Some Things About Flying (17 page)

“I remember calling you late at night because I wanted to hear your voice, even if it wasn't fair, waking you up.” She'd imagined him slipping out of bed and downstairs to some private room, cautiously punching her number, keeping his voice low. She was pleased by his efforts, the care he took; although would have preferred, naturally, to be wakened by a voice and a body beside her.

It's a long time since he's made one of those calls. They both must have learned to sleep soundly.

“I never minded. I loved hearing your voice. I'd wake up in the morning thinking about talking to you. Sometimes I kept remembering right into class, and I'd have to pace to give my body something to do.”

“When I had thoughts like that, I had to sit very still behind my desk, so nobody could see what was on my mind.”

They have gone deep into the past tense.

“I was thinking, I could have had a heart attack when I was forty, forty-two, like a lot of guys, and I would have missed you entirely. I'm glad we've had this much.” There are no ceremonies for people like them; any pledges that get made are folded inside other kinds of words. But they are precious, and they do cause seams and cracks in the heart.

“Although,” he adds, smiling slightly, “I could do with a lot more.”

“Me too.”

“Remember the beach?”

“I remember trying to get you to make love underwater, but you wouldn't.”

“I think I didn't know how, exactly, but I was too proud to admit it. I'm sorry I made us miss it. Remember the time I went along to the reception your department was giving for that poet, what's his name? Somebody famous I'd never heard of.”

“Who got so pissed, and threw up. And then we sneaked out. You gave me a wink and left, and I waited a few minutes and followed. It was like being fifteen again, necking in your car.”

“The hormones were pretty adolescent too.”

“I thought it was grand to be steaming up car windows at forty-two. If also reckless.”

“Even grander and more reckless for me, at forty-four.”

“We were lucky.”

“I've always felt lucky, knowing you.”

That's nice. Did he write something similar to the people of his family, but with a slightly varied spin to make it personal to them?

Oh, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Except it does.

Wouldn't he be a hero, though, if his letter were found. People would say not only, “Look how he cared right to the end, look at those words of devotion and hope.” Which she assumes they are, or are intended to be. They would also say, “Imagine a man of such calm, such fortitude and generosity, spending his very last moments thinking of others, and ways to comfort.”

His words would be printed in newspapers and portrayed on television screens, a testament to his cool head, warm heart.

People would measure themselves by Tom and his words. They would wonder, “Could I have done such a thing?” or “What would I have written, if it were me? Who would I write to, and what would I most want to tell them?”

The survivors of other passengers might feel somewhat ashamed of their loved ones, for their absence of eloquence at the end. Or they might feel reassured that perhaps Tom spoke for them all, and that their loved ones also died well.

Around the globe, people would be stirred and astonished by Tom and his effort and words.

A far smaller circle would also be asking, “What do you suppose he and Lila were doing together? It surely wasn't coincidence.” Or “Boy, that's a whole heap of bad luck, isn't it? Way to get caught in front of the world.” Or “What nerve, writing something like that.”

Tom has no doubt also considered all this. It certainly doesn't bear mentioning.

“You know,” Lila says, “I bet all sorts of things happen to planes that we never hear about. Maybe this isn't even so unusual, and the crew knows exactly what they're doing.”

“Yeah, well, check out the flight attendants—do they look as if they're taking this for granted, or even know what they're doing?”

Not really. Three of them, including Sheila, are together, whispering. Sheila's hands are in motion, making gestures Lila can't interpret, another is frowning, and the third looks merely harassed. It's possible they're worried about running low on coffee and soft drinks, but it looks as if what they've run out of is gloss. Things like lipstick and wisps of hair have come unstuck. Their glitter has worn off and what remains is unshiny, unauthoritative. Earthbound and ordinary.

In a situation requiring them to be more than human, to look merely human is—what's the word Lila wants?—yes, disquieting. At best, disquieting, an unruffled, minor word, not too upsetting as words go in potential disasters.

Disaster is a good one to avoid. Cataclysm. Catastrophe. Tragedy.

But that's a word, like fate, with nice, compact literary meaning, having to do with Oedipus, Lear, people like that, not people like Tom or herself, or Sarah, or Adele, or Jimmy or Mel, or Susie or her mother, or anyone else here, surely. Unhappy ends brought about by huge fatal flaws.

What would hers be? Or Tom's? Self-indulgence, she supposes. A reluctance to resist pleasing impulses. That seems very small.

“I can't find,” she says, “a way to think about this. I find a lot of little ways, but not a proper big one. You're a historian, you're supposed to have perspective; do you get a better view?”

“Ah, Lila.” He sighs. “You expect a good deal from history, don't you? Although you're right; if I look at this through the lens of centuries, there is a sort of universal pattern.”

“Which is?”

He regards her solemnly.

“Shit happens.”

That's
why she's loved him. For a moment she stares, and then they're laughing, real heads-back, body-rocking, stomach-clutching, breath-taking laughter.

What a perfect moment for the plane to go down. Then they could just die laughing.

Weeping, screaming, throwing up—all that is apparently normal, but hoots of delight are unseemly and possibly disgraceful, and they've drawn some frowning attention.

“Oh dear,” she says finally, “my stomach hurts.”

“It would have been a good moment to go down, that's for sure.”

She is startled, as she sometimes is, when he speaks her thoughts. But after more than five years, it's hardly eerie if they know more about each other than they're aware of knowing.

“Anyway,” he says, “I think I understand better why you were laughing before. I'm sorry.”

Apology or regret? That question again; but perhaps, like some others, no longer very important.

nine

Sheila moves along the aisle, speaking up to be heard. “If those of you nearest the windows will draw down your blinds, we'll be starting the movie. I apologize for the delay.” She smiles, rather shakily, Lila thinks. “I understand it's an excellent film, and we also apologize in advance because we should be on the ground long before it ends.”

Lila herself couldn't have made a worse joke.

“I mean,” Sheila goes on quickly, “we'll be happily landed at Heathrow.”

Then why start it? What is it passengers shouldn't see that requires the shades to be pulled? The plane tugs slightly right, slightly left. A man Lila can barely make out, sitting in an aisle seat a few rows ahead, grabs Sheila's arm.

“What the fuck's going on?” His voice is loud and harsh, and around him people stir anxiously. “Don't give us that shit about movies, we want to know what's really happening.”

Do they?

“Please, sir, just stay in your seat. Everything's fine, there's no cause for concern. Those small movements are just manoeuvres. The pilot and co-pilot are doing exactly what they've been advised to do.”

Does she know that? Does she believe it?

“Bullshit. And I wasn't leaving my fucking seat, so don't tell me to stay in it. We're in this crate, we deserve some decent information, and I want an answer to my fucking question.” The man does seem to be capturing a mood; angry voices sound around him in grumbling support.

Sheila's eyes and lips narrow briefly, as if she would very much like to slap him. Then she looks as if she could cry, but mustn't do that, either. She looks, actually, like a kid with a part in a school play that's gone off the rails, out of control, into some spiralling, impromptu ad lib. Even her make-up looks stagey and garish against skin gone white.

“Sir, you're causing a disturbance, upsetting other passengers.” She takes a deep breath, glances around. Gauging support or hostility? “Even if you're afraid, it's no reason to try to scare others. Particularly when there's nothing to be frightened of.”

Oh, inspired, Lila thinks. The man is left voiceless, bruised where it hurts worst, in his pride. Others briefly roused by his fury now try to look as if they never were.

On the other hand. On the other hand, if Lila were the one demanding better information, she would not care to be treated with contempt. She would hope to phrase her concerns more politely, with more compassion for Sheila and for her fellow passengers, but equally she would hope not to hear drivel like, “There's nothing to be frightened of.” She narrows her eyes as Sheila advances more confidently, pursuing the lowering of blinds. Which, astonishingly, do obediently descend.

Are these people crazy? How can they agree to shut themselves in, blocking out brightness for what may be their last moments? Shouldn't they need to bathe in light, feel awed and grateful that there still is such a thing as light?

Perhaps they're exhausted from seeing. From fear. The entire space is dimming, and Lila is having trouble catching her breath. Tom nudges her. “The blind? Can you reach it?”

Is he crazy, too? “Tom, it's too—eerie.” That's the only word she can think of that isn't quite panicky. “Surely you don't want to watch the movie, do you?”

“I don't suppose so.” He looks dubious, though; tempted. “But other people might. Especially the kids, it'll divert them.” He nods towards Susie, but her eyes are closed, so she's not a good example. “And you know it won't be dark. There's always light.”

Not the right kind, there won't be. Not real, true light.

How long would it take, starting now, for the plane to spin down to the sea? And what would the view be? What shifting, changing forms might light take during the descent?

“The blind please, ma'am.” Sheila is beside Tom, looking at her, but Lila can't move, any more than she would be able to move a razor against her own wrist. Sheila reaches behind and pulls it down herself. “Thank you,” says Tom. And, “Sorry.”

Lila's hands curl into fists, fingernails digging into the flesh of her palms. She closes her eyes, tries to conjure up light, and almost succeeds.

She hears Tom sigh, feels him fiddling with his headset.

In her mind's eye, she must be able to hold all the shades of brightness: the blue and gold and green of sky, sunshine, grass, all that. The bright, comforting red is velvet, best dress from childhood, worn on special occasions, such as birthday parties. She can feel it too, under fingers, brushing thighs, a lost sensation.

Here's the lawn, a pricklier softness, that her father cultivated to a very particular colour and height, reluctantly and regularly mowed by Don. How rigorously their father judged and cared for that lawn, its uniform colour, its absence of weeds—he was meticulous about it, pacing it in the evenings, bending to run a palm over it, plucking offending presences from it. His extensive concern for something so inessential made him seem foolish.

What could that passion have really been for? Surely not truly for the perfection of grass.

Lila has made assumptions about her father and her mother, not all of which are necessarily borne out in these details. She has bestowed the word “seething” on her mother, and allowed her various passions, but has left her father sitting, quiet and kind, in a corner.

That's not where he was. He was out scrutinizing his lawn, or driving Don to hockey practice, or building the swing, or hammering and sawing away in the basement. Passing Lila, he might hug her shoulders, wordlessly. In his work, handing out and denying bank loans and mortgages, he must have been powerful.

He obviously had a part in whatever caused her mother to seethe; and her mother may have had a part in his solitary silences.

Lila's mother gave her, in a little blue cardboard box, her first pair of earrings: silver drops. Her father said, “Looks like you're getting all grown up.” He sounded sad, and if Lila hadn't been fifteen and aimed towards her own deeply desired, undefined future, she might have spared him a moment of pity. If she tilted her head in a certain way, under the white-globed front hallway light, the earrings' silveriness glowed back at her from the long mirror by the door.

What was different then, wearing those earrings? Blind, dumb, ruthless hope, she supposes. Being young.

Now there are some questions she wouldn't mind asking her parents. But she missed any moment there might have been, and there is no point, and no time, to regret. She needs to keep her eye on the light.

Setting off on a cross-country road trip with her first lover, she drove through miles and miles of golden grain, light rippling over it, stirred by the wind. She can see the shiftings and colours more clearly than the lover, Jason, whose affections did not survive the rigours of their days together in the car, who grew hunched and morose, who was not much of a lover anyway, and who is unattached in her mind's eye to light.

After the prairies they wound through mountains, where brilliance glared off snow at the peaks, and lit lower rocks, and finally faded into hazy darkness below.

At the end of that journey, Lila was diverted from farewells, hers and Jason's, by sunlight like shatterings of glass skipping over the sea, far into the distance. She was awed by this first view in her life of the sea, couldn't imagine its depth and immensity.

Don't think of oceans.

All right then, cosy events. Fireside embraces, seductive, soft words.

Don't think of flames. Lila's eyes fly open.

On the screen, someone is riding a horse down a mountain. It looks like a dimmed, dulled version of her bright younger vision.

Some people actually appear to be staring at the screen, watching this. Surely, though, what they see are not horses and men, but scenes and films from their own lives.

What gorgeous duster coats the men in the movie are wearing. Look how they hang, how they move with those lanky bodies, how seductively they flare at the hips. She should get one—would she look properly dramatic, or just ridiculous?

Oh, how stupid—she won't be shopping for a duster coat, or anything else; another of those foolish, startled griefs.

Glancing at Tom, she is astonished to see that while he is watching the screen, headset clamped around his dishevelled, greying and receding hair, tears are simply flowing from his eyes, pouring unchecked down his face and off his chin. She has never seen him weep before. He is doing it without sound or movement, and it looks remarkable.

It's also private; as intrusive, and even embarrassing, to watch as it would be to walk into a room expecting to find it empty, and discovering instead a friend making love, catching in the eyes that remote and ardent look of orgasm.

One would back out, awkward and apologizing if seen, silent if not.

When Lila cries, which isn't often, her face contorts, her nose reddens, her hands fly up to catch and blot the tears. How can he weep without moving?

And what is he weeping for? Perhaps his own private version of prairies, or silver drop earrings.

She is struck to the heart that she has no idea, actually feels her heart quiver and lurch. Tears come to her own eyes. He has been the dearest person in her life, and at the end, she doesn't know what pictures form the contents of his grief, and he has no way of knowing hers. This sorrow is explosive; she could burst open, splashing loneliness over everything.

Well. Almost everyone must be deep inside their own soul when they die.

She closes her eyes, this time to be clear about what really may happen: smoke and spinning and blackness and burning light, limbs and voices flying and crying—all this can happen at any instant, and they would each be alone. It's going to hurt so much. Her poor skin, poor bones, all crumpled and crushed, and her beloved little home, and Don and Anne and the kids, the remnants of family, and all her beautiful books and ideas and words, and rows of young faces watching her, more or less eagerly, taking apart all those books and ideas with the hope and intention of being able to put them back together, and voices and laughter of gossiping colleagues and dear Patsy and Nell, in cafeterias and restaurants, in kitchens and living rooms and in voices on telephones. And mysterious, unknown Tom. Skin, voice, flesh over bones, fingers and palms on her flesh and his. Laughter and opposing ideas and desires, magical intersectings of ideas and desires, and solemn eyes, delicious lips. Her own secrets and dreams: whatever they are, her true final companions.

Opening her eyes, she finds Tom regarding her, now dry-eyed and dry-cheeked, with yet another queer and unfamiliar expression. “What?” she asks. In the end, it's not only words that have no life-saving uses. Love doesn't, either.

The end may be a matter of passionate, grieving silence when all else fails.

The cabin seems to sway and shift. She can't tell if it's the plane or herself.

Now he is stroking that thinnest layer of skin on the back of her hand; his thumb moving gently between her wrist and her fingers, and his fingers resting in her palm, connect her to her own skin, in this seat, in this cabin, in this instant.

Something will happen very soon, for very good or very ill. “It'll be all right,” he says. “We'll be fine.”

As if he knows. As if it's up to him. In their other lives, he knew and it was up to him, but there's no room here for the tininess of that plot, those small bumpings and grindings of emotion and event. She smiles at him anyway.

“I know we've had troubles,” he says, “but I've never not loved you. You made my life more than I could have hoped.”

She notices, although he may not, the past tense. “Thank you. You, too.” Because it's perfectly true, he has made her life larger, no lie. There are pictures and ideas and touches and combinations of words she might never in her life have encountered, if he hadn't invited her for a drink.

The plane judders and something that feels large and vital grinds. Lila's skin is suddenly boiling, and Tom also breaks out in a sweat: exactly that, beads and drops popping out on his forehead, his neck, his hands.

The juddering slows, the grinding eases. This isn't it, then, not quite yet?

The cabin is oddly, briefly quiet. People must be shocked into silence, petrified into immobility. Everyone must be staring at something inside their own heads, behind their own eyes, beyond denial.

If all these people do vanish at once from their own lives, many stories will be changed. For generations, for the rest of life on earth for that matter, connections will be altered or lost, some unanticipated children will be born from unexpected unions, and some others will not. Some people may fall into poverty, and others will thrive. The hearts of thousands will be affected, and even some aspects of Tom's long view, history itself, will be altered. Lost lives, lost genes, lost prospects and possibilities—all that. A peace accord signed here, an unnecessary battle erupting there. Perhaps also a serial killer or two fewer in the future as well, who knows? Or one or two more.

Another shudder, another jolt, a fragile levelling.

When Lila was little, she performed a small daily ritual. First thing each morning, she said, just to herself, “Let something good happen. Let the first thing that happens be lucky.” A small lucky event could expand to a whole lucky day; and the reverse.