The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [26]
But with Paisley, Ginger inscribes in the journal in her head, there’s nothing you can do for her, not really. You work, so you can’t even offer to keep her kids after school, not that she would want that. Your kids aren’t the same age and don’t hang out together. The most you can do is take over a plant that won’t get watered or a bouquet of flowers that will make everybody think of funerals. The best thing is probably just to send a card.
Mainly, you feel guilty. What kind of person is glad her neighbor is the one in trouble and not her? What kind of person lives only two houses away from someone in mortal danger, and in spite of that spends a weekend down in the city, having fun?
“Can I help you? Do you have any questions?” a man with an exhibitor name tag asks. Ginger feels like someone being shaken from sleep. She supposes she’s been staring all this time at a spa festooned with a large, red sign proclaiming, “Consumers Digest Best Buy Award! Extremely energy efficient! Four-hundred-gallon water capacity! Seating for six adults!”
“No. No, thank you. I was just looking.” She moves on, chastened into alertness, her mind bristly and sharp. She checks her watch. Almost lunchtime. There’s nothing she can do for Paisley. For the moment, she lets it go. There’s someone she can do something for. She heads up to the room.
Eddie looks up from his computer with a sly grin when she comes in. Rising from the desk where he’s sitting, he’s completely naked below the waist. This is exactly what Ginger expects. Even so, she’s impressed by the size of his erection. “Gross,” she says as she opens her arms to him. “Truly, truly gross.”
Even after all their activity yesterday, his mouth is hungry for hers and hers for his. Their hands stroke each other for a long time before they actually make love, and when they’re finished they hold each other much longer than they usually do. In some way, this is because Paisley is in peril and she and Eddie are not. It’s a celebration. Afterward, Ginger wants to feel awful. The truth is, the memory will always make her smile.
Chapter 7
Paisley—Flying
Tell us something about you we don’t already know.
It was a game we played, on and off for years. Sometimes a bunch of us, bored but watchful, gathered at the playground or the pool. Mostly just with Andrea when Courtney was sick.
Distractions.
Here’s one I never told.
When I was twenty-one, I learned to fly.
My first day in a small plane, the wind blew hard and the pilot shot me anxious glances, expecting nausea, hysteria, I’m not sure what, given the loud motors and the wild ride. I loved it. Loved it! Next time, I’d fly that plane myself. I did, too. A graduation gift from my parents.
I was deciding what to do about marrying Mason.
The sky seemed a good place to think.
I soloed at twelve hours when other students took twenty or thirty. Up there with just the firmament and the sound of the motors, I had a whole new perspective. I could see everything. Up in that plane, I felt free.
So how I missed the deer . . . well, I have no excuse. It was October, a beautiful day, and I was turning from the downwind leg of the landing pattern to the base leg, thinking, well, we don’t have to get married in June. It could wait another year. I was so lost in this that I hardly registered the small forms on the runway. Maybe in the back of my mind I thought they were dogs or even people. Then the woman in the control tower told me, “One two seven November, you better circle one more time. We don’t want venison for dinner down here—at least not tonight.”
I saw them clearly then—three deer, running across the tarmac with great, graceful strides. “Venison