Dear Edward(4)

“Dad,” Eddie says, “will all our stuff be in the new house when we get there?”

Bruce wonders what Eddie is specifically worried about: his beanbag chair, his piano music, the stuffed elephant that he still sleeps with on occasion? His sons have lived in the New York apartment for their entire lives. That apartment has now been rented; if Jane is successful and they decide to stay on the West Coast, it will be sold. “Our boxes arrive next week,” Bruce says. “The house is furnished, though, so we’ll be fine until then.”

The boy, who looks younger than his twelve years, nods at the oval window beside him. His fingertips press white against the clear plastic.

Linda Stollen shivers in her white jeans and thin shirt. The woman seated to her right seems, impossibly, to already be asleep. She has draped a blue scarf across her face and is leaning against the window. Linda is fishing in the seat-back pocket, hoping to find a complimentary blanket, when the woman with the musical skirt steps into her row. The woman is so large that when she settles into the aisle seat, she spills over the armrest into Linda’s personal space.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” the woman says. “I’m Florida.”

Linda pulls her elbows in close to her sides, to avoid contact. “Like the state?”

“Not like the state. I am the state. I’m Florida.”

Oh my God, Linda thinks. This flight is six hours long. I’m going to have to pretend to be asleep the whole way.

“What’s your name, darling?”

Linda hesitates. This is an unanticipated opportunity to kick-start her new self. She plans to introduce herself to strangers in California as Belinda. It’s part of her fresh beginning: an improved version of herself, with an improved name. Belinda, she has decided, is an alluring woman who radiates confidence. Linda is an insecure housewife with fat ankles. Linda curls her tongue inside her mouth in preparation. Be-lin-da. But her mouth won’t utter the syllables. She coughs and hears herself say, “I’m getting married. I’m going to California so my boyfriend can propose. He’s going to propose.”

“Well,” Florida says, in a mild tone, “isn’t that something.”

“Yes,” Linda says. “Yes. I suppose it is.” This is when she realizes how tired she is and how little she slept last night. The word suppose sounds ridiculous coming out of her mouth. She wonders if this is the first time she’s ever used it in a sentence.

Florida bends down to rearrange items in her gargantuan canvas bag. “I’ve been married a handful of times myself,” she says. “Maybe more than a handful.”

Linda’s father has been married three times, her mother twice. Handfuls of marriages make sense to her, though she intends to marry only once. She intends to be different from everyone else in the Stollen line. To be better.

“If you get hungry, darling, I have plenty of snacks. I refuse to touch that foul airplane food. If you can even call it food.”

Linda’s stomach grumbles. When did she last eat a proper meal? Yesterday? She stares at her bag of chocolate candies, peeking forlornly out of the seat-back pocket. With an urgency that surprises her, she grabs the bag, rips it open, and tips it into her mouth.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Florida says.

She pauses between chews. “Linda.”

The flight attendant—the same woman who welcomed them at the gate—saunters down the center aisle, checking overhead compartments and seatbelts. She seems to move to an internal soundtrack; she slows down, smiles, then changes tempo. Both men and women watch her; the swishy walk is magnetic. The flight attendant is clearly accustomed to the attention. She sticks her tongue out at a baby seated on her mother’s lap, and the infant gurgles. She pauses by Benjamin Stillman’s aisle seat, crouches down, and whispers in his ear: “I’ve been alerted to your medical issue, because I’m the chief attendant on this flight. If you need any assistance at any point, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

The soldier is startled; he’d been staring out the window at the mix of grays on the horizon. Planes, runways, the distant jagged city, a highway, whizzing cars. He meets her eyes—realizing, as he does so, that he has avoided all eye contact for days, maybe even weeks. Her eyes are honey-colored; they go deep, and are nice to look into. Benjamin nods, shaken, and forces himself to turn away. “Thank you.”

In first class, Mark Lassio has arranged his seat area with precision. His laptop, a mystery novel, and a bottle of water are in the seat-back pocket. His phone is in his hand; his shoes are off and tucked beneath the seat. His briefcase, laid flat in the overhead compartment, contains office paperwork, his three best pens, caffeine pills, and a bag of almonds. He’s on his way to California to close a major deal, one he’s been working on for months. He glances over his shoulder, trying to appear casual. He’s never been good at casual, though. He’s a man who looks best in a three-thousand-dollar suit. He peers at the curtain that separates first class and economy with the same intensity he brings to his workouts, his romantic dinners, and his business presentations. His nickname at the office is the Hammer.

The flight attendant draws his attention for obvious reasons, but there’s more to it than sheer beauty. She’s that magic, shimmery age—he guesses twenty-seven—when a woman has one foot in youth and one in adulthood. She is somehow both a smooth-skinned sixteen-year-old girl and a knowing forty-year-old woman in the same infinite, blooming moment. And this particular woman is alive like a house on fire. Mark hasn’t seen anyone this packed with cells and genes and biology in a long time, perhaps ever. She’s full of the same stuff as the rest of them, but she’s turned everything on.