Tangent

Something told their vacation just didn't work out, ya know...?

+++++

So...after signing off on the manifest and load-out in the dispatch office at CDG, I made my way out to the airplane on the early side because I wanted to stop off for breakfast at Maxim's. I always loved their ham and cheese omelet and made it a point to drop by for breakfast whenever I made the CDG-Logan run, and with a decent breakfast under my belt, I went on out to the gate to get the day going.

And that's when my life turned upside down. When the next door opened, anyway.

Red hair. Batik dress. Sitting in a cloud of patchouli. Joyce. Joyce of the green eyes.

Sitting with a young girl. Sitting there expectantly -- just like she was waiting, for me.

Because, as it happened, that's exactly what she was doing.

+++++

Maybe the first clue that something was wrong came when she ran into the pilot's arms.

She wasn't the skinny little thing he remembered, either. As a matter of fact, he thought she was rather plump. The bags under her eyes came as a surprise, too. Still, the pilot seemed to take hold of the moment and he helped her back into her seat and gave her a tissue to wipe away the tears that had come as a surprise.

+++++

"Joyce? I can't believe it's you!"

"I know, I know," she said between sniffles. "I just really need to see you, to talk to you."

And about this time I notice the teenage girl sitting next to Joyce. Then I noticed her eyes. Which for some reason reminded me of my own mother's blue-green eyes.

Fuck.

What was that sound? Cosmic tumblers slipping into place?

"Joyce? What is it?" I think I managed to say -- as I looked at the teenager.

"We need to talk," she repeated, now gasping for air.

"I can see that," I sighed, wondering where I'd packed my heartburn medications. "Are you on this flight?"

"Yes, your dad helped me."

Okay, like that was a big help. "Okay, okay," I said. "Can we talk -- once we get to Boston?"

She nodded before she hauled a wad of soggy tissue up to her nose and began playing something that sounded an awful lot like The Ride of the Valkyries.

Not exactly knowing what else to do I looked at the teenager and held out my hand. "Hi. My name's Jim. And you are?"

"Tracy," the girl said -- and rather sullenly, too -- as she took my hand in her's.

Then Joyce looked at me and shrugged -- as if the gravity taking hold of us had grown too strong to ignore. "Jim...she's your daughter."

I think there's something about those cosmic tumblers -- like they make an unmistakable, almost imperceptible little clicking noise as they slip into place. You can feel them, too, right in the middle of your heart.

+++++

They were flying coach but I took care of that and moved them up to the front of the plane before I disappeared into the cockpit. I was so early I had the space all to myself -- until Jill, one of the flight attendants, a sweet thing I'd known for years came in to go over the cabin manifest.

"Anything I need to know about?" she asked.

Really. No kidding. Like what would you say then, ya know? "Well," I began, "it turns out a girl I was nailing back in college has a kid, and guess what? I'm the daddy. And...I just found out."

"Uh, okay."

"And they're on this flight. I just put them in 2A & B. Would you take care of them for me, please?"

"Take care of them? What did you have in mind?"

I shrugged. "I don't have a clue, Jill. As a matter of fact, I'm feeling a little speechless right now."

"You? Speechless? Wow, I am impressed."

"Jill? Not now, please."

"Okay, champagne and caviar it is. Anything else I need to know?"

I think I just shook my head, but not much else remains in my mind about the rest of that day. Once we got into Logan and parked on the ramp at T5, I helped Joyce and Tracy off the plane and through customs, then Joyce told me to pick a place where we could talk for a while.

"Where are you staying?" I asked in reply.

"Nowhere right now."

"Nowhere? What does that mean?"

"I was in Copenhagen," she said, "but I needed a way home so I called your dad."

"Uh, Joyce, you're losing me. Do you guys have a place to stay or not?"

"No."

"I don't mean to split hairs, but are you telling me you don't have any place to live?"

"Mom!" Tracy cried out in exasperation. "Just tell him!"

"Tracy, just back off, okay?" Joyce whispered, her voice a coarse, jagged thing that seemed to have come from someplace way beyond tired. "Jim? Just get us out of here, please."

Tired, yes, but I heard a rising tide of panic in her voice and now all of a sudden I realized I was looking at some kind of breakdown in the making. And, if I was reading the tea leaves just right my father had given his blessing to this meeting so I really needed to get my act together, and quick. I picked up Joyce's bag and headed for the crew shuttle -- with these two strangers in tow. We got to my car, an ancient Land Rover that I used to drive to the airport in winter, and I did the only thing that came to mind...I drove them up to my place.

I'd bought a little place in Manchester-by-the-Sea after I settled on Logan as my home base; it was new construction and bigger than I needed but it was almost right in the center of town and I could walk to almost everything I needed. I'd furnished the place as if a family might -- had one lived there, though I knew not why at the time; maybe because it felt like the right thing to do? So, are you thinking breadcrumbs and circles yet?

And as I think I mentioned, it was early December and the mid-afternoon sky was lead gray, but the sky around Boston in the wintertime is always lead-gray -- and cold. There'd been a couple of snowy days a few weeks prior but only the gritty remains were left on the margins of the highway leading out from Boston; it was, I guess, a typical New England winter's day -- which is to say it was depressing as hell. When I pulled into my driveway and hit the garage door opener the first words out of Joyce's mouth concerned our little green Porsche.

"You still have it?" she cried, and for some reason seeing the old thing made her cry -- again.

I got their bags to the rooms I thought they'd like, then went downstairs to wait for them; Tracy came down first, and she found me in the kitchen popping the top on a Coke.

"Is there anything to drink?" she asked.

"All kinds of stuff in the 'fridge. Help yourself."

She found my last Coke and stood behind the sink and slugged it down, then she took a deep breath before cutting loose with a timber-rattling belch.

Nice first impression, ya know?

"So. You're my dad." Not a question, just a statement of fact. And she didn't seem too excited by the idea, either.

"Uh, look, this is all news to me, Tracy. Have you and your mother talked much about all this?"

"Oh...only for the last ten years."

"How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Fourteen. I'll be fifteen on the twenty-fifth."

"A Christmas baby," I said, doing the math as I watched her. And yes, the numbers worked out perfectly. I could in fact remember the night I'd nailed Joyce that would have led to a December birth. I was, in fact, in Pensacola, Florida at the time she came into the world, but by then Joyce was supposedly hooked up with some realtor or something like that. "That always sounded like..." I started to say...

"Like getting short-changed? Christmas and your birthday on the same day so you only get half as many presents...?" She shrugged, then she walked off -- into the living room, and there she plopped down onto the sofa and finished off a root beer. And then Joyce came down the stairs and straight away asked for a mineral water, just as Tracy fired off another wall rattling burp.

"Sparkling?" I asked, trying to ignore the eruption in the living room.

"If you have some. Please."

"What about dinner?" I asked. "We've got a couple of good seafood places within walking distance if anyone's interested."

"I've always wanted to try lobster," Tracy chirped brightly. "Is there any place for that?"

"Sure," I replied. "Joyce? What about you? Are you hungry yet?"

"Give me a half hour," she sighed, trying to smile a little.

I handed her a Perrier after she sat beside Tracy, and it wasn't hard to see my contribution to her features as they sat side by side. And it wasn't too big a stretch to see my mother -- as well as bits of me and my brother -- in her profile.

And yes, this was all a little unsettling -- yet I was still waiting to hear what this was really all about.

"So?" I began cheerfully. "I think you said there's something you wanted to tell me?"

Joyce sipped her water, then put the little green bottle down on the table in front of her legs.

"Yeah, Jim. I'm sorry, I should've let you know about Tracy years ago but after I got married..."

"Did your husband know?" I asked...

...and she shook her head. "We hooked up right after you left, but I knew. And I never told him. Then during some kind of medical exam he learned he was sterile and that was the end of that. He filed for divorce about three years ago. I tried to keep up with the house payments but, well, that didn't work out. That's when I contacted your dad. He's been helping us out a little..."

I think my hands were shaking by that point. I know I was upset, but just then I saw that Tracy was curling up inside, already extremely afraid something bad was about to happen, so I tried to let go, let Joyce get this out in her own way.

"...but we ended up losing the house. We tried staying with my mom for a while but that didn't work out, either."

"I can only imagine," I sighed. I remembered Joyce's mother. She'd been an alcoholic for as long as I'd known Joyce and I couldn't imagine a worse place to raise a kid.

"You remember her?"

"She's kind of hard to forget, Joyce."

"Yeah, well, she's worse now."

"So...where were you living, when you were married?"

"Up on the coast," she said -- a little too evasively.

"I see," I said, because I did see. 'Up on the coast' meant Humboldt County, the pot-growing capitol of the known universe, which meant her realtor hubby had probably been knee-deep in the trade. And she probably had been, too. And she was being evasive because, despite my time in Berkeley, I had always been considered uncool when and where pot was concerned. Then again, I was probably considered uncool where booze was concerned, or any other drugs, for that matter. Call me a prude or call me an asshole -- it doesn't matter to me what your own excuses are -- because I am the anti-drug. Always have been, always will be, and you'd be surprised how many pilots are exactly like me. Or...maybe you wouldn't be...

"I always hated that judgmental tone," Joyce sighed. "I can still hear the derision in your voice when you say 'I see.' We all could, ya know...?"

"I wasn't cut out for that life, Joyce."

"But you were such a good musician. I really never understood where all your anger came from?"

"I don't either, but here's the kicker. I really don't care where it came from, and guess what? I'm not going to change anytime soon. I hope that's not going to be a problem for you."

And Tracy was getting smaller and smaller, turning in on herself the more I spoke, the more worked up I got, but it didn't take a real rocket scientist to figure out that all the horror stories she'd heard about me were coming true. More than true. She was getting a front-row seat to her nightmare-come-true...her asshole father in all his self-righteous glory about to explode and throw them back out on the street. Again.

But then...our circle started to close.

"Jim, I'm sick," Joyce said. The green-eyed love of my life. The girl I turned away from when I decided to destroy my world...

"Sick?" I said.

"It's called a glioblastoma. It's a..."

"I know what a glioblastoma is, Joyce. How long have you known?"

"About a month."

"What's the treatment plan?"

"Jim, I don't have insurance. That's why we were in Copenhagen."

"What? Not even Medicaid?"

She shook her head and my eyes started blinking like a semaphore flashing out an SOS. I looked at my watch and went to the telephone and called a friend -- who also just happened to be a lawyer. After a brief hold I explained the situation to him, right down to the Tracy thing, and he recommended we meet up for dinner and go over some options.

Joyce and Tracy were staring at me during this exchange, looking at me like I was some kind of lunatic-idiot-savior, and after I rang off I turned to them and was really quite taken aback by the sight of the two of them. Diaphanous little Joyce, well, not so petite anymore but still cute as hell, and our little girl. Two peas from the same pod. And just then it hit me. And hard.

They were the life I'd had within my grasp, and yet they were the life I never knew was within my grasp. I was angry as hell and totally unprepared for the sudden overwhelming love I felt for them both.

+++++

Marco Petrocelli was one of those all-purpose lawyers everyone runs across sooner or later. He'd handled the closing on my house and beat a speeding ticket in municipal court for me. Well, more than one, actually. He played golf and liked to sail, which was how we became friends. Sailing. Not golf. A real fringe benefit of being Marco's friend was his mom's lasagna. His parents owned a fantastic little Italian cafe down on the waterfront and his mom's lasagna was the stuff legends are made of.

So we met Marco at the cafe and sat in a quiet little corner booth, and Joyce finally felt free enough to let it all hang out. Tracy did too, and I assume because she probably thought I couldn't possibly hurt either of them in front of witnesses!

Sheesh. Teenagers.

Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but as time was of the essence Marco thought the best way to get insurance for Joyce -- and Tracy -- was to marry her and get her on my group policy as soon as humanly fucking possible, because Massachusetts had the best laws in the country as far as pre-existing coverage issues were concerned. He volunteered to make it happen, too.

So, here's the scoop.

The day before I was this happy-go-lucky single guy with a nice job and no responsibilities.

Tomorrow I was going to be married to my college sweetheart. I was going to be the father of a fifteen-year-old girl who was, quite literally, terrified of me. And, assuming the clouds of patchouli that seemed to ooze from their pores meant they were both potheads, I was going to be up to my neck in one hell of an ethical dilemma.

Make them quit? Yup. That wasn't an issue, at least not as far as I was concerned, yet...now I had to consider the probable results of coming down hard while having a rebellious teenager on my hands. Stupid I am not. Uncompromising? Yeah, probably, but not stupid.

I knew exactly what I needed. In fact, it was the only possible solution.

I needed a mother.

No. Let me be clear. I needed my mother.

When I called home I realized I needn't have worried. Their bags were already packed.

+++++

Yes. I know. Maybe I could have handled this on my own. Hell, who knows, maybe I should have...but that's not how these circle things work.

But here's the thing. My parents were good at the whole mom and dad thing, and maybe because the first thing they ever taught me to do was to listen. Listen to them. Listen to my teachers. Listen to my friends. So...I listened. And because I knew how to listen I found it easy to learn. And I found that by listening to people I found it easy to learn all about them and that as a result I hardly ever got into arguments or disagreements with anyone.

Maybe it was too late to get Tracy over that hump, or maybe no one had ever tried to get her to listen, but all that fear coiled like a spring in her gut sure looked to me just like someone who didn't know how to listen. She'd heard a lot of stuff about me but when it came right down to it, when she finally met me she had no clue how to listen to me. What she'd heard about me in the past kept her from hearing me when I spoke -- and it was going to hurt us. She and me. And my mom was the best remedy to the problem I had, so why not at least give it a try...?

Why not, indeed?

Because as it happened they'd been on the sidelines for a few years. My dad had been involved for at least the last three years, and though he'd never told me about Tracy he'd done so only because Joyce had insisted he not do so. Now it looked like they were going to get to play the whole grandparent thing -- and that by marrying Joyce I was going to make the game legit. How perfect! Instant family!

But wait a minute there, young whippersnapper. Your betrothed, your wife, has a glioblastoma, and in case no one has clued you in yet, this wife of yours, the one with the glioblastoma, is going to die. And probably within a year, if not a whole lot sooner.

In other words, this part of the story does not come with a happy ending.

+++++

I think it was a few days before Christmas.

Yeah. Mike and I were scheduled to do the CDG thing again.

And I know right about now you're scratching your head and wondering where this is going. I got that. Yeah. But, well, you see...the whole Mike thing is wrapped up in this story in all kinds of interesting ways. Like I said...circles are like that.

So, yeah, dispatch office, pick up manifest and load out and Mike's there too, going over the METARs -- the meteorological reports for the North Atlantic overnight -- then we walked out to the gate and stowed our flight bags, woke up the aircraft then went down onto the slush-covered ramp to do our walk-around. Yeah. Cold as shit and snowing like a son of a bitch. That about sums it up. Nasty outside, and getting nastier by the minute.

Back to the 'pit and get the heat cranked up, program the INS and sign-off for the load-out, call the stews and tell them it's time to close and arm the doors. Call Ground for a pushback and activate the flight plan. Push back and start three then taxi to the active. Take off and climb out of the muck and work the SID to the airway. Routine. Pilots like routine. Routine is good.

The time from pushback to takeoff to getting established on your airway is no-nonsense time. There's no extraneous chit-chat allowed. No 'how's the new pup doing?' or 'how'd that wisdom tooth thing go?' during that phase of flight. You 'aviate' -- period. You fly the plane and listen to ATC when they call out traffic. You fly the plane and look for traffic. Maybe a half-hour later, when you hit cruise and the autopilot takes over, you start the whole idle chit-chat thing -- assuming you want to.

As far as Mike was concerned I was pretty sure I didn't want to.

Mike, on the other hand, wanted to. Hell, he needed to.

"I left Isabel," he said like right out of the blue.

"Oh?" I think I said, not really wanting to go there.

"Yeah. The thing is, I got a problem."

I turned and looked at the flight engineer, a crusty old dude who looked and acted like a civil war veteran, and he knowingly pulled the breaker on the CVR, the cockpit voice recorder. And voila, with Big Brother turned off you can vent to your heart's content knowing the goons back on the ground won't be listening as you talk about corn-holing your mother-in-law at Thanksgiving. Or...whatever...

"Oh?" I replied. "What's up?"

"Well, see, the thing is...I've been seeing a dominatrix up in Beverly..."

I think I closed my eyes and looked heavenward, saying the only prayer that comes to mind in such situations: "Oh, God no...Why me?"

Then I looked at Mike. "No kidding? A dominatrix? What's that like?" This, of course, I said in a remarkably non-judgmental voice. As in, "Oh, you like bananas on your Cheerios? Me too. Well, how about that! What a coincidence!"