It seemed meant to be. But she had just been offered a job at The Boston Globe; it was too great an opportunity for her to pass up. I moved back to the town I loathed, but we agreed it was just for a year or two. That was at the end of 1998. Within a year, she was covering John McCain’s presidential campaign. We both thought this was somewhat hilarious since McCain was a Naval Academy grad of my dad’s era and she had only a tenuous grasp on American politics. I wrote her up a 3,500-word annotated history of the New Hampshire primaries, helped her pack up our Sentra, and she headed north.
She spent most of the next year on the road covering McCain; this made me alternately miserable—I missed her terribly—and ecstatic—her absence allowed me to flee Boston for friends in Los Angeles and Chicago. But even the 2000 campaign eventually ended. She was now a star at the paper and all talk of moving to New York or Los Angeles ceased. And she wanted to start a family.
Our arguments left me bitterly reflecting on my own childhood. Dad had given up nothing for his wife and children. Not his dangerous profession, not his career climbing. And now, having endured that, I was supposed to be the postmodern man, sinking my own ambitions for a wife and unborn child? I faced some of the hardest decisions of my life. As usual, I felt unprepared and alone.
There are turning points in life that you don’t notice at the time. The dissolution of my marriage wasn’t one of them. I can tell you exactly when it imploded. It was in a third-floor room of the New Orleans Ritz-Carlton. I was profiling a seventeen-year-old jockey and we had just flown in from San Francisco for the Eclipse Awards on an interminable flight where we took turns stealing liquor bottles off the airline cart. At the airport, a horse owner picked us up with an open case of Coors on the backseat of his Cadillac. An hour later, I had just fallen into a hard, drunken sleep when the phone rang. I heard the Australian accent that still killed me eight years after falling in love with her. She was excited.
“I found the perfect house.”
I expected to hear the tale of another overpriced condo we could barely afford in the Back Bay or the South End.
“It’s in Nahant.”
Nahant is a lovely town on the north shore of Massachusetts, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. It was home to our best friends and their two kids whom I desperately loved. Often, I would make the thirty-minute trek from Boston to soak up their food, play on their backyard tire swing, and have a swim. But I had no desire to live there. Nahant is nearly all white, houses one pizza joint, and is fifteen miles through horrible traffic and strip malls from the limited possibilities of Boston. I saw a Stephen King existence in my future: not that of the wealthy writer but of a man driven slowly insane by isolation.
“Nahant? I thought we agreed I didn’t want to live there.”
A forty-five-minute monologue followed. I don’t remember the particulars except for a repeated phrase: “If you don’t want to buy the house, you were never committed to this marriage.”
I could have said no, but I was never good at that, not in that relationship, not in my life. I could feel her slipping away from me, so I did what I always do with loved ones who threaten to slip away. I surrendered. I said okay and hung up.
I flew home the next night on a red-eye that was caught in a blizzard, so I didn’t land at Logan until 10:00 a.m. We had to make an offer that afternoon. In a haze, I walked through the wood floors, saw the distant sea view, noted my wife’s enthusiasm, and signed the papers. I just wanted her not to be mad at me anymore.
We moved in two months later. Shortly after the moving truck arrived, a friend stopped by and found me wandering aimlessly through the rooms. “Dead man walking,” he quipped. It wasn’t too far from the truth.
I spent the next year in a deep depression. I lived a double life there. I’d jet off to wherever and interview a quarterback or a murder suspect or the occasional Colombian rebel. In some ways, I was living the big life I always wanted. But at home, I struggled to get out of bed before ten. On a good day, I’d fall into my rusting Honda and drive three miles to the YMCA in nearby Lynn, a dying industrial town. The Y on a weekday morning was populated with retirees in their sixties from a nearby General Electric plant. They were a rough bunch—there was a sign in the shower that read “Cleaning habits that may be acceptable at home may be considered offensive by other patrons”—and the regulars would blast CNBC and trot on treadmills without bothering to change out of their flannel shirts and deer-hunting orange hats. I’d move quickly toward the pool where I’d share a lane with a mildly retarded man who eagerly awaited my arrival with a lopsided smile and a propensity to scissor-kick me in the ribs every lap or so.
But in the water I’d lose myself. Swimming lap after lap, I’d envision an escape to Los Angeles or New York. No more lunches at Wendy’s on the Lynnway, no more being awakened by the lobsterman’s backfiring truck as he headed off to tend his traps at four in the morning. My fantasy woman was a lot like my wife, but without the picket fence fetish. She would be a slightly bohemian type with an artsy job who wanted to raise boho kids in a shambling, run-down apartment in Brooklyn or Santa Monica.
Every day, I wrote for a couple hours, called friends across the country, and then slipped into a two- or three-hour nap. Some days, I wandered the deserted roads of our town. Nobody walked there, so this led to my being hassled by the cops. This did not improve my attitude. By the time my wife arrived home, I wasn’t fit company for anyone. Surly and sarcastic became my default settings. There were ultimatums and timetables given for my improvement. I entered therapy. I took Paxil. She became convinced that I wasn’t going to be a fit husband or good father until I came to grips with the death of my own father.
I agreed, but how?
Then 9/11 came. The planes that destroyed the World Trade Towers took off from Boston Logan, passing over our little town before making a U-turn and heading south. When it became clear what had happened, she headed into work. For some reason, I drove to the T and took it to Logan. The once bustling terminals were now quiet except for a woman sweeping the floor while crying quietly to herself.
The Globe sent my wife to Pakistan a few weeks later. I returned to Flint for Thanksgiving. The country’s buildup to war triggered something long buried. The night I arrived, Mom and my sisters watched the news and footage of planes taking off from faraway carriers. I lay on the couch and felt a physical weight crushing my chest. I stared at Dad’s planes on the mantel and his portrait on the wall. I wanted to scream, “He died!”
But I said nothing. Still, it was the first hint of an awakening. I went to bed and woke up at 5:00 a.m. with a fear I had never felt before, not while on dangerous assignments with Colombian narco-terrorists or while riding in BMWs with suspected murderers. I stumbled outside and walked through our neighborhood until dawn. I told Mom I had to get away. We sat in her car at a gas station before I left and I asked her why we never talked about Dad.
“I thought it would be too painful for you,” she said. “People told me we should move on and look forward, not back.”
I left an hour later. I wandered the country, visiting friends from Chicago to California. I watched the network news extol the bravery of our pilots as footage of their red taillights heading off to Afghanistan played in the background. I changed the channel.
Things between my wife and me deteriorated. When she came back from Pakistan, I met her at Logan in a driver’s cap with her name written on a piece of cardboard, but she didn�
��t laugh at all. That’s when I knew I was screwed.
Then I got an email from the Navy. I had tried getting on board an aircraft carrier for a magazine story earlier in the year after my wife’s urging, but it fell apart after 9/11. But then the Navy changed their mind; this was going to be a long war, and maybe some good publicity in a glossy mag was not a bad thing. I was invited to spend three weeks deployed with a Hornet squadron. When I saw what carrier they were on I lost my breath; it was the Kitty Hawk, Dad’s last boat.
If this wasn’t dealing with his death, nothing short of orchestrating my own plane crash would do. I departed for Hong Kong to meet the carrier two weeks later. We promised not to make any decisions while I was away.
I saw Dad’s ready room. I saw where he prayed. On a murky night off Singapore, I wandered onto the deck of the Kitty Hawk in an Ambien haze and walked the few hundred feet in the tracks of the catapult that launched him to his death. I stumbled to the edge of the boat, nearly pitching over the side into a sea of darkness. And I wept.
I returned three weeks later, tan and ten pounds heavier from too many midrats corn dogs—and with a new understanding of my father. It didn’t pay immediate dividends. That Sunday, in a Gap parking lot, my wife told me she was leaving me.
“It’s just not working.”
For once in my life, I said nothing. My first thought was, “In a Gap parking lot? Are you fucking kidding?” We rode home in silence. It turned out I was going to be doing the leaving. At the house, I threw some clothes into two giant duffel bags and laughed bitterly at the wallpaper I had been peeling off our bedroom walls—prep work for a renovation that now would never happen. I tossed my CDs into a crate and packed up my Honda for a trip to see the Harrisons in Chicago.
At first, I tried to maintain my dignity, but our good-bye was more Rowlands and Cassavetes than Hepburn and Tracy. I was fine for a while and then flopped on the kitchen floor, bawling uncontrollably. My wife wondered whether she should call the paramedics.
Finally, I gathered myself and drove away. Five minutes later she called me.
“Aha,” I smirked. Second thoughts already.
“You forgot your laptop.”
That was basically the end. Eventually, I wrote an essay about moving to New York as a newly re-singled man and mentioned our divorce in a setup paragraph. There were no names. She read it and never took another call of mine. In a way, she enacted my most primal fear from childhood: someone I desperately loved walking away and slamming the door shut.
My reaction to the silent treatment was less than manly. I left begging messages. I implored friends to intercede. I made her a mix CD. Then I turned comically thuggish. I read about how the Romans handled the Carthaginians and toyed with driving to Nahant and spreading Morton’s salt over her beloved tomato garden. A friend convinced me that might be a felony.
A year or two passed and I avoided Boston at all costs, turning down assignments that brought me anywhere near the so-called Hub of the Universe. But I had an accountant who took profoundly liberal deductions for me. She’d done my taxes over the phone for two years after I moved because of my begging, but then insisted I come and do them in person if I wanted to keep using her. I had to do it. My whole personal financial system was built around her visionary use of the home office deduction. I made plans to stay with friends in Nahant, just two blocks from my former home.
I got drunk with a couple of friends in Manhattan the night before my trip. Around closing time, I proclaimed that maybe it would be a great idea if I toilet-papered my old house the next night. Everyone agreed this was a splendid idea. We all stole rolls of toilet paper from the bathroom at Lucky Strike, a SoHo bar I cherished like an old friend. We crashed back at my place and built a tower of stolen toilet paper on my Danish modern dining room table, the one cool thing I’d claimed in our divorce.
It seemed like a less good idea the next morning. I hit a baseball game at Shea Stadium for work and then drove up to Nahant that afternoon. I had dinner with my friends and their kids. Still hung over, I turned in early and fell asleep.
I woke at 3:00 a.m., wide awake. I knew what I had to do. I gathered up two rolls from the guest bathroom and threw on a black jacket. I headed out in my socks—better not to leave shoeprints, I thought. I crossed a cemetery and tripped over a headstone, doing a face plant into some kind of animal feces.
Now covered in shit, I trudged on. A few minutes later, a police car drove by making his nightly rounds. I dove behind a shed into a pile of moldy two-by-fours festooned with rusty nails. Dodging lockjaw, I tiptoed the last block. I saw the old house, an unassuming sky blue Cape Codder. It still made me shiver a little. I looked around and saw that the coast was clear. I tossed a roll into a pear tree that used to carve scratches on my arms when I tried to mow around it. I did it one more time. Then I got the hell out of there. It was such a pathetic job that I’m not sure my ex ever noticed; or she may have just blamed it on neighbor kids. She was much too cool a customer to let on either way.
I was now two years older than Dad when he died. He commanded men and flew off carriers. I was TP-ing my ex’s house. The comparison was not flattering.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I flew off on the COD the morning before the Black Ravens so I could get to Whidbey in time for the fly-in. The Nimitz had tracked north toward home and the water temperature was below 60 degrees, so all passengers had to wear fluorescent orange cold-weather suits. The suits would keep you alive in the water for three hours, but how you were supposed to survive a crash was another matter. The COD only had a hatch up top; there was no way to bail out. We would all be riding that sucker into the water in case of emergency.
The guys convinced me that wearing civvies under the cold-weather suit would be uncomfortable, so I put my flight suit back on. We shot off the Nimitz’s catapult and I thought of Dad being launched from that same catapult when I was a little boy.
We flew two hours to McChord Air Force Base just outside of Tacoma. I meant to change into my civvies right after we landed, but I wanted to share a taxi to Sea-Tac with a Hornet pilot so there was no time. We then sat in I-5 traffic for forty-five minutes. I was bone tired by the time we arrived and just wanted to get on the road before Seattle’s nightmare rush hour. I started wandering the frequent-renter row of National Car Rental trying to choose between a Ford Fusion and a Chevy Malibu. I was in full option paralysis when a middle-aged man in a National windbreaker ran up to me. He stuck out his hand.
“We want to give you a free upgrade.”
I shook his hand, but I was confused.
“For your service. To welcome you home.”
I guess I sort of looked the part. My hair was fairly short and I had a three-week cruise ’stache going. I thanked the man and slid into the leather seat of a maroon Volvo.
I kept driving until I pulled into the parking lot of the Best Western on Whidbey. I didn’t have a reservation, but the clerk said they had plenty of rooms. I’d left my wallet in the car and started back for it. The clerk told me not to worry about it.
“You’re okay. You’re getting the government rate. Your flight suit is your ID.”
I just smiled, trudged to my room, and thought, “Well, you took my father when I needed him most, so I might as well save twelve bucks a night and get a comfy car.” Sometimes, loss can be glib.
I went to my room and collapsed on the bed, just undoing the laces of my flight boots. I reeked of aviation fuel and desperately needed my first real shower in a month. But I didn’t want to take my flight suit off. I knew it might be for the last time. Shedding th
e suit would make me lose Dad again.
The next morning, I put on the uniform of the marginally employed American man—khakis and a dress shirt. Back on the Nimitz, Tupper looked like shit. He sat through the morning brief and tried to listen, but halfway through he excused himself and puked in a garbage can outside the ready room.
The Black Ravens just looked at each other and shrugged. Getting all the Prowlers airborne was going to suck in the best of circumstances, and now their skipper was barely walking. Doc asked Tupper if he was okay to fly. He lied and said yes. No one said anything. In a way, it was a mirror image of Doogie’s fly-off, the one Tupper screamed had been “unsat.” Here was Tupper jumping into the cockpit massively dehydrated and with a fever. No one could really blame him, but it was “Do as I say, not as I do.”
On the flight deck, mechanics in other squadrons placed bets on whether VAQ-135 could get all their Prowlers airborne. The consensus? No chance. They had watched the Black Ravens struggle all cruise with the Midway fiasco, the Headden accident, and the Crapper screwup. The Nimitz senior staff rolled their eyes last week when Tupper gave his bone-tired sailors twenty-four hours off against the recommendation of CAG. Tupper had made a simple deal with his guys: “I’ll take care of you, but you need to take care of me and the squadron by getting these jets airborne.” The salty old dogs on the Nimitz thought it was all so very heartwarming, but that was twenty-four hours to work on ancient planes the squadron wouldn’t get back. There was no way they’d all get airborne.
But then Tupper launched first. The rest of the planes followed, even the Hangar Queen getting up without a hitch. It took less than fifteen minutes. The old-timers back on the Nimitz admitted maybe they had sold the Black Ravens a little short. The squadron Tupper had preached about, the one he’d always wanted, had come through for their skipper at last.
The Magical Stranger Page 18
