"Thank you for the flower," she said after a minute. "Thank you for the apology. And Richard, try to remember: Anyone you want to keep in your life-never take them for granted!"
Friday afternoon late, she came down happy from a flight, bright and lovely; she had stayed in the air more than three hours, landed not because she couldn't find lift, but because another pilot needed the plane. She kissed me, glad and hungry, telling me what she had learned.
I tossed a salad, listening to her, stirred it in the air over its bowl, dished it into two parts.
"I watched your landing again," I said. "Like Mary
Moviestar for the camera. Your touchdown was light as a sparrow!"
"Don't I wish," she said. "I had full spoilers all the way down final approach or I would have rolled on into the sagebrush. Bad judgment!"
She was proud of her touchdown, though, I could tell. When she was praised, she often switched the subject to something alongside not quite perfect to spread the shock of the compliment, make it easier to accept.
This is the time, I thought, to tell her. "Wook, I think I'm going to take off for a while."
She knew at once what I was saying, looked at me frightened, gave me a door to change my mind last minute by speaking two levels at once:
"Don't bother taking off now. The thermals are all cold."
Instead of turning back, I plunged ahead. "I don't mean take off in a sailplane. I mean leave. After the race tomorrow; how does that sound? I need to be alone for a while. You do, too, don't you?"
She put down her fork, sat back on the couch. "Where are you going?"
"I'm not sure. Doesn't matter. Anywhere. Just need to be alone for a week or two, I think." Please wish me well, I thought. Please say you understand, that you need to be alone, yourself, maybe go back and shoot a TV thing in Los Angeles?
She looked at me, her face a question. "Except for a few problems, we've been having the happiest time in our lives, we're happier than we've ever been, and you suddenly want to run off to anywhere and be alone? Is it alone, or do you need to be with one of your women so you can start over new with me?"
"That's not fair, Leslie! I promised changes, I've made changes. I promised no other women, there aren't any other women. If our test wasn't working out, if I wanted to see somebody else, I'd tell you. You know I'm cruel enough to tell you."
"Yes, I do." There was no expression in the lovely planes and shadows of her face . . . her mind was sorting, sorting, fast as light: reasons, suggestions, options, alternatives.
I thought she should have expected this, sooner or later. My cynical destroyer, that viper in my mind, doubted our experiment would last longer than two weeks, and we'd been living in the trailer six months tomorrow, not a day apart. Since my divorce, I thought, never had I stayed six days with one woman. Even so, time for a break.
"Leslie, please. What is so wrong about getting away from each other once in a while? That's the murderous thing that happens in marriage . . ."
"Oh, God, he's getting on his soapbox. If I have to listen to that litany of reasons you've got for not loving . . ." she held up her hand to stop me, "... I know you hate the word love it's had all the meaning mangled out of it you have told me a hundred times you never want to use it but I'm using it right now! . . . litany of reasons you've got for not loving anyone but the sky or your airplane, if I have to listen I am going to scream!"
I sat quietly, trying to put myself in her mind and failing. What could be wrong with a vacation from each other? Why should the idea of being out of touch for a while be so threatening to her?
"To scream would be to raise your voice," I said with a smile, by way of saying if I can poke fun at my own sacred rules then it can't be a terribly bad time we're in for.
She refused to smile. "You and your damn rules! How long-oh God!-how long are you going to drag those things around with you?"
A bolt of anger tensed me. "If they weren't true, I wouldn't bother you with them. Don't you see? These things matter to me; they're true for me; I happen to live by this stuff! And please watch your language in front of me."
"Now you're telling me how to talk! I'll goddamn well say what I goddamn well please!"
"You're free to say it, Leslie, but I don't have to listen. . . ."
"Oh, you and your stupid pride!"
"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being treated without respect!"
"And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's being ABANDONED!" She buried her face in her hands, her hair cascading, a golden curtain, to cover her misery.
"Abandoned?" I said. "Wook, I'm not going to abandon you! All I said . . ."
"You are! And I can't stand . . . being abandoned. . . ." The words choked out in sobs through her hands, through the gold.