Jim Shepard - Flights

To his right the tower rose on the other side of the runway, two stories high with a line of simple, oddly shaped antennae rising from its top. Nothing seemed to be moving. The enormous hangars shielded many of the aircraft parking areas from view, either from the tower or from the Bridgeport Flight Service. In the distance a bluff rose behind the far runway, surmounted by a fence that was the end of Birch Street. The small-scale geography was conspiring even there, he realized; the street he lived on was a dead end, leading to the airport.

His father’s Buick pulled in a few spaces down. He held up one finger and went into the building nearest him.

“I don’t know how your father ends up doing things like this,” his mother said idly. “Mr. Nice Guy. They must have messengers or something. Fourteen years he works at the company, and he’s picking up mail.”

His father opened the door and Biddy almost toppled out. “Shove over,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You going to leave your car here?” his mother said.

“Sure. Otherwise we both go all the way home and all of that. … I’ll pick it up on the way back. It’s all right here. What is this, the South Bronx?”

They pulled out of the parking space and stopped at the gate for a break in the traffic.

“Someday I’ll show you around,” his father said. “It’s a shame, we got the airport right here and you don’t take advantage of it.”

Biddy peered over his shoulder at the hangars, the wind sock in the distance, the planes. “We can come back,” he said, feeling more and more as if the Cessnas were a kind of frightening, exhilarating last chance, or best chance. “I can find out more.”

“Railroad Salvage,” his father said when they arrived. “What are we doing at Railroad Salvage? What kind of chiboni shops for Christmas presents at Railroad Salvage?”

“Hibachis,” his mother answered, shutting the car door. “They’ve got triple hibachis on sale. I thought we’d get one for Michael and Sandy.”

“Hibachis.”

“That’s right.” She walked ahead of them. “You didn’t have any ideas.”

“Hibachis,” his father repeated. They went inside.

Railroad Salvage was a cavernous warehouse piled high with great stacks of odd items that had flimsy red-and-green “Sale” signs perched over them. Merchandise was arranged as if it had been unloaded randomly from trucks: peanut butter next to snow tires, Fort Apache Play Sets beside cutting boards. Red-and-green streamers hung between steel beams on the roof. Above him a sign read CHRISTMAS CARNAVAL. It depressed him when adults couldn’t spell.

His parents had threaded their way to the hibachis and were handling one, moving the grills to higher and lower slots. They decided to get it.

The line at the cashier was discouragingly long. The woman in front of them had twelve jars of apricots and a wrench set. His mother wandered off and after a few minutes his father did as well. Biddy stood holding the hibachi with both hands, seeing with perfect clarity his eventual confrontation with an impassive cashier, his parents still missing and the line behind him growing restive and angry.

He could faintly hear a Christmas carol piped in above him, lost in the great noisy space of a giant metal box filled with bargain hunters. His mother reappeared beside him. “Where’d your father go?” she asked. “We still have to get something for Cindy. Then we’re through. There’s Ginnie.”

Ginnie was waiting in a line two rows down. She waved and hesitated, then relinquished her place in line and came over. She said something about the last minute.

“It’s terrible,” his mother said. “Every year I say I’m going to finish early, and there’s always someone you forget.”

“I was looking for a vaporizer for Dom’s mother,” Ginnie said. “Of course they sold out. They probably had two.”

“How’s Cindy?”

Ginnie rearranged the packages in her arms. “They have some sort of bug up their ass. Every time I turn around, they’re not talking or one of them’s mad about something. They’re supposed to be getting married in a few months. You figure it.”

“Well, you get nervous. It’s a big step.”

“I don’t know. I thought you were supposed to fight after you got married, not before.”

He attempted to be as inconspicuous as possible, seemingly absorbed in the gums along the checkout counter, but they changed the subject. He hefted the hibachi higher, against his chest.

His father arrived after they’d checked through and said hello and goodbye to Ginnie, ushering them to the car. They drove to the Trumbull shopping mall. “So what are we going to get her?” his mother said.

“What about a chain?”

“She’s got a lot of chains,” Biddy said.

“How about a nice sweater?”

“She said she doesn’t need a sweater.” They both looked at him. “When we were looking for a sweater for Ronnie.”

“Okay.” His father fiddled with the radio. “You’re in charge then, if you’re the expert on Cindy. Check Read’s first and pick out something and show us. I want to show your mother something anyway.”

When they arrived, his father gestured vaguely at the front of the store, saying to meet them in Housewares, and to see if he could stay under twenty dollars.

He wandered through Ladies Lingerie, the For Her Shop, and Junior Miss, sure that in his ignorance he was bypassing perfect gift after perfect gift. He finally stopped at the perfume counter, drawn to the octagonal island terraced with colored bottles. He peered at the yellow Chanel bottles.

“Can I help you?” a woman said.

He found his parents twenty minutes later, eyeing a sink.

“What’d you come up with?” his father said. “Perfume?”

His mother took the red case in her hands. “Cinnabar? That’s nice.”

“You don’t give a girl perfume,” his father said. “That’s like something Ronnie would give her.”

“A sales slip,” his mother said. “You already bought this?”

“I had some money,” he said. His parents looked at each other, and his mother shrugged. “Well, we’ll pay you back, that’s all. Unless you want to give it to her all by yourself. Then we still have to get her something.”

“Perfume,” his father said. “We’ll give her something from Frederick’s of Hollywood next.”

“Oh, leave him alone,” his mother said. “I think it’s nice.”

When they got home, he finished putting tinsel on the tree, a job his parents always considered his and his alone, in some sort of effort, he sensed, to pretend he was capable of separate but equal responsibilities: Dad cuts the tree, lays in the wiring; Biddy hangs the tinsel. Still, he enjoyed it — he enjoyed any sort of work on the Christmas tree, except stripping it — and he stood beside it, hanging the thin, fluttering silver strips from branch to branch, the main body of tinsel he was drawing from draped over his arm like a maître d’s linen.

The sun was going down, the sky gray and blue with a bit of orange showing behind the houses to the west. His sister was out. His parents were in the den and the bedroom. More Christmas carols were on the stereo: Nat King Cole soothing his way through “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” The dog lay sprawled on its side near the tree, rear legs twitching occasionally to the rhythms of a dream. And Biddy was luxuriating in the silence and the time it took to insure an even distribution of tinsel on a Christmas tree. By the time he was finished, he was standing in a thick gloom, the windows liquid with the twilight, and he paused to survey the tree in its lesser glory, shimmering feebly in the darkened room, before crouching low and plugging in its lights.