The helicopter was not his choice. Aerodynamics would have been much better. A twelve year-old Brandon was not only charmed by the highbrow and sexy sound of the word, he was thoroughly consumed by the idea of flight – squinting through Ray-Bans at the rapidly shrinking Earth, goosing the throttle and confidently pulling back the yoke to shake off life’s banal strictures and point himself toward a limitless horizon. Aerodynamics as the topic of his Middle School Science Fair presentation was, for Brandon, a foregone conclusion. With the effortlessness of destiny, an artful and scholarly vision had come to him: an interactive display centered on a 3D model wing, blown by a fan motor that would run on a D-cell battery, and perhaps also float colorful little streamers. This apparatus would demonstrate the core principals of weight, lift, drag, and thrust, the seamless mingling of learning and entertainment easily driving the judges wild. The Science Fair had been announced at morning assembly with the mythic solemnity of a royal wedding. “Each entrant must present an original topic, with no duplication, collaboration, or outside assistance,” aspirants were warned. A buzz ran through the school, with good topics both jealously guarded and wildly speculated-on, but Brandon’s singular passion and depth of knowledge on the topic of Aerodynamics made him certain it was uniquely his. He even cavalierly whispered his delicious secret over boloney sandwiches and GoGurts one day to Daniel Stenbock, a bit of a dim bulb, and not Science Fair material.
On the day topics would be selected, Brandon waited in a long line of entrants to make his declaration to Miss Van Slyke, the willowy and pert recent gift to the school from the state college put in charge of that year’s Science Fair. Her shimmering straight hair, maddening ribbed sweaters, short skirts, and long, flawless legs had lately been knocking around his adolescent brain almost as frequently as the thrill of flight; his stomach grew queasy when he stepped before her. “Aerodynamics,” he said, trembling.
“Oh, sorry,” she frowned, looking at her clipboard. “Somebody took that one. Daniel Stenbock.”
Standing exposed now before the perfect Miss Van Slyke, the idiot Stenbock’s treachery stung, but that prickly rush was quickly overwhelmed by the novel effects of a triple-narcotic cocktail, the sting and slam of which Brandon would come to know well and experience many more times: the rubbery, stupefying paralysis of being looked at by big, expectant female eyes, the dreadful fast-boil fear of disappointing her, and the primal spasm that arrests involuntary twitching or flailing to impose false cool. “Helicopters,” he sputtered, naming the first semi-close thing that came to mind.
“Awesome,” Miss Van Slyke mumbled, but it did not seem to please her.
Brandon figured Stenbock was too dumb to also pirate his 3D display, so for the new helicopter set-up he would keep the fan and streamers, simply swapping a rotor blade for the wing. But when he told his parents of this plan, his father thought the arrangement too technical, and that a diorama would better engage the judges. The next night his father brought home an intricate scale model of the venerable Sikorsky S-70, better known as the Blackhawk, to be assembled as a father-son project, and ultimately featured as the centerpiece of this diorama. It would hover heroically over the display area by means of translucent fishing line, his dad said. Initially, Brandon was given the job of gluing the fuselage together, but was quickly shooed away for smearing glue and making fingerprints.
A few days after starting the father-son project, Brandon’s father emerged from the basement, tenderly carrying a stunning tableau: the Sikorsky painted as a Fire and Rescue chopper poised tensely above a hillside made of Styrofoam, Elmer’s Glue and brown felt; it unwound a dangling stretcher basket to an injured hiker below. The display was exquisite. Even the faces of the tiny figurines his father had included were rendered in painstaking detail. The macho Rescue pilot had a thick walrus moustache and wore jaunty sunglasses, while the hiker’s face was twisted in such bone-crushing agony that imagining what had happened to him on that craft store hillside gave Brandon bad dreams. His dad said that painting with the microscopic brush under a magnifying glass had made him go half-blind, but he was sure the judges would appreciate the detail. Brandon’s mother could not have been more proud.
When the awards were announced, and the project was given only a pedantic Honorable Mention, Brandon felt bad for his father. Other parents looked at him and his shabby award ribbon with a resigned sympathy that seemed a little more like pity. When he thought about it later, he had to conclude that their reaction was probably because of how his parents had cornered and loudly berated poor Miss Van Slyke. Later she would give Brandon a hastily-printed Special Certificate for “Superior Craftsmanship” and in pressing it into his hands, seemed happy to be rid of him. His dad hung it on Brandon’s bedroom wall, near the Sikorsky, which was strung from the ceiling with lengths of the translucent fishing line.
That helicopter hovered unfailingly over his shoulder, always vigilant, ever-poised, seeming ready to unspool its umbilical, to hook onto his backpack strap and whisk him safely over the precipice of any impending stumble. The Science Fair wasn’t the first time his parents had swooped in to kick up dust, or hooked-on to hoist him over an obstacle. His father had been threatened with a lawsuit over his reaction to a blown Little League call that he could not let go. His mother had found her way into every classroom as the tireless Volunteer Helper Mom, a position she created for herself when his Kindergarten teacher failed to nurture Brandon’s finger-painting gift, and had maintained each successive year by simply showing up with him at school daily and not leaving until the 3 PM bell. Though not uncharacteristic, the Science Fair was when he first noticed the depths of their ostensible consumption. He started wondering if other kids, like Daniel Stenbock, also felt the cool of an ever-present shadow hovering overhead.
A few months after the Science Fair, Brandon and his mom walked together into the schoolyard one morning. “So I’ll be starting high school soon,” he said to her tentatively. “I’ve been thinking maybe I should start getting ready.” She said nothing, and this encouraged him. “Maybe do a little more on my own. You know? To get ready…”
His mother stopped next to the baseball backstop, turning as kids milled around them. Her look was serene, but cautious, as if she had expected this, and had rehearsed an answer. “You might think your dad and I are a little too hands on,” she began with a deep breath. “But raising a child, especially one as exceptional as you are, is a sacred responsibility. We signed up to do nothing less than our very best. And how you turn out is a reflection to the whole world of our effort. So maybe we try a little harder than others to do our very best.”
The din of adolescent chatter filled Brandon’s ears as he looked around at kids gamboling and slouching, screaming and whispering, strutting and shrinking, all unfettered, unsupervised, he the only one with a Helper Mom. “Well, some of the other kids…” he stammered. “Their parents aren’t as…I mean they don’t…”
He felt himself rising, a curious lightness tickling his knees and spiraling through his chest, as if flaps had deployed to thrust him skyward. His mother smiled knowingly. “Other parents don’t love their children the same way we love ours,” she chided.
It was only her hand that she placed gently on his shoulder, but it felt like the tubular steel of the Sikorsky’s landing skids crushing down. “Someday, Brandon,” she said, “you’ll fly away. But until then, you’re our responsibility.” A soccer ball whizzed crazily toward them. His mother deftly stepped in front of him, taking the ball’s blow on the shoulder. Brandon looked into the schoolyard to see Daniel Stenbock smirking. The idiot had done it on purpose.
High School, by virtue of its implicit mission to foster self-sufficiency and process pimply slackers into revenue-generating citizens, provided Brandon a little freedom. Though he had to recite to them each day’s activities and obligations, and homework was still sometimes a group endeavor, he was often able to walk alone, in sunlight, without a looming shadow overhead. Coincidentally, he noticed that the pitch of the Sikorsky model strung from his bedroom ceiling seemed different, perhaps nudged when his mother dusted it. Instead of hovering, the nose now pointed up, as if ascending. In his first week he signed up for the Cross Country team, and decided to give Band a try.
He had played the trombone before, sucking horribly, but had been encouraged to keep flailing away by teachers who needed extra bodies. He sat with the other freshmen, their nervous chatter filling the noisy auditorium, waiting for tryouts to begin. A few seniors huddled with Mr. Schulnick, the Director, ignoring the sweating noobs. The room hushed when a long-legged girl streaming long, radiant hair swept in with an electrifying white-toothed smile. The other seniors melted as she flitted among them, kissing each on the cheek, squeezing shoulders, pressing her chest into theirs. This was Vanessa Rivington; she had pulled off the Triple Crown of secondary education performing arts: Student Band Director, Show Choir, and the lead in Oklahoma! Even a clod like Brandon knew the story.
“I’m super-excited!” Vanessa beamed at the freshmen. “Our amazing director, Mr. Schulnick, and I, your Student Director, will evaluate each of you individually. Don’t be nervous! Be awesome!”
Brandon’s audition sounded like a castrated harp seal with flatulence being assaulted.
“Awesome,” mumbled Vanessa, but it did not seem to please her.
“We might try you in percussion,” grimaced Mr. Schulnick. “Ever played the tambourine?”
“Way to go Bran-douche,” sneered Daniel Stenbock.
It was rare for his father to leave work early, but when Brandon’s mother called after the audition he appeared, grim-faced and resolute. His father dialed a number he had recently programmed into his cell, and Brandon overheard his half of the call: “I’d like to speak to Mr. Schulnick please…Oh, he’s left for the day? I’ll speak to the Principal then…yes, it’s urgent.”
They emerged from the Principal’s office after about an hour the next day, his father shaking hands with Mr. Schulnick, who looked unnerved, perspiration rolling from his balding scalp. His mother beamed. “We’re going to try some private lessons,” Mr. Schulnick informed Brandon, sounding as if he was convincing himself both that this was a fantastic idea and that he was elated.
Brandon wouldn’t have really minded switching to the tambourine, but was happy to see his parents satisfied, so dutifully showed up for the lesson. When he saw that it was Vanessa Rivington who would conduct it, his guts liquefied, and it was only a question of which orifice would falter first.
“Ready for your lesson?” she asked, patting the empty chair beside her. “It’s Brandon, right?”
He nodded as he sat, his throat suddenly parched.
Vanessa’s abundant hair swayed as she reached for a sheet of music on the stand before them, sparks dancing from her polished nails. Brandon had to look away, feeling scorched by the senior’s beauty and regal bearing. Girls his age wore makeup, but they were all Kool-Aid lips and garish rouged-up puppet cheeks compared to Vanessa’s mature, artful, enchanting face. Her eyes were round and expectant, dark caramel candy drops in a rosy shadow sliced by the lithe curves of raven lashes. Paralysis from the first of three familiar narcotics stung and wracked him. He fought to stay lucid as Vanessa’s plump lips announced their first practice piece as “When the Saints Go Marching In,” thready panic making his trombone impossible to lift. Finally the third drug, barbiturate calm, kicked in and he could see the notes on the sheet.
“Show me what you got,” Vanessa smiled.
“Um,” she said, biting a plump lip after he had finished. “Interesting.”
“Terrific!” cried Brandon’s mother. It probably shouldn’t have surprised him that she materialized, but he sat dumfounded at her stealth, and in awe of her dedication. She must have hidden in the rafters, he thought. “Good start, don’t you think?” she cooed to a confused Vanessa.
Four years of largely ineffective tutoring, plus quarterly parent-teacher meetings with Mr. Schulnick, allowed Brandon to hold second chair through graduation.
There were nightly phone calls his first semester away at college, a running group chat used by the three of them throughout each day, and trips home every-other-weekend at his mother’s insistence so that she could do his laundry. But on his own, he also experienced freedom again, a soaring, unfettered happiness at limitless possibilities that at times felt like he had always imagined flying would. He bought a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans at the Student Union, and considered growing a moustache as virile as the rescue chopper pilot figurine, though he could manage little more than a scraggly, late-pubescent dirty chestnut fuzz.
Both his parents were as interested in his grades as they had always been, his mother reminding him of assignments that were due, and making sure he studied, his father proofreading and offering helpful re-writes of his essays. His dad also seemed especially interested in whether he was making friends, or attending parties, while his mom often asked cloyingly if he was meeting girls.
Kaylee had long, ruler-straight hair, and it brushed his cheek when she sat down in the seat beside him in the lecture hall one day. She smiled and asked if he had last week’s lecture notes. Brandon heard himself answer that he did, but his voice sounded to him like a surreal, dragged-out echoing yelp, as if coming off of a slow, warped LP amplified ghoulishly through a tin pail. She put long, slender fingers capped by flawless flame-red fingernails to her sternum and introduced herself, then did this magical fluttering trick with her eyelids and lashes. Brandon felt his heart inflate and collapse in an instant, becoming a shriveled pit that plummeted into his gut with alacrity. Kaylee asked shyly to borrow his notes. Had she asked for a kidney, he could not have agreed more readily.
He said he would e-mail her, lying that he had typed the notes up already, but had forgotten his laptop. In truth, he wanted to conceal all his flaws from her, poor penmanship among them. That night he created a masterpiece – typing, spell-checking, re-reading, editing, and even supplementing with extra nuggets from the textbook. He e-mailed her the file, and dreamed of a reply.
Brandon spent most of that week thinking about Kaylee – her smile, her hair, those fluttering eyes. She was arguably gorgeous, but neither Prom Queen perfect nor Pom Squad plastic. She had a fresh, natural look with a preference for crumpled flannel, suggesting a genuineness to Brandon, and that perhaps she liked the outdoors. And maybe she, like him, gravitated to books and science, and for their first date they could hike a well-lighted, not-creepy trail, settling to rest at its end on verdant grass to talk of the cosmos. Their eventual wedding would almost surely be an outdoor one.
He lost his nerve when she found him in class the next week and thanked him with a diffident smile. Agonizingly, he could do no better than mumbling “no problem” to the floor. After that, he never seemed to score a seat next to her, and despite his willingness, Kaylee never again sought his notes (with sweaty horror one night, he conjectured that she had found them insipid, indecipherable). He thought of her constantly.
Just before Thanksgiving he spotted her on the Quad. She strode with feminine grace, swishing hair behind her that must have smelled of honeysuckle and promise. Long legs carried her to him against the stately backdrop of academic brick and limestone plus autumn’s full splendor of scarlet, yellow, and orange leaves, the sun ladling out the last embers of its golden light. With a strength he did not recognize, Brandon set his feet on the quad’s brick. “Hey Kaylee,” he said, trembling.
She had earbuds in and gazed straight ahead, stumbling and pausing finally at the shadow looming in her path. “Hey…you,” she said cautiously, seeming a bit unpleased. Brandon stood shot-through again with the empty helplessness and rabid panic of that old three-narcotic cocktail, fumbling desperately for the synthetic, iced calm to kick in, but it was too late. Kaylee replaced her earbuds and kept walking.
Brandon’s mother was intrigued that Thanksgiving when she found out about Kaylee, but vexed that the girl seemed, in her estimation, shallow. “She sounds like trouble,” his mother said. “Thinks she’s better than you. Well, let me tell you, there is no one better than you!”
In retrospect, it should not have surprised him that his mother insisted on staying overnight after she drove him back to college that Sunday. She got a hotel room off campus and stood waiting outside his dorm that Monday morning. It was early, a chilly gray day, late-autumn frost hoary on the grass, kids shuffling by, still half-asleep, hunched under backpacks and the weight of impending Finals. “Let’s find this girl of yours,” his mother said. Brandon’s stomach filled with both hope and dread, confounded by both the mortifying thrill of getting close to Kaylee, and also the nut-shriveling terror of what his mother might say. She seemed to drag him on a translucent line toward the center of campus. “As long as I’m here, I need to speak to one of your professors, too,” his mother said. “That jerk who’s giving you a hard time in Sociology.”
It was the ruler-straight hair that he spotted from a distance. Kaylee stood with a group of girls outside the Math building, lush, shiny hair spilling over a hoodie. Brandon saw her laugh at something one of the others had said. Turning, she looked right at him with a happy smile that seemed meant, somehow, for him. That was when he knew for sure that he was in love with her.
He remembered his mother.
“It’s ok. I don’t think you need to…” he stammered. But she had already made off toward the group. “Mom, you don’t even know who she is!”
“I saw the way you looked at that one,” she said, pointing. “I know which one. I know her type.”
He was unsure whether following his mother would make him look even more pathetic than he already felt, so hung back, consumed by both withering shame and an impossible hope that whatever was said might somehow work. He watched his mother walk up to the group and beckon Kaylee aside.
Kaylee stepped away from the circle with a befuddled, but sunny smile. Brandon could only see his mother’s head bobbing and hands dancing; Kaylee faced him, appearing to listen with the earnest interest and kind helpfulness of one asked if perchance she had seen a lost dog recently. Gradually, Kaylee’s face melted to confusion, eyes narrowing, lips falling open.
Brandon strained to hear, edging closer. There was a moment of quiet as Kaylee’s face went blank. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I even know anyone named Brandon,” he heard her say.
A flash of sick heat ran through him as he became intently aware that he stood alone.
His mother became more animated, even pointing with accusing zeal at the girl. Brandon watched Kaylee’s face dissolve from puzzlement to concern, then quickly to alarm, clicking through emotions like the channels on a TV being changed by an impatient child. She shrank back as Brandon’s mother intensified her harangue. Kaylee’s darting eyes caught his just before the clutch of friends closed protectively around her, and instead of a bewitching flutter he registered a sour conflation of recognition, pity, and fear in them.
He wished he could run away, wished the ground would open and swallow him, but he knew that at some point he would have to retreat across campus, towed behind his mother. An awestruck crowd was beginning to gather, some swiveling their heads from his ranting parent to him. Among them he spotted Daniel Stenbock, apparently just smart enough to get into college, and looking delighted to exhort the crowd. Kaylee’s friends bunched around her tightly, a few of the braver ones shouting back at his mother, but this just seemed to enrage her more. Her hands waved and chopped above her head as she cursed them, whirling like the blades of the old Sikorsky. Brandon stood clutching the strap of his backpack, his only wretched hope that the trusty old umbilical would descend from the sky to hook onto him, whisking him away once again.
Tim Jones is a fiction writer living in Northern California. His proudest achievement is helping to raise two children, now college-age, without hovering too much. This story was inspired by parents he met along the way, who probably had good intentions, but may have tried a little too hard.