Charlie's Spaceship

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A failing of mine, I apparently lacked the social graces necessary to function in the real world. Summers in the Hamptons were not pleasant experiences for me, except when I was able to sneak into the garage, behind my mother's back, and help the chauffer work on one of the cars -- not that any of them did much mind you. Still, it was then that I got my hands dirty and felt the grease and grit on my fingers and began to learn that all these wonderful things that populated my pampered world had actually been made by someone and had not just appeared out of thin air.

"You look so distracted," commented Mary's sister Nancy as I sat on the deck overlooking Charlie and Daisy playing together in the tall grass behind the house.

"Thinking of summers at the Hamptons," I replied.

"Isn't that where Billy Joel and those types live?" she asked.

"Yes, it is," I replied hoping that I would not regret admitting it. "They were not happy summers," I added.

"I'll bet it's a lot different now with all the rich people living there. Did your parents have a house there before it got so exclusive?"

Damn it. I was starting to like her right then and there. She had such a pleasant voice and like I said, she was reasonably easy on the eyes. "They owned the Hamptons," I said, "and still own more of it than anyone else."

"Oh," she added quite surprised.

I pointed to Jack and Mary, getting the grill ready for the hot dogs and hamburgers. "He's got an MBA from what is it, NYU? Probably in the middle of his class, I would guess. Harvard, suma cum laud, number two in my class, at age twenty two."

"You're not joking are you?"

"No, I'm not."

"Jesus, what are you doing here?"

"Nervous breakdown at twenty eight. Couldn't deal with it any more. I was John Robert Ennis the fourth. Now I'm just John Ennis," I replied. I told her a little bit more, more than I think I had ever told anyone else up until that time.

"Do they know?" she asked.

"Nope, don't have a clue."

"I won't tell," she promised and I actually thought she might keep it too as we just sat there and chatted on the patio as the kids played and the burgers burned. I learned she had an ex-husband she who was not in her life and was about as shy around men as I was around women. We liked the same music and thought Charlie was just a wonderful kid.

Once or twice as we chatted, Charlie would come up us to say something he thought was really important and we would both smile and nod and he seemed to really like fact that she and I were there together that sunny afternoon in June.

"It's very nice of you to build the space ship for Charlie," she said as we sat and ate our hamburgers together. "It really means a lot to him, you know. Jack and Mary never seemed to take it very seriously until now."

"How can you take a five year old's drawings in crayon seriously?" I asked, "especially when you don't understand a thing that he has written."

"But you do, don't you? Charlie told me you're really going to build it. He said you're going to make it fly." She paused. "Is it?" she asked. "Is it really going to fly?"

Damn it, I was going to tell her the truth. Oh well, she already knew I had a nervous breakdown so she probably thought I was crazy anyway. "Yeah, I think it is going to work. Don't know how, but I think it's going to take Charlie back home."

It was out in the open. I had said what I was beginning to suspect after only knowing him for two weeks.

She just stared at me for a moment, not quite comprehending I guess what I had said. "He really is very strange, isn't he?" she asked.

"How can a kid who has never seen a periodic table of the elements draw one and calculate the atomic weights to six decimal places in a language that doesn't exist? How can a kid using crayons make drawings for parts that fit together using tolerances to within a few microns, less that the thickness of a human hair?" I paused. "So you're going to ask me how that birdcage space ship of his is going to work and I just don't have a clue, but I really believe it will."

She smiled for a moment, looked at me and then said, "then so do I."

Her kids interrupted us once or twice and after dinner, they took off in her abused minivan and I realized that I had desperately wanted to get her phone number but hadn't had the courage to ask her for it.

Mary, good sister that she was, saw that I had spent most of my time talking to Nancy and quietly came up to me and offered me the number I had been afraid to ask for.

I spent most of the next week wondering if I should call her and restoring an old Duisenberg car that I had picked up several years ago at auction and was finally getting around to working on. One of the problems I had with trying to live a normal life and working a regular job was that I ended up having little free time for such things. The regular job though, did keep my days filled and focused and often left me so tired at the end of the day that my demons usually left me alone.

In the end, it wasn't me who called, but she. Mary and Jack were going off on a long weekend and she would be taking care of Charlie and she thought it would be good for him if I showed up.

When summoned, I invariably came and this was no exception and as I drove there, I resented it. There I was forty six years old, being summoned and still obeying. I had wanted to be free and I wasn't. I was getting angry with myself until I realized where I was being summoned. I liked Charlie. I liked Nancy. So what was the big deal anyway, duh? I was too afraid to call, so she called.

Charlie was delighted to see me. It was as if I was some long lost friend of his whom he hadn't seen in years instead of only a mere week.

"Mary said he had been depressed when you didn't show up during the week," she explained.

I had tried to explain things to Charlie and I guess either I failed or he wasn't capable of understanding the concept of "lead time" as in how long I had to wait for the tubing he required. I know, it was a bit much to ask a five year old to understand and even more for me to explain to a five year old. I made another attempt -- and would continue to do so -- until it was finished. I made many promises to him that I would finish his ship but perhaps like a lot of us, I think he may have been let down too many times to get his little hopes up.

I spent part of that warm June morning in the barn, looking things over and making sure it was much as I had left it. Charlie told me I could build it inside the barn but it would have to be moved outside in the sunlight to work. I had told him I thought it might be too heavy to move but he assured me it would not be a problem. That left me and Nancy both puzzled but I had long since given trying to figure out how this ship would work. Either it did or it didn't and if it didn't it certainly wouldn't be my fault as I explained to her.

"Were things your fault?" she asked outside the barn.

"What?" I asked bewildered by the question.

"When you were growing up, were things always your fault?"

"Just the nervous breakdown," I sighed. "I was the perfect child, too perfect perhaps, but no, I never did anything wrong until then. That certainly made up for a lot," I laughed. It might just have been one of the very few times I had actually laughed about it. "The one thing that went wrong that probably wasn't my fault, and I get the blame."

"Everything was my fault," she said. "When it rained, it was my fault. When he gambled and lost, it was my fault. When he hit me too."

How could anyone have hit her was beyond me. She said little and I was able infer a bit more and it made me realize that while my family had been dysfunctional, they had never been abusive, at least not physically anyway. My parents may have been cold and distant, and if there may not have been a lot of love, at least there was no hatred either.

I tried and failed to make some sense of it all that day as we basically stayed around the house, watching over Charlie who really needed no watching over, just someone to help him with the basics, like making dinner for him and tying his shoes and listening to his important stories.

She talked a bit about her life that afternoon, about growing up in a suburban home to suburban parents who struggled to make ends meet, about how both her parents worked to support her and her sister and brother. She was middling in school, and unable to afford college, went to work out of high school, married a boyfriend, had two children and was divorced and on her own at thirty one, the result of one too many black eyes I suppose. It was a life I could only imagine.

"You're lost again," she said looking at me in the afternoon sun. "You've told me so little."

"I just enjoy listening to you," I said. It was true, I really did. "Would you like to see my life?" I asked. "My father's eightieth birthday is coming up. I've been restoring a classic car for the past few years, a 1931 Duisenberg and I've decided to give it to him. I thought I would drive down there and charter a plane and fly back. It will make for a long weekend, perhaps leave Friday morning and return on Monday."

I really thought she was going to say no. I really did. She was silent for more than a few minutes. "I'm just thinking about who I can get to take care of the kids and feed the dog," she said. "What will I wear?"

"I know you're struggling to make ends meet, so if there's anything I can do to help with this. It's in two weeks," I added.

"Of course I'll go with you," she said a moment later.

"Perhaps I can have my sister Emily call you and the two of you can decide if you need anything."

Oh yes, I was crazy all right. I was agreeing to spend a long weekend with a woman I barely knew at my parent's summer house in the Hamptons.

My sister Emily couldn't have been happier when I called. She was even happier when she called me after talking to Nancy. "She sounds so wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing both of you."

On a warm June Friday morning, I picked her up at her modest apartment building and we took off down the road in the old Duisenberg. I had to admit I had done an excellent job restoring the old car and I really had not wanted to give it up, but there was nothing left to challenge me and I knew it would make my father happy. I kept to the two lane highways as we were not pressed for time on the drive down to New London where we caught the ferry to Orient Point. A short hop and we were on the first of two ferries, the first from Greenport to Shelter Island, the second from Shelter Island into the Hamptons.

I had warned her about the house on the drive down. "Oh my God. Is that it? It's, it's huge!"

I had lived in apartment buildings that had been smaller. It had a dinning room that was bigger than most tract houses where I now lived.

There was a subdued, yet festive air about the place when we arrived. I had gone back most years for a visit, if only briefly, so I was not entirely a stranger, though I no longer spent my summers there as did a younger sister and her family, along of course, with my parents who now lived there full time, leaving the Manhattan mansion behind them for good now that he longer went to the office everyday.

Emily, bless her, was there and took charge of a by now very nervous and intimidated Nancy while I sought out my father.

He was sitting on the back veranda, drinking his usual Martini, playing gin with someone I did not know.

"Hello," I said politely, not sure I should disturb him. He looked up at me and half smiled. "Lieutenant Governor Thomas," he said by way of introduction. "My eldest, John the fourth," he said to the man.

We shook hands and then I introduced them to Nancy. He looked up in approval I think, then nodded that the game was over for now and relaxed for half a second. "I've brought you a present but it's too big to be wrapped so I was wondering if you'd mind having a look at it now."

Like most of us, I usually gave polite presents that had proved to be totally useless. I mean, what do you give someone who could buy anything and almost anyone, who could pay the national debt of some small countries?

His interest was piqued as was that of my sister and by the time we arrived out front, the whole family was there. His eyes opened when he stood out on the granite front steps and saw the car. "It isn't in the car, is it?"

"No, it is the car," I said handing him the keys.

I think for the first time in his life, he was speechless. It could not have been a bigger surprise and he was clearly delighted with it. He was almost like a kid with a new toy. "I always thought these were great cars," he said for about twenty times.

I wanted to ask him why he never bought one. I mean, it wasn't like he couldn't afford to buy one that had been restored. Maybe he didn't know how. Perhaps that was it. Maybe it had just never occurred to him to do it.

The rest of the weekend became a blur. I felt so sorry for Nancy and I almost wished I hadn't asked her to come along. I knew almost everybody there and she knew no one except Emily and I. Yet, she was a trouper.

It was separate bedrooms for us that weekend, not that I minded. It was a bit early in our relationship for that and my mother did not approve of those things anyway and never tolerated any of us who wanted to sleep in the same room with our "significant others". She had her rules and as long as it was her house, we obeyed or else.

Saturday morning I borrowed a Bentley and took Emily into the Hamptons for some shopping and a general ride around the area. In the afternoon, it was the party itself. It began around three ish and ran well into the night. There was quite a crowd there and more than a few of the local celebrities dropped by. Nancy was pretty much in awe of the whole thing and her eyes almost popped out when she saw some of the people. "Is that who I think it is?" she asked more than once. At least she had sense enough not to ask for autographs.

Me, I pretty much stayed in the background with her. It was, after all, my father's birthday and not mine. He was supposed to be the center of attention and not me and he certainly was.

Sunday was lazy, reading the Times by the fireplace in the Great Room, walking with Nancy along the beach at Montauk, and a quiet dinner with just the family.

Nancy was more comfortable there that night. She seemed less in awe, perhaps because there were fewer people there or perhaps she was now so numb to it all. I think my parents actually liked her. I know Emily certainly did. More than once she said how lucky I was and how happy she was for me.

Monday morning, we said our "goodbyes" and left. I think for the first time in my life, my father actually hugged me. "You've done well, John," he said.

I wanted to cry but didn't. That was all I ever wanted from him, from either him or my mother.

Emily drove us to the airport where a chartered jet waited patiently for the two of us. It flew us back north in no time and we landed, took a taxi back to my place where I showed her my modest house that I had above my garage and workshop.

"The Great Room is bigger than your whole house," she said. "How could you leave all that?"

"How could I stay?" Did she understand? Did I even know myself? I took her into my shop and showed her the three cars I was restoring, showed her my tools and my life reduced to nuts and bolts and axle grease.

"Remarkable," she said.

We chatted and ate lunch and I returned her home in the Porsche and we promised to go out the following weekend.

I had almost forgotten about Charlie. I had dropped by once or twice a week, mostly to do some minor work and also to check up on my little friend and make sure he understood that I was not abandoning him.

"The tubing is shipping tomorrow," Jack said on the phone not two weeks after my weekend at the Hamptons. "It should be at the house the day after that." He was using his company to purchase the tubing. They wouldn't sell it to him otherwise and it made life easier anyway. He would simply reimburse the company and be done with it.

Now I had to build it. What a project! I had jigs to make, tubing to bend, and forms to prepare. I built the craft on its side in the barn and ended up renting a crane to lift it upright. There was just no other way. "How much is this costing me?" asked Jack who still did not know.

"A friend owes me," I said politely.

Charlie was ecstatic. Finally, his space ship was coming together now very quickly. He had sense enough to stay out of my way most of the time, but I made sure that he saw the progress a couple of times a day and I let him inspect it too. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what was going on I think. He was only disappointed when I went home every night. "Soon, Charlie," I would tell him.

"Monday at high noon," I told Nancy over dinner two days later. It was Saturday and I was having dinner with her and her two children. We had spent the afternoon together and I had taken them to my modest house and shown it to them as they were now getting curious about me and my relationship with their mother. Her seventeen year old son was slightly impressed with the antique cars and knew a little bit about them. I think he was more interested in the Porsche I owned than in the Packard or the Cord I was restoring. Her daughter I think was bored to tears by it all but was too polite to admit it. She would be off to college in the fall on scholarship anyway.

The Great Day finally arrived. It was bright, almost cloudless morning and I got there just after eight. I had a lot of last minute work to do. For one, the craft had to be hauled out of the barn. It had to be in sunlight for it to work. I had known about that of course and mounted heavy duty wheels on its five legs. My only concern was that it might tip over as I moved it, but I got it outside far enough without any problem.

I then placed four video cameras all around it. I wanted it documented from every possible angle. If something went wrong, I wanted it on tape. I would also carry one inside the craft myself.

"Are you sure it's safe for me?" I had asked Charlie.

"You're my friend," he said. "I would never hurt my friend. I promise," he smiled.

We figured the sun would be directly overhead at about 11:45 so about half an hour before, we started getting ready. Charlie insisted that Daisy come along too, so the three of us walked over to the barn. Mary and the other two children were also out there and I explained to them that I wanted the entire event video taped.

"You're serious, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes, very."

"Do you know something you're not telling us? I mean, Nancy has hinted at a few things herself. She trusts you more than she has ever trusted anyone else, so I guess I do too."

"I have suspicions, nothing more. We'll know for sure in a little while."

"He isn't coming back, is he? He's going somewhere else?" "I think he's going home," I replied. "Then I'd better go and say goodbye." I couldn't watch as she went over to Charlie. I was certain she was going to cry. She had loved him and taken care of him as if he was her own biological child and now she was thinking she might never see him again.

At about 11:30 the three of us climbed into the craft. It took a few minutes for me to seal the hatch properly and pressurize all the tubes.

Charlie manned the few controls, five dials actually, and at 11:35, began turning one of them.

The outer shell began to slowly spin. I had no sensation of movement but after another minute or two, the craft was filled with an almost blinding white light. I closed my eyes but it did no good. It didn't hurt mind you and I opened them up a minute later after it passed.

"Oh my God, it works!" We were in space. The sun was behind us, and through the rapidly spinning shell, I could see stars all around.