Dear Edward(93)

Afterward, when Principal Arundhi was finished with his official responsibilities, they had gone out to a fancy dinner with a lot of wine for all the adults except Mrs. Cox, who drank martinis. Dr. Mike and Principal Arundhi had a long conversation about a particular baseball series that had been important to both of them when they were kids. Mrs. Cox misheard them talking about the Mets and told everyone what she had seen at the Met that season. Edward and Shay were allowed a glass of wine each, due to the special occasion.

During dessert, Edward had surprised himself and everyone present by lurching up out of his chair, holding his glass. The collected faces had turned toward him, and just the sight of each familiar person had moved a piece of furniture inside him. He said, “I wanted to say thank you. To each of you. Thank you so much.” There was a pause, and Shay raised her glass and then everyone else did too and it was possible that they were all crying a little. John looked at Lacey and said, “We did it.” Lacey, her eyes shining with tears, laughed and said, “I guess we did.” When Lacey leaned forward and kissed her husband, Edward sank into his chair, and everyone at the table applauded.

In Colorado, Shay and Edward drive to the hotel closest to the site and check in. The hotel receptionist gives them a look, like, Aren’t you a little young? They have ID, but the receptionist shrugs, and they don’t need to produce it. Edward and Shay had fought the grown-ups for weeks about taking this trip.

“Just wait a year or two,” Besa had said. “Why does it have to be now? Sólo tienes dieciocho.”

Lacey said, “You think eighteen is old, but it’s actually not. You need more experience driving, for a trip this ambitious.”

Edward said, “I need to go before college, and I need to go alone with Shay.” He didn’t have a better reason to provide. He simply knew that this was something he had to do and this was when he had to do it. He and Shay will attend college together in the fall. As Shay predicted, Edward got into every school he applied to, but he’d applied to the same colleges as Shay, so he waited until she chose one that had accepted her, and then he enrolled there as well.

Besa had agreed to the trip only after Shay promised to respond to every single phone call and text from her mother. Besa also installed a tracking app on Shay’s phone. “In case you get lost,” she said. “So I can come find you.”

They swim in the indoor pool. They have adjoining rooms and play gin rummy on Edward’s queen-sized bed. They eat at the diner next to the hotel. The next morning, before the sun is fully over the horizon, they climb into the Acura and drive the twelve minutes to the site. Edward feels nauseous as they make their way there. This trip was his decision, and yet he feels like he had no choice. He wonders if returning to a place he had miraculously once escaped is a good idea. What if he doesn’t get out the second time? He’s had nightmares in which the ground takes a good look at him, shakes its shaggy head, and swallows him whole.

There’s a small dirt parking lot next to the site. The sky is lined with pink and yellow; the sun is still working its way up. No one else is here. They’d planned their visit for a Tuesday, because Shay had found in her research that the fewest people visit the site on Tuesdays.

“We don’t want anyone recognizing you,” she said. They’d both read an article online about the memorial and how it had made the young sculptor famous, and the article had mentioned that any boy between the ages of fourteen and thirty who visited the site was approached and asked if he was Edward Adler.

A low wooden fence separates the parking area from the meadow. Edward climbs out of the car. The air tastes clean, and he gulps a few breaths. Ahead of him, in the center of the field, is the sculpture. A flock of 191 silver sparrows in the shape of a plane, taking to the air.

“It’s beautiful,” Shay whispers.

They walk together across the field. Tall grass swishes against their shins; they’re wearing shorts and sweatshirts. When Edward reaches the tail of the bird-plane, he stops and looks up. The silver birds stretch away from him. The lowest ones are within his reach. The sculpture is smaller in person than it had looked in photos. It spans the length of a small Cessna, not a commercial airplane.

Edward turns in a circle. Other than the memorial, there is no sign of destruction. Green grass spreads in every direction. He can see the road they drove on to get here, their car, and a wide expanse of pastel sky. There is so much sky, he feels like his proportions are off, as if most of the world is built into the horizon.

“Edward,” Shay says. He sees that she is near the front of the sculpture, where the birds point upward into the air. There is a metal stake with a plaque. He stays where he is. He knows the facts: the date, the flight number, the accounting of lives lost.

The article they’d read had included a photograph taken the day the sculpture was unveiled. A group of perhaps fifty people encircled the birds. The families of the victims stood with their heads tipped back, watching, as the canvas covering the metal sculpture was tugged free. The people were all colors and ages. The only person not looking up was a curly-haired toddler, on her hands and knees, investigating the grass.

Edward spent a lot of time studying that photograph. He paid careful attention to the faces, looking for a woman who might be Benjamin Stillman’s grandmother, looking for a man who might be in the midst of a search for Florida, in her new life and body. Edward looked for a poet who might be Harrison.