“I used to fly a Dakota,” said my father. “Just after the war, when they would let you fly anything that had wings.” He stared over my head, at the shower curtain rods that were wedged between the side of the meter box and the living room wall and served as coatracks. I followed his gaze and saw him, young and tanned, cap askew, leaning out of the window of the plane as he was cracking a joke while the mechanic was inspecting the left propeller. A little farther down the sunlight bounced off the dull metal skin of the Nissen huts. High above the airstrip, where the tarmac disappeared into flat patches of dry grass, a small red spray plane turned its nose in the wind. “In those days, flying was just like riding a motorcycle,” he said. “You jumped into your crate and took off, and if you got hungry you just set her down in a field behind a village pub to get a plate of fried eggs.” He produced a thin smile and groaned as he got up. “Come on,” he said. “Help me carry in a pile of these boxes. We’re going to build a B-seventeen.”
That night I made mushroom omelets, which we ate while gluing together the gray plastic pieces of airplane. The box had boasted a roaring flying fortress, her gun turrets spitting fire at viciously attacking Messerschmidts. What took shape in our hands, however, was a dull plastic lump with ugly welds. When the fuselage was finished, my father held it up doubtfully: “I’m beginning to understand why they all want to buy ready-made planes. This is a mess. What does he expect us to do next? Paint it?” In the hallway, next to the piles of boxes, I had seen a bag of tiny pots of paint and equally tiny brushes. When I told my father he grumbled to himself. “We’ll be the Fords of the model airplane industry, then. If you file down the welds, I’ll do the painting. We’ll divide up the assembly per model.”
I thought of the wall of cardboard out in the hallway. I wasn’t really so sure that, after this B-17, I wanted to build more planes.
“Look, mate,” said my father. “This was your idea and I’m perfectly willing to carry it out, but not on my own. If you want to get rid of that pile, you’ll have to put your money where your mouth is.”
I started to say something, but when I looked at him I saw he was dead serious. I stared down at the flotsam of plastic bits and pieces. If we went on at this rate we would have to assemble a plane every night for months to come. I looked at my father. My father looked at me. I sighed and lowered my head.
There was a stumbling noise on the stairs. The coat hangers clicked against the shower rods. My mother opened the door and stared at the mess on the table. “What’s going on here? What are all those boxes doing in the hallway?” She looked disheveled. My father stood up and went over to her. He kissed her on the neck and turned around, so that they were both looking at me. “Be proud of your son,” he said. “He has come up with a wonderful idea that’s going to make us rich.”
“How convenient,” said my mother. “I just got fired.” She wriggled out of my father’s half-embrace, kissed me on the head, and looked at the airplane-in-the-making that stood between the empty plates. “What is that?”
“Fired?” There was a touch of concern in my father’s voice.
“An airplane,” I said. “We’re building model airplanes for the doll doctor.”
My mother looked from one to the other with an expression on her face as if we had just told her we were going to start a penguin farm in Greenland. “What did you have for tea?”
“Mushroom omelets,” I said. “With fresh thyme.”
“Did you let him cook again?” she said to my father.
“He’s better at it than I am. Why were you fired?”
“Time for bed,” said my mother. She laid her hand on the back of my neck and gave me a gentle squeeze. “They threw me out. For impertinence. I think I’m too old for this kind of work. I can’t stand it anymore when an overgrown child with a little mustache who’s just out of high school treats me like his slave.”
“Oh, Lord,” said my father.
I got up from my chair and let my mother lead me out of the room. As we passed my father he gave me a pensive look. He leaned down to kiss me good night. “That idea of yours,” he said, “just became a plan.”
MY PARENTS FIRST MET when my father was brought into the hospital with so many broken bones that the osteopath told the head nurse to phone a colleague who liked doing jigsaw puzzles. My mother, who had just received her degree and was standing for the first time as a full-fledged nurse at a patient’s bedside, had failed to see the humor in it. She gazed at the tranquil face of the young man lying there on the white operating table and felt (highly unprofessional) compassion flooding her like a spring tide. His light, sun-bleached hair lay tousled on his forehead, and his face, despite the pain he must have felt before they had knocked him out, had the healthy complexion of someone who spent much of his time outdoors. No one in the hospital looked like that. No one she knew had his hair. And when they began to cut away his clothes she realized that she had never seen anyone with such a body. His limbs were bent where they shouldn’t have
