Mr. Peanut (17 page)

David had no idea what to say. He’d hoped knowing might grant him some comfort, but this was so abstract that he felt no better.

“Mr. Pepin,” Dr. Ahmed went on, “I can understand your grief. It is,
however, extremely fortunate your wife’s condition has been discovered before you flew home. We don’t let patients with this disorder take long flights without an intensive regimen of blood thinners in advance. Your legs, the veins there,” he touched his own thigh, “they’re aided by muscle contractions for circulation. Without medication, people with the disorder can have clots form there and then drift into the heart, lungs, or brain. Resulting in a massive stroke, or pulmonary embolism, or heart attack.” David waited.

“On your flight back, your wife could well have died,” he said. “She could just as easily have died coming here. And so you might have lost your whole family.”

It was so odd, David thought, to be so far from home and talking to a man you’d never see again tell you about losing everything. “Can I ask you something?” David said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure this disorder was the cause?”

“Yes.”

“It couldn’t have been anything else?”

“No.”

David waited for a moment. “You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.” The doctor put a hand on David’s shoulder.

“Can I see her?”

“She’s sedated right now.”

“What about the baby? What happens to him?”

“We’ll let him stay with her for a while—with the both of you. There’s no rush.”

“When can I see her?”

“She’s in room three eighty-two. You can go there now.”

“Is he with her?”

“Yes, but she probably won’t be awake for another hour.”

In his mind, David pictured mother and child. “I’m very hungry,” he said. “Is that wrong?”

“Of course not,” Dr. Ahmed said. “The cafeteria’s on this level. Go out those doors and follow the signs.”

David piled his plate with so much food it was appalling.

They were serving a buffet breakfast, and in addition to the usual fare there was pineapple, of course, watermelon, cantaloupe unlike any he’d ever tasted, and coconut syrup so unusual and sweet and perfect with pancakes
that he vowed to stock up on it before leaving. And while eating he again wondered what was wrong with him. How could he feel so hungry? It was as if he’d been on some sort of fast during his wife’s pregnancy and now that their baby was dead it was over. And then once more an overriding sense of fatalism came over him, an uncanny sense of strangeness about this journey in which everything had happened in an unbreakable, predetermined sequence. And following this same chain further into the future, he had a terrible premonition of his own fate.

“Mr. Pepin?”

It was an older man who’d addressed him, and at first glance David thought he was a pilot. His stiff blue uniform had epaulets on the blazer and a set of wings pinned to the breast. He held his cap in his left hand—a briefcase tucked under his arm—and he held out his free hand to introduce himself, his grip firm and dry. “Dr. Ahmed told me you’d be here,” he said. Though he was at least in his sixties, the man’s expression was fresh, alert, with a youthful glint in his blue eyes. He was very pale, nearly albino, as if he’d meticulously avoided the sunlight his whole life. Smelling of pepperminty Barbasol shaving cream, he was thin and fit, and David could imagine him slapping his flat stomach in pride. His white crew-cut hair was still thick, without any sign of thinning, a full head’s worth that he’d take with him to the grave. For the first time in many hours, in the gentle beam of this man’s attention, with his groomed uprightness and grandfatherly scent, David felt safe.

“I’m Nathan Harold,” he said. “I’m with United Airlines. I’m a disaster liaison, though my field of expertise is transportational psychology. May I have a few minutes of your time?”

David nodded, and the man eased a chair out and sat down. He placed his thin black briefcase on the table, snapped the locks, produced a folder with
David and Alice Pepin
on the tab, then closed the case and stood it next to his feet. There was a set of wings emblazoned on the folder’s cover, over which he crossed his hands. “Let me first extend the airline’s deepest regrets, and my own. I’m so very sorry.”

David found himself suddenly embarrassed by all the food he’d heaped on his plate, and now, even more acutely than before, he felt a crushing sense of guilt. He was afraid his expression might give him away, or might otherwise be wrong, so in spite of the man’s kindness, he struggled to look at him.

“How’s your wife doing?” Harold asked.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” David said. “She’s still sedated.”

“How are you managing?”

David could focus only on Harold’s hands, which were beautiful, large, and powerful. His nails, from the crescent moons of his cuticles to the neatly trimmed edges, seemed cared for not vainly but fastidiously. They looked as if they’d never once been bitten or chewed. And then the man did an amazing thing: he unfolded his clasped fingers and turned his left palm open toward David, as if he’d detected his fascination and was holding it there for his inspection—a palm more striated and densely webbed with lines than any he’d ever seen before. It caused him to briefly raise his eyes to Harold’s—he was smiling warmly—and then look down at his open hand.

“I had my palm read once in Italy,” Harold said, “in Palermo. I was in my twenties then. Long time ago. Anyway the woman, a gypsy, she said two things to me. First she said that I was an old soul. She could tell by all the lines. She said I’d lived many lives before and had the potential for great wisdom. I don’t know about that, but then she showed me this line.” With his index finger he traced the pronounced line that started at the base of his palm below the middle finger, to where it intersected the first groove that ran perpendicular to it and stopped. “She said it was my fate line and that because it stopped like this, it meant my fate wasn’t predetermined. It was wide open. This was because I didn’t know myself, she said.”

David looked at his own hands. His palms—he’d never noticed this before—were bare of such striation. But he had the same fate line: interrupted, incomplete.

“It’s amazing what we believe if we hear it at the right time,” Harold said. “When she told me this, I somehow felt like a failure, as if I suffered some crippling blindness about myself. Ever since then, from the day of that reading, I felt like everything I did with my life was an attempt to complete this line. Isn’t it odd that a total stranger could have an influence like that?”

David nodded.

“You don’t feel like you own your feelings now, do you?”

“No,” David said.

The man flicked a finger at David’s plate as if knocking on a door. “Can I get this for you?”

“No, thank you,” David said.

Harold put his wallet back. “I’m glad you’re eating.”

Something in David eased infinitesimally. The man’s tone, the very sound of his voice, promised a future that was not of this event.

“I’m here for several reasons, Mr. Pepin, first of all for aid. When something tragic happens in our skies, we do our utmost to extend sympathy. But sympathy without action, that’s an empty emotion. Mainly I’m here for the purposes of reentry.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Adjustment,” Harold said, “to
earth
. I’m here to make sure you didn’t leave your whole life in the sky.”

Waiting, David crumpled his napkin and rested his wrists on the table, staring at his hands once again. No matter how anyone tried to help him now he felt like he was being interrogated.

“I know it sounds mysterious,” Harold said. “Let me begin practically. I have your family’s luggage. It’s in a car parked outside, along with a driver from the airline. If there’s anything you and your wife need from it, any particular article, even all of it, I’ll have it brought to you right now.”

David nodded.

“Did the doctor say how long Alice would be hospitalized?”

“He said she had to go on blood thinners to get home. He said it was dangerous for her to fly right now.”

“Will you stay at the hospital?”

David shook his head.

“Why don’t you tell me what hotel you’re staying in, and I’ll have the driver deliver your luggage immediately. If you find your stay here is extended, everything’s there. He can bring anything back to you at any time.”

“We were supposed to be at the Mandarin Oriental. But … ”

“You don’t know where you’ll be,” he said.

“No.”

“Do you feel like you’re still moving? Like when you drive for a long time and try to sleep afterward, but it’s like your mind’s been windblown.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Harold put his two index fingers up, then pressed their sides together. “It’s a condition, David, like shock. A person suffers a disaster traveling between two points in the air. It’s a unique brand of trauma. For two reasons. First, it’s the initial act of faith when you fly—the obvious thing you put out of your mind in order to board. That your reptile brain knows at thirty thousand feet you’re at risk of death. Second, because we travel at such great speeds and in such complex systems and routes, should anything interrupt the connections required for us to move between these locales, should we somehow get thrown out of that sequence of departure and arrival, then our most fundamental sense of security is blown from our possession as surely as if it had been detonated. The psychological and spiritual aftermath of such an event can be devastating.”

David was able to look up now, and the man’s eyes were blue and comforting.

“Something happens between two points,” Harold said, “something in the air, and it’s as if our own lives have been shot, like Phaethon’s, right out of the sky. What we suffer is a kind of obliteration. Faith—all sense of trust—blasted from our souls. Wherewithal and judgment from our minds. Confidence from our spines. Happiness from our hearts. And
nerve
from the very core of our being. So many essential things cleaved from us and trailing smoke piece by piece from the far-flung point of impact that you’d think it was a permanent calamity. It makes us hole up. It makes us not want to move.”

David listened.

“Remember when the space shuttle exploded?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember where you were?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll never see another launch now without thinking about it. You’ll always think it could happen again. SLSD is a syndrome: Sudden Loss of Suspension of Disbelief. It’s why certain elderly people lose their ability to drive. They can’t get up the
nerve
to pass or merge. Trucks in their lane send them careening toward the shoulder. They drive fifty-five in a gesture of desperate obedience. To calm their nerves they observe the law to the letter. They’ve seen so much misfortune that they’re paralyzed. They’re convinced the road is full of imminent disaster.”

David nodded.

“You said the Mandarin Oriental, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Your stay there will be taken care of by the airline. If you wish, we’ll upgrade your accommodations for the duration of your wife’s convalescence.”

“What if I want to go home? Or if my wife does?”

“Then United will fly you and your wife first-class on the first available flight to any place in the world you wish to go. Here … ” He opened the folder and handed David a card that was paper-clipped inside the cover. He underlined the number on it with his pen. “That’s my cell. If I’m unavailable for any reason, you’ll be forwarded to the on-call liaison. But I’m never unavailable.”

“Mr. Harold,” David said. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but this feels like I’m being rewarded for something tragic.”

“No, sir. You’re being attended to. Assisted. And by very experienced professionals. By the
friendly
skies. Here.” He slid David a stapled packet of papers from the folder. “That’s a list of doctors associated with our airline.
If you need consultation or a second opinion about anything over the next few days, consider using any one of them as a starting point.”

“Thank you,” David said.

“Which brings me to the most difficult part: arrangements.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For your child.”

It was amazing, David thought, how many things death foisted upon you. Even a meeting like this.

“It seems cruel to bring it up so soon,” Harold said, “but we’d like to help with this as well. We’ll pay for every cent of your child’s burial, of course. We have numerous local undertakers with whom we’re associated. We own cemetery plots on all the islands. We can also make arrangements in any state in the country. Again, we feel it’s our obligation. We’d be honored if you’d let us assist.”

“I don’t know what to say,” David said.

“There’s nothing to say. We’re with you until you and your wife feel your feet have touched the ground.”

Harold sat silently for a time, his hands crossed in front of him.

David stared at his food—its freshness already dimmed, the colors mixing with one another, syrup with egg yolks with butter, all of it disintegrating, congealing, decomposing. “I should probably go upstairs and see Alice.”

“Of course,” Harold said.

David wiped his mouth. He put his napkin on top of his plate. He looked at Harold, who was staring at him patiently, and then looked down again.

“Are you all right?”

David shrugged, feeling pinned to the chair.

“If you feel the need,” Harold said, “you can ask me.”

David couldn’t bring himself to look at him.

“Ask me,” Harold said.

David’s eyes brimmed full. “Was it me?” he said. “What I thought? Do you know?”

“Yes,” Harold said, “I do.”

“Tell me. I need to know.”

“It wasn’t you, David. It was neither you nor anything you thought nor any choice you made. You weren’t part of the equation.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because it’s the nature of the event.”

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

“Now, listen to me.” He reached across the table and put his hand over David’s. “You think what just happened to you is some sort of culmination. Like the end of a chapter. That it
had
to happen exactly like this. But it didn’t. It’s no culmination at all. You have no agency here. It’s the effect of travel. When people travel, and especially when they fly, they see the choice to do so as unique. That’s part of its lore, its miracle and romance. Its magic. People give special status to their point of departure. ‘That flight that went down,’ a person says. ‘I was scheduled to take it, but my cab got stuck in traffic.’ As if God had intervened. They afford divine status to this means of transportation. It was, in fact, just a
flight
they were trying to catch.
That
was the end of the sequence. It was where they were
going
, so it had to be. But they’re wrong. Because when they
do
catch that flight, they take travel’s interstitial nature and apply it to themselves. Once they’re on that plane, they see it as a break in their life’s sequence, a kind of limbo or safe haven. But life travels with you. Think about it. Divorces have occurred on planes. People get engaged up there. Children have been conceived miles high. They’ve been delivered, healthy, up there too. And people die—of coronaries, strokes, aneurysms. They have a drink, then slip off to permanent sleep. They choke on airplane food. They’re saved. People fall in love. Books are finished, both being written and read. Great discoveries and scientific breakthroughs are made. Yet in spite of all this, people think of travel, of movement, as a kind of reprieve from life. But they’re wrong. Movement isn’t a reprieve. There
is
no reprieve. Movement is our permanent state.” In closing, he squeezed David’s hand firmly.