Dear Edward(27)

Edward watches Shay’s clouded face, hoping for more words, explanations, answers—something to fill the ever emerging craters that make him up. But Shay switches the light off, and he’s left alone in the darkness and quiet.





10:17 A.M.

There is a monotony to time in the air. Consistent air quality and temperature, limited collection of sounds, circumscribed range of motion for the passengers. Some people thrive within these restrictions and relax in the sky in a way they rarely do at home. They have powered down their phones and packed their computers in their luggage; they delight in being unreachable, and read novels, or giggle at sitcoms on the in-seat monitor. But certain driven individuals, who can’t conceive of taking a break, hate being disconnected from their life on the ground and find their anxiety amplified.

Jane squeezes past Mark. There’s extra legroom in first class, so he doesn’t have to stand up, but she feels like he ought to, out of politeness. As it is now, she has to trail her bottom directly in front of his face. When she’s upright and in the aisle, she glances back and sees that his attention is fixed on the computer screen. This man, who’s basically been in heat over the flight attendant since boarding the plane, hasn’t even glanced up.

Jesus, she thinks. I have the sexual allure of a grapefruit.

She walks up the aisle and through the red curtain that separates first from economy. Every seat is full, and the passengers in this section all look mildly uncomfortable. Jane gives her birthmark a quick press. She wonders if it’s possible to fly in first class and not feel guilty. Does her seatmate feel guilty? She decides probably not.

“Mom!” Eddie cries, and her eyes trace the sound to her three boys. One white-headed, two with curly handfuls of hair sticking out in every direction.

She waves to Eddie, and just like every time she sees him after an absence, she remembers him as a colicky baby, wailing in her arms, heaving sobs in his crib, being bounced on Bruce’s shoulder. He barely slept those first three months, and that was the darkest time in Jane’s life. She was hormonal, with leaking breasts, and she was failing, every single minute of every single day. She was failing to provide significant comfort to her baby, and she was failing to be the mother that Jordan had always known. The three-year-old gazed at her nursing nightgown and uncombed hair with a combination of fear and sadness. She was also keenly aware that she was failing herself—she’d always believed that she could kick the butt of any situation, and this proved she couldn’t. She was not the woman she’d thought she was, nor the one she’d planned to be.

Her adult life had been a smooth trajectory until that point. She had decided what she’d wanted and gotten it, from stories published in a literary magazine, to Bruce, to a high-paying job writing for a television show, to her first baby boy, whom she’d strapped to her chest and carried throughout her days. Now she sat paralyzed on the couch, milk-stained, unable to sleep or rest or think, because of the unstoppable, strangled cries of an infant. But when Eddie did stop crying, he became a sweet, smiling baby, who crawled around the apartment after his brother. He snuggled more than Jordan had. Jane’s depression was broken for good when she woke up laughing one morning because her baby was on top of her, dive-bombing her cheek with openmouthed infant kisses. Mwah, mwah, mwah.

Jordan always drew the eye. As the older brother, he was faster, stronger, first in most things, but Eddie and Jordan operated as a team. Eddie was the one who calmed his brother down when he got angry that something wasn’t going his way. Eddie loved to play the piano, so Jordan wrote compositions for him to perform. Eddie built Lego cities that stretched from the kitchen to the front door, guaranteeing that his parents would swear and rub bruised feet while walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. When the Lego obsession started, Jordan checked architecture books out of the library in order to help his brother plan ever more elaborate metropolises. When Jordan started defying Bruce in small ways, like sneaking out of the apartment when he was supposed to be studying, or coming home from the museum ten or fifteen minutes later than arranged, Eddie went along as his partner in crime. When they were “caught” by the doorman or by Bruce himself, Eddie always immediately said, “I’m sorry, Dad,” in his sweetest little-boy voice, which cut Bruce’s anger off at the knees. Jane liked to think that Eddie’s early rage and tears had emptied him out and he was going to coast, smiling, into adulthood, in the wake of Jordan’s more turbulent boat.

“How are you guys doing?” she asks when she reaches their row. The three heads tip back to look at her, all sharing the same serious expression.

“You’re going to get much better food in first class,” Jordan says. “Can you save us your dessert?”

“Definitely.” She smiles at the boys; she’s a little scared to look at Bruce. It’s hard to know how long he’ll hold a grudge about her not getting her work done in time to sit with them.

“Any aliens in your script yet?” Eddie asks.

“No.”

“Submarines?”

“No.”

“Mutant monkeys?”

“Yes. There are several of those.”

“Maybe your mother will write a love story,” Bruce says.

This is his way of pressing down on her birthmark. She has a movie she’s been wanting to write for a decade—a quiet, dialogue-driven piece that takes place during a single hour—but she keeps putting it off for these lucrative rewrite jobs. She feels a pang for that movie now. She pictures the fictional couple, about to kiss for the first time—a moment that won’t exist until she writes it—and shakes her head. The man, with his arms wrapped around his beloved, turns his head and looks at Jane. Please hurry, his eyes say. Time is running out.