Dear Edward(77)

I wish you well, Eddie,

Mahira

Edward reads the letter over and over, on a loop. He might have kept reading the page until it was time to leave the garage, but Shay notices and says, “Is that one okay?”

He hands it to her.

When she looks up, she says, “Did you know he had a girlfriend?”

“No.” The word echoes inside him, as if he’s become an empty well.

“Did you know this girl at all?”

He shakes his head. “I probably saw her in the deli, but I don’t remember.”

“Seven million dollars and a girlfriend,” Shay says, in a hushed voice.

Edward pictures his brother running around tree trunks, jumping off the roof of a car, holding his arms outstretched for airport security. He feels an ache spread through his center, like the fault line before an earthquake. He thinks: What can I do for you, Jordan? What does this mean? How can I help?

The answer is immediate: Go see the girl.





3.

“We contain the other, hopelessly and forever.”

—James Baldwin





2:07 P.M.

The frozen rain hitting the aircraft causes a glitch. The pitots (named after the early-eighteenth-century French engineer and inventor Henri Pitot), which look like small steel Popsicle sticks on the outside of the plane, freeze. Pitots aren’t supposed to freeze—even at arctic temperatures—a critical fact that will be brought up in the NTSB hearing seven months later. While frozen, pitots are unable to do their job, which is to assess the aircraft’s speed. This is unfortunate, but planes are embedded with backup plans. If one engine fails, there is another of equal power. In this case, the failure of the pitots triggers the autopilot system to disengage. The plane is no longer on cruise control. The pilots need to check the sensors on the dashboard, and assess the speed and balance of the plane themselves.

The rain has stopped, but the weather—an incredibly sensitive ocean of air and moisture—is still very much at play. Pockets of air pressure swirl around the plane like flocks of migrating birds. When the senior pilot reenters the cockpit after using the bathroom, he sinks into the left seat and studies the radar. He allows the co-pilot to continue to be in charge of the instrumentation.

The pilot says, “Rotor turbulence. Bigger than it looked on the radar.” He stares at the screen. “Pull a little to the left, to avoid draft.”

The co-pilot, a man twelve years the pilot’s junior, looks worried. “What?”

“Pull a little left. We’re on manual now, yes?”

The co-pilot nods and banks the plane to the left. A strange aroma, a burnt smell, floods the cockpit. The temperature also increases.

“Is something wrong with the AC?”

“No,” the pilot says. “It’s an effect from the weather.”

The sound of slipstream becomes louder.

“It’s okay,” the pilot says. “Accumulation of ice crystals on the exterior of the fuselage. We’re fine. Let’s reduce speed.”

An alarm sounds for 2.2 seconds in the cockpit, to remind them that they’re not on autopilot.

Jordan has felt clear, for some time now, that he no longer needs his parents. He lives with them because it’s customary for kids to live at home until the age of eighteen, but he knows he could easily get a job, continue to educate himself with books, spend unsupervised hours with Mahira, and live on his own. He can picture his apartment: a light-filled, high-ceilinged studio with a loft bed. When he envisions himself living there, he’s wearing glasses and holding a cup of coffee, even though he has perfect vision and caffeine makes him sweat.

Now he watches the doctor disappear behind the first-class curtain. He knows he and his brother and father are thinking the same thing: Is something wrong with Mom?

“There’s a sick old man up there,” Bruce says. “It’s probably …”

The air seems to leave his mouth sideways, and the rest of the sentence is lost as the plane hops to the right, like a stone skipping across a pond.

The physical jolt shifts something inside Jordan, and a new truth yawns open: I do need them. I need all three of them. And while the plane hesitates, as if deciding its next move, his apartment now has a bunk bed to share with his brother and another bedroom, for his parents.





March 2016

Edward keeps his eyes closed for most of the bus ride into New York City. The letters have all been read and categorized by him and Shay. It’s the first Monday of spring break, and they were able to leave their houses undetected because Lacey is at work and Besa is spending the day with a cousin. Edward is rimmed with irritation, though, because he has to make this trip, because this trip is a thing at all. Edward would have bet his life that he and his brother had no secrets. And yet Jordan had kissed a girl. He had loved a girl, a stranger. Jordan had either not wanted to tell Edward or not trusted him with the truth.

Halfway through the ride, Edward’s eyes fly open, as if they need light, the way his lungs need air. “I’m skipping that practice PSAT next weekend.”

“Okay,” Shay says.

“You’re going to take it?” He feels antagonistic. The bus is curling around the long entrance loop to the Lincoln Tunnel.

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life, so yes.”