The Fall of Never(16)

“I have to be,” she said. “Are you sure? Are you checking everything?”

The attendant looked a little annoyed, all perkiness suddenly gone. “I’m checking, ma’am, there is no Kelly Rich anywhere in our system.”

“It was left for me by a Jeffery Kildare. I called earlier today and they said they confirmed Mr. Kildare’s ticket purchase.” Then it dawned on her. “Try under Kelly Kellow.”

Exasperated, the attendant retyped the name. The moment it appeared on the screen, the attendant perked up again. “Yes, here it is, Kellow.”

There’s no escaping it, is there? she thought. We can forget about our past but our past will always come back to bite us in the ass eventually.

She urinated twice in the terminal’s restroom, once more while waiting at her gate before boarding the airplane, and a fourth time while on the plane before take-off. Rain sluiced against the side window and she pulled the shade down over the pane. After the plane was in the air, the sensation to urinate subsided and she tried to soothe herself by listening to some soft jazz through a pair of airplane headphones.

She fell asleep midway through the flight.



And awoke to the sound of a million ball bearings crashing down on a tile floor.

Her eyes sprung open and it took her a couple of seconds to realize she was on an airplane. And not ball bearings at all—rather, large clusters of hail smashing against the window near her head. She slid the plastic window shade up and stared at the blackness on the other side of the glass. The hail was so thick, it was nearly impossible to make out the collection of city lights on the ground.

The captain came on the intercom then, informing everyone that all was fine and they would be landing shortly. And as if in spite of the captain’s statement, the plane surrendered in a great heave and shuddered violently. Kelly sat with her hands gripping the armrests, her stare straight ahead, until the shower of hailstones finally tapered off and she could make out the runway lights through the porthole window.

A large black man was waiting by the baggage claim holding a placard that read KELLY KELLOW. He was an easy seven feet tall and nearly busting out of his navy blue chauffer uniform. His eyes were narrow and sober and she caught him staring at her through the mob of people before she even recognized her name (my old name, she thought passively) on the placard. As if he knew immediately who she was.

“Miss Kellow.” His voice was deep, like a rumbling truck. He made no attempt to gather her bag from her. Seeing him jarred her momentarily, and she paused just before him. Some lost memory struggled to surface.

“Hello.”

“DeVonn Rotley, ma’am.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

“Ma’am?”

“I remember you,” she said. “From when I was a child.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “This way.” And he turned as if on a pivot and began striding through the wedge of travelers like an African elephant marching through a field of overgrown grass.

Outside was brutally cold. The hailstorm had apparently hit the airport pretty heavy; the tarmac and parking lots were already crystallized and even the roof of the black Cadillac that Rotley led her to was covered in the tiny white balls.

In silence, Rotley pulled onto the highway and headed west. Kelly, seated in the back seat, stared out the side window. They crossed Lake Champlain, the moon glowing over the still waters, and headed north on Route 9.

“You never left,” she said at one point. It was not a question and it was just barely directed at the driver. It was spoken, she understood just as the words came from her mouth, more so to enable her to recapture some visage from her youth—something, anything—and to move past the forgetting and the not remembering and to arrive at something of substance and familiarity. “You’ve been working for my father for all these years?” She knew this yet could hardly remember any of it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s good to see you.” And it was a stupid thing to say, she knew, because it really felt like nothing to see him, and she thought he knew it.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Cold tonight.”

“Hmmm.”

“Winter’s come early this year,” she said to Rotley, not wanting to talk about what was really on her mind.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We hit the hailstorm just before landing.”

“Yes,” said Rotley. From the back, he looked like one of those giant statues on Easter Island.

“Is my sister all right?” Okay, so she couldn’t avoid asking the question. From the moment she heard Jeffery Kildare’s voice on her answering machine, Becky had been the only thing she could think about. Becky…and maybe that pale reflected figure in Nellie Worthridge’s kitchen, the figure from the video…

“I’ve not been detailed on the situation, ma’am,” Rotley intoned. “My apologies.”

Frowning, she slumped back against the seat and turned to stare out the window again. Champlain was gone, hidden behind a blind of black trees. The further north they drove the denser the forestry became, and soon it was almost impossible to even see the moon through the tinted windows. It was cold, even inside the Cadillac, and she leaned forward and peered at the dashboard up front. Rotley drove without the heater on. There was a bloom of frost on the windshield in front of Rotley’s view and each time the giant man exhaled, a cloud of vapor billowed out.