Why Do Stars Fall Down From The Sky

"And yet he didn't intervene?"

"He got Carol help, but I think by then the damage had been done. Beyond that, I think he had affairs just so he could stay away from Joan. He played golf, he went hunting or fishing..."

"Did he drink a lot?"

"At one point, yeah. After I went off to college he always seemed pretty bent when I called, but not so much the past few years. I think he was going to divorce Joan and marry again, and I think that helped pull him away from booze."

"Do you know who he was in love with?"

I nodded. "Old friend. They'd known each other since...well, they were in grade school together."

"So Joan wasn't your mother, right?"

"Yup. Dorothy Mahoney is my mother."

"The actress? Really?"

"Really."

"Now that you mention it I can see the resemblance. You have her legs."

"Thanks," I said. "I think."

"Do you talk with her much."

"Only when she needs me. Which so far has been every five years or so."

"I guess I can see why marriage doesn't really ring your bell."

I nodded. "Marriage, to me, is a battlefield -- where no prisoners are taken and no one survives intact."

"You know, there was a point when I wanted you so much, when I wanted you to ask me to marry you..."

"I'm sorry I let you down."

"That's just it, Pat. You didn't let me down. You were always pretty clear about what kind of future you wanted."

"Oh?"

"You don't trust people, Pat. Or maybe it's more accurate to say you don't trust love."

"Maybe. But I also don't like living by myself," I sighed. "How's that for a contradiction."

"That's a whopper, but why do you have to live alone?"

"I guess all that's frowned on, you know?"

"Well, maybe you could live with someone for a while, figure out if marriage is right for you?"

I sighed. "It always ends in marriage, doesn't it? It's like a moral imperative..."

"Maybe it is," Ellen added.

"Tell me something, would you? What's the point of marriage if you don't want kids?"

"Commitment, I guess. Shared struggle to reach a goal? To take care of one another and maybe just have someone to laugh at your corny jokes and a shoulder to lean on when things go wrong...?"

"You need a piece of paper for that?"

"No, not really, but Pat, do you not want kids of your own?"

That was the crux of the matter, really, and she'd come to the point easily enough.

"Or are you afraid you'd create the same misery for your own kids," she added.

I looked down -- and I think I nodded in defeat. "That would kill me," I whispered.

"So don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't let that happen; don't create the same environment your parents did. Find the right girl and hold on tight, be there for your kids and help them on their way. Just because your parents messed up doesn't mean you will too."

But that argument always came full circle again, didn't it? Faith in the unknown versus the reality of cold, hard truth. The scattered light of stained glass or shadows passing on the sea below. "Is it really that simple, Ellen?"

"I don't know, but I'm willing to try if you are." I knew she was teasing me just a little and that she really wasn't serious, but then she took my hand and gave it a little squeeze before she went off to deal with a passenger.

Maybe my thinking really was caught in a rut. Or maybe I simply couldn't imagine a life with a wife and kids because deep down I really never really wanted to live that way.

I watched the spoilers on the wing when they deployed, felt the subtle transition to our gentle descent, but this time I felt anxious little butterflies of uncertainty were circling in my gut. Only not about Ellen.

Genie was on my mind. Hell, she'd always been on my mind, all the way back to Mrs. Murphy's first grade class. I'd always looked at her when she came into the classroom, even then. The same butterflies visited me on those mornings. We were just little kids but I was drawn to her like a moth to the flame and something was once again pulling me towards her. Momentum? Some weird kind of reverse destiny -- like you can never ever really truly walk away from your past? Instead, we wear our past all our lives, like turtles wear their shells.

Genie was, like me, tall. I was a lot taller than all my classmates, but she was the tallest girl at Bradfield, too. She had a face that reminded everyone of that girl on TV, the freckle faced girl that played The Flying Nun. The same big smile, open, friendly eyes, brown hair cut real short, like Maria in The Sound of Music only Genie's was shiny brown. By third grade we always sat together in the school cafeteria during lunch, and almost every day we walked home from school together -- which explains the how and the why of Deborah becoming like what a real mother was supposed to be like. So, hadn't Genie -- in a way -- become more like a sister to me?

By the time I was in sixth grade, like by the time I was eleven years old, I was taking care of Carol when she came home from school because Joan was always at the country club playing cards and getting smashed. And I don't know how many times Genie came home to help. Some nights Carol and I walked over to Genie's and had dinner there.

So, where was Dad during all this?

After surgery and rounds he was at the club playing golf. Cocktails with friends in the nineteenth hole then more cocktails with Joan in the main lounge that overlooked a large, four hole putting green. By the time they made it home Joan was primed and ready for combat and she'd start in on Dad, in a heartbreaking instant turning into a world class bully. After a half hour of that Carol and I could hear him thundering out the door and getting into his car and taking off for God knows where. When I finally learned he had a mistress waiting in the wings I could hardly blame him.

But as soon as he was out the door the real fun began.

Joan would come in to our rooms and tortures us for a while, the pure emotional abuse of a sadistic bully. She'd usually have a few more drinks then pass out in the living room, and that was when Carol and I could finally get some sleep. The thing is, this was our routine. It happened every night.

So when I looked at Carol I was looking at a fellow survivor, yet I was also looking at my kid sister, a defenseless little girl who'd always counted on me to take some of the heat from Joan. When I left for college Carol lost what little protection she'd had, and now she was coming apart at the seams. If that was my fault, was I supposed to be her caretaker for the rest of her life?

But now I was, and quite literally would be, her caretaker -- for the rest of her life. And now...I had to make some very painful decisions on her behalf if she didn't snap out of it, if these ECT treatments proved fruitless.

But then the Tri-Star landed and her thrust reversers pulled me back into the present. I had a tight connection so I smiled at Ellen before I dashed through customs and over to the domestic terminal to hop a ride down to DFW, yet I felt conflicted as I ran from one terminal to the next. Genie and Carol, two sides of an old coin, dominated my thoughts -- which did their best to keep me company on the next three hour flight.

Genie was, of course, waiting for me at the head of the Jetway in Dallas, and she held me and kissed me just like all the other husbands and wives were doing. So natural, like falling from one life to another without so much as a passing thought. As we drove back into the city she told me about all the arrangements she'd made; the service for Joan and the actual funeral -- all followed by a small get together with some of my parents closest friends at the country club. A perfect Highland Park wedding -- or funeral -- but really...what's different but the passage of time?

And Tom, Genie's son, was waiting for us at the house. My father's house. Doing his homework, a book report on Tom Sawyer, and I thought 'How appropriate' -- given the circumstances.

I carried my flight bag and a small duffel to my old bedroom -- because I absolutely, positively wasn't going to sleep in my parent's bed -- and Tom followed me and then waited for me to put my things away. My room looked exactly as it had at the end of my senior year at Highland Park High, which is to say that there were shelves and bookcases loaded down with all the model airplanes I'd built -- probably starting somewhere in second grade -- so a good ten years worth of plastic and diligently applied paint and decals.

And Tom was fascinated.

"I hope you don't mind," he started a bit hesitantly when I looked up at him, "but I came in and looked at your airplanes."

"No. I don't mind. You interested in building models?"

He nodded solemnly, as I guess he was still pretty shy, even for a nine year old.

"So, what have you built so far?"

And Tom shrugged. A shrug that represented long, lonely nights tossing and turning as daydreams came and went unfulfilled. His shrug represented all the things he wanted to do but hadn't been able to...yet. He had all the signs of a kid caught in the tug-of-war of a disintegrating marriage; divided loyalties; not knowing who to believe, or even what to believe, as his parents used him to get at one another. The boy needed a father, desperately, and though it was easy enough to see what Genie had in mind I felt for him.

I still had a few kits in my closet, a couple of nice Tamiya 1/48th scale Navy jets, and I pulled them down and watched his eyes light up when he saw an A-7 Corsair II. I pulled that one from the stack and put it on my desk and opened it up, and Tom picked up the rows and rows of pieces and parts and looked at them almost reverentially...

"Look over the instructions," I said gently, "and tell me what you think."

I turned and saw Genie leaning in the doorway, taking us in with her all-knowing, appreciative eyes, but then she looked over at me and smiled before she turned and walked off to the kitchen. She was making herself right at home now, cooking up a storm because, well, she was in her comfort zone. I assumed it had been a long time since she'd had an appreciative husband around the house and, well, we had a certain history, didn't we?

Then Tom looked over at me and he unflinchingly asked the one question I'd not expected: "Could you teach me to fly?" he asked.

So I looked him in the eye and took a quick measure of his sincerity. "You interested in that?"

He nodded. "Every time we go somewhere. There's something magic about flying."

I nodded. "There is. So tell me, subtract 90 from 360. What do you get?"

He thought for a moment then replied: "270," he said -- and quite confidently, too.

"Add 65 to 95."

"160."

"You sure?" I asked.

"Yup."

I nodded. "Okay," I said, "now what about that kit?"

"I think I'd need help with painting it, but it doesn't look all that bad."

"Ever used an airbrush?"

"A what?"

I smiled and shook my head. I'd put away my airbrush equipment years ago and had no idea if it would still work, but Genie called out from the kitchen just then -- "Dinner's ready!" -- and I couldn't help but hear her mother on a distant afternoon and I drifted along on my memories for a moment.

"Well," I finally said, breaking free of the past, "come on, Tom. I guess your mom has other plans for us right now."

We ate spaghetti and garlic bread and I fielded a barrage of questions from Tom about flying lessons, at least until my jet-lag hit -- and I went down hard after that. When I woke early in the morning and found Tom asleep in Carol's bedroom and Genie down for the count in my parent's bed, and I looked at her while she slept and wondered why all this felt so natural. Like this was the way it should have gone down twenty years earlier, and standing there I went from feeling a kind of contented bliss to emotionally disoriented, like Time was this flexible, yielding thing that could entertain two such wildly disparate emotions in my mind.

I'd had my eight hours so went to the kitchen and was not exactly surprised to see that the 'fridge had been completely stocked, and I stood their, exasperated and yet full of wonder, in awe of Genie's mastery of the finest detail. She would have been perfect as Eisenhower's Chief of Staff when he was laying out Operation Overlord, and I felt certain the war could have been shortened by at least a year if she had been organizing the invasion of Europe.

I called my grandfather at 0500 because I knew he'd have been up for at least an hour by then, and that he'd have his morning calisthenics out of the way already, so I asked him to come over and help me whip up a bunch of pancakes for Genie and Tom. Fifteen minutes later and with his excitement barely contained, he was whipping up batter while I was putting the bacon in the oven, then whisking eggs and dicing onions and green peppers for a huge scramble. When the bacon began doing it's job -- filling the house with that eternally seductive aroma -- and thereby waking Tom and Genie -- the old man and I began ladling out hotcakes on the griddle while Genie set the table and poured glasses of fresh squeezed OJ.

And I could see she was in seventh Heaven, that her version of the universe was coming together nicely -- that the cosmic tumblers were all falling into place. Like any other nine year old, Tom dragged his ass into the kitchen still rubbing sleep from his eyes, but the prospect of a hot breakfast made by someone other than his mother snapped him to full attention. Full of unasked questions, he sat there staring in utter disbelief at my grandfather, and I even think I understood his confusion. It was beyond surreal that any old man could move with such certainty and speed and, as long as his hearing aids were set correctly, carry on multiple conversations with any and everyone in the room. Poor Grandfather was still as sharp as a tack and Tom just couldn't relate to that.

And soon the Old Man and I laid out a nice forty-thousand calorie breakfast, just what we needed to get us through the day ahead. Tom plowed through five pancakes and asked for more, so the Old Man went to the griddle and whipped-up another batch of perfect flap-jacks.

When Genie drove Tom over to Bradfield the Old Man got down to business.

"Joan's father and grandfather had some serious money," he began, "and it's parked over at Northern Trust. After consulting with her attorneys she decided to split the trust in two, seventy-five percent to you, and twenty-five to Carol, I think to take care of her medical costs, and assuming you would have no objections I went ahead and consolidated your new shares with your father's trust..."

I shrugged. I knew the money was there, somewhere, but refused to touch it, and had continued living on my salary from TWA. I just looked at the Old Man and shrugged.

"Look, I know you don't give a damn about these things, but Joan's father made some good money, her grandfather even more, and she inherited it all. With what your father left you, well, you aren't exactly poor."

"And I told you..."

"I know what you told me, Pat. Now you're going to need to tell me what your plans are for the foreseeable future."

"I thought I'd been clear with you about that. I'm going to fly and I'm going to keep living in my apartment in Boston. I have no plans beyond that."

"Pat, do you even own an automobile?"

"No. I don't need one. I can ride the T anywhere I want to go."

"What are you going to do with this house? And if I may, do you have any intentions concerning Genie?"

"Why would I sell this place?"

"Because it's a shame to let it sit her and rot. And what about Genie?"

"Paw-paw, last I heard she was still married..."

"Divorce is inevitable."

"You'll excuse me, but you sure seem particularly well informed about things."

"Well, you'll excuse me, but in case it's slipped your attention, I ain't exactly getting any younger and I've got plans of my own to tend to. And, in case that too has slipped your mind, you figure into those plans as well, so you'll pardon my curiosity but I kind of need to know what you have in mind."

"You mind if I ask what you and Genie have cooked up for me, or is that question none of my business?"

"Don't be a smart-ass, Pat."

I knew that look, the glare he was sending my way just then. You didn't mess around with the Old Man when he sent that one your way. My dad had taught me that much...

I sighed, but I didn't dare look away -- because the Old Man hated human weakness and frailty of any sort. "You know my position on marriage," he snarled. "Maybe it's time you changed your mind about living your life like some kind of monk. It ain't natural, Pat. Your life won't ever be complete without the responsibility that comes with bringing up a family and taking care of them. That's what defines a man, in case no one told you."

"That thought has been on my mind a lot recently," I sighed.

"And?"

"I think about destiny, too. Growing up, I always thought that Genie was my destiny, and then..."

"And then California came calling -- but your mother was behind all that. Then that lark in the Air Force. Yes, yes, I know that story all too well."

"Paw-paw, in case you've forgotten, Genie met the man she thought was her destiny -- and it wasn't me..."

"Because she thought you'd walked out of her life -- all our lives, really -- and she didn't know what else to do. She knew she wanted a family..."

"Gee, I wonder where she got that idea?" I said.

"That was a dumb-ass thing to say, Pat, and don't you dare talk to that woman like that...not while I'm still around. I hear about that and I'll come kick your ass from one end of the Commons to the other."

And he could probably still do it, too. "I hear you," I sighed.

The garage door opened and Genie walked into the kitchen, stopping short when she saw the piles of papers spread out on the kitchen table. "Did I come at a bad time?" she asked.

"No, not at all," my grandfather said -- in that perpetually chipper, matter of fact way of his. "Pat's just got to sign a few things. What time is the service?"

"Eleven," she replied. "Would you like us to pick you up? It's on the way?"

"Thanks, that would be nice. Say Pat, bring your father's car, if the damn thing'll start. It needs to be driven some while you're still in town."

Of course all this felt like one blistering insinuation after another. I could see that the lawn care had slipped and that there were leaves in the gutters, things my father would have never allowed. And there were three cars in the garage; his two Jaguars and Joan's Cadillac. Those Jags were an affectation of his, an expression of his love for all things British; he had a new XJ-12 as well as an older XK-E, an inline six model, but it was a ragtop-- though I'm not sure the top had ever been raised to close off the cockpit. That car...oh how he'd doted on the thing...and how many times had we waxed it together?

But after I'd dressed I went out to the garage and noted battery chargers had been hooked up to both his cars, and only my grandfather would have thought to do that. The XJ started easily and burbled to life, and after I backed her out I went around and opened the door for Genie.

"It still smells like your father," she sighed, her eyes closed as her senses roamed. "God, I miss him."

"I know the feeling," I said as I settled in and adjusted the mirrors, yet the truth is I felt like I was on autopilot, going through the motions while lingering memories beat the air over my head. It was like the last thing I wanted to do right now was rock the boat -- because if only one thing was apparent right now it was my grandfather's agenda. He wanted me home and he wanted me married to Genie. He wanted me taking care of that boy, opting to take over my father's memberships at the country club and Koon Kreek, and it all seemed like he wanted me to slide into my father's life because, I was beginning to see, he just couldn't admit that his son was gone. I needed to step in to validate the future he had always considered a done deal, the future he'd imagined it ought to be. And would have been but for kid in a Mustang.