We Are Not Ourselves(186)

Before he left, he called again. “How is he?” he asked, because he couldn’t ask the obvious: Is he alive?

“He’s in pain,” she said, “but he’s still here.” Her voice broke. “I told him you were coming. He squeezed my finger.”

At Midway, he checked in, passed through the detectors, and took a seat at the gate. There wouldn’t be much of a wait; he had arrived shortly before departure. He settled in and tried to read a book, but he was seized by panic at the thought of his father dying. He had been living without his father for some time already, but he still made pilgrimages to him, for the advice he listened for in his father’s heartbeats, ear pressed to his chest; for the reassurance in his constancy; for the comfort he felt when he nuzzled him close and registered the soft, unconscious rhythm of his breath on his neck. He was still the standard-bearer; he was still his father.

They started boarding the plane. The back rows, his group, boarded first. He felt like a horse stomping at the gate, ready to dash off the plane when it landed. He hadn’t checked any bags; his uncle Pat would be waiting for him at the airport.

He was the first to his row. He put his book into the seat pocket, lowered the tray table, and drummed his fingers. Stragglers filed in slowly. Soon he would have to get up for the person in the window seat, or watch the one in the aisle stuff his things into the overhead bin. He wished he hadn’t rushed aboard. He didn’t need to use the bathroom, but he replaced the table and rose anyway.

He pressed close to the mirror, leaned his forehead against it. His breath collected on it. He would stay there as long as he needed to. He was looking for something, some confirmation, though of what he wasn’t sure.

Then he saw it. It was all there: his father’s aspect of perpetual surprise; his father’s widow’s peak, which seemed to climb his scalp in flight; his father’s nose, which flared out slightly at the nostrils; his father’s jaw, which gave ballast to the rest; the cavity in his father’s chin; the black hair; the slightly overlarge ears.

He bared his teeth. They were, against all odds, perfectly straight. As a kid he had avoided the nighttime headgear designed to supplement the corrective pull of his braces. He had faked the log that documented his wear time. At the panic-stricken last minute before heading to the orthodontist, overwhelmed by the enormity of so much squandered time, he had switched pens and varied the numbers, composing fictions that attested to his discipline and endurance. His father drove him to the orthodontist once a month for two full years; every time, Connell waited to hear the guilty verdict; every time, he was spared. His father never called him on it either; he was happy enough to take him for a ride, happy enough to shell out bucks he didn’t have for the sake of his son’s smile. The world of adults seemed to budget for the carelessness of children.

His teeth were not his father’s. His father had a bridge that he washed under the faucet and click-clacked for Connell when he asked him to. He had a cracked front tooth that he lost half of when he fell to the brick floor in the kitchen while Connell brooded in his room.

“You are flying home,” he said to the mirror, hoping to ground himself in the reality of what was happening. “Your father is dying. He is your best friend. You will never be the same again.”

It didn’t work. By the time he got back to his seat, he had forgotten what he had felt in the bathroom. An attractive woman around his age or a few years older had taken the window seat. In the aisle sat an older businessman who couldn’t be bothered to flirt with her. Connell squeezed past him, insisting that he needn’t get up, and the man didn’t flinch.

As they waited for takeoff, Connell looked at the tiny television on the seat back, which showed a map with their location, the plane icon as big as a state. It looked as if it could cover the distance in a quick sprint, but it just sat there.

“I’ve heard that’s good.” He gestured to the book in the girl’s hands.

“Oh, it is,” she said. “It’s beautifully written. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by her.”

“What brings you to New York?”

She seemed startled by the sudden shift, but he hadn’t read the book or any of the author’s others. “I’m going to see a friend,” she said. “My college roommate. She moved there to work for a fashion house.”

“My name’s Connell.” He jammed his elbow awkwardly against the seat as he tried to extend his hand.

“Karla,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

He thought he heard the businessman sigh.

“Have you ever been to New York?”

“I haven’t. I’m excited.”

“How long will you stay?”

“A week.”

“What do you have planned?”

“Not much,” she said. “I don’t even have a guidebook yet. All I know is I’m staying with my friend. I’m so busy, I haven’t had time to sit down and plan anything.”

“Make sure you ride the Staten Island Ferry. It’s the best view of the city, and it costs only fifty cents.”

The businessman coughed. “It’s free now,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“It was fifty cents. It’s free now.”

He resumed making notes on his stack of papers, but not before giving a look that said he knew what Connell was up to, that Connell had been away too long, that he was a fraud, that he was going to lead this girl astray.