A White Plane

Monday, April 18, 2005

It had been another good day, except for a headache in the early afternoon. There was tutoring at nine o’clock that morning, which lasted three hours, with the planning for the new tutoring sessions beginning that summer. Meanwhile, Mom had taken Francis and Linnea up in the sun and the wind of the tree house to finish their lessons.

Linnea, the smart-fry that she was, had been listening in on Carrie-Bri and her hunt of the treasure. As she sat up in the tree house, she looked at the sparkling glass stones which Carrie had fastened around the pirate deck and on the branches.

“Look, Mom!” She exclaimed, and held out one of the “precious” stones in her hand. “I found the treasure. We’re millionaires! We won’t have to worry about anything ever again. We’re all set…”

She let the gem slip loose from her fingers and fall between the cracks of the deck.

“Oh, no!” She groaned, and then burst into giggles.

Back indoors, Collette hustled through her laundry. And Carrie began to prepare an “ethnic” lunch of quesadillas brushed in butter, with small olives. It was then an idea occurred to her:

Tennessee Coca-Cola had just come over to work out with Joe in the basement. And while they were banging around downstairs, Carrie was reminded of the open vent right above their ears in the kitchen.

She ran over before Rose, who was sitting at the bar stool, could stop her.

“What?” Carrie screeched into the vent, holding back laughter, “Rose likes Tennessee?”

Collette and Rose roared with laughter.

Minutes later, they heard back through the vent:

“Oh, Tennessee likes Rose?”

They heard laughter from the back room, and Joe came bounding out from where he had sent the message through his bedroom vent. His face was red from laughing.

“You heard that?” Rose asked, thoroughly embarrassed.

“Yeah,” Joe laughed.

“What did Tennessee say?” Carrie had to know.

“He looked around like this for a minute.” Joe imitated his confusion. “And then he started howling.”

Leave it to Carrie to embarrass Rose. It was rather too funny.

So the afternoon passed. Joe played with an inchworm and cleaned the garage, Carrie wrote the outline for her research paper, Rose went off to baby-sit, and Mom cleaned the house while Francis and Linnea played outside under clouding skies. And of course Francis, as usual, left a trail of pretzels wherever he went – The Pretzel Man.

Later that afternoon, after finishing up her work, Mom and Linnea drove Collette back to the apartment where an evening of cleaning and scouring awaited her.

Meanwhile, Mom relayed her afternoon phone conversation with Mrs. Lord-Welches.

“Well,” Mom began with her I’ve-got-something-important-to-say eyes, “Isgerd had a great time in Florida, by the way. And she said that while they were at the landing strip, they were watching the planes come in. When suddenly, this white plane lands. It has windows down the side, but there were no markings on it, no decals, no nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. And so she asks Gauti, ‘Gauti, what’s that white plane over there for?’ And he says, ‘What white plane, Mom?’ And she says, ‘The white plane, right over there.’ And he said, ‘There is no white plane, Mom.’ And she says, ‘The white plane, Gauti. Look!’ And he says, ‘Mom, I don’t see a white plane, and neither do you.’ And so her eyes get really wide, and she’s thinking, ‘Wow, so he can’t say anything about the plane at all.’ And so she asked Loraine, ‘Loraine, what is that white plane?’ And she says, ‘Mom, Gauti won’t tell me anything about it.’”

“Wow, well, you know Gauti won’t say anything about it, not even when he gets out of the Air Force. He’ll still have to keep it secret.”

“Well, Isgerd and I are going to keep tabs on it. Our code names over the phone will be “Marigold” and mine will be “Rosebud”. And the code name will be “white plane”. I think I’ll ask Dad about it.”

“Dad’ll say the same thing.”

“Probably. He’ll say, ‘What white plane?’”

“Yup, but it’s probably just a plane for foreign diplomats.”

“But why all the secrecy?”

“Terrorists?”

“I guess it could just be the official Air Force Launders plane.”

“Or money launderers.”

And so there was a secret to unearth, although the likelihood of finding it out, was quite remote.