Dear Edward(44)
Edward rubs at the dirt with his foot. He sways forward and back, with one foot touching the ground. “That was part of it.”
She’s surprised him with this question, and his chest aches as he considers it. He didn’t let himself think about the memorial again after the conversation with his aunt and uncle in the kitchen. He’d tried, when he walked away from the hearing, to walk away from any thoughts related to the crash. But Shay asked him a question, and the answer is that he can’t imagine entering an airport, or going through security, or buckling himself into a seat. That sequence of events feels unviable, opposed to a natural law. He could no sooner get on a plane than fly out of this playground by flapping his arms. He belongs on the ground. He has been grounded.
“The odds are impossible that anything like that could happen to you again,” Shay says. “You’d basically guarantee the safety of a plane by getting on it.”
“That’s not how that works.” He shifts his weight on the swing, and it creaks. “That’s called the gambler’s fallacy, you know.”
“The what’s what?”
“It’s when gamblers convince themselves that because they’ve been losing for a long stretch, they’re more likely to win any minute. But they’re wrong—of course. The odds of flipping heads is still fifty percent, even if you’ve flipped ten tails in a row.”
“That’s interesting.” Shay dips her head back as she arcs upward. “Because I always feel bulletproof when I’m with you, as if I’m safe by association.”
Edward barely registers what she’s said. He’s been sucker-punched by memories of his brother. This happens sometimes, and he knows he has to ride the memories out. The only way out of it is through it. He remembers Jordan above him on the top bunk, his head half-buried in his pillow. He remembers Jordan’s face when he wrote music, his brow furrowed in concentration. He sees Jordan beside him on the plane and knows that the smallest, truest reason he will never fly again is that the last airplane seat he ever sits in has to be the one beside his brother.
2.
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other.”
—George Eliot
11:42 A.M.
Just before lunch service, Veronica takes a short break in the front corner of the cabin, next to the kitchen. She always wishes, in this moment, for a cigarette. The yearning is strange, since she quit smoking four years earlier and doesn’t miss the sensation of smoke filling her lungs, but something about leaning her hip against the metal counter and looking out the small port window makes her desire a cigarette every single time.
She wonders how long she’ll be in L.A.—two days, three? She’s been in the air for four days now, and though she hasn’t yet received next week’s schedule, she knows she’s due a few days off. She wants to put on her new bikini and lie by the pool. She wants to drive her brother’s convertible and wreck her hair with wind.
Wind is what she misses most, up in the sky. The airplane air isn’t as bad as passengers say it is; she never likes when people spout opinions without bothering to gather the facts first. Airplanes take about 50 percent of the air collected in the outtake valves of the passenger compartment and mix it with fresh air from outside. The air is then passed through filters to be sterilized before it’s introduced to the passengers. So the air on the plane is clean, and not worthy of complaint, but still, Veronica can taste the effort in it.
Every time she leaves an airport, she appreciates the unpredictability of each inhale. There might be a soft gust of wind, or the smell of popcorn, or the heaviness that precedes a rainstorm. She notices nuances in the air that everyone else is immune to, with the exception of submariners, probably, and astronauts. People for whom the earth is not enough; their freedom is off the ground. Veronica enjoys the unbridled nature of the outside world in small doses, but this is her home. She is the fullest version of herself at forty thousand feet.
She straightens up, runs her hands over her hips. Hers have been the only hands on her body since her breakup with Lionel. She hasn’t had sex in a month, which is a personal record. Usually she blitzes dry spells with the hot stoner on the first floor of her condo, or with her college ex-boyfriend, but she’s been too busy, or distracted, perhaps, to have made that happen. She’s aware that she’s getting lonely, though; she gets a small charge now out of brushing up against a handsome passenger. Even the finance guy in first class—too slick and hungry for her taste, normally—is pressing something inside her. She shakes her head and pulls out the massive drawer stacked with lunch trays. She loads the cart. She chooses the slowest of her walks, the one that maximizes the side to side of her hips, and heads into the cabin. She asks for every look and then throws it like a coin into the till.
The economy flight attendant appears at Bruce’s side. “We deliver special meals first,” she says.
Bruce blinks at her. “Special meals?”
Jordan lowers his tray over his lap. “It’s for me. Thank you.”
“Why do you get a special meal?” Eddie asks.
“It’s vegan,” Jordan says. “Mom ordered lunch for all of us when she booked the tickets, and I told her to enter my meal preference.” The tray the flight attendant hands him holds a pot of applesauce, a hummus sandwich, and a pile of cut carrots.