Some Things About Flying (11 page)

Sarah has, Lila thinks, the narrow, stretched look that predicts a certain ropiness about the neck and arms and thighs by the time she gets to Lila's age. An age she is now not entirely likely to reach. She has a glorious array of freckles on her face and arms, probably elsewhere as well. A few of the freckles duck back into dimples when she abruptly breaks into a grin.

“Weird, huh? Introducing ourselves like we're at a party? Shaking hands over a puddle of barf? You in a hurry for the can?”

“Not really. I mostly just wanted to stand up and stretch.”

“Me too. I couldn't sit still. Now I can't stand still. I keep wanting to break out. Like”—she grins again—“
that's
a good idea. I've always got a ton of energy, and usually that's great because I get a lot done and I don't get tired, but this is driving me nuts.”

Indeed, she is bouncing on her feet, almost hopping in the aisle. She is very appealing, although Lila can see she is also likely exhausting. Lila spots her wedding ring and wonders if, in her absence, Sarah's husband is enjoying a restful silence. She feels, beside Sarah, unfrenzied, unoccupied. “What do you do?”

“Receptionist for a doctor. Boy, that gets crazy. I was really looking forward to being away. My little sister's in England, she's going to university there and I haven't seen her for ages.” Her expression crumples. “Oh gosh.” Lila touches her arm. “My husband said I should come, he's an electrician so he said for a couple of weeks he'd cut back so he could look after the kids after school, stuff like that.” Sarah goes so pale her freckles look ready to leap off her skin. “What's he going to do?” she cries. “If I don't come back, what'll they do?” She clutches at Lila. “Do you think people know? I mean our families, will they be told what's going on?”

“I don't know. I was wondering that myself. Maybe not. What could anyone say? Even we don't know what's happening.”

“Oh, I hope nobody calls him, he'll be so upset. He's the kind of guy likes to
do
things, you know? It's like me up here, I want to
do
something, and it'd be even worse in a way for him.” She pauses. “Well, in a way, anyhow. Not really. But you know how it is when you want to help somebody and you can't? Like when your kid gets sick?”

No; but Lila nods agreeably.

“I always hate that. Like when they've got a fever and you can't make them better? It's worst when they're babies and you know something's wrong because of how they're screaming, but they can't tell you what it is and it's just so fucking scary, right? You got kids?”

Lila shakes her head. Normally not having children is perfectly fine, but Sarah almost makes her feel guilty. Or inadequate. Missing a critical factor of today's panic and grief.

Sarah shrugs. “Lucky.” She probably means Lila has less to let go of.

“How old are your children?”

“Twelve and nine. Boy and girl. Tim and Tiffany.” She falters again, her eyes fill up. “My poor babies! What'll happen to them?” Again she grabs at Lila's arm. “Do you think they'd be okay? Without me? If that's what happens? What do you think?”

About whether they'd be okay without her, or whether that's what's going to happen? “Of course they'd be terribly upset. Naturally. But I'm sure they'd turn out fine in the end. Your husband sounds”—sounds what? Lila has no idea how he sounds—“like a nice man. Helpful.”

“Yeah, he's okay.” The changeable Sarah grins again. “Pisses me off. You know how long it took me to make him okay? And now maybe I won't end up getting much out of all that work.”

“You must have married very young.”

“I was eighteen. Knocked up. He was twenty. Boy”—she shakes her head—“that was a shitload of crap from my folks, and then getting used to each other and having kids so quick. I said right then, no more for a while, we need to get sorted out first. So we get sorted out and look what happens! You on your own?”

Lila shakes her head. “No, I'm with a friend.” She never speaks of Tom to anyone but Nell and Patsy, but here, everything's different. “We were taking a holiday. Two weeks roaming around England, maybe a bit of Wales or Scotland. We've been planning for ages.” How lovely this sounds; how remote.

“A guy or a woman friend?”

“A guy.”

“Shit, that stinks. I bet you were really looking forward to it.” They are edging closer to the washroom. Behind Lila, a short, elderly white woman has joined the line and, behind her, a Sikh man, turban knocked slightly sideways.

“I was. We were. We wanted to get away. Have some fun, see new sights.” How tenderly she feels towards that man with whom she planned a holiday; if not towards the one who can't bear dying with her.

“You know, I've never been away just with Kevin. Not since the honeymoon, anyway, and that was only four days because we didn't hardly have any money. After that there's always been a kid around. Sometimes I've thought, if we could only get away, just the two of us, but it's kind of scary, too. Like, if we did, what would we do? We're so used to being with the kids, what if it was just us and we didn't have a clue?”

“Yes, I've wondered something along those lines, too.”

“But you're not married to this guy?”

“No. He's married, I'm not.”

“Oh.” Sarah perceptibly closes up, draws away. Foolish Lila; what else would a married woman be likely to do? But at least Lila is now someone individual and interesting, and Sarah is regarding her with curiosity. “How does that work? Don't you mind? Does his wife know? Is it okay, me asking?”

Lila shrugs. “Sure.” On the ground it wouldn't be okay at all, but on the ground there'd be a future and she would hardly be exchanging confidences with Sarah or anyone else. “Sometimes it's hard and doesn't work very well, and sometimes it's fine. And no, I don't imagine his wife knows, although who can say? I expect people often know things but don't want to admit them. To themselves, mainly. Too much disruption.”

It's tricky, trying to discern just which one of them, Dorothy, Lila or Tom, is most lacking in courage. But Lila doesn't say that.

Sarah looks thoughtful. “I've wondered if I'd know if Kevin was screwing around. Oh, sorry, you probably don't like that, calling it screwing around. But that's what I'd call it, I guess because I'm a wife. I guess it depends which spot you're in, doesn't it?”

Lila thinks that's clever of Sarah. With her ability to distinguish varying points of view, she would be a good student of literature. “There are lots of words,” Lila agrees. “You're right, it's a matter of perspective.”

“I think I'd know.” Sarah frowns. “But if he was, I don't know what I'd do. Kill him, likely, but then what? One thing, I wouldn't pretend I didn't know. Of course I can't keep my mouth shut about anything; sometimes Kevin says, ‘For heaven's sake, Sarah, not everything's worth talking about.' But if you don't say things, how do you know what other people think? I'd just bust if Kevin was screwing around and I didn't say anything. I'd just bust open all over the kitchen floor like some big old watermelon.”

She pauses, very briefly. “I wonder if Kevin'd get married again. If the worst happens. I guess he would.” She sighs. “He's only thirty-two. And he'd want somebody for the kids, anyway. Man, that pisses me off. I'm going to haunt him if he does that. I wonder what that'd be like, haunting somebody. Seeing everything.” She shivers. “Weird, thinking dead people might be able to do that. I sure wouldn't like it, somebody looking and listening all the time. Like, I wouldn't like some dead person doing that to me, but it'd be interesting to do it myself. Think of the secrets you'd know! Man, that'd be fun.”

She looks cheerful now, and it's contagious. Lila finds herself wondering who she might haunt, whose secrets she might enjoy intruding on. Well, anyone, really. Not friends, necessarily, or loved ones. Strangers might even be preferable. Everyone has secrets, small and large privacies, and flitting from one to another would be an eternity of entertainment, far better than TV. She might start with Dorothy. Unless Tom got there first. That might overcrowd the room with inquiring spirits.

They could play a dire bedside spin on Dickens, with Lila appearing as ghost of lover past.

A small amusement.

“I wonder,” Sarah says, “what does happen. Or if it's nothing at all.” Lila, sobering, doesn't say what naturally leaps to mind, that they may find out very shortly. But of course the words are in the air.

The old woman behind Lila suddenly pipes up. How long has she been listening? “If you have faith,” she says in a clear, quivering voice, “what happens is heavenly. Bliss and salvation. Joy we cannot imagine.”

Lila has nothing to say to that. She is a little surprised that Sarah does, and in a voice turned instantly jeering and bitter. “Yeah? That'd be nice, all that joy. You'd think we'd be in a big rush to get there then, wouldn't you? But I don't see anybody praying for the damn plane to crash, do you? So that hardly makes any fucking sense, does it?” She is glaring at the woman.

What does it mean, Lila wonders, that up here, in this situation, outbreaks of affection aren't occurring at anything like the rate of rage?

Lips and eyes narrowed, Sarah turns back to her. Lila thinks she looks a little like a snake, and wouldn't be surprised to hear hissing. “I had a bellyful of that crap when I was a kid. Praise the Lord, my ass. More like, you do something bad, the Lord'll whip you silly. My folks went nuts when I got knocked up, said they'd pray for me but I'd have to repent or I'd be going to hell. Screw that. I told them Kevin and I'd be happy in hell, as long as they weren't there.”

The old woman makes unhappy little throat sounds, but at least keeps quiet.

“You religious?”

A bit late to ask. Lila smiles. “No, but there's no telling what I may decide to believe by the end of the day.” She may wind up crying “Jesus save me.” Or, for that matter, “Hallelujah.” She doubts it, but then, she has doubts about practically everything.

“I believe in my babies and Kevin. And me.” Sarah's shakes her head, as if trying to dislodge some piece of knowledge. “Shit, this sucks. This really sucks.” Lila could not agree more.

“I mean, you get up in the morning and you're all excited because you're going to be someplace totally different by the end of the day, and you run around trying to think of everything you need to remember and get everything taken care of—even food. You know, I made six dinners and froze them for everybody? Not for every night I'm gone, and Kevin can cook all right anyway, but just so at supper sometimes they'd be thinking about me? So I'd still be there in a way?

“And I was thinking about seeing my little sister for the first time in ages, and how much we have to talk about and how great it was going to be, showing her pictures of the kids and seeing where she lives and how she's changed, because she got away even farther than I did, and they pray for her too, I guess.

“So I mean, you're thinking about the place you're leaving and the place you're going to, but you forget to think about the part in the middle, and then it turns out to be the only thing that counts.”

Lila must have thousands of words in her head, many of them capable of being combined in graceful forms to express with elegance various ideas, and here's skinny, freckled Sarah taking a very few, blunt words and saying pretty much the whole thing.

“How'd you figure what that guy was saying, that co-pilot?” Sarah asks. “Think he was telling us anything like the truth, or just trying to keep everybody quiet?”

“I don't know. I couldn't tell either. Both, maybe.” How did Lila come to sound so prim? Five years of keeping an enormous secret may have done the trick. Not speaking about something important for such a long time may have robbed her of passionate speech.

There'd be a sorrow, a loss.

“Great voice, though, didn't you think?” Sarah looks mischievous. “Sexy. It'd be amazing, hearing that voice coming at you from the next pillow. Kevin's got a nice voice. I knew him all through school, and I remember when his voice changed, and then it kept getting deeper and deeper. I'm a sucker for voices. What's your guy's voice like?”

How can Lila describe something that has so many different tones for different purposes? “It's quiet most of the time. But he's a professor, like me, and he used to be a politician, and that's like acting: you make your voice project more and use it in different ways. In personal circumstances, too, so for instance you can tell another person how angry you are without having to raise your voice at all.”

“Wow, you're a professor? What do you teach?”

“English literature, I'm afraid.” As with the question of children, Lila feels oddly guilty. Insubstantial, by Sarah's standards.

“No shit. I used to love English in high school, it was my best subject. Sometimes I wish I had time to read, but having a job and the kids—well, if I did read, it wouldn't be anything good, likely. But maybe sometime. When the kids are grown up, in a few years. Oh.” Her face tightens again.