Tandem

If I survive…

Mollie pushes the morbid thought out of her head. Of course, she will survive. She survived the turbulent sixties when all her friends either got strung out on dope or— literally or figuratively—they lost their heads in Vietnam. She survived her abusive ex-husband slamming her head into the wall so hard it left a nose-shaped dent in the plaster. She survived two C-sections, one that left her hemorrhaging for almost a week. Most recently, she survived Covid, the dreaded plague that claimed the lives of much younger and healthier people. Survival is her superpower. Of course, she’ll survive.

“Tight enough for you?” the instructor asks as he tightens the tandem around her waist.

It’s too tight, she thinks. She wants to do this solo. She dreams of freefalling through time and space, nothing holding her back, no one holding her down. But she tells the instructor, “It’s just fine.” That’s been her default answer for everything ever since she graduated high school.

“Do you like the ring, Mollie?” Larry asked her as he placed a plain silver plaited band on her finger.

“It’s just fine.”

"How was your first time making love, Mollie?"

"It was just fine."

“Please forgive me for smashing your head into the wall, Mollie.”

“It’s just fine.”

Making a fuss just makes a bigger fuss, Mollie’s mother used to say when she complained about anything.

But this morning, she was sincere when she said those words to Sandra when her daughter argued that it was crazy for a seventy-five-year-old woman to take skydiving lessons.

“It’s just fine, sweetheart. Everything is going to be just fine.”

What she meant was that no matter what happened to her mother, Sandra would be fine. After a few days receiving condolences and arranging for Mollie’s burial, she’d go back to her busy life, teaching school and entering dance contests with Chuck, her significant other. Sure, she’d grieve and hurt for a while, but like Mollie, Sandra is a skilled survivor. She’ll be just fine.

It’s Doug Mollie is most concerned about. Doug and his endless parade of former and future fiancés. If he could just seal the deal with any one of them, Mollie would worry less about leaving him. She doesn’t know how Doug will make it without his mother reminding him where his socks are and when his dental appointment is.

She’s floating now, but she doesn’t have the sensation of flying like she thought she would; she feels like she’s being pushed down. Did the instructor tell her when they were going to jump? She thought he must have, and she must have complied, but her thoughts were racing, and the wind is so loud, beating out a violent melody inside her ears. She hears their jumpsuits flapping in the cold, brisk air and wonders if her jowls are flapping. She watched videos where skydivers’ faces looked like excited dogs hanging their heads out of moving car windows.

Good Lord, it’s beautiful up here. No wonder everyone thinks heaven is in the sky.

She went to heaven once. She was thirty-seven and overdosed on barbiturates and cheap chardonnay. She knew it was heaven because her mother was there and her mother died when she was ten, but Mollie didn’t think heaven was in the sky. The heaven she went to was right here on earth and the only thing that made it different was that all the pain and hatred and ugliness had been removed.

Funny how no one ever asked her why she tried to end her own life. As soon as she was released from the hospital, everything went right back to the same way it was with Larry yelling and slapping her around and everyone else pretending they didn’t know it was happening.

Ambivalence, the psychiatrist called it. She longed for death’s sweet release while simultaneously clinging desperately to life.

Maybe today she will get to go back to heaven and see her mother again. Maybe the wind will shift and carry them into some huge boulder, but she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to the instructor. He seems like a nice man, and she thinks she heard him say something about a baby. 

Besides, she didn’t take skydiving lessons just so she could die and lose all memory of her first jump. She wants to savor the feeling of conquering gravity for a few years anyway.

The ground is getting closer. She can see dirt and grass and the giant circle they are aiming for. Somehow, she thought it would last longer than this. Why does everything you dream about and plan for end so quickly once you achieve it? Maybe it’s best to let some things just stay dreams. Sometimes she wishes marrying Larry had stayed a dream, and then she would have never known the darkness inside him, and maybe she’d still love him.

“Legs up! Prepare for impact!” The instructor yells, and this time Mollie hears him.

She tucks her knees up to her chest, and she slides butt-first into the circle. She loses her breath for a second, feels a little sting on her backside, but like always, she survives.

The instructor unharnesses her and helps her off the ground. Her legs are a little wobbly, like a newborn calf, unsteady and uncertain of the unknown world, but eager and excited to be here.

All ambivalence is gone. It disappeared somewhere between the jump door and the landing spot, as if ripped away by the icy wind, and now her uncertainty is part of the entropy of the universe and no longer caged inside her soul. She wants life more than death. For the first time in seventy-five years, she’s thankful for her superpower.

“So, how was your first jump?” the instructor asks.

Exhilarating. Breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. Remarkable. Unbelievable. Extraordinary. Amazing. Rejuvenating.

She could use all those adjectives plus a hundred more and it still would not sum up the experience.

She pats the instructor’s hand and answers, “It was fine. It was just fine.”