Dear Edward(43)

In late spring, a letter arrives about the one-year memorial. Several families of the victims of Flight 2977 have formed a memorial committee, and the airline has offered to cover any costs. On the date of the crash one year later, a memorial statue will be erected in Colorado, at the location of the tragedy. The land has been donated by the state. The memorial will remain on that ground forever.

A sketch of the planned tribute accompanies the letter. An artist is at work sculpting 191 birds out of metal, and the birds will be strung together in the shape of an airplane. A jet made of silver birds.

“How horrible. And beautiful,” Lacey says, looking at the picture.

She had told John and Edward, when they returned from D.C., that she’d accepted the part-time job as the volunteer coordinator for the local children’s hospital. She organizes the volunteers and makes sure there are enough people to read to sick children and hold brand-new babies. She said to Edward, with pride on her face, “I’ll be working at the real General Hospital now.”

Edward doesn’t tell her that he wishes she hadn’t taken the job, that it is another unwelcome change in his life. He doesn’t tell her that he’s noticed that the pregnancy magazines, which had lived under the coffee table since he’d arrived, are now gone. He doesn’t tell her that he’s noticed that she walks around the house differently, before and after work each day. She bustles from room to room, every step filled with purpose. She doesn’t watch TV with him anymore. When Edward closes his eyes and listens to her quick steps across the kitchen floor, she sounds like a stranger.

“Do you want to go to the unveiling?” John says to him.

“No.”

“Well, I have to say I’m relieved. The families will be there.” John says this with a barely concealed horror that almost makes Edward smile.

“It’s too much,” Lacey says.

Even though the matter is settled, the three of them stand still—as sunset dims the room—and gaze at the image of a cascade of birds pointed at the sky.

That summer, Edward watches television during the day while Shay is at camp. His doctor said he could go to camp too, but there was hesitation in his voice that Edward capitalized on, because he can’t imagine running bases, or gluing beads, or dodging dodgeballs. He finds that he enjoys being alone in the house. He talks to the characters during General Hospital: He tells Jason not to work for the gangster Sonny and tells Alan to be kinder to his daughter.

He has fewer doctors’ appointments than the summer before, so he expands his television schedule and takes naps on the couch after lunch. A few times, presumably to make him leave the house, John takes Edward to work with him. They go into a mostly empty, cavernous office and move from one computer to the next, backing up the data onto drives. “They’re in bankruptcy,” John says, and nods at the huddle of men in the far corner, wearing wrinkled shirts and messy beards. “I set their computers up nine months ago, and they were so excited then. It’s a shame.”

Shay seems intent on making him leave the house too. A couple of days a week, after she gets home from camp, she insists they walk to the playground down the street. “You need fresh air,” she says. “There’s more to life than General Hospital.”

He shrugs his skepticism, but he doesn’t mind sitting on a swing beside her, listening while she tells him about something annoying that her mother, or a camper, said. He shades his eyes with his hand against the sunshine and watches toddlers dig in the sandbox with deadly serious expressions on their faces.

When eighth grade starts, they continue to visit the playground once or twice a week after school. Edward is unbothered by the resumption of school; he doesn’t mind the routine of walking from one classroom to the next. He admires the two new ferns Principal Arundhi acquired over the summer and visits the man’s office to water the plants every Wednesday afternoon. He sets the television to record General Hospital each day and watches it when he gets home.

It’s mid-October when the actor who plays Lucky leaves the show, and a new actor immediately takes over the role. On the swings later that afternoon, Edward tries to explain the injustice of this to Shay.

“No one acknowledged the change at all, except to run a little announcement at the bottom of the screen. All the other actors just pretended it was the same Lucky, even though it was clearly an entirely different person. The new guy weighs about twenty pounds more than the real Lucky—he barely resembles him. It made it all look so fake.”

“It’s a soap opera.” Shay kicks off the ground and swings forward. She always swings higher than he does. She pumps with her legs and never takes breaks, as if at any moment she might be judged on her form and trajectory. “Every female character on that show has had major plastic surgery. Monica can hardly move her face anymore.”

He frowns at her, and thinks, Is that true?

“I don’t care about the new Lucky,” he says. “I’m going to stop watching the show for good.”

“The real Lucky might come back. His movie career might turn out to be a bust.”

Edward almost growls at her with irritation. “No, he won’t.”

Shay turns her head to look at him. She swings by, a gentle blur. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you not want to go to the memorial this summer just because you didn’t want to fly there?”