Two Feet Off The Ground Read online

  I dragged Owen out of the room. “I’m not staying in there for another thirty minutes to listen to these idiots.”

  “Mom.” He tilted his head, upset like I had just stolen his stash of video games.

  “Oh, relax,” I said, snapping my words out at him like a whip. I clenched my jaw. “I’m calling Chuck instead.”

  * *

  I hadn’t spoken to Chuck since that day at the gym. I avoided him, burned up by his harsh departure. But, I needed him now.

  I parked at the far edge of the airport an hour before was scheduled to meet him. I needed some downtime before hopping a flight to South County and back. When I woke that day, a stroke of confidence had flashed through me. If I could get through this one flight, I’d be en route to a life most would envy.

  I sipped my water and decided I’d better not drink. I certainly wasn’t about to crack the door of the Cesna and pee over the Atlantic Ocean. I fiddled with my radio and bypassed one sappy song after another. Finally I just shut the damn thing off and rested my head back. I hoped Chuck would be serious with me. The last thing I needed him to throw at me was a joke or foolhardy attempt to scare the shit out of me.

  I opened my eyes and watched a family of Canadian geese land on the grass by a pool of murky water. They pecked at the grass and hopped around on their little legs, happy to be alive and in such good company. Good for them.

  I got out of my car and dug in my trunk for the emergency pack that Owen begged me to prepare after 911. I could’ve sworn I tossed a package of crackers in it. I grappled with the zipper, twisting it around until it finally opened for me. I plucked up a bottle of hand sanitizer. Lot of good that would do them if stranded on the highway amidst a sea of other evacuees. I untangled some cord from a roll of duct tape and bypassed an emergency blanket before spotting a box of animal crackers.

  I chuckled when I opened them and discovered crumbs. Welcome to my life.

  I enjoyed the next forty-five minutes feeding the hungry geese, amused at how they gobbled down the stale crackers with glee. I wondered if they even had Canadian geese in California.

  He later filled me in right before he removed the wheel stops from in front of the tires. “Don’t know about California, but Hawaii’s state bird is an evolutionary descendent of the Canada goose.”

  By then though, I didn’t really give a crap. I just stirred up small talk to keep my head on straight. I hadn’t even touched the airplane and my stomach already rolled with nausea.

  “Here put this on.” He tossed me a headset.

  “Why do I need this?” I’d rather have had a parachute, a flotation device, and a helmet.

  “It’s the only way you’re going to hear me talking up there. In case an alien aircraft fires its laser beams down on us.”

  My throat burned. “I can’t do this, Chuck.” I handed him the headset back. “I can’t get up in that air with you in this thing that looks like a goose could topple it over.”

  “You’ve got to face this head on,” he said, sauntering up to the nose of the plane with a can of oil. He poured some into the propeller.

  “Why are you oiling the propeller?”

  “Normal stuff. Don’t worry.”

  I tapped the flimsy body. “Who chose this color anyway? It looks like someone threw up all over it.”

  He dipped to check under the nose. “Yours truly. Paula and I painted it drunk.

  That’s why there are a few spots where you can still see the duct tape that we used to hold the wings to the body.”

  I scoffed. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Relax, I promise you’ll be the one feeling like an ass when you discover how much fun you’ve been missing out on all these years.”

  “How do you find this fun?”

  He rose back up and twirled the propeller around a few times. “How do you find cutting hair fun?”

  “The same way a painter enjoys creating a masterpiece when he sticks his paint brush in a can of paint. I get to play all day, creating works of art that people can walk around with.”

  “I get to play all day, too. I get to zoom around the globe anytime I want to. If I want good chocolate, I can fly to Switzerland and eat a truffle while breathing in the crisp air of the Alps if I care to.”

  I’d settle for Hershey bars from Walgreens. “I’d rather change someone’s hair color.”

  “Yeah, well, if you don’t get up in the air, you’ll have time to fill all your nights and weekends with dye jobs, too.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and propped open my door. “Get in.”

  I braced one foot on the step and kept the other one pressed into the tarmac. “Can’t we just ease into this with baby steps?”

  “What do you want me to do? Taxi around in circles all day?”

  “Well, yeah. We could start there and see where we end up,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Or we could just sit here and watch the planes take off.”

  I climbed in. “That sounds perfect.”

  “I was joking.”

  He revved up the engine.

  “What are you doing?” I slapped his hand.

  He threw his head back laughing, while the engine idled higher. “Getting ready to fly a plane.”

  “Stop making the engine run so high like that.” I slapped his hand harder, over and over again until he stopped laughing.

  “Put your headset on.” He secured his under his chin. “Seriously. We’re just going to taxi.”

  I fastened my headset, yanking it so tight I coughed.

  “That’s not going to save your ass if we crash. It’s not a car seat for your head.”

  I smacked his arm this time, and winced when my hand hit his steel bicep. “You better not take this thing up in the air until I tell you to. If you do, I swear, I’ll kick you in the balls so hard that you’ll never be able to produce baby Ambers.”

  He cracked up. “The world might be better off that way.”

  “Just stop talking. I need to concentrate,” I said, securing my trembling hands under my legs.

  He eased on the gas and they jerked forward. My heart landed somewhere in the backseat. He played around with the buttons and murmured something into his mouthpiece to the controller in the tower. He pushed a button and they lurched forward. I gripped the seat and squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh shit.”

  “Relax, that’s normal.”

  “We’re just taxing, right?”

  “Right.”

  My teeth chattered like I’d just stepped inside a sub-zero freezer. He started to taxi the plane. They rolled down the aisle of aircrafts all safely parked with wheel stops in place.

  He stayed off the main drag and weaved in and out of aisles, down the side of the metal fence and to the far end of the runway where birch maples buffered the surrounding neighborhood from noise.

  “How are you doing?” He peeked over at me.

  “Never mind me. Keep your eye on what you’re doing.” He wasn’t driving his Mercedes down Main Street for crying out loud.

  “We’re safer in the air, you know,” he said.

  I looked up through the window at the clouds that hung like mashed potatoes. My heart raced ahead of me. I held my chest to slow it down. This was not how I wanted to live my life. I could learn to deal with life as a lonely lesbian better. I was sure.

  “What does it feel like to take off in this thing? Is it like a big plane?”

  “It’s better.”

  Of course. I supposed he’d agree that jumping ten cars with a motorcycle was, too.

  We passed some shrubs before he turned the plane around to go back the way they came. “Ready to tiptoe a little more?”

  Before I could answer, he sped up, and instead of following our path, he veered sharp off towards the runway.

  “Slow down,” I screamed.

  “Again, relax. The only way you’re going to get over this is to face it head on. I’m just offering you the push you need.”

  The engine powered up and the fast
er we sped, the more the plane shook. The next thing I knew, the plane zoomed forward and its nose tilted upwards. My mouth dried up like a field of cotton. I tried to talk, scream, anything, but the air underneath my feet sucked the life out of me like a super-powered vacuum. I balled up like a fetus, trying desperately to catch a breath, which proved difficult in the small jack-in-the-box space I had crammed into. When the back tires lifted, I dug my nails into his arms and screamed. The plane sank. I wailed like a newborn taking my first breath, flinging tears here there and everywhere.

  The plane bumped around the air like a car driving over railroad tracks. Chuck lifted us higher above the trees. I clung to his arms, pleading him to take us down, for the love of God.

  Horror took over his face. “I will. I’m circling back around. Just let go of my arm so I can steer this thing.”

  I rolled up in a ball again, burying my face in my knees. My heart raced like a galloping horse en route to claiming my Triple Crown. Suddenly, the plane dropped, bucking around like a bronco. I screamed like someone was scalping me. My belly rolled. The plane tilted from side to side, like a nervous squirrel not sure if it should cross the street. “Get me off this thing,” I begged.

  “I am. I am. I’m trying.”

  Finally, the tires hit ground and we rolled to a stop.

  Before he could even drive off the runway, I jumped out of the plane and ran off the tarmac towards the building. The last thing I heard was Chuck calling out after me-something about my pocketbook.

  Not until I reached my car did the gravity of the situation sink in. I was grounded for good. Grounded to a life that would never include Paula McKenna.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I trudged into work all groggy and defeated from my restless night’s sleep. When I fled from the runway the day before drenched with fresh tears and moving with the unsteadiness of a Parkinson’s patient, I determined I wouldn’t get another good night’s sleep unless Paula turned down her job or at least six months passed after we broke up. Either way, my future sucked.

  I had exhausted every means open to man. Books, magazines, Internet advice, therapy, group support, even the highly-regarded, in-your-face method, and still I wasn’t one step closer to freeing myself from the panic shackles that choked me.

  “You look terrible,” Aziza said to me.

  “You try sleeping with a twelve-year-old in the next room yakking away all night to his girlfriend.” There I went again, using poor Owen.

  “Someone’s got some serious PMS,” she said.

  I hurried past her so she wouldn’t see my chin quivering and the broken dam ready to release a raging river down my face. “I just need some coffee and I’ll be fine.”

  “I tried to call you to tell you your morning canceled out on you.”

  I sighed and dug for my cell. It was turned off. “Well that could’ve saved me a shit load of grief this morning.” I had run a red light, dodging a near collision with a carpet truck, and to really piss me off as I had raced by the coffee shop to get to the spa on time, a freaking cop pulled me over and gave me a ticket.

  “You look fried. You should really get some sleep.”

  I dropped my lunch pack and tote bag at my feet. “I’m not going back out in that traffic. I’ll just clean.” Clean Aziza’s salon. Her floors. Her sinks. Throw her towels into her washing machine and then into her dryer.

  “Why don’t you go home and start packing?” She scooped up my bags from the floor and draped them back over my shoulder. A worried frown crept across her face.

  The room started to tighten its steel hands around my throat. The smell of perm solution and bleach danced together forming a nauseating cocktail. The track lighting seared harsh wedges of heat and glare into me. I needed to leave. Maybe I’d drive to Galilee and hang out with the seagulls. I could toss clam cakes into the water while I sat on a pointy rock and sulked.

  I hoisted the straps of my bags higher up on my shoulder and walked over to the receptionist desk. “Let me see how much time to I have until my next one.”

  She rode on me tail like a car hugging a semi down the highway to save gas. “Well, you see what I did was—"

  “What the hell?” I rifled through the appointment book, and when I looked into my column, nothing but ruled, blank lines stared up at me as if laughing, mocking me that even my clients didn’t see me fit. From that day forward, my entire column of loyal customers had vanished. Erased and relocated to another column. “Why does Ashley have Ms. Davis and Ms. Roberts today? Why is everyone in her column?”

  She patted my back like I was a child who skinned my knee and needed a band aid. “I just thought you’d want to spend your last two weeks here doing fun stuff.”

  Cutting hair charged me. How could someone like Aziza, who screwed up every head of hair she touched, get that, though? She should’ve just signed that modeling contract back when she starred in the Providence Fashion Show ten years back and left the hair industry to people who actually cared about it. So not fair. She pranced around her salon all day acting important and bossy and now erased my career away with the back end of a stubby pencil.

  I backed away from the book. Salty bile rose up in the back of my throat, threatening a mutiny of its own. “Put my clients back.”

  “You’re foaming at the mouth like that Yorkie who attacked my ankles last year.”

  “They’re my clients,” I said. “I earned them. What right do you have just feeding them off to Ashley’s greedy little hands?”

  “Take it easy.” She backed away this time. “Go take a Midol and chill out.”

  “Just get out of my way.” I pushed her out of the way and charged towards the door.

  “Is this how you plan on spending your last couple weeks with me?” she asked. “Like a bitch on steroids?”

  I plowed towards the door, catching my foot on a basket of magazines and spilling them out onto the floor like a deck of cards. I bolted out the door like a pigheaded child and yelled out over my shoulder at Aziza, and for that matter anyone within a two mile radius, “I’m not moving to California.”

  * *

  I drove straight to Paula’s house. Her driveway was vacant. Her front door folded up into the door jamb like a new pack of t-shirts. Neat and untouched. She had taken Owen for some special bonding time, and I had no clue where they were. Mother of the Year. I snuck in around the back gate, half-expecting them to jump out at me and blast me with squirt guns set on the highest stream. But, only the morning glories greeted me, opening their petals so wide they could swallow me up whole and still smile towards the sun under the stench of my rotten mood.

  Next I circled the Boulevard, where a group of people of all different shapes practiced Tai Chi on the lush grass in front of the mansion with the gigantic Elvis portrait on the front room wall. A grave sin against interior decorating. The first time I caught a glimpse of the utter tackiness, I nearly got myself killed. Luckily Paula had grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me back on the grass before the yellow Volkswagen Beetle could run me over. What if some other weirdo in one of the many mansions lining the well-manicured street decided to hang up a picture of Audrey Hepburn with that cute little bun in her hair? Who would save me then?

  I coasted the road at a turtle’s pace, skimming the sidewalks with bleary eyes. I studied the tops of bushes for a tuft of Paula’s golden hair. I scanned the park benches, past the teeter-totters and around the water fountain. I darted back towards the Tai Chi people, jealous of their peace. They danced their arms and legs around like wings, unaware of the negative force field passing to their right side in a Beemer. Not until they disappeared in my rear view mirror did I finally exhale, afraid I’d somehow snuff out their good spirits just by breathing their same air.

  I drove on down Hope Street back towards the East Side of Providence and passed Apsara restaurant. Paula had introduced me to the shoebox-sized restaurant. That first night, we waited in line for over an hour. I had just finished a twelve hour shift at Bell
a and my feet throbbed. Each time I shifted my balance to ease the needle-stabbing pain, Paula would assure me the Nime Chow would erase the aches and pains the moment my teeth sunk into the fresh wrap stuffed with rice noodles, basil, bean sprouts, lettuce, and shrimp dripping in peanut sauce. Nime Chow had now replaced Advil for good.

  My head throbbed as I traveled closer to downtown Providence. And, only one thing could soothe the knocking in my head. I pulled into the crowded drugstore parking lot just past the string of “mom and pop” shops hugging the street. Once inside, I marched right down to the candy aisle, which was filled with treats beckoning for my attention like puppies in a shelter. I walked down a little further to the single chocolate bars and sought out my favorite. A Hershey bar. I reached for one and plied open the wrapper with my teeth. I devoured it in three bites, then folded the torn wrapper and made sure to hold it high enough for the camera to see, so anyone peeking at me wouldn’t think I’d set out to steal it. Next to flying, my next worse nightmare was jail.

  I hunkered down to the tampon aisle and passed an elderly woman with blue hair. I wanted to kidnap her, tie her to a chair at Bella, and make her over. The lady peered up at me and offered a weak smile. She looked at me with a glimmer of pity and concern before hobbling away, stamping her cane into the ground with each wobbly step.

  I folded my frown into a half smile, hoping the gesture would actually inject me with some peace. But, it just felt phony like I’d taped my lips up at the corners.

  I grabbed a box of tampons and then hunted down the card aisle. I surveyed the topics and scoffed when I saw that some card maker actually approved cards for breaking up with someone. Although we shared many good times… If only we could agree more than disagree… I only wish I could have been the person you needed me to be… What about I’m sorry I’m such a freak?

  I had to find Paula now and tell her that it was over; that she deserved more than I could give her; that I would just waste her precious time and eventually she’d end up hating me.