Dear Edward(82)

John shrugs, as if to say: Maybe, but I couldn’t be sure.

The weariness in his uncle’s eyes makes Edward realize, for the first time, why John had needed to save him at all costs. His uncle—with all his will, attention, and care—had been unable to save anyone else. The babies Lacey had carried. Jane and Bruce, and his oldest nephew. And so he had been willing to wreck his own life, even his marriage, to make sure he didn’t lose the nephew who came to live in his house.

“I wouldn’t have done that to you”—Edward looks at his uncle and then over at Shay; this applies to her too—“because I know what it’s like to be left behind.”

He’s winded by the sentence, as if the truth has taken something from him. He feels a flash of fear, but then sees the look on his uncle’s face. John opens his arms, and Edward steps forward.





2:08 P.M.

The co-pilot, spooked by the alarm, or the turbulence, or by the experience of flying the plane by hand—most pilots train for manual takeoff and landings, not midair flight—makes an irrational decision. He pulls back on the side stick to put the airplane into a steep climb. The pilot, from his vantage point, doesn’t have a clear view of the co-pilot’s right arm, and it doesn’t occur to him that his colleague would make such an unwise decision.

“Steady,” the pilot says.

“Roger that.”

Almost as soon as the co-pilot pulls up, the plane’s computer reacts. A warning chime alerts the cockpit to the fact that they’re leaving their programmed altitude. The stall warning sounds. This is a synthesized human voice that repeatedly calls out, “Stall!” in English, followed by a loud and intentionally annoying sound called a cricket. A stall is a potentially dangerous situation that can result from flying too slowly. At a critical speed, a wing suddenly becomes much less effective at generating lift, and a plane can plunge precipitously. But the pilot believes they are following the correct protocols, so he’s not overly concerned by the stall warning. The co-pilot, who is still pulling back on the side stick, is now covered with a cold sweat and breathing shallowly. He tries to hide his panic.

The floor buckles beneath Veronica, then re-forms. “Return to your seat,” she says to the red-haired doctor. She gives the dead old man a look, then gives the nurse a kinder one. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she says.

She trips toward her seat, which is around the corner from first class. She falls onto the hard horizontal rectangle and tugs the strap across her chest. She pictures the white features of Crispin Cox. She considers that there is no breath in his throat, no blood coursing through his body. She’s never had anyone die on a flight before. What is the protocol? She’s read all the protocols, and for this situation, the first step is to alert the pilot. She will do so as soon as she can get to the intercom. Then, if possible, the dead body should be moved to an empty row of seats, away from other passengers. That’s not possible on this flight, which is full, but she did read that sometimes the corpse is gently placed into a closet until the flight ends. There is a closet in the back of the plane that might work, if she emptied out a few containers.

She imagines herself and Ellen carrying the body through the entire plane to get to the closet. Her with her hands under the old man’s armpits, Ellen holding his feet. Luis waiting by the closet to help.

The plane gives a hard cough, and the nose wavers. Veronica shifts her attention to the grumbles and clanks of this colossal machine, which she knows as intimately as her own body. She thinks, What are you trying to tell me?





April 2016

Edward has only two responsibilities that feel real to him now: reading new letters as they arrive, and taking care of Principal Arundhi’s fern. Edward has had the plant for nearly four months. The fern appears to be thriving, bright green and placid on its table beneath the basement window. Edward takes photos of the kangaroo paw and shows them to Principal Arundhi, to reassure him of the plant’s good health. The principal’s office looks more like an office now and less like a greenhouse. The virus had turned out to be a long, truly nasty one, which came in three waves. It has finally lost its grip on the ferns, but thirteen died in total. There is only a spattering of plants on the windowsill and the side table.

“I have to rebuild,” the principal says. “I’m considering purchasing some orchids. Marvelous plants, orchids. Don’t you think?” He sighs, and Edward can see that his heart’s not in the rebuilding. He’s just saying the words. Principal Arundhi asks Edward to hold on to the kangaroo paw for a few more weeks, just to be safe.

Friday is the only day of the week Edward bothers to keep track of, because that’s the day John brings home new letters, if there are any. Shay is now pen pals with the nun in South Carolina. Edward writes to Gary and asks him questions about whales. He and Shay both text with Mahira. All the children have been replied to. They have, Edward thinks, responded to the letters on the edges: the very old, and the very young. In the center are hundreds of requests that Edward has come to picture as a stretch of quicksand. He hasn’t decided what to do about them, but he knows that if he fulfills the wish of one letter, he must fulfill them all. And that, as depicted by Shay’s spreadsheet, is technically impossible. It would have him living in multiple parts of the globe, working as a doctor, a librarian, a chef, an activist, a novelist, a photographer, a classics professor, a clothing designer, a war reporter, a sommelier, and a social worker, among other careers. He would be mapping out wishes that oppose one another, in locations multiple time zones apart.