Texas

My car broke down in Clovis, New Mexico. I called Emmit and he was there before the tow truck, which had to come from Amarillo.

“Yeah, sis, you’re screwed. It’s the timing chain.”

Emmit rolled out from under the hood and shook off his jacket. He grinned, his perfect teeth revealing that he was delighted by this opportunity to strut around like a rooster and save the day.

“Why’d you get a tow from Amarillo? I got a friend back home.”

“Insurance,” I said, curtly. I was grateful to see lights flashing down the road.  

I stalked to the back of the rig and threw open the hatch, which was broken, so I had to hold it with one hand while I rifled through my belongings.

“Wow,” said Emmit, from behind me. His voice was soft, like I was an injured animal. “You didn’t tell me you were living in here, kid.”

“Shut up, Emmit,” I said.

He held the hatch open as I threw my stuff into whatever totes and purses I had around. 

“If you want they’ll take it straight to the wrecker,” he said.

“The wrecker?” I cried.

“Honey, it’s totaled.” He peered into the shadows. “That dad’s guitar?” He bobbed his head, his military cut flashing in the bright lights. “Cool.”

“I’ll have them drop it at your place.”

“Okay but then you’ll have to pay to get it towed to the wrecker.”

“What the heck is a timing chain?”

“If it breaks, it’s like a knife to the heart for your engine,” he said. “What is this, a ‘92?”

“Why does that matter?”

Just then the tow truck driver walked up and Emmit knew him, so that spared me for a few minutes. I shoved the last of my makeup into a Walmart grocery bag that was dangerously close to bursting. Emmit helped me carry my stuff to his truck.

“You running off, Maddy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Where to?”

“California.”

“With Dave?”

“Yes.”

“So where is he now?”

“He’s already out there.”

Emmit scoffed. I whacked him on the shoulder.

“What?” I said. He just shook his head and looked morally offended, which had the intended result of infuriating me.

I let Emmit handle the tow truck driver. I made about a dozen trips back and forth between my cab and his truck as I remembered various places I had stashed things. By the time the tow pulled away, with my old beat up rig draped like a doll down its hulking back, I was quietly crying in Emmit’s passenger seat.

He hopped in the driver's seat and gave me a hearty pat on my shoulder. I shrugged him off, but I appreciated the gesture.

“Good call, sis,” he said, as if he had consulted me again before sending my vehicle off to its funeral pyre.

He put the truck in gear and got us back on the highway. My gut lurched as we merged onto the interstate heading for Lubbock, Texas.

“I really think Dave should be helping you move across the country,” he said. Just like our mother would have said it.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care what you think.”

Emmit grinned again. “I’m just glad you’ll be here for Thanksgiving.”

///

About a year ago, Emmit married a rich pediatrician from Lubbock. She had kids and a mansion in the suburbs. For Thanksgiving we piled in her Hummer and drove to her parent’s ranch.

The ranch was out on the edge of town, where the trees grew tall in the distance. The sprawling 70’s style country house looked out over the family’s very own airfield. 

We parked near several large hangars. The door was open to one, and through it I could see light shimmer on a propeller.

“Don’t ask about the planes if you don’t want a tour,” called Olivia, Emmit’s wife, in a singsong voice. One of her youngest sat on her hip, howling already. She sashayed into the house.

“The planes?” I sneered.

“Keep it to yourself,” said Emmit, looking bashful. “They’re nice people.” 

“Airplanes?” I hissed again. “How many does he own?”

I clutched the bottle of Moscato champagne I had decided to contribute to the festivities, feeling inadequate.

Emmit shrugged, shouldering a ham roast while holding onto his small daughter’s hand with his spare hand. I eyed the third kid warily. He decided to follow his mom into the house.

“Probably like a dozen. They’re trick airplanes. You know, like back in the day.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’ve seen it,” he said. Overhead the sun gleamed down at us through barren cottonwood branches. “They do flips and stunts.”

“So not a private jet.”

“Pretty sure he has one of those too.”

“My God,” I said.

“Calm down,” said Emmit. He pinned me with his biggest blue-eyed glare. “And please be nice.”

I made a face at him. “You’re just like Mom.”

“Ouch!” Emmit took a theatrical hit to the chest as we started for the house. “That hurts, sis.”

“So knock it off,” I said.

///

“Would you like some Better Than Sex, darlin’?”

Olivia’s Aunt Beverly leered at me through several centimeters of eyeliner and mascara. It was the bright pink blush on her papery cheeks that made me secretly adore her. 

“Some what?” I asked.

A half dozen women broke into giggles around me. I looked around for Emmit, but he had wandered towards the football game in the other room. I surveyed the crowd and realized I was being cornered for inspection by the womenfolk of the family. I had to get out of here.

“It’s like a mudslide,” said the alcoholic aunt. She was rail thin and held her champagne flute draped against her clavicle.

“Emmit says you’re moving out to California to live with your boyfriend,” Olivia said. She set a plate in front of me laden with chocolate jello, crumbled cookies, and generous layers of Cool Whip. These were the only discernible layers of the dessert.

“What a shame, honey!” Her mother waved her bejeweled fingers at me from the other end of the table. “You should move here with us! We’ll take care of you! Peter needs a new secretary at the shop.”

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?” The alcoholic had a teenage daughter. I glared at her. I had been so shy of adults as a teenager that I didn’t trust the young sycophant.

“Dave,” I said.

“Is he from California?”

“How’d you meet him?”

“He’s from Austin too,” I said.

“Emmit said your car broke down,” said the teenager.

“And we are so sorry to hear that,” crooned another aunt, this one immediately to my right. She placed a warm palm on my shoulder. She was strangely normal, wearing inadequate concealer and a Costco blouse.

“Car trouble is the worst!” Wailed the matriarch again.

“I remember when my first car broke down,” the normal aunt declared, her hand still on my arm. Her eyes got misty. She looked across the table to her champagne flute sister. “Remember that Val?”

“Was that the Nissan?”

“Terrible car,” moaned the mother, draping her diamonds across her eyes.

“It’s like losing a pet.” The normal aunt pinned me with her earnest stare. “A good car, that is.”

“What happened?” asked the teenager.

“I heard it was totaled,” interjected her mother.

“Was it scary honey?”

I swallowed a bite of Better Than Sex and took inventory of the estrogen in the room. I really had to get out of here. But the dessert was actually delicious.

“Yeah it was scary,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It was the timing chain,” said Olivia.

“According to Emmit,” I said.

The mother cackled.

“Emmit knows cars,” said Olivia, looking affronted. The alcoholic leaned in.

“If a man says it’s totaled, it’s totaled,” said Aunt Beverly, smacking her smeared lipstick. Her cloudy eyes made me squirm.

“Especially Emmit!” Said the aunt to my right, freeing me from her grasp to clap happily. She beamed at me. “He must be such a good brother.”

I dabbed my mouth with my napkin. 

My good brother was watching football with his father-in-law. Two uncles also occupied the living room, arguing over the season’s MVP.

I sat next to Emmit on the couch. He and the father-in-law smiled at me. They each had a beer next to them. 

Mom never let us watch television, especially on a holiday. I looked at the comfortable relaxation on Emmit’s face and thought it must be nice for him. To have a different family.

I looked out the window. Maybe that’s why people get married.

With a sigh, the father-in-law grew bored of the uncles arguing. He folded up his recliner with a snap and lumbered to his feet.

He wore a dark plaid suit jacket over his button down and jeans. He shuffled to the mantle and withdrew a cigar, which nestled comfortably between his yellowed molars.

“Maddy, is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come on, Maddy and Emmit. Let me show you my planes.”

///

The hangar smelled like cement and leather. The father-in-law opened the large garage doors at each end, and the late afternoon sun filled the massive quonset hut with chilly blue light.

The planes were old. They were the kind with two wings stacked on top of each other, with the pilot and passenger riding in two little cupholders shoved in between.

Emmit told me what they were called and what they did with them but I didn’t listen. 

Instead I followed the syrupy smell of cigar smoke to where the old man stood at a dusty shop counter, shuffling a couple tools into and out of the same drawers.

Photos and posters covered the wall above the counter. Pinups and Harley Davidsons and the usual. But there were some weird ones in there - posters for local fairs, family photos curling with time. 

A golden frame caught my eye. In it, a sepia photo of a man and a woman in front of an old airplane.

“My parents,” said the father-in-law. “They met doing stunts.”

“Stunts?”

“These are daredevil planes. Wing walking, loops.” His mouth made a round O, and he used his pointer finger to make a circle in the air in front of himself.

“Wing what?”

“Wing walking.”

I turned around and looked at the small aircraft behind me. I peered at the shadows in between the wings. Emmit walked up, already laughing at my expression.

“While the plane flips?”

“Some people did that.”

“So you’re telling me your mom walked on that airplane while it was in the air?”

The father-in-law nodded. “Dad was the pilot. I remember watching them at the fair. Stopped when they could. It’s a dangerous business.”

I looked back and forth between the plane and the old sepia photo. 

“You must have thought they were so cool,” I said.

He nodded. “Like gods.”

I looked back at the wall of photos, wondering what other weird stuff was in there. Emmit cleared his throat.

I pointed at another old photo, a woman with a mane of black hair and a face like a movie star. This image, looking like it was clipped from a newspaper, was also framed.

“Who’s this?” I asked. 

“That’s Dotty Roy,” he said. His eyebrows were raised in wonder, but he shook his head. “She was my mother’s friend. A wing walker.”

“What happened?”

“She didn’t make it out alive.”

“Wow,” said Emmit, also looking at the beautiful woman on the wall. “Sorry for your loss.”

The father-in-law gazed at the old planes slumbering before him. 

“She was hot,” he said, “but now she’s toast.”

I peered at the old man, wondering if he had intended to make the blackest joke I’d ever heard. Emmit cleared his throat again.

We watched the golden flakes of dust wafting through the air. 

I thought of Dotty Roy exploding in a chrysanthemum of flame. I thought of my car getting crushed at the wreckers. I thought of Aunt Beverly’s cheeks with their sexy little dash of pink.

I caught my reflection in the glass of the picture frame. My hair was as unruly as my complexion, so I didn’t look nearly as pretty, but I was just as young as Dotty Roy. These women were so brave.

///

Emmit bummed a smoke off me at the end of the day. We sat on his porch under a spare blanket and watched a couple stars flickering valiantly through the city lights.

“I wish you weren’t running off,” he said.

“I’m just growing up, Emmit. Get over it.”

“You’re growing up now? I couldn’t tell.”

I was silent, so he got sheepish.

“Nah, you’re doing alright. I love you, kid.”

He said it like Mom says it, once every few years. He wasn’t demanding reciprocation. He was declaring vulnerability and accusing me for it.

“Emmit!” I cried, sounding not nearly as annoyed as I meant to. “I’m just taking the Greyhound to California. It’s not like I’m doing tricks on planes.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“I’ll be careful,” I said.