Tangent

Mike dated once or twice but nothing ever came of it. I think he was afraid any woman he touched would turn to cancer and that her ashes would blow away on the next sea breeze. He kept flying for a while, at least until Sadie graduated from high school, then he retired and started teaching kids to fly. By that time Sadie and Mario Petrocelli were a permanent fixture down on the waterfront, and once she started working at the restaurant as a waitress that was it. Within a few years, she alone possessed the secret to Mama Petrocelli's lasagna and there she would remain, spinning off to form new circles of her own.

Angela went to NYU and then to med school. She's an oncologist now and lives up in Portland, Maine, yet the funniest thing about us, the really odd part of our story, is that I love Angela and Sadie as much as I love Tracy. We came together inside a shifting moment in time, a moment when old circles completed their arcs and new circles seemed ready to start, but we, all of us, fused under the pressure of the moment. We came together, just like families have come together throughout all our time on this planet.

I watched my father's circle close, then my mother's. And I watched their circles close with three girls and a slightly insane pilot there by my side because, hey, that's what families do. When we're together now everything feels whole and good and right with our world, and I don't know how else to describe things. We just are.

Tracy thought she wanted to be a pilot for a while until she heard me play the piano anyway, and then, after she really listened to the two records I was a part of she decided she wanted to be a musician. And despite all my best efforts to change her mind she turned out to be a decent keyboardist, even if she still burps too loudly.

All these spinning circles come together at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and everyone comes and spends a month or so here when the leaves are green and the breezes are soft and warm. Even Mike comes by every now and then, usually to pick up a grandkid and bounce him on a knee, but sometimes just to pick up his mail. It's home, after all is said and done.

I married Jill, the flight attendant I'd futzed around with before Joyce came back to me. It took me a while to get there but we weren't meant to live alone. We go down to Petrocelli's at least once a week and eat Sadie's lasagna, and on Sundays Marco joins us for brunch.

Jill and I like to walk out to a nearby beach -- it's called Singing Beach for some reason -- and even in winter we like to walk through the snow and watch the sun come up over the water. Sunrise and sunset, points on an arc describing and defining circles of her own design, yet even so a part of who and what we are, what it means to be alive, even if we are but little tangents to her steady arc. Jill and I walk down to the sand and the sea with an old Bernese Mountain Dog by our side, and she barks at passing whales.

© 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | all rights reserved, and as usual this was just a little bit of fiction, pure and simple.