pay attention to the people who really matter, a rather self-absorbed man who spends all his energies doing the things he excels at—counseling patients and making money—and very little at the things he doesn’t do well.

  “Dad, what are we going to do? What if Mom doesn’t come back?”

  “We can’t make her come home, but at least I’m going to try.”

  Pride is the only thing that kept me from going a
fter her in the first place. I wanted to blame somebody, and so I blamed her. The truth about marriage is that it can’t be pinned down to right and wrong, your fault or mine. It’s a chameleon, fierce and fragile, illusive, and yet if you treat it with just the right amount of respect, trust and awe, it will be the shining achievement of your life. Your heart. Your soul. Your life’s blood.

  That’s what I’ve come to Florida to tell Elizabeth.

  That’s also why I stopped in Columbus and bought these absurd clothes and these silly sunglasses. I want her to know that I’m willing to make changes.

  Of course, the other reason is that I’m afraid she’s run off with a yuppie beach-boy type, and if I have any hope of winning her back, I’ve got to compete. Show I can be hip, too. Show I’ve still got a little fire in the belly.

  The young salesgirl in the mall (Glo, her name tag read) reminded me of Kate at that age. About nineteen, I’d say. Probably a student at the “W.” She was so sweet and friendly I told her about my wife leaving me and the purpose of my trip, and that’s when Glo suggested the toupee.

  “They have really nice ones at Wigs and Things on the south side of the mall. A toupee would take ten years off your age.”

  It was the toupee business that brought me to my senses. I’ve never confided in strangers; that’s something Elizabeth does. I guess the thought of finding my wife with another man robbed me of common sense as well my sense of style. Anyhow, after I embarrassed myself by discussing toupees with a rank stranger, I shut up about my personal life.

  Now that I’m here on the beach, I’m having second thoughts about the Hawaiian shirt. I don’t see another one like it. Maybe I should have stuck with the one that had palm trees.

  And why didn’t I remember sunscreen? My legs and the top of my head are burning to a crisp. I’ve only been here forty minutes, and already my legs look like lobsters. Why didn’t I wait at the Palm Breeze? That would have been the sensible thing to do. But, of course, Elizabeth’s rash flight knocked everything in my life askew, including my judgment.

  Lucky for me, instead of calling all over town, I still had enough sense to figure out that Elizabeth would stay at the Palm Breeze. She loved it when we were down here before.

  I like to think that in thirty years together I’ve learned to predict my wife’s erratic ways. And I could until she ran off without so much as a “fare you well.”

  That was a nice young man at the check-in, but I don’t think he’d have told me a thing if I hadn’t said I had come down as a surprise for my wife. Thankfully, I’m a good judge of people. He’s a romantic. I could tell by the romantic ballad he was listening to.

  I’m heading back to the Palm Breeze if I don’t find Elizabeth in the next ten minutes. It’s so miserably humid sweat’s running out of my eyebrows and streaking my sunglasses.

  I wipe them off and then stroll back toward the parking lot, scanning the beach. If Elizabeth had brought her old blue bathing suit, I’d have spotted her in a minute. But no, she had to fly off and leave everything behind.

  She’s impulsive by nature, the exact opposite of me, but I guess that’s one of the things that attracted me in the first place. The day I met her I’d driven from Oxford with my college buddies Curt Haines and Russell Weaver for a weekend on the Gulf Coast, and Elizabeth Holt was the first person I saw.

  Or so it seems all these years later. In retrospect, I must have seen dozens of people before I stopped at Gus Stevens’s restaurant for his famous fried oysters. And there she was, sitting at a table with a bunch of rowdy, beach-boy types, scarfing down oysters on the half-shell while they counted.

  “Damn,” Curt said. “That girl’s going to make herself sick.”

  “She’ll stop before that,” I said, not knowing Elizabeth.

  We ordered beers and fried shrimp and oysters, and I made sure I took a seat across from her so I could watch. Lord, that woman fascinated me, even then.

  Of course, she didn’t stop eating until she’d won whatever bet they’d placed. When she waved goodbye and bounced outside, I could see she was going to be sick, so I excused myself and went after her.

  She was standing under a live oak tree, losing the contents of her stomach. I pulled a clean white handkerchief out of my pocket. “Here. Looks like you could use this.”

  And that’s how it started with Elizabeth and me—her leaping before she looked, and me always there to pick up the pieces.

  Now she’s nowhere in sight. Discouraged, I’m about to head back to my car when suddenly I spot this woman holding a book, head tilted exactly the way Elizabeth always does when she’s concentrating. I skirt around the towel, out of her view, I hope, trying to be discreet.

  This woman is slimmer than Elizabeth, and tanned. Also, the swimsuit is two-piece, not at all the type she wears. And yet, when she starts nibbling on her right index finger—a years-long habit she has when her emotions are deeply involved—I know without a doubt that I’ve found my wife.

  Relief washes over me. She’s alone. There is no buff beach boy, no tanned jock in one of those ridiculous bathing suits that shows what a stud he is.

  Of course, that doesn’t mean she won’t have one stashed back at the motel. I should have asked the guy at the check-in counter.

  Suddenly I’m overcome with uncertainty. What will I say to her? How will she react?

  It doesn’t take long to find out. She looks up and spots me.

  “Howard.”

  That’s all she says, just Howard, and then she stares at me as if she’s trying to recall exactly who I am. She makes me feel like a squirming schoolboy. I guess it’s those blue eyes of her, so clear they reflect the sky and the water and seem to be looking straight inside me.

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  I guess it is or I would have thought of something that wouldn’t get her hackles up right off the bat. Clearly, I should have taken another day or two to map out a plan before I hauled myself down here.

  “What do you want me to say?” Two bright red battle flags dot her cheeks, and if I don’t turn this conversation around soon, she’s going to storm off—and not to our bedroom where I could make the peace. “You look nice, Elizabeth.”

  She gives me the once-over, and all of a sudden she starts laughing. Who can figure women?

  Although I don’t see a thing funny about this situation, I smile to show I’m a good sport and that I get it…whatever it is.

  “Here I am parading around half-naked, and there you are in that god-awful Hawaiian shirt. Aren’t we a pair?”

  “I guess we are,” I say, hoping she means that in a good way.

  She swings her newly tanned legs, and I can’t help but notice how nice they look, how nice she looks—younger, livelier, almost like the girl I fell in love with more than thirty years ago. For the first time in weeks, maybe even months, I feel the stirrings of an arousal. The intensity of it takes me by surprise.

  I don’t know whether my renewed sexual interest is due to our long absence or being in a new place or my wife’s new youthful glow, but I’m not going to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. I start looking for a place to make out.

  “Let’s go somewhere where we can be alone.”

  When I take her hand to pull her up, she bumps against me and actually blushes.

  “Why, Howard…”

  “Yeah…well, babe, it’s been a long time. And if I don’t get moving I soon won’t be able to.”

  “Let’s take my car,” she says. “We can come back for yours later.”

  Both of us are jogging toward the parking lot like horny teenagers in the first rush of lust. I feel rejuvenated, as well as vindicated and relieved. Obviously if she has another man he can’t measure up. Equally obvious, I don’t have to even ask, which is a relief.

  Sometimes I don’t know what to say to Elizabeth. Maybe seeing patients all day depletes my well of wisdom, and by the time I get home I don’t have anything le
ft to say. Besides, shouldn’t she know me by now? Shouldn’t she know that my intentions toward her are always good?

  “Shoot,” she says.

  Elizabeth’s so flustered she drops her keys, and they bounce under the car. Getting on all fours with an erection the size of a flag pole is no easy feat. Fortunately I don’t have to crawl under the car: my arms are long enough and I snag the keys on the first attempt.

  “Hurry, Howard.”

  Sweating profusely, I heave myself upright, but not before I notice how trim and perky her feet and ankles look. When we get back to the motel, maybe I’ll start there. I’ve read that some women like that. If kissing Elizabeth’s feet is what it takes to get her back, I’m willing to give it a try.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Can love survive being stuck in a zipper?”

  —Beth

  Here I am in the Palm Breeze, tangled up in the pink chenille bedspread and Howard’s pants. My swimsuit bottoms and our shoes landed somewhere near the door, but he came out of the gate too soon and now his zipper’s stuck.

  “Shift a little to the left, Howard.”

  I give a yank at his pants and he howls as if I’ve castrated him.

  “What’s wrong? I say.

  “The belt buckle! Watch the belt buckle.”

  “Hold on. Let me just…”

  I fumble between us, but the more I try to fix the zipper the more hopelessly we become entangled. Now his belt buckle is sawing against the inside of my leg.

  “Is it working?” he pants. “Can you push them down?”

  “I think so. Lift your left leg…now your right…”

  “I can’t. I’ll be levitating.”

  Somewhere between his yowl of pain and my struggle with the stubborn Bermudas, we’ve lost our fire. What started out as a passionate assignation in the afternoon worthy of an X-rated movie has turned into a Groucho Marx movie.