Undream the Echoes

Liam
06.05.1998

I pick her up early in the morning. Morning dew still clings to the grass and the birds haven’t begun singing yet and Elle looks absolutely pissed when I arrive at her doorstep.

“Hello,” I say nervously as she gets into the car and slams her door. She just stares straight ahead.

“Your car is a piece of shit.”

“Oh. Well thank you.”

“Seriously, it is,” she grumbles and puts her feet up on the dashboard. I see the look she gives me out of the corner of her eye; it’s a challenge. She wants me to tell her to get her dirty shoes back on the floor where they belong. She’s daring me to do it. I know this game, as I’ve played it hundreds of times before. It’s a way of testing others’ patience, and it’s a way to learn your place around them and to see just how much you can push their limits. It shows who’s superior and who’s a pushover. If I let her keep her feet up, she knows I’m willing to do anything to make her happy and she’ll then use that to her advantage. If I ask her to put her feet down, she knows that I have the balls to stand up for myself – but then it usually results in a clash of heads, because I know she’s just as ballsy as I am and doesn’t like being told what to do. It’s a no-win situation.

But like I said, I know how to play this game. And I know how to cheat.

I start the car and swerve dangerously out of the parking spot, the tires screaming in protest. Elle is slammed against her door (not too hard, I hope) and in order to catch herself, she instinctively puts her feet down. I don’t even have to ask her or say please. I win.

“Oh, sorry. I’m a bit of a dangerous driver. It’s best if you sit up, see?” I say, trying to hide a grin. “A seatbelt would be smart too.”

She curses quietly – she knows I did that on purpose – but nevertheless I hear a click and look over to see her safely buckled and glaring out the window in hatred. “What kind of car is this anyway?” she all but growls.

“It’s a vintage Mustang. 1966.”

“It’s old as shit.”

“Yes, well, that’s what vintage means.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Why are you in such a bad mood?” I implore. I know she’s being a complete bitch on purpose – another test. She’s seeing if I’ll put up with her nastiness. She wants to know if I still think she’s worth it. And she is, so instead of retorting an equally nasty comment as I usually do, I bite my tongue and humor her.

“Because the sun isn’t out yet,” she answers.

“If I had known you weren’t a morning person, I wouldn’t have asked for you to wake up so early,” I say, fighting a grin as I start the car. My nervousness around her is now gone, replaced by an amusement at her bitterness. “You did agree to this, by the way. When I asked you if waking up at five was okay, you said it was ‘perfectly all right,’ quote, unquote.”

“That’s because you kept on saying that it would be worth it if we went earlier. And that it would be pointless if we did this thing – whatever the hell we’re doing – later in the day. You didn’t leave me with much of a choice.”

“It’s always prettier in the morning. Trust me. I think you’ll like it.”

“Why won’t you tell me where you’re taking me?” she demanded.

“It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise. Great. Get me some goddamn coffee.”

“No please or thank you?”

“Maybe later.” And maybe I just imagine it, but in the corner of my eye I see her smirk.

That gets my hopes soaring. I stop at the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru and order a black coffee for me and – I turn to her to ask what she wants, but she’s already a step ahead of me. She leans over me and shouts into the order box, “Jasmine green tea. No sugar.” It seems that both of us enjoy our drinks bitter, which, as I will learn later, is a similarity we share in things other than beverages.

And so we drive. The city disintegrates and the skyscrapers transform into the trees of a forest. And then the forest thins and we find ourselves in the middle of a huge valley and then we’re here.

“But where’s here?” she asks as I open the door for her after parking. But I just smile and my eyes tell her, you’ll see. She hates that, I can tell, but she can’t do anything about it so she has to play my little game if she wants to discover the surprise.

I take her hand and guide her down a path that leads over a small hill. Surprisingly, she doesn’t tug her hand away from mine. She lets it sit there, and even though her grasp is limp against mine and she doesn’t seem very enthused to be touching me, I don’t care because at least she’s touching me. I feel like what a fifteen year old girl would feel like with her very first crush, and with that thought I’m suddenly excruciatingly embarrassed. I turn my head away from her slightly so she can’t see my cheeks redden. If she knew how freaking obsessed with her I was, there was no doubt that she would be creeped out and run away instantly. And it stings a little because I know she doesn’t like me as much as I like her…at least not yet. I’m working on that part.

“Can you please tell me now? Or a hint at least?” she begs, and when she looks at me with those big brown eyes I can’t say no.

“I want you to meet my girls,” I respond. Terror and shock flash over her features and I can tell what she’s thinking. What the fuck did you just say? As if I have daughters or other girlfriends or something. But I just shake my head and say, “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The sun is blushing into the sky now, kissing the clouds to a rose petal hue. The faint blue above us is tinted with a blossoming pink color, which eventually turns to coral and then gold as we continue to walk. The peak of the hill isn’t too far away from us and I feel Elle’s fingers squirm against mine in anticipation. We reach the peak and the rest of the valley ascends into view, revealing what is nestled in the heart of it, revealing the thing we’ve come here for. Elle gasps and I say, “Surprise.”

It’s an airport. Not the sort of airport with hundreds of people flying to Jamaica or Hawaii or the Caribbean for vacation, with the tedious security checks and the horrible food. No, this airport is much smaller. It is only one white building located in the middle of the field with a dozen or so landing strips around it. There are four airplanes parked outside, glinting proudly in the morning sun. The planes are not passenger planes – they’re the small kind that hold only two people, the kind that were meant for people to take a leisurely flight in around the area for a nice view (that is if they have the right permits and licenses). The planes can’t take you to the tropics or to another continent; they’re not made for an escape. All in all, it is not a very impressive airport. But that doesn’t matter because it is my airport.

When I tell Elle this she turns to me and practically screams, “You own this?”

I smile and nod. “Want to go for a ride?”

She chooses to go in the white one, the one named Charlotte. I’m pleased with this choice; Charlotte happens to be my favorite. She’s not my newest plane (that would be Betty) and she’s kind of a bitch when it comes to landing, but she had been the first plane I bought with my own money. It is basically the equivalent to one’s first car, except this is so much better, because this can fucking fly.

“So, um, what do we do?” Elle asks nervously as I prepare everything. I laugh; it’s amusing how quickly her early morning bitterness has washed away with the sunrise, only to be replaced with anxiousness and excitement. She’s acting no different than when I take my six year old nieces for a ride.

“First,” I say and hand her a pair of large pilot goggles, “you put these on.”

I’ve only brought two previous girlfriends here before (I don’t tend to show this off to too many people, except for the ones who I think are worth it), and both times they have scrunched up their noses at the sight of the old dusty goggles and say, “You want me to wear those?” because they know it will ruin their makeup and make them look stupid. But Elle grabs the goggles and places them right on her face, ignoring the fact that they make her look like a frog or a rather large insect, and then she turns to me and demands, “What’s next?”

“Now you can get in the plane. Watch your head under the wings, they’re sort of low to the ground.”

“What? That’s it? There’s nothing special, like …”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like crazy procedures we have to follow, you know, like Mission Impossible stuff.”

“Um, no. You just get in the plane.”

“That’s no fun,” she huffs.

“Or,” I continue, “you could kiss me and then get in the plane.”

“I’ll just get in the plane then. Nice effort, though. You get creativity points for that one.”

Slightly deflated, I follow her over to where Charlotte is parked and climb in the pilot’s seat. I hear a squeal and look over to see Elle in the passenger side, staring with shining eyes at all of the buttons and the steering wheel in front of her. “I get to fly it too?” she asks with excitement.

“By any chance, did there happen to be a great deal of caffeine in the tea you drank on the way here?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a morning person, remember? Now the sun’s up and I’m happy.”

I nod. “I’ll try to remember that for future reference. And to answer your question, no, only I get to fly. You’re the copilot. I can switch over the controls to your side so you can drive for a little bit, but I’m in control of when that happens.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “And what makes you decide if you want to let me fly or not?”

I grin. “Have you ever heard of the term road head?”

She gives me a glare that is so murderous my hands begin to sweat a little.

“Um, it was a joke,” I stammer. “I was kidding. One hundred percent kidding.”

“Good,” she replies, but she doesn’t seem to be too angry, so I feel a bit safer.

I start the plane and the propellers roar to life. I do a few checks on everything before taking off, flicking switches and pressing buttons and making sure lights turn on when they’re supposed to. Elle watches with interest but doesn’t ask any annoying questions. The take off is smooth, just as I had hoped, and as we’re forcefully pressed back into our seats as Charlotte’s wheels lift off the ground, I look over and see Elle grinning like an idiot. Absorbing her good mood, I smile too.

We’re up in the air in no time. Cars and people dissolve from view and the autumn-tinted treetops become an ocean of greens, reds and ambers. The clouds swirl around us and for a moment we become one with the birds.

“I’m flying,” Elle whispers as she stares out the window. To my surprise she’s not looking down at the ground, but at the sky and the clouds all around her. “I’m really flying.”

I smile again. It’s always fun to fly, but watching someone else’s first experience of it is even better. It’s nothing like being in a huge passenger plane, where thick sheets of metal protect you from the lowered atmosphere and violent air currents. Up here, in Charlotte, it’s completely different because we can stick our arms out the window and taste the sky.

I decide to pass over Walden Pond, as it’s one of my favorite places to fly over because of the wondrous view. It’s prettier from the sky and I wonder what Thoreau would have written if he had seen his beloved pond from up here. “I can see the little people down there,” Elle says and sticks her hand out the window to wave. “Hello little people!” she shouts and I laugh. I realize that this is the first time that I have seen Elle truly happy, the first time I have heard her genuine laugh and seen her smile like this. Before all I had been doing was piss her off. But this, this is a good feeling.

“Do you want to try driving now?” I ask and she turns to me with big eyes.

“Really? You mean, like, right now?”

“Yes, right now.”

“Okay!” she says in all seriousness and tightens her goggles. “I’m ready.”

“All right,” I say, “put your hands on the steering wheel. When you have control you’ll feel a little tug, but you’ve got to keep your hands straight and steady, okay? Pulling on the steering wheel makes you go higher and pushing it in makes you go down. And you see that little dial in the middle of the dashboard? You want to keep the needle right in the middle, on that line right there. It means that the plane is level. When it’s above the line it means you’re ascending, and below it means you’re descending. Are you following me?”

“What are all the other numbers and dials for?”

“That one tells you your elevation in kilometers, and that one reads air pressure, and that one is for the gas tank…but you don’t need to worry about any of that. You just have to focus on going straight and not crashing. Okay? Got it?”

“Got it.”

I flick a switch above my head. “It’s all you.”

She starts screaming. And she continues screaming.

“Elle? Elle! Will you please stop? We’re not going to crash. Absolutely nothing is happening right now.”

“But this is so much fun!” she cries and screams again. But then she bursts into laughter and says something like, “Okay, okay, I’m done. Calm. I am calm.” Then she turns to me again. “Can we do a flip?”

“Um, no. Please don’t try that. That would be bad.”

She pouts. “Fine.” For a few minutes she just drives straight, focusing very intently on keeping the plane level, but then she begins to play with the steering wheel and presses it in and then pushes it out, sending the plane in waves as we fly. “This is weird,” she states.

“What, driving a plane?” It was practically second nature to me by now. It was different than driving a car, sure, but I had done it so many times in my life that now I hardly needed to think about what I was doing while piloting.

“Yeah,” she says. “I mean, there aren’t any yellow lines to follow, or anyone else to look out for. You just kind of do whatever you want.”

“Uh, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” I answer and shrug. “You’ve got to be careful of birds, and keep everything in balance, because if one thing goes wrong on the plane you need to think fast and compensate for it so you don’t start to descend too rapidly. And every once in a while another plane will come into radar, and then you might have to radio them to let them which way you’re going so you don’t crash…but yeah, it’s easy, I guess. Easier than piloting a jet, that’s for sure.”

“You can fly jets?! Wait a minute, how do you have a personal airport anyway?” she asks.

“My grandfather was the one who built this airport, and as a kid I always loved it when he took me for rides,” I reply. “I was in ROTC in college so it was sort of an easy decision when I decided to join the Air Force. I inherited the airport and two planes all from my grandfather when he died, but of course I couldn’t use any of it until I finished all of my army training. And, well, now that all of that’s done, sometimes on the weekends I come out here and fly by myself.... It’s nice. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t move too far away from my hometown when I got out of college, because I knew I’d lose this place.”

“Mm,” Elle murmurs once I’m finished and we fall into a brief silence.

“What about you?” I ask her. “Where did you grow up?”

“Georgia,” she responds and I’m surprised because she had never stuck me as one of those southern belles. I had always detected some sort of an accent, but she did such a good job of covering it up that it was impossible to decipher where she was from. Most of the time I hardly even noticed the little twang to her words; she must have trained herself well to get rid of the southern brawl. “I did go far away for college. My parents were pissed at first, but whatever. I wanted to get out of there.”

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

“Oh, you know, my parents were the conservative type. I wasn’t. Long story short, we fought about a lot of different things. That’s why I moved to Massachusetts – I figured one of the most liberal states in the country would do me some good.”

“Do you ever go back to visit?”

She scoffs. “No.”

“Why not? Don’t you miss it?”

She hesitates for a second. “Um…”

“Never mind, you don’t need to answer that. Are you hungry?” I quickly change topics. I can always tell when someone has a secret they want to keep, and I’m not a curious enough person to disrespect that. I have my own past as well, and if I don’t want her prying then I know I shouldn’t try prying into hers. She gives me an appreciative smile. “We got up too early for breakfast and now I’m starving,” I continue. “I know a great pancake place nearby that we can stop at.”

“Oh, pancakes?” she exclaims. “I love pancakes. Yes, let’s go to the pancake place.”

I laugh. “All righty then,” I say, a bit taken back by her enthusiasm to eat. (It’s not until later when I learn that Elle is absolutely obsessed with food.) I relieve her of piloting and take over again, turning the plane around and guiding it back to the airport. Soon enough the landing strips can be seen on the ground, and I dip the nose of the plane downwards. Taking off and landing has always been my favorite part; there’s that strange pulling feeling inside of you, like your heart is trying to stay in one place as the rest of your body is going somewhere else.

The landing is rough, as it usually is with Charlotte. The wheels bump and skid across the ground, sending the plane in a seizure of rumbles. Elle is sitting next to me, grabbing onto whatever she can, saying, “Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow” until we finally stop. I guide Charlotte over to the parking spot and then cut the engine.

Elle looks at me. It is clear that she wasn’t expecting the landing to be so brutal, but that’s what you get when you fly in planes like these. “My butt hurts,” she informs me.

“I can kiss it to make it better,” I offer.

“Oh, ha ha. No.”

I smile and step out of the plane, feeling unsteady against the solid dirt beneath me. There’s always a sense of disorientation once one descends from the sky and returns to earth. “To the pancake place, then?” I ask.

She nods. “To the pancake place.”