Dear Edward: A Novel (20 page)

“Who would write this?” Edward whispers. “How could they think it was okay to do?”

“I saw these in the beginning,” Shay says. “Online. I didn’t know you yet, obviously, and I wondered if you were writing them in the hospital.”

“I could hardly swallow,” he says, “much less set up a Twitter account.” But part of him thinks,
Did I?
His brain is undependable, with no fact solid enough to bear his weight. He imagines himself lying in the hospital bed, his leg in a cast, typing his feelings into an iPad.

Shay holds the flashlight between cupped hands, as if it were the contents of a prayer. She shakes her head and whispers, “We’ve gone through everything. We should go.”

Before they leave the garage, they reread the flight list—they are both trying to memorize the names—and check for new photographs in the first folder. John has added one since yesterday. It’s a photo of a red-haired woman wearing a white coat, with a stethoscope around her neck. She looks at the camera with an expression that suggests pausing for the photo was an inconvenience. Her name is written on the back:
Dr. Nancy Louis
. She’s survived by her parents, who have a Connecticut address.

Edward recognizes her. The memory, which is tied to so much else, makes his throat tighten.

“You knew her?” Shay says.

“No,” he says, but that
no
hurts, and so does the last glance he gives the doctor before putting back the folder, and heading out the door, and across the frozen lawn.

The next morning after math class, Margaret appears at his side and says, “It’s been bothering me, so I had to check. You didn’t get in trouble
at all
for shoving me, did you?”

Edward looks down at her. He’s grown three inches in the last six months and is constantly surprised to see the tops of his classmates’ heads when he walks down the halls. “No,” he says. “I’m really sorry. It was a mistake. I kind of freaked out; that’s why I’m not in gym class anymore.”

Then he sighs, because the football captain is approaching. He spots Edward and shows all his teeth in what Edward assumes is intended to be a smile, then puts his hand up for a mandatory high five. Edward raises his hand and slaps the kid’s palm. When he turns back to Margaret, she’s looking at him with disgust. “He’s not my friend,” Edward says.

“How many APs are you going to take when we’re juniors and seniors?”

“I don’t know.” He looks at her in surprise. “Do you already know that?”

“Seven.”

“Wow.” Edward doesn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t known there were that many AP classes on offer. He wishes he hadn’t pushed her in gym class, and he wishes he wasn’t having this confusing conversation now. He’s aware of sweat lining the back of his neck.

“There were eleven Asian people on your flight.” Margaret says this in a lower voice. “One of them lived in the same town as my auntie.”

Her words travel directly inside Edward, to the place where the flight roster is now imprinted, and where he had assumed by the spelling of certain names that eleven people were Asian. Margaret has just given him a confirmation that feels like a puzzle piece locking into place, and he’s grateful. He understands now that this was why she approached him; this is what she cares about.

“I know their names,” he says, in the same low tone she used.

He thinks for a second that Margaret’s going to demand that he recite them for her, but she nods, apparently satisfied, and walks away.

12:44
P.M.

Flight 2977 trails in the jet stream of all the aircraft that came before it. The men who strapped flapping metal wings called ornithopters to their arms, the gliders, the hot-air balloons, the aerial steam carriages, the Ezekiel Airships, and many more. All of the people on this flight were born during the age of commercial air travel, and so everyone, to some extent, takes for granted the fact that they are able to sit in the sky.

Benjamin is reluctant to sit when he leaves the bathroom. He can’t tolerate hours folded into a cramped seat. He stands near the back of the plane, out of the way. He looks at the small window to his right, at the branches of water etched on the glass. The branches fade as he watches—under his gaze, the rain stops. The sky, as if taking a breath, lightens.

He feels something shift inside him in response to the change in the sky, and he thinks, for the first time, about the reality of his life after this plane ride. Lolly will meet him in the airport. He stops there and thinks,
Maybe that’s enough
.

He hasn’t lived with, or near, his grandmother since he was twelve. Maybe he can turn the focus of his life to thanking her. Even if he didn’t deserve to be saved—in the hallway of the apartment building where his parents squatted or on the dry dirt of the Afghan field with blood gushing from his side—Lolly saved him when he was four years old. She fed, clothed, and bathed him. Read to him. Yelled at him, when he talked back or when he stopped talking.

He was eleven when he found out she’d gotten him a full scholarship to military school. He’d gone mute, to punish Lolly and to keep himself from crying. Lolly had seemed more offended by the silence than anything he’d done to date. She shouted at him, morning, noon, and night.
Open your mouth, child! Don’t you ghost around! If you want to be in this life, you got to speak up! I’m doing you a favor! I’m getting you out of this place!

He’d kept his mouth shut but thought:
I love this place. This place is home
.

Maybe he can devote himself to the service of this old lady. He could clock in and out of the desk job, recruiting new grunts and completing their paperwork, and spend his money and free time on Lolly. They could go to the movies. Lolly likes jigsaw puzzles—she always has one spread out on the kitchen table; he could buy her a brand-new one every week, so she doesn’t have to keep redoing the frayed, incomplete sets she bought at the dime store. They could drive to the ocean, which is only a few miles from where she lives but which no one in their neighborhood ever visits, as if the great blue sea isn’t there for them.

One of the boys from across the aisle—the younger brother—walks toward him and then comes to a stop.

“Are you waiting for the bathroom?” the boy asks.

Benjamin shakes his head.

“Oh,” the boy says, and sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Can I ask—are you in the army?”

The kid is skinny, with a worried expression and a mess of dark hair. He’s probably about the same age Benjamin was when he was dropped off at military boarding school. Benjamin didn’t know shit at that age. The oldest boys made fun of him that first semester, and though he knew their intentions were mean-spirited, Benjamin couldn’t make sense of the insults. They were mocking him, but which part? Luckily, he had a growth spurt over Christmas break and came back thirty pounds heavier than any kid his age, so they left him alone.

But he’d never figured out that interpersonal language. He’d done well on every academic test but remained stupid socially. If he had been savvier, he would have put himself on the officer path and found his way to West Point. Mostly white boys went there, but to make their numbers, the army was always on the lookout for enterprising young men of color. But Benjamin never shook the right hand, or even knew the right hand to shake. He kept his mouth shut throughout high school and was funneled directly into basic training afterward. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he’d confused his own thoughts to the point that he had no idea who he was or what he wanted. He pictures Gavin and feels a deep ache.

“I’m leaving the army,” he says, and the sadness inside him morphs into incredulity. He says it again, but more loudly. He wants to hear what the words sound like in the air. “I’m leaving the army. I’m on my way home.”

The boy nods, like this makes sense. Does this make sense? How can this make sense? He has no expertise, no experience outside the military. He can handle a .50-caliber rifle better than almost anyone, march impeccably in formation, and walk through a forest wearing a seventy-five-pound pack without making a sound. Are those skills applicable to civilian life?

The boy says, “It must be really stressful, knowing you could die at any time.”

It is,
Benjamin thinks, as if this too is a new idea.

He considers the boy. It feels like so long ago that he was that young. “You’re in school?”

“Kind of. My dad homeschools my brother and me.”

Benjamin gives a smile so small no one else would identify it as such. “What’s your name?”

“Eddie.”

“I’m Benjamin.”

“I should…” The boy points at the bathroom door. “It was nice to meet you. Sir.” He adds the last word as an afterthought.

“You too, Eddie.” Benjamin watches the boy walk into one of the bathrooms and lock the door.

Linda tracks the mousier flight attendant as she makes her way down the aisle with a trash bag.
Hurry up,
she thinks.
Please hurry up
. She’s trapped by the foul-smelling, untouched food on her tray. She wants it gone. She wants the gray sky gone and a blue sky in its place. She wants Florida, and her encroaching mass, gone. She wants off this plane. She imagines her moment of exit: seeing Gary waiting with a bouquet of flowers in the center of a crowd of strangers. It’s the moment featured in nearly every romantic movie. The girl exits the plane looking lipsticked, dewy, well rested. The man’s eyes light up at the sight of her.

Linda looks down. Her clothes, so crisp when she put them on, now look dingy and faintly gray. Her hands are chapped from the dry air. Her hair—she puts her hand up to touch it and immediately brushes against a rough spot—is undoubtedly not at its best. She imagines Gary’s eyes widening in dismay. The flowers wilting.

“What do you think she does for a living?” Florida says.

“Who?”

Florida points to the sleeping woman on Linda’s right, who is still draped in a blue scarf.

“I envy people who can sleep like that,” Florida says. “I’ve had insomnia for as long as I can remember.”

“She must be really tired,” Linda says. “Maybe she works two jobs and never gets enough rest.”

Florida narrows her eyes, as if making a mathematical calculation. “Nope. Her shoes are expensive. My guess is that she’s overtired from trying to satisfy multiple boyfriends. It’s exhausting to lead that kind of secretive life, not to mention have that much sex.”

Linda laughs, an openmouthed hiccup.

“Sweetheart,” Florida says.

“What?”

“You should laugh more. What a wonderful sound.”

“Shhhh,” Linda says. “You’ll wake her.”

They both grin up at the flight attendant, who has just appeared beside their seats with the garbage bag. Linda lifts her tray toward her, permeated with relief.

Mark hates coming down: off drugs, off running a Spartan Race, off sixteen straight hours of tracking patterns in the market. It was the coming down that made him finally kick cocaine last year. The headache, the scratchy sensation
inside
his skin, the dry eyeballs, the sluggish brain—the fact that these symptoms were the aftermath of every single delicious high became intolerable. He loved getting high, had no access issues—the dealer was one of the assistants in his office, a popular young kid with a bright future—and Mark operated, if he did say so himself, magnificently while intoxicated. He’d seen sloppy users—hell, he saw them every day at work. Guys rubbing their noses, with obnoxiously large pupils, talking so fast they had to repeat themselves three times in order to be understood. No one could even tell when Mark was coked; he prided himself on this fact. Well, his brother could tell, but Jax was a special case and he hardly ever saw him. Mark worked hard on not thinking about him. Thoughts of Jax felt like coming down, and he had built his post-cocaine life around avoiding that feeling at all costs.

Mark feels, buckled into his seat, on the verge of that sensation now. He’s at the top of the mountain, still coursing with sex and adrenaline and a feeling of holy-shit-did-that-really-happen? He has to either keep his engine revved at this level or knock himself out so he can remain unconscious for the decline. He doesn’t have the necessary narcotics in his carry-on to engender that kind of blackout, so his only alternative is to keep going.

He looks around.

“Are you all right?” His seatmate gives him a look of maternal concern.

Jesus,
he thinks.
No way. Just no. Don’t push that shit on me
.

He stands up. He’d like to spar with Crispin again, but the old man’s eyes are closed and his skin looks translucent. His veins are visible through papery skin. Mark shudders.
Sickness, old age, decline—unacceptable
.

He finds Veronica in the galley kitchen, next to the cockpit door. Actually, he notices—his senses so acute he can’t help but process everything—that he’s surrounded by doors. The massive plane entrance is six paces behind him, the cockpit door to his left, and the first-class bathroom directly to his back.

“Hey,” he says, in what he hopes is a charming voice. He goes for an equally charming smile, but both efforts feel like a throw at a dartboard. It’s hard to hit the bull’s-eye. He gives himself an 80 percent chance now of having missed both marks.

Veronica is crouched down in the corner, folding what look like cellophane squares and placing them in a container. When she hears Mark’s voice, she stands and turns in one movement, and her grace takes his breath away.

His mother used to drag him and Jax to the ballet when they were boys, and though Mark complained, he’d secretly loved watching the singular moments of beauty. A ballerina pirouetting. A leap, which ended in another dancer’s arms. This was the loveliness—the magic—Veronica brought to a small galley kitchen in an airplane thirty thousand feet in the air.

“I’m grateful for you,” he says, and then he thinks, aghast:
I’m grateful for you? Jesus Christ, you fucking idiot.

“What did you say?” She looks genuinely confused.

With his slow-motion, super-detailed vision, Mark sees the coolness that had been on her face when she turned, the certainty that she was about to shut him down and send him away, be replaced with this confusion, this vulnerability.

He sees another door. They are now on all sides. He’s just got to push through this one, and he certainly knows how to push.

“You have a job to do,” he says. “I appreciate that. And I promise I won’t bother you again. I would simply like to take you to dinner tomorrow night. In L.A.”

She looks at him, her red lipstick perfect, her eyes divine.

“Please say yes,” he says. “To one date.”

She doesn’t speak right away. He can tell she is a master of pauses. He waits, with a patience unfamiliar to him.

“Yes,” she says finally. “To one date.”

“One date,” he repeats, and the engine in his chest whirs. He’s surprised to realize he’s truly grateful to this woman. The coming down has been postponed. He will coast on this win, until he’s seated across the table from her tomorrow night.

Jordan stares at the open book, willing his mind to focus. His brother and father are working on a sudoku puzzle and keep passing it back and forth in front of his face. He wants no part of their geekery, and he knows that his father would never disturb him while he’s reading. He’s in a safe zone, and the book is good—
A Prayer for Owen Meany
—but he’s unable to concentrate. His brain keeps peeking forward, toward L.A.

He hadn’t fought the idea of the move, unlike Eddie. His brother had cried and begged to stay in New York. “This is our home,” he’d said. “We can’t live out there. Los Angeles has earthquakes. Everyone drives in cars. We’ll have to wear sunscreen.” Their parents had promised Eddie a piano in their house, and lots of books, but he only gave up arguing when more of his belongings were in moving boxes than out of them.

The idea of sunshine, the beach, and girls in bikinis sounded fine to Jordan, though it was hard to understand the logistics. Did kids his age really show up by the ocean on weekends with towels and a packed lunch? Everyone lived in houses with lawns. There would be no deli on the corner. There would be no Mahira. Jordan realizes that he’d assumed, when he’d kissed her the last time, that a new Mahira would magically appear in L.A. and at every other step in his future.

He rereads the same sentence for the fourth time and thinks,
But they won’t actually be her lips
. How has this not occurred to him before? He doesn’t want to kiss just any girl. It has to be the right one—at least he assumes this is true. He has, after all, never kissed anyone other than Mahira. Jordan straightens in his chair, in order to be taller than his brother and father. The L.A. sunshine suddenly looks white and bland. The bikinied girls look white and bland. Mahira had chosen him, and he had been lucky. What if his luck has run out or was tied to New York City and her?

“Dad,” Eddie says, “remember how you told us that every whole number can be written as a product of prime numbers?”

Bruce nods.

“Why is that? I mean, that’s super weird, isn’t it? That it works for every single number?”

Their father regards Eddie. “You’re asking me why it’s true?”

I want to turn this plane around,
Jordan thinks. He feels punctured, stupid, young. He can feel the falseness of his actions. He drew attention to himself by opting out in the security line. He drew attention to himself by ordering a vegan airplane meal. He drew attention to himself every time he flouted his father’s curfews and rules. He hadn’t kissed Mahira; she had kissed him. It had been
her
idea, not his, and it was the one part of his life that had been secret and genuine. Otherwise, apart from her, he is a blowhard, a showman, playacting at real life. Jordan misses her in a new, more acute way. The feeling twists like hot metal in his chest. She had been at the core of him—maybe she was the core of him?—and he hadn’t appreciated that until now.