You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  YOU

  CANNOT

  MESS

  THIS

  UP

  Copyright © 2019 Amy Weinland Daughters

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including

  photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or

  mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the

  publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical

  reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright

  law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-583-4

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-584-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938259

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  Book design by Stacey Aaronson

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos,

  trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of

  their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

  entirely coincidental.

  To Kimber & Rick and Will & Matthew

  For making both of my childhoods memorable.

  Thanksgiving Day

  Thanksgiving Day,

  The Day we feast.

  The day we pray,

  And eat the beast.

  The Pilgrims came,

  To become free.

  Of the English, For You and me.

  —Amy Weinland, 1978

  Chapter One

  PIPER COMANCHE 400

  Life goes by so fast …

  It’s something I had heard so many times that it had lost its meaning, suffering death by violent repetition. Maybe it’s why the younger me never really believed it any more than I was worried about wrinkles, the rising cost of retirement, or that disturbing rumor that women’s bodies magically expand at forty-five.

  No, that crap wasn’t going to happen to me.

  And then, before I knew it, in the dreaded blink of an eye, I went from being John Cougar Mellencamp’s youthful, free-willed Diane—complete with dribbling slacks—to living the part of life that goes on. The part after the thrill is gone.

  Life was more blurry than fast, slipping into a mesmerizing normality. Disguised as humdrum and mundane, the routine began to suck the enchantment and marvel out of everything, leaving me at times wondering if I ever believed in anything beyond what now seemed so real. Driving in an endless line of minivans, we pick up and drop off, fill and empty ourselves into oblivion. It lulls our imagination to sleep. It stifles our spirit and lays waste to the creative genius that exists in every human soul.

  As happy as I personally was, I wondered if there wasn’t more. I was in a good marriage to a good person, who was probably better at being married than I was. I had two beautiful, healthy children. Though my boys weren’t perfect, relative to my ideal of it, they were loving and genuinely did their best to follow the line our family had drawn in the sand. I had all the trimmings and trappings, a late-model imported motor vehicle with sliding doors, a big house, a DVR, and a counter-depth refrigerator. It was all good. It truly was. But, that said, was this really the “it” I was destined to arrive at?

  Maybe it wasn’t so much that it was going by at light speed, but more that we were so infatuated with cultivating stability and comfort that we had stopped seeing what was really going on.

  Being able to get anything, anywhere, at any time hasn’t caused our creativity to flourish; no, instead, and ironically, it’s squashed it, convincing us that creating isn’t as valuable as sourcing. We’d rather be comfortable than happy, or maybe we’ve replaced happiness with satisfaction. Why risk eating at a place you’ve never heard of when you can be comforted by something called Jack Daniels sauce?

  THAT chilly November morning was a titillating exception to the reality of modern life. At the controls of my sleek minivan, I drove the few miles that separated our Ohio home from the regional airport. Past the Target and PetSmart, past the Walmart and the Lowe’s, the Kohl’s, the Walgreens, and the Kroger. Past the Outback Steakhouse, the Chili’s, and the UPS Store.

  Though it was the same silver Honda Odyssey I’d operated efficiently since just before our second son was born and the same roads I’d driven up and down, endlessly, since moving to the Midwest in 2007, the feel of adventure hung thick in the brisk air. Following my faithful guide and best companion, the friend who did whatever I wanted, my iPhone, I turned into the parking lot of the Wright Brothers Airport. It was less of an air hub than a weird collection of metal buildings situated in front of a single runway flanked by a thousand little points of light.

  Maybe it was George Bush’s lost America.

  Surveying the five or six different hangars, my first task was to locate which building I was supposed to enter to meet Mary. My phone couldn’t help me now, so it was up to my own cunning and catlike reflexes to find the right place. I was semiconfident that I knew where to go, a specific chain link gate with what I hoped was the correct entry pad. If only I had listened to my husband when he was giving me the directions the night before, rather than thinking about a million other things that were more interesting than hearing him banging on about the specifics. That kind of stuff was never necessary, that is, until you needed to know.

  Yelling into the speaker with zero confidence, if that was even possible, I identified myself as a departing passenger. Without a reply from whomever was on the other side, the fence began to shudder and groan, allowing me to pull through the gates. This had to be it. From there, I was directed to an unmarked parking area behind the barely identifiable passenger terminal, near where a wide variety of small aircraft were in the process of being loaded, unloaded, and serviced.

  Though my husband had taken his share of flights on smaller planes, I had not yet had the experience of hurtling through the wild blue yonder in an aircraft smaller than a regional jet. Today, all that would change. After parking the van in an area that looked suitable, apparently there were no rules here, I was warmly greeted by Mary, wearing her unfailing smile and cheery disposition. I had known Mary for at least twenty years but had never had the opportunity to form a deep bond with her. Guiding me over to the plane she opened the passenger door and motioned toward my bags, “Here, throw them in the backseat.” It was that simple … no security, no awkward disrobing in a cold room, and no showing of the liquids. I just drove up in the parking lot and tossed my crap into the actual plane. Clearly, I was a baller.

  Climbing up, I swung the small door shut, immediately realizing that its light, almost flimsy construction mirrored that of the entire airplane, the one that would separate me from the atmosphere at 8,000 feet. The sturdiness reminded me of a boat —ready to launch at a nearby lake for a day of fun, sunburns, and awkward trips up and down the back ladder—as opposed to an actual aircraft. We could swim back or call for help on our cell phones if the old boat couldn’t make it—in this case, the flying one, the consequences were far graver.

  Maybe I shouldn’t think about that.

  As I watched Mary go through the preflight checks necessary to begin our flight to Houston, I suddenly appreciate
d her steady maturity. She was taking it all seriously, not cracking the jokes that I would have been compelled to, even if our roles were reversed and I was the responsible airplane pilot.

  I had always liked Mary and respected her, but our relationship had long been metered by the fact that my husband worked for hers, an association that prevented any real closeness. This was unfortunate as she was smart, funny, well-read, and pleasant. I had always looked forward to seeing her at the long line of cocktail parties, enjoyed talking to her and considered her to be a beacon of light amongst the sometimes dimly lit bulbs of duty.

  Following Mary’s lead, I strapped myself in with what seemed like an underwhelming harness. It looked more like something out of a 1973 Buick than a modern-day jet airplane. “I’m ready to start the engines,” she said, handing me a huge aviation headset, complete with a microphone that looked like something from a Time-Life Books commercial. “We can use these to communicate. Also,” she added, “you can hear the chatter between ground control and me.”

  I hadn’t really expected such a personal connection to our flight, much less something called “chatter.” It was like I was the co-pilot. Wait! Who was the co-pilot? Who would fly the plane if Mary became incapacitated? Taking it the inevitable one step further, I willed it out of my brain, sending it to wherever my review of the flimsy cockpit door had gone. Instead of questioning her, I just nodded furiously, agreeing with everything she said. That’s what you did if you were from the South, and a people pleaser, and truly terrified of conflict. It was a trifecta that should have ended in a therapist’s office, but that would have been admitting something was actually going on. Vicious cycles never end the way they are supposed to.

  FINISHING her prep work, Mary fired up the engines with a flip of a switch, and after a couple of additional official-looking movements, she taxied the airplane toward the runway. I had never known anyone who could taxi a plane toward anywhere, much less a runway. The best my regular set of friends could do was back a car into a parking space.

  The small four-passenger plane handled far differently than a jet. Even on the ground, I could distinctly feel every bump and imperfection on the surface below, like we were traveling in a golf cart on a dirt road in East Texas, not necessarily the sensation you are looking for prior to being launched into the air in a metal tampon. The aircraft itself was apparently, at least to aviation buffs, a classic—a Piper Comanche 400, one of only several hundred ever made. It was an attractive plane, even at forty-something years old it was pleasing to the eye. Honestly, that’s something you could have said about me. The plane and I were of similar age, both of us maturing in our own special way. Its red leather seats looked worn, and my tail rudder had expanded, though neither had deteriorated to the point that we weren’t flight worthy.

  THE journey itself, as originally planned, could have proven to be an interesting trek even without the flight on a small vintage plane. I was heading back home to Texas to meet with my family on some matters that none of us really wanted to consider. The meeting regarding my parents’ estate had been on the books for some time and was conveniently planned around Thanksgiving, so I could be in town for the uncomfortable discussions and subsequent signing of important documents. My siblings and I had begun to refer to it as “Death Camp Thanksgiving,” a reference to a weekend meeting my dad had conducted the previous fall. That’s when the four of us, everyone minus my mom, holed up in a downtown Houston hotel for two nights while he laid out his entire financial portfolio. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, we all had been issued matching briefcases that contained “the plan,” precisely detailing what each of us needed to do when he was gone.

  As much as the three of us had one another’s backs, and said (and sincerely meant) that we didn’t really care about the money, we all cared about the money. I wondered what it, and any other honest discourse about topics previously untouched upon, might do to our otherwise agreeable family dynamics. We were reaching that age when all the stuff that had once seemed so far off was bearing down on us with inevitable dread and wonder.

  SUDDENLY, and at the last minute, the key meetings for the Thanksgiving edition of Death Camp Weekend had been moved up to accommodate a lawyer’s holiday plans, and I was lucky that Mary had been in Ohio and flying herself back to Houston in time for me to make the new appointment.

  My husband, Willie, and our two boys, Will and Matthew, were to follow tomorrow, taking the flights that I originally booked for the four of us. Though a little apprehensive about the single-engine plane, I was grateful to have a way to Texas that wasn’t going to require a one-thousand-dollar charge on my already holiday-worthy Visa bill.

  Mary began accelerating the Comanche’s engines as we turned onto the runway. My heart began to beat more quickly as we gained speed. I felt as if I was on some sort of secret mission … with hidden weapons strapped in a sensuous fashion to my legs and arms. In reality, all I was armed with on most days was a cheap toilet brush, some semi-explosive bleach cleaner, and my smarter phone. It was hardly the stuff that had miniseries written all over it.

  AFTER what seemed like a slow three-mile ride down the runway, the airplane began to shakily lift off from the ground, and I experienced a palpable “Oh crap!” feeling. It had taken a considerable amount of effort for the small craft to get itself off the runway, meaning it couldn’t take too much to bring it back down. What had I been thinking? This was ridiculous. What had my husband been thinking? This was clearly on him. If I died, it was his freaking fault. Idiot.

  As we vibrated our way to higher altitudes, I could sense concrete risk, danger and fear. Being a novice, I was not able to delineate between the “good” and “bad” sounds and sensations. This was thrilling, and oh yeah, it was scary as hell. It was an experience that fed my soul, different from a commercial flight. I wasn’t watching life, I was actively participating in it, and, excitingly, anything could happen. We could crash, I could ask Mary to “pull over” so I could use the bathroom, or we could just continue to drift around up here in the fluffy clouds—I had no idea, but it definitely wasn’t a sure thing either way.

  I settled into thinking about signing the serious grownup paperwork. Our situation was uncomplicated relative to stories I had heard regarding other families. Everyone got on well—or as well as could be expected as we matured and morphed into who we really were. My older sister, Kim, was a flight attendant. Single, she lived in a beautiful house, which she kept meticulously decorated with her savvy interior-design skills. Rick, the youngest, flipped properties in the communities north of Houston. He and his wife Jennifer, and their five kids, lived in an old house that they had moved from inner Houston to the rural family place in the piney woods of East Texas. As for me, I was a happily wed suburban housewife, a struggling writer, a college football fanatic, a mother and a girl who had been uprooted several times, most recently to the land of enchantment that is Centerville, Ohio.

  We were all so different but had remained close and shared, for the most part, the same moral platform. The discussions regarding Mom and Dad’s estate would no doubt be interesting, as we three approached the subject of finances differently.

  Rick is the kind of guy who checks the gauge on the propane tank to monitor daily consumption. Kim, at the other extreme, would gladly cash in a portion of her retirement fund to go to Italy. I was somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t install a meter on my blow dryer, but I also wouldn’t cash in my adult diaper fund for a Carnival cruise. If I was being honest—and this is my freaking book after all—I would say that I was more correctly positioned on the financial barometer than my genetic associates, who would probably assert the same thing regarding themselves.

  As far back as I could remember, Kim had been the royal anointed one within our family. She reigned supreme throughout childhood, a dominance that had continued right on up to our mysterious passage into the adult world. She was the pretty one, strikingly beautiful since the beginning, and was born with a gre
at fashion sense. She was funny, thoughtful, smart, and, as a bonus, she didn’t look like she had just sniffed glue when we went to Olan Mills for a family photograph. Yeah, I had spent many long years being jealous of Kim for having the nerve to be everything I was not, but secretly wanted to be.

  Her potent influence is still apparent, sovereignty illustrated by the silver-platter snacking service offered up every time she chooses to bless our parents’ home with her presence. Don’t visualize Dean’s French Onion or Frito Lay Bean Dip, oh no indeed, it’s more like artichoke hearts and six kinds of imported cheese baked into a soufflé, or fresh-blended tomatillos, canola mayo and tenderly sliced jalapenos served with tortilla strips fried in peanut oil.

  They won’t come out before she arrives, and as soon as she ceases consumption, backing away from the kitchen island, the buffet ceases operation. It was how she rolled, and regardless of how long she stood commandingly over her kingdom, spreading her wingspan over her salty birthright, she never gained a pound.

  It was sick.

  RICK was the male heir to the Weinland throne, the boy that everyone had waited patiently through two babies with lady parts for. Yes, his penis was a welcome sight to my young parents, weary from pulling off yet another diaper only to find yet another soiled va-jay-jay. Heralded and trumpeted into life as the next Weinland leading man, Rick handled the pressure with great success. He didn’t ever buck the system or refuse to go along with everyone’s expectations; he just simply made it clear, from early on, that he was going to do things differently.

  An artist whose paintbrush was mainly a drumstick, and sometimes an actual paintbrush, Rick had music and the dream of a simple, unmaterialistic life. He was also the funniest person I had ever met. Hands down. His comedic timing was flawless. His approach was a magical mix of subtlety and obnoxiousness. One minute he was the most hilarious person in history, verbally and physically, while in the next, he became part of the background.