33. Time Passes

In the months that followed these incidents, things happened that were all too predictable given the trajectories all the players were on.

For a fortnight, Scott bivouacked at the “shed.” He did not, as Lana had sarcastically predicted, sleep under his Cub. He set up a cot in the office and, having gotten his car back with its sizeable stash of necessities, he made a life. Having had a taste of prison, these digs were doable. For that first week, he did not repeat his drinking incident. He turned his attention to selling and trying to gain the ground lost by lost time and additional expense.

Bruce negotiated with Scott about the sales trips. Scott was persuaded by the argument that at this point they both needed to be selling. They would divide up the paperwork and maintenance chores. Parts acquisitions also would be shared. It was agreed that they would now make a fifty-fifty effort to dig themselves out of the slight pit they were in. It was only a dip, really. They should regain altitude in short order.

This noble plan was derailed by the arrival of another process-server. Scott saw the man drive up and get out of his car. He was so unlike the last one, that Scott missed the import. He was wearing ordinary cold weather gear topped by a ski cap. His well-worn boots crunched their way down the walk to the office. Scott got up and went to the door, and opened it.
“Scott Andrews?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Tom Johnson.”
For a moment, Scott thought that he was going to hold out his hand to be shaken, but instead, out from within the parka can an envelope of some heft.
“Oh no. I’m not taking this. You fucking asshole.”
“I’m just doing my job, sir.”
Scott shut the door on the man, who wedged the envelope into the storm door, went back to his car, and drove away. Scott’s divorce papers had been served. When Bruce arrived that morning, he brought the package in. A glance at the envelope, from the Circuit Court of Wood County, West Virginia, told the sad story plainly enough.
“I don’t think you can duck the server that way, nor should you,” Bruce said, to Scott’s indication to ‘throw that shit out.’

Scott eventually got around to reading Lana’s terms. She wanted the house. She wanted a quitclaim deed. He could have his car, and all of his personal property. She was asking for temporary support, help with the bills and mortgage until she could get on her own two feet. She renounced any claim in his business, and apart from the temporary support, she indicated that she would not seek alimony per se. The red flashing light in all of this for Scott was, by acting so aggressively so quickly, he understood that he had irrevocably destroyed his marriage. Lana, he knew, at least on some level, was utterly finished with him. This realization ripped through his mind in one direction, while the realization she was the love of his life and that he couldn’t live without her ripped through going the other. They passed in the middle of his head and shouted, ‘fuck you!’ He hopped in the car, peeling out in the direction of the package store. He bought himself a bottle of the active ingredient in the martini: gin. He returned to the office, slapped an old tumbler down on the desk, still sporting yesterday and today’s unfinished paperwork, and he poured. It was about 3:23 in the afternoon.

By the time Bruce touched down and hangared the Cessna, Scott was totally awash.
“Goddamn,” he slurred by way of greeting.
“Scott, what are you doing? It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“Middle of bullshit.”
“You looked at your divorce papers, I gather.”
“Buddy, she’s killing me.”
“(…)”
“She’s killing me I tell ya.”
“I think the technical term is divorce.”
Bruce was woefully inadequate at dealing with this level of plastered and heartbroken. A sob burst from his partner’s throat. He’d never heard that happen before. This was some bad juju.
“Why doesn’t she understand how much she means to me?”
“Maybe because you hit her?”
“I am so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to do it. I was just pissed off. It was just a moment of stupid. Just one, tiny, tiny moment!” He held up his hand and showed how tiny that moment was by pinching his fingers together. He then stood up, very shakily, and grabbed the bottle. He held it out to Bruce.
“C’mon, brother, join me! Less have a good old-fashioned chick flick style date with destruction!”
“OK, let me see if I can find a glass around here without too many dead flies in it.” Bruce rummaged and came up with an old shot glass. He poured himself a shot of gin. The bottle was seriously depleted. Scott snatched it and held it up.
“Here’s to heartbreak of earthquake magnitude!” Bruce had never heard Scott be so poetic. He wondered whether Lana had ever heard him do this. If she could see him now, perhaps she’d soften up. Then he remembered that she was who she was and would find this whole scene either ridiculous or revolting or both. Bruce took his shot down in one gulp. He had some catching up to do.
“Here’s to a temporary set back.”
“Shit fuck. Can’t ya jush go tell her I love her? Isn’t that what a buddy should do?”
“I promise to try it.”
“You’re a good man, Bruce.”
“So are you, Scott.”
“No I’m not. I’m fucked up.”
“That’s true at the moment, but it’s just a temporary state of affairs.”
“No. I mean, without that woman, I’m worthless.”
This was ‘got it bad’ of a magnitude Bruce didn’t think Scott had in him. It wasn’t good.
“Scott. Watch it!” There was nothing he could do. Scott tried to sit back down, but missed the chair by a few feet. He sat down hard on his ass, and fell over backwards, again upending the trashcan. Bruce watched to see if he’d get back up, or was down for the count. Scott writhed, but fell still. After a moment, Bruce observed that Scott’s breathing was deep and convulsive. His back was heaving. At first he thought he was vomiting, but then he realized that his ‘buddy’ was sobbing. He thought he ought to go and put a hand on the man’s back. Show him some humanity. Old wounds held him back. The present predicament had no remedy. At length, Bruce left Scott passed out in the office and went home to his own wife. He told Annie all about it. Annie could only say,
“Wow. I feel bad for him. She’s never going to go back to him. She just isn’t.”
“I know. I don’t even feel like talking to her about it.”
Bruce never did.

Soon after this, Scott got a small apartment not far from the airfield. Now, hidden from view, he began to drink hard liquor in earnest. He was worthless most evenings, and his ability to perform as he had on sales calls began to falter.

Scott sobered up for the restraint hearing. Her attorney was before the magistrate with his. He sat at the defendant’s table in ha rumpled suit. She sat at the plaintiff’s in a lovely dress. She looked radiant and beautiful. The harsh words coming from the lawyers and eventually the Master made permanent Scott’s inability to get within shouting, much less whispering distance of Lana. Bart, his attorney, took the tack that a slap across the face was not the same as a punch. It, therefore, was not battery. It was not deniable as aggression and assault, but the mitigating circumstances were that she’d been dishonest. Bart also tried to do something with the idea that Scott had never before raised his hand against her, that it was an isolated incident. Had he so much as ever yelled at her before the night in question? Yes, came the answer. Had he yelled at her before that? Was there a pattern of verbal abuse? Stephen outlined all of the abuses. The Master of Divorce scolded Scott for abusing his wife, and said that it was unforgivable to have hit her. The distinction over the force of the blow or the uniqueness of the incident did not persuade her that Scott should be granted access. The order was extended indefinitely. Scott was also required at this time to support Lana, as he had been doing up until the time of his arrest. Following the hearing, Scott went home and got drunk.

Early in February, not too long after Lana had agreed on the text to her Harper’s Readings debut, she got an email from an editor at HarperCollins about making a book out of “Amy Tells All.” The email asked if she was ‘interested,’ and if so, would she accept an advance on royalties of $3,000, 1/3 payable immediately, 1/3 payable upon delivery of an acceptable manuscript, and 1/3 to be paid out at publication. The editor suggested that between the two of them, she was sure they could produce a very sellable book. Her temptation was to accept this offer immediately, but she decided to run it past her father. Her father would know whether this was a decent offer from both a publisher’s and a writer’s perspective.
“You’re kidding!” Was her father’s explosive reply to this bit of news.
“No, Dad, that’s what she wrote. I can read it to you verbatim.”
“No, no… I mean that’s just fantastic. The advance offer seems low to me, but for a first time un-agented writer, that’s maybe as good as you can do. They must be expecting this thing to at least sell in the mid-list. That would not be a good figure for a trade book.”
“Trade books… remind me again what that is?”
“A book you buy in the bookstore. Not a limited edition. Not academic or literary.”
“I rather thought Amy was somewhat literary.”
“It doesn’t mean it won’t be ‘literary,’ it means it will sell a few copies. They obviously think that, or they wouldn’t be betting on it.”
“So go for it?”
“Go for it!”
“Yippee!”
“Lana, I can’t tell you how proud I am, and once again, so incredibly jealous. My baby sold a book!”
“As you said, Dad, let’s see if it does in fact sell.”
“I have faith.”
“Dad, you are da bomb.”
“Tick tick!”
When the contract came in the mail, she looked it over. She took it in to the firm and had David Weinstein take a look at it.
“I think you need to have an entertainment lawyer take a look at this. Also, how do you know that this deal is at the appropriate price-point?”
“As usual Dave, you get right to the heart of the matter.”
“Let me contact some people I know in the book agent business.”
So Lana learned that HarperCollins was low balling her. Dave’s friend the agent did some snooping, and discovered that ‘Amy’ had been a popular blog, but memories were short, and urged Lana to put the blog back up and do some more writing on it. That said, the agent remarked, she thought that a visit to a few other houses might be in order. Once HarperCollins got wind of any other offers, they might try a different figure. If another offer could be garnered, let her take that one if HarperCollins balked. When the agent reported back, it was to say that she’d pitched the book at two other houses and gotten favorable responses. A blog with that sort of readership might make a very sellable book. The agent informed HC that she was representing Lana Andersen. She informed them that a low-ball offer was not going to float Lana’s boat. Another offer arrived that added a zero in the thousands place. Lana took it, and signed the paperwork.

Lana buckled down and hit the law books hard. At the end of February, she took the Bar Exam in Charleston on the last Tuesday and aced it. She was now a lawyer. Weinstein and Fetterman took her on, since those guys loved her like a daughter, and they had her name stenciled on the door along side theirs. They put her right to work doing the domestic violence cases she had now had direct personal experience with, but could now argue in a court of law. Her first case involved some loony bird down out in the sticks who had pulped his wife so bad she was in hospital for a week. She got him the maximum, six months in Greenwood. She was the bane of the batterers in short order. She was known as a bitch on wheels.

Scott continued to slide. Nightly drunkenness led to daytime fuzziness. He began to mess up his checklists. He was forgetting things. He was repeating himself. Behind the yoke of the Cessna, he was becoming dangerous. Bruce had to continually monitor him. He had lost much wait. He was gaunt and shaky. They were hanging on by the slimmest of margins. They were one mistake away from ruin.

Dana and Julian, in mid semester, had traded places. Julian’s sessions on Nabakov became a hit with the students. The story, in verse, of the ugly duckling daughter who kills herself in her humiliation and loneliness resonated with them and took over where ‘Amy’ in her brief moment had left off. Part of it had to do with Julian’s reinvigoration. He was just ‘on,’ and the students ate it up. The material was so superb that it was hard to go astray with it. It had it all; homosexuality, insanity, beautiful verse, and murder. Dana on the other hand, with her six trends, was having a hard time. The students were repulsed by the neuroscience. They eventually convinced her that only the last item on her list, the idea that physical and psychological problems were intertwined, was relevant. They even convinced her that it was obvious. At home, things were similar, except that they had made a concerted effort to get a grip on their drinking. They were able to work on projects later into the evening, and therefore, they got more housework done. Julian had not heard from Lana for quite some weeks. The weeks extended to a month and then it was spring. His mind had gone quiet about her. He still occasionally would recall the intensity of her attention, but without fresh words, she faded.

Amy had never worked so hard in her life. She was proud of her appearance in the magazine, which her circle of friends crowed about, but the casework by day and the creating and editing of her book in the evenings was a new level of labor for her. Sometimes the casework got the upper hand, but she was determined to do right by those taking a chance on ‘Amy.’ She loved having an editor. The editor would rewrite something, and while Lana could see that it was better in terms of a tighter piece, Lana would invariably need to take the editing as a springboard for a rewrite in her own language. As a result, the book was so much better than the blog had been. It grabbed you by the heart and smacked you in the face with its truthiness. The poetry was much better in the book, too. She was happy to have an editor that knew what the hell she was doing. The book was submitted in its final form for the apparatus of publishing to get to work on it. April was dawning and the month and a half of effort was at an end. She turned her attention back to restarting and refreshing “Amy Tells All” as a sales strategy. She re-did the blog as an author’s site. Then came the ten months it took for the book to come out.

In those ten months, Scott and Lana were once again in the courthouse. It was July 10th Lana was granted a divorce. She abandoned her suit for support, because she’d been doing very well at Weinstein, Fetterman, and Andersen. The $20K from HarperCollins didn’t hurt. As they sat at their tables as adversaries, she could plainly see how wasted Scott was. He’d been a robust man, and now he was a shadow. The adversarial approach did not work so well for Scott. His lawyer did his best with what he could get out of Scott, but Scott refused to play along. He asked for the right to address Lana in court, and she granted this request. It was to be a simple statement to her, supervised by the court. It did not require any sort of swearing-in. It was not sworn testimony. He rose from his seat and standing beside the table, he turned to Lana and looked at her for a moment. She also rose from her table and stepped towards Scott. She returned his gaze, her thin lips relaxed, her eyes wide open, and her hands at her sides. Her composure was exquisite.
“Lana, I am so sorry for what I’ve done to you. I was a fool. I kept you away from things you loved. I have had to learn, the very hardest way there is, by losing…”
His voice cracked. He struggled to resume.
“…By losing the one thing that mattered most to me. I have had to learn of my mistakes. I did not realize I was so wrong. I had a wrong idea about the way it was supposed to work in marriage. I’ve learned. It was wrong to lose my temper, but I’m only human. It was so completely wrong to hit you. I will regret that moment…” Again, he faltered. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he made no effort to conceal it. She felt herself flush. She recalled that she had been a bird among the cats. She had labored much on brining out the music in her words and the harmony of her soul. She had not written an evil book; she had a heart of gold, though it had a steel shell by now.
“… as long… as I live. I am begging now, before the court, for your forgiveness.”
There was a long pause now, and Bart asked Scott if he was finished. He said,
“Yeah. I just want her,” and now he turned back to her, “I wish you could forgive me, Lana.” Lana was now also beginning to cry. She did not cry continuously, or much, but it was clear to all witnesses, the attorneys, and those in the benches scattered about, waiting their turn before the court, that she was moved.
“Scott, I need you to hear this and believe in it. It is my forgiveness that you need, but your own. Forgive yourself.” With that, she sat back down. The gavel signaled the end of their marriage.

Bruce went around and around with Scott during the next year. He would get into benders the likes of which only hell can top. He was negligent, belligerent, and ineffective. He hardly sold anything. He rarely flew anymore, which was good. When he did, Bruce had to watch him. He’d forget to test the fuel. He’d test it twice. He’d space out when approaching airspace. He violated rules of protocol and been lectured by airport managers hither and yon. Many in the local aviation community became aware of his struggles. They tended to avoid him, if possible. He felt the general rejection. Bruce was holding him together with baling wire, it seemed. Scott lived on the false hope that Lana would come back. He’d enter some grim despairing zone where the knowledge that this would never happen, and then he’d talk himself back into some sort of hope. The duration of his misery was a marvel to Bruce. Bruce Sibley related all of this to his wife, of course, and Annie passed it along to Christine and Lisa.

Out at Spats one evening in September, the ‘evil sisters’ gathered to dine and wine.
“Hey, Lana,” said Christine, Anne Sibley is reporting much despair at Scott Airstrip.”
Lana shrugged.
“It’s as if you two have traded places. Scott’s fallen all apart, gotten all emotional, become a drunk, and you are like the frosty queen with it all together.”
“We’re divorced. That’s all there is to it.”
“Yeah, but the man’s a human being.”
“I know he is. He’s very human, that being. What can I do about it? I can’t give him false hope. Whenever I think about him I can feel his hand print on my face again.”
“Yeah,” said Lisa, continuing her line of thinking, “but it’s kind of a small town and Bruce is also struggling.”
“Yeah, Bruce. I feel sorry for Bruce. If I were Bruce, I’d be looking for another gig.”
“He’s got so much time, effort and money invested in Aviation Synergies.”
“You gotta know when to hold ‘em,” Lana quoted. “Listen girls. I have a restraining order in place. Still. I can’t just go have a chat with Scott, even if I wanted to. I don’t want to, because until he forgives himself, he can’t move on. He’s just wallowing in emotion. I’m emotional; I’ll admit it. But I’m ok with who I am. Scott is not. I understand that it’s messing him up, but his absolution has to come from within.”
“He needs help,” said Christine.
“I would agree,” said Lana. “Perhaps Annie or somebody could recommend a good counselor for him. Though if I know Scott, he’d be about as likely to go to that as to a ballet.”
“You’re right about that,” said Lisa.
“’If I know Scott…’ That’s really interesting. I don’t know him anymore. I’d never seen him cry ever before our day in court. I’ve thought about it. He’s lost to himself, and therefore to me. Even as a memory. I almost never think about him.”
“What ever happened to that professor?” Asked Christine.
“I don’t know. I think about him quite a bit, but I felt like a huge disruption in his life. I hated feeling guilty about it. He could make contact if he wanted. He doesn’t. Perhaps he’s forgotten about me. He always said it was about the words. I don’t have any product out at the moment.”
“Don’t you have a book deal?”
“Yeah. It takes forever for a book to be published. I had no idea.”

Julian hadn’t forgotten about Lana. She was right that he was unable to bring himself to resume the conversation. He and Dana had reached a good place, and that’s where he wanted to keep it. His students informed him that “Amy Tells All” was showing signs of life. He couldn’t get himself to look at it. His reticence was a result of his sense of himself and his need to maintain his equilibrium. He cherished the memory of his moments with Lana, and they warmed him when he took them out of the box in memory where he housed them. She was still his muse; she simply filled this function in absentia and from a distance.

Another winter fell upon the Appalachians.