Rosalinda's Eyes Ch. 01

"Hey, I could use the practice."

"Get a dildo," I said, rumbling away in disgust.

So, she started on the Paris run. Not necessarily on my flight, but every now and then she ended up on my plane. One December we were walking the museums together and she took my arm, almost in the way husbands and wives do, a very casual gesture -- and I knew it then. A woman just wasn't going to happen to me. I was going to have to go out and find one the hard way. Problem is, or was, I really didn't know how.

So, I asked the captain on my return flight. His recommendation: stay away from stews. That was it. Like the poor guy had been burned by that fire more than once. Our flight engineer recommended the bar scene at TGIFridays. So much for that, thank you very much.

I went out to use the head mid-flight and talked to the senior stew on the upper deck and her advice was straight-forward and to the point. As long as kids weren't in the picture, she said, she was available.

"What?"

"If it's just something casual," she repeated, "I'd love to go out with you."

Her name was Brenda Collins, a nice Irish girl. She looked, those days, a little like Deborah Kerr, but with ta-tas the size of the Hindenburg. We went out that night, for a burger and a chocolate malt, and when I dropped her off she asked me in. So, as I'm sure you know, I ended up giving her a two hour long foot rub, which led to a thirty second, tonsil shattering blowjob.

We were of course married ten months later. About three months before our first was born. She'd been married once before, and she told me once it just didn't take. We celebrated our thirtieth anniversary a few years back, so I feel most certain this turned out to be something a little more than casual. Even so, I still rubbed her feet, and she gave the most glorious rendition of Hail to the Chief when she played the skin flute.

+++++

But...

PJ started to come apart at the seams when Brenda moved into my life, and for the first time I began to think that all those moments filled with tense innuendo had meant a lot more to her than they had to me. And all of a sudden I realized I couldn't just leave her in the lurch. I started spending more time with her, taking her out to dinner with Brenda from time to time, making her feel like she was an important part of something new, and better. I think I realized that, like the song, the more you give, the more you make. She went out on a few dates, and one of them took, another pilot, Derrick. She started having a life of her own again, a real, productive life of her own, and pretty soon we weren't seeing each other all that often.

Brenda and I bought a house out past JFK, and life, for me, really started.

We had a boy, and two years later a girl, and even before I moved over to the left seat I was earning enough for Brenda to take extended leave and stay home with the kids. Both our parents were retired by that point, and both came out for extended stays, some more extended than others. To help with the kids, my father said, but we ended up cooking steaks over charcoal every night I was home, and drinking our ritual two beers more and more often, and PJ and Derrick came over for many of those nights, too. A separate, more enduring truce between Peej and pops was arrived at during that time of our lives, a peace that lasted forever.

And I don't want to gloss over the next twenty years, but I can sum them up thusly: they were remarkably uneventful in the way America was during those years. Staggering material prosperity and almost endless opportunity defined our world views; you had to work at being poor in those days, or so it seemed. Our kids grew up along predefined pathways, went to Columbia and NYU, and my son stayed the course and went into the Navy, flew Hornets over Iraq and Afghanistan, while my daughter went to med school in New Haven, finished her residency at Sloan-Kettering.

What seemed to put an end to all that prosperity, all that certainty, was 911. A few years shy of my mandatory retirement, I could just see one of the impacts on the World Trade Center while approaching New York City. We were still out over Long Island Sound, and I felt a pure, white hot anger I'd never felt in the skies over North Vietnam. Like many Americans, I began to hate any and everything about Islam and Arabs, particularly Saudi Arabians. When I saw a news report about Israelis and Palestinians at each others throats again I'd turn and look away. I had zero interest or sympathy for their endless bickering anymore, and in fact thought the most honorable way out of the situation would be to forgive Mexicos debt and give Baja California to Israel in exchange for a few years peace. I figured with Israel out of the way the Arabs might let up killing each other, at least for a few months.

And after that it was so easy to Hate. Mexicans for this, Hondurans and El Salvadorans for that. Nigerians for failing to take baths seriously, Laotians for making better Thai food than Thai people. It seemed almost endless, the opportunities we created here to simply Hate People. Our politics became the politics of Hate and, like a cancer, our Hate began to eat away at the very heart and soul of what it meant to be an American. Maybe that's what Bin Laden had in mind when he attacked America, but I doubt it. With a dozen people he accomplished what all the Japanese and Germans in the Second World War never could: he got Americans to turn against one another, to begin tearing the country apart from inside.

+++++

My mood blackened with the country's, I think, and for similar reasons. Parallel trends, I guess you could say. Not long after 911 my father began to deteriorate, and quite rapidly, too. I'm not implying a causal relationship, either. He was old and his heart had begun to fail while Clinton was still in office, and the years passed quickly after that...too quickly. He passed in 2003, my mother a year later, and that would have been hard enough to take -- but Brenda fell ill as well. Breast cancer, and it staged out at IV by the time she was diagnosed. So, father in '03, mother in '04 and my wife in 2005. My kids gone, out of the house, and then -- one-two-three strikes and you're out of love right in the middle of the biggest increase in Hate the world had seen in seventy years. Oh yes. I retired too, so the one thing I loved was now gone. A victim of the simplest, most predictable thing of all: getting old.

So, I say this might have been a parallel trend with good reason. We the baby-boomer generation had witnessed and come of age in the greatest explosion of material wealth in human history, and that explosion had taken place in our collective back yards. A huge number of kids grew up with tennis courts and swimming pools and really excellent schools, not to mention The Beatles and cheerleaders in really short skirts, and then, in the span of just a few short years all we'd worked so hard to build seemed at risk -- and just then our parents started dropping like flies.

So, dark world events eclipsed by even darker personal shake-ups. Got it?

I went out to LA after Dad passed to start to settle some of his lingering estate matters, and he wanted my mother to stay in the house, then, and when she was gone it would pass to me. The rest of his investments would go to the girls, assuming those weren't eaten up taking care of Mom, yet she failed rapidly when she learned of Brenda's cancer. I think seven months passed between my mother's and Brenda's death.

And one winter's day a few months after the girls and I buried Brenda, a blue sedan pulled up in front of my house and a Navy Chaplain walked up and knocked on my door, told me that my son had been killed in Afghanistan. I took the telegram and went upstairs to our bedroom and didn't come out for days. I'd heard the phone ring, of course. I just didn't answer. I couldn't, you see. I knew I'd have to confront reality if I did, that I'd have to tell my sisters and my daughter -- and I knew I couldn't. And not come undone in their presence.

So Terry, my daughter, started calling PJ, who started calling me, and with no response they came out to the house, saw my car in the drive and expected the worst. They came upstairs and found me curled up in a tight ball, the crumpled yellow notice still in hand, and they read the words and fell to the bed beside me and we cried for what felt like weeks.

There was no body to bury; we were given a flag and the grateful thanks of a nation -- and that was pretty much all there was to it. In the aftermath I looked around Long Island and finally realized I didn't belong there so put the house on the market and moved back to my parent's house on the east side of Elysian Park. Back to LA. Back into a part of the country that now felt more like Central America than the city I had grown up in. Back into the middle of the front lines of America's wars of dissolution, where firefights were waged nightly between the cops and too many gangs to count, where body counts went unremarked upon in the local paper because they were seen as a little too incendiary.

In the end I went back because there's no place like home.

Need I say more?

+++++

The house needed work, but so too did the neighborhood.

Dad's next door neighbors for the last twenty years, Tom and Doris Parker, were still on hand, but everyone else was gone. Oddly enough, many of the houses still belonged to cops, most long-time veterans with the LAPD, many of whom worked at the academy, yet even so most of the people around the neighborhood were not Irish Catholic anymore. Hispanic, I think, summed it up accurately, though there were a couple of black families around, some Asian, too, and this last group had torn down the original bungalows and erected boxy little apartment buildings. Unheard of thirty years ago, but the overall tenor of the neighborhood was little changed -- beyond more bars on windows and a lot of alarm company signs on new, very strong fences. If you know what I mean.

Tom Parker had two boys working with the department, and when the moving van appeared outside my father's house the Parker brothers were soon on deck to lend a hand, and Doris invited me over for dinner that night. Shepherd's pie and Guinness, of course. And some fresh soda bread. We talked about the good old days, they fretted about the neighborhood, and Tommy and Judd filled me in on the real score. The war zone started down the hill now, on the other side of the 110, and the park wasn't safe after dark. Gangs and dealers, they said, and the cartels owned whole neighborhoods. Two judges' bodies had been found so far this year, out in the desert with their heads blown off, a cartel signature. They'd rendered opinions against cartel members, and the cartel's judgement had been as swift as it was final. Cops were being targeted, their homes and family members too. This wasn't police work, Tommy Parker told me that night. It was war. A war fueled by drugs, simple as that. Their was suspicion in the ranks, that hispanic officers had been targeted and compromised, that there were more bad cops in the PD now than there ever had been before. Hispanic politicians were turning a blind eye, Tommy said, because most were on the take.

I noticed that the more Tommy drank the more worked up he got, and I saw Judd distancing himself as Tommy's rant became darker, and after Tommy left Judd hung around a little, maybe to clear the air.

"It's bad," he said, "but not that bad, and maybe not all that different." Everyone knew Irish politicians had been on the take, that Irish cops had patrolled non-Irish neighborhoods differently than they patrolled their own. But true enough, the cartels had made a big difference, that too many cops had been turned and were now on the payroll. That judges had been gunned down, and too little was making it into the news.

"Life's not that bad here," he said. "Tommy's still makes the nastiest burger on earth, the beaches are still the best because the babes are still the hottest. I wouldn't live anywhere else," he added, "and we're glad to see you finally came back to your senses. Now, what are you going to do around here, besides pick your nose?"

"Get this house fixed up, first of all. Beyond that, not much."

"You still fly?"

"No."

"Could you? I mean, could you teach?"

"Yeah, for a few more years."

"Well, I ask because my daughter started lessons but the cost got out of hand. Think you could lend a hand?"

"Let me look into it."

Fateful words, like out of the mouths of babes -- lost in the woods.

So...when I started clearing brush from the back yard, Judd and his girl Rebecca joined in on the fun. Judd hacked away with a machete while Becky and I hauled stuff to a dumpster I'd had delivered. Two days of solid work and the three of us had it down to dirt, and I had a landscape designer come and look over the site. Becky and I talked all the time, of course, about flying. She was about halfway into ground school for her private, or non-commercial license, and she'd stalled out, wasn't making enough money to pay for both the flight school and the hours of flight time necessary.

And when I checked with local schools the next day I found the cost of flight time exorbitant, prohibitively so. I talked with a few schools about my experience and they all sounded more than interested about taking me on, but that wouldn't affect the price any. Becky still wouldn't be able to afford the flight time, even if I gave away my time for her ground school.

But what if I bought an old Cessna and brought her up to snuff? Could I do that myself, and have a little airplane to tool around the neighborhood? Have a little fun while I still could? I talked that over with a few of the flight schools and yes, as long as I was willing to teach and train other students for their regular fees, they take me on -- and even maintain and store the aircraft for me. I'd be out a little up front money, and I'd have to commit to teaching a certain number of students a week, but all in all, I could make it work. In fact, one dealer said they happened to have the perfect aircraft just sitting around, so I loaded up car with my log books and copies of my ratings and drove out to the valley.

The aircraft was a two year old Cessna Turbo Skyhawk JT-A with a dual G1000 panel, and I knew it was priced way more than I was willing to spend -- "but this one has low hours and the owner might be willing to make a really good deal."

"How much?" I asked, and the owner of the flight school wrote down a number on a post-it note and passed it over.

I whistled. "Wow. Who's the owner?"

"I am," Stan Wood said.

"So, what's the deal?"

"I could use an instructor with your experience, simple as that. If you're willing to do instrument and multi-engine, I can guarantee you a six figure income, and I'll make a shitload more than that a year, so it's a win-win. AND -- I'll float the note with twenty grand down." And with that he held out his hand. I think he was daring me to refuse, too.

And I took it his hand, then we went out and took her up. I'd brought along a camera and snapped away, planning out the evening ahead as I framed shots. And the thing is, there's nothing like flying a little bird like a Skyhawk, and for the first time in months I felt myself smiling inside, and as she was just a gorgeous aircraft -- and had a panel to drool over -- I felt close to ecstatic.

So, I called Judd, asked him to bring Becky over that afternoon after he got off from work, then I carefully baited my trap, and by the time they walked in the door I was beside myself.

"So, I began. I'm going to need some help ripping up this carpet," I began, and I could see her deflate. "Next, I think we'll repaint. Inside and out. How much do you think that's worth?"

"I don't know," she said, now clearly depressed.

So, I went over and fired up my iMac, pulled up a photo of the back yard. "Come take a look," I said. "Here's what I have in mind." I think Judd could smell the set up now, and he walked over, stood by my desk, motioned Becky to come over too.

And when she was by my side I flipped to the next picture, an exterior shot with me standing by the pilot's open door. Then one of the panel, another of us out over the Pacific, dozens more, in fact.

Her eyes were transfixed, and when I came to a closeup of the panel I paused there, let her look long and hard. "Is that a Garmin 1000?" she asked.

"It is. One of the first in the country, too."

"Jesus," she whispered, then she turned to me.

"So, here's the deal. Class meets here Tuesday and Thursday night. We fly Saturday mornings, rain or shine, at 0-800. You pay for gas, and you help me get this house cleaned up. We quit lessons when you've had enough, or I die, whichever comes sooner."

Have you ever been hugged by an 18 year old female LaCrosse player? It kind of hurts. On the other hand, turns out she was a damn fine little house painter.

+++++

Becky spent summers at her grandfather's house, and she'd made a few friends in the neighborhood over the years, and one was another girl on the LaCrosse team with similar aspirations. She too wanted to fly, if not in the military then at the very least commercially. This girl's name was Bettina Rodriguez, and Becky brought her by the house the very next evening.

"We wanted to know," Becky began, "if the same deal applied for one more person?"

"What? Cleaning and painting, in exchange for lessons?"

"Yup."

"I don't even know you?" I said, looking at Bettina. "Or if your parents would even approve of such a thing."

And I had never seen a look of such despair in my life. Not once.

"But...are you willing to work hard?"

"Yessir."

"Now, what about your parents?"

"It's just my mother."

"Okay, what about your mother? Does she have any idea what you're up to?"

"No, sir."

"Any idea that you're interesting in flying?"

"Only since second grade," she said, grinning like I had just asked the stupidest question in the history of humankind.

"Is your mother home?"

"Si, yes."

"Well, you'd better see if she has time to come talk to me about all this? And Becky? You'd better go too. I think this may take some serious arm twisting on both your parts."

I'd never seen anything move that fast in my life. They were out the door like two Phantoms on a night catapult launch -- and I laughed a little as I went to the kitchen and fixed a big pitcher of iced tea.

I heard a knock on the door a few minutes later; I padded across the living room and opened it -- and there was PJ, in tears, a taxi out front, waiting.

"Do you have any money?" she blurted.

Need I say more?

+++++

I guess, in order to make a long story somewhat shorter, I'll skip the details and just say that Derrick had had enough of PJ. He'd met someone new and filed for divorce, alleging PJs resumption of drugs, this time prescription opioids, as the proximate cause. She'd just retired from United and had nothing but time on her hands, and "Just look at me!" she cried. "I'm OLD!"

"Who the fuck isn't?" I said, swearing for just the second time in my life. That's sarcasm. You're supposed to laugh. "Just what did you expect would happen?"

At any rate, about ten minutes after my narcissist, quasi-incestuous sister found her way back into my life, there came another knock on my door, one I held as vastly more important. I told her to go to our parents bedroom and to remain absolutely quiet until I came back to get her again. Maybe it was the tone in my voice but that's exactly what she did, and when I heard the door close I went to the door and opened it again.

I don't know what I expected, but there was this Mexican woman standing there, her eyes full of molten fury -- the girls nowhere to be seen.