Why Do Stars Fall Down From The Sky

Why Do Stars Fall Down From The Sky?

There was a moment up there, right when the power came off, that the universe seemed to give up for a moment and time just seemed to let go of me with a sigh. Who knows, maybe the whole ball of wax relaxed, maybe everything everywhere took a deep breath before getting back down to business. Strange, because for a moment that's what I felt. The jet's engines powered back and little spoilers popped up on the top of the wing and I could feel the aircraft's nose kind of drop away a little as gravity and drag got back to work. Sitting in the first row in economy -- I think it was seat 7A -- I sighted along the wing's leading edge and could just make out the distant skyline of the city, out there inside misty gray hazes lost somewhere in the forbidden spaces between now and then.

Even from this distance, I could make out landmarks that had defined my childhood: the Southland Life Building, the pin-striped First National Bank building, and I could even see the blocky white form of Union Station, too. With that landmark in view, I knew it was only a few blocks from there to Dealey Plaza and the infamous School Book Depository. If you knew where to look -- and I most certainly did -- you could follow the motorcade's route from the Grassy Knoll along Stemmons to Parkland Memorial Hospital -- where once upon a time our little universe really did come to a stop.

That moment seemed to define my generation, especially those of us growing up in Dallas at the time. Or maybe it didn't define us so much as it haunted us. When people asked where I was from I always answered Highland Park and left it at that. It was the way people looked at you if you answered Dallas. I think it's called guilt by association, but it's not hard to see it in peoples' eyes.

I'd been in the library -- at High Park High School -- when the principal's scratchy voice came on over the intercom and announced that the president was dead, that he'd been murdered downtown and that school was done for the day. Two years later I graduated and as I flew west to San Francisco I swore I'd never return to Dallas, and I managed to hold true to that oath for almost ten years.

By that time I was wrapping up a five-year hitch in the Air Force, not fighting in Vietnam but flying KC-135 aerial refueling tankers for the Strategic Air Command out of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The -135 was operationally similar to the Boeing 707, and in the early 70s airlines needed pilots with such experience; I found TWA's offer irresistible and headed off to Kansas City to start training, then on to Boston -- where I soon found myself flying across the Atlantic twice a week, usually to London but occasionally to Paris or Frankfurt, in the right seat of a 707-320c. Dallas receded in my mind to a distant, unpleasant memory, and I was happy to let it stay there.

And I might have been successful if not for the determined efforts of my father.

A physician, he too had gone to Highland Park High. He'd met the woman of his dreams there, too, and in due course he married her. I was the result of that union, by the way, but my mother was an actress -- and actually a rather good one. When I was three years old she left for Hollywood and, like me, never looked back. A year later the divorce was finalized and Dad drifted for a while before meeting another former classmate at the Dallas Country Club. She played golf and tennis and poker and could put down a half bottle of Jack Daniels without batting an eye and this wild-eyed woman became the mother I was destined to remember most. She gave my father a daughter, a timid, diaphanous creature who played the piano by day and read Agatha Christie novels all through the night as she charted a jagged course through looming mental illness in a constant search for our father's love and attention.

Father was a thoracic surgeon and always busy, while Joan -- wife number two -- spent all her waking hours at the country club playing cards and drinking bourbon. Like many alcoholics, she possessed two personalities: an aloof sober variety of patrician princess and; a drunk bully. I rarely saw her when she was sober, but soon enough learned her modus operandi: When she and father made it home in the evening she launched into him until, after a few years, he found other, less stressful ways to spend his time. After she ran him out of the house she turned on me for a few years, until my voice dropped, anyway, then she turned on her daughter, my sister, Carol. Perhaps my time in that madhouse had something to do with my oath to never return, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Not long after I settled in Boston I met a girl that seemed to punch all the right buttons and while we dated off and on for a year nothing came of it and in the aftermath I seemed to fall into a rut. I would spend the occasional layover with a stewardess but remained otherwise serially unattached -- and after a while realized that I 'almost' liked living that way. 'Almost' being the operative word to keep in mind.

I went back to Kansas City and transitioned to the L-1011 TriStar, but was soon back in Boston -- flying to Paris now all the time and growing more comfortable with the time I spent in that city but increasingly feeling at odds with my life. I was still in my thirties -- though just -- and though I spoke to my father weekly -- as in almost every Sunday -- I realized I had almost no attachments left to the people who were supposed to be my family.

Father was still technically married to Joan, my mother-in-law, but now, twenty years after I'd left she was by all accounts beyond redemption. My sister, Carol, had developed an apparent affinity for razor blades and overdoses and had been in and out of Timberlawn -- the gentile psychiatric hospital east of downtown -- so many times she had her own room there. Father still lived in the same house at the end of Willow Wood Circle he always had, a low pink brick thing that looked vaguely French, but every time I talked with him he sounded more miserable than the last time we spoke; by this point I was starting to worry about him.

I suppose I shouldn't have. He'd been seeing someone, of course. For years, as it happened.

And oddly enough, neither my father nor Deborah Baker felt the least bit ashamed of the arrangement.

They played golf together. They spent Sundays fishing at Koon Kreek together. And then they decided to go to Paris together, but first they stopped off in Boston.

+++++

I knew her, of course. Genie and I, Deborah's daughter, had known each other since grade school and we had been a 'thing' during our senior year at Highland Park. We'd gone our separate ways after graduation, me to Berkeley and she to Tulane, but I'd neither seen nor heard from her since -- and had no idea what she'd been up to. Seeing my father and -- ahem, Mrs. Baker -- walking up the Jetway at Logan left me feeling at little disoriented because, let's face it, they were both married -- just not to each other, and I had known Deborah most of my life -- just in a very different context. And I guess I was supposed to either go along with this charade or be gracious and not say anything untoward about their new relationship.

To put this whole mess in sharper relief, I really didn't know my biological mother -- beyond what I'd seen of her in movies and on television -- and I think is by now apparent that I really disliked Joan, my mother-in-law. I'd always appreciated the sense of family Deborah Baker created in her home, and under the circumstances perhaps that was inevitable -- because I felt safe there. Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas felt stilted and coldly contrived under my mother-in-law's stewardship, yet the same holidays had felt warm and cozy when I dropped by the Baker house, and yet it was those few instances that rattled me most. I'd simply never known what the fuss about Christmas was all about, as Joan was always too drunk to give a damn and Dad was usually in surgery taking care of another broken heart. By the time I was ten, and Carol was, I think, around seven years old, Christmas had become something all of us dreaded -- and after seeing Christmas in the Baker's home I knew that was all wrong.

So as I watched Dad and Mrs. Baker walk up the Jetway I felt that lingering dichotomy; Dad with his faint grimace of a smile and Deborah Baker with the same welcoming eyes I remembered from my teens. It was, after all, just a few days before Christmas.

With their luggage checked through to Paris/Charles de Gaulle all that was left to do was shake my father's hand and hug Deborah Baker, then we walked along inside uncomfortable cocoons of silence over to the international terminal for our flight -- and with the two of them in first and me up front in the right seat, it promised to be an interesting flight. After we made our way onboard I clued in the head stewardess and asked her to take care of my old man, and after we arrived early the next morning I helped get them into the city and to the Crillon, their hotel. We enjoyed an early dinner after long naps then I left them to enjoy the first week of their vacation, though they had convinced me to take a week off for Christmas and to stay with them in the city when I returned later that week. I dared not ask what their other halves were doing for Christmas, and from what little I could see my poor father seemed really not to care. I think taking care of Joan had simply worn him down, like stones under a pounding surf.

When I returned to Boston the next day I found a letter from my mother, not my mother-in-law, in my mailbox. She was, it seemed, now between husbands and with the holiday fast approaching it appeared she was feeling abnormally blue. She wondered, or so she wrote, if I had plans for the holidays -- and if not she wanted to spend some time together. The tone of this missive was more plea than request, and this was a first in my experience.

And this was notable to me, as this outpouring of loneliness represented a vulnerability I'd never suspected in her. She'd done well in Hollywood, really very well, and was now a regular on a popular television series and still making movies; fans adored her and reporters followed her everywhere. We'd spent a little time together when I was at Berkeley, and I found the life she'd created for herself to be an intoxicating brew of glamour and ego; it was hard to imagine a life more comfortable than what she had in Beverly Hills.

Yet within her words, I felt something uncomfortably dangerous. Loneliness was not something a vulnerable soul like her's tolerated well, and her reaching out to me was a first in my experience. Thinking about her out there suddenly by herself at this time of year felt wrong, so not knowing what else to do I called Dad. I explained my concerns and as he always did he listened attentively, and carefully, then he agreed with my assessment. Go out to LA, he said, and help her get through the holidays. We could do Paris again next year.

That was, of course, the last time I ever heard his voice.

+++++

It was a few weeks after that. I had just walked into the flight dispatch office inside the TWA annex at de Gaulle when one of the dispatchers handed me a note, and I could tell by the look in the man's eyes that bad news had come calling.

The facts were all laid out there in concise corporate speak: Father dead. Car accident. Return DFW soonest...

The dispatcher handed me travel documents and sent me on my way, and I sat in numb silence as a series of airliners carried me homeward. A stewardess I knew sat with me from time to time on the way, held my hand as we crossed the Atlantic, and after a change of planes at JFK I fell into a restless sleep. I seemed to remember dreaming about cellophane Christmases all wrapped up in terrible cartoons full of red-nosed reindeer and foul-spirited grinches stealing the true spirit of Christmas, and then the throttles retarded and the spoilers popped up on top of the wing and there was Dealey Plaza off in the distance and I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or not. Maybe all of this was, I told myself, little more than a bad dream, and I found myself wondering what John Kennedy had thought as he looked out at this skyline before he landed at Love Field.

But then, looking out over the city I could see Highland Park over by Love Field, and then we passed over Addison airport -- where I'd learned to fly once upon a time -- and right then I knew this wasn't a dream. So many familiar landmarks, yet it struck me now that there was nothing familiar about anything down there. This was terra incognita, a dangerous place that existed within a series of very bad memories, and the only good thing down there was had been laid out on a marble slab being prepared for burial. This was January, after all, and bare limbs and dead grass do not make good homecomings.

Yet I wanted to get up and run into the warmth of a home I'd never known, but there wasn't any such place -- not now and certainly not then, and it hit me: there was nowhere like that for me, and for the first time in my life I realized I had been well and truly homeless for most of my life.

The thought made me so sick I had to laugh.

I could see DFW airport ahead and soon felt the little 727 landing, her thrust reversers announcing our arrival to the world, but still, I felt detached from this noisy routine, detached and alone -- as if lost inside a never-ending dream. Watching the jet turn into the gate I realized there wouldn't be anyone waiting for me, so after the Jetway connected I watched all the other passengers deplane before I gathered my flight bag and overcoat and made my way off the jet and up the ramp into the terminal.

And so I was quite surprised when I saw Deborah Baker waiting for me up there beside the waiting area. And even more surprised when I saw Genie, her daughter and my old girlfriend, standing by her side -- and I felt myself falling back into a dream that just didn't want to end.

+++++

As it happened, my mother-in-law had learned of her husband's death and broken out in what could most charitably be described as genuine hysteria. Laughter for a time, then a wailing lament followed by a durable catatonia. She was now resting at Parkland, heavily sedated and jaundiced. Carol, my sister, was as always living inside herself, still warmly ensconced in Haldol and wrist restraints out at Timberlawn. This I learned from Deborah in the terminal before I realized just how fragile was her current state of mind.

Her husband was off somewhere in Mexico, Cuernavaca she thought, with his latest mistress, and it turned out that the only person she well and truly loved -- besides her two children, of course -- was my father. And now she was crumbling before my eyes, hanging on to me as if I was the last remnant of that love. Which, when you get right down to it, I suppose I was.

And then there was Genie.

She looked now just as she had when we had last said our goodbyes -- now almost twenty years ago. Tall, with short brown hair, and a face that seemed born to smile, she stood back and watched as I held onto her mother and I felt the same empathic warmth in her eyes. Well, empathy and compassion, though maybe a little pain, too.

And yet I stood there in silence, lost in that dream, not knowing what to say.

+++++

My father had died in an accident, of sorts. He'd been playing golf, had just finished the first hole at the country club, and had gone into the little field stand by Mockingbird Lane to use the restroom and get something to drink, then once again in his little Cushman golf cart he had gone over to the crossing at Mockingbird and pushed the button to get a crossing signal. When he had a green signal he started across and was immediately hit by a speeding Mustang driven by a kid who'd had his driver's license for about a month.

Death. Senseless Death. Pointless in the extreme. One of the most gifted thoracic surgeons in Texas run down by a kid smoking pot while he was out and about and oh, by the way, skipping school, too. My father had been alive one moment and gone a split second later; he had literally never known what hit him. Pronounced dead at the scene. Closed casket service, burial at Sparkman Hillcrest, classmates from Highland Park High, and the med school in Galveston lined up in shock.

And there I was, sitting in church with Deborah and Genie by my side. Both of them holding my hands, and quite possessively too, I thought.

I stayed in town long enough to settle my father's affairs, but in truth, I had no idea what to do about Joan and Carol. My mother-in-law had been an alcoholic for so long her physicians were astonished she was still alive; my half-sister Carol's affinity for razor blades and secobarbital notwithstanding, we'd hardly been close but now here I was: when the music stopped I was the last man standing. In short, it had been my father's wish that should something happen to him I be appointed guardian to both Joan and Carol -- so there really wasn't anything I could do about the situation other than see it through.

They were, you see, family, and though that was a word that did not come easily to me, I had a secret weapon, or what you might call an ace up my sleeve.

+++++

He'd always been an overtly simple man. He worked hard, never drank much and managed to go to church only when the situation absolutely called for such nonsense. He'd studied engineering in Massachusetts back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, or so he liked to say, then he'd fallen in with some truly evil people. Men who called themselves things like geologists and petroleum engineers. He'd got in on the big Texas oil boom and made some real money, then he started a company that made offshore drilling equipment and got filthy rich. Along the way, he picked up a wife and in due course, the man and his wife had a son.

The man was my grandfather.

And in point of fact, he still was. Sitting right beside Deborah, as a matter of fact.

My grandparents had built one of the first homes in Highland Park -- and my grandfather still lived there. When I was a kid, when life in my father's house became too much for me, I'd walk over to my grandparent's house in search of calmer shores -- and it was a long walk, too. Maybe two hundred yards. I still remember how he would open the door and look down at me, and how he would nod his head knowingly and let me in; this happened with increasing frequency and after a while, my grandparents had a bedroom in their house set aside just for me. They didn't pass judgment on anything or anyone, either; I was simply welcome in their home. Come hell or high water he made pancakes every Saturday morning, and we always had lunch at their home on Christmas Day.

My grandmother died when I was ten, when I was still going to Bradfield, and my grandfather and I only grew closer after that. He taught me how to fish the spillway at Koon Kreek, and how to hunt ducks with retrievers on the Old Lake, and when I expressed an interest in learning to fly he saw to my lessons and drove me out to Addison Airport every Saturday morning for a year. He and my dad watched my first solo flight early on the morning on my sixteenth birthday and because of him I ended up with my pilot's license before I'd even learned how to drive.

He was old now but still tough as a boot, and he stood next to me at Dad's funeral and I think we sort of held each other up. In the aftermath, his lawyers helped decipher my father's wishes, and his financial advisors helped modify trusts for Joan and Carol. He'd never tried to hide his feelings about Joan but Carol was, whether he liked to admit it or not, his granddaughter -- and his sense of duty to her was therefore absolute.