Into Thin Air (50 page)

That night Lila made a special chocolate cake, she bought a special book of fairy tales for Joanna, and she acted as if it were an everyday occurrence. The three of them sat at the table, and after dessert Jim insisted they all go out to a double feature and after that for ice cream, until they were too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

The morning Lee left Jim got up early and opened the pharmacy at six. He wanted company, but people were used to the opening hour of seven. They could look in all they wanted, but no one would come in. He finally made himself a chocolate milkshake and sat at the fountain stirring it with a straw for almost twenty minutes before he realized how little he liked chocolate shakes.

Every hour he looked at the clock he could see Lee doing something else, only now he knew she was really doing it. At ten she'd be on the plane. By twelve she'd be in Madison. And by six he'd be home with his wife and his daughter. He'd take all of them out to a dinner and a double feature. They'd all stay up late. Later and later, until distance and time had blurred him and Lee apart again into seemingly separate and connected lives.

Lee, who had always been good at leaving, arrived at the flight gate so late, she nearly missed her plane altogether. She raced toward the closing gate door, stumbled past an aisle of irritated passengers to find her seat.

She sat by herself, in the back of the plane, staring out at the sky, trying to catch her breath. She had a picture of Joanna stuck in her wallet, beside the one of Karen. She had a small bag of airport postcards that she thought she'd send to her as soon as she was home. She had already sent one to Andy, of the Baltimore skyline thawing toward spring. She had said she was coming home for good, that she wanted to see him and hoped he wanted to see her, too. She had sent a card to Rico to tell him she wanted her job back, that she could now bake breads so delicious that just one bite could cure loneliness or a fearful heart or even the slightest need to keep secrets.

She wished she had the Want ads with her. This time, whatever apartment she found was going to be home. She'd need something big, something with a back room she could now fix up into something a small girl might want to stay in, although maybe the only small girl in it might be that of a ghost she had loved—and even so, there was an odd kind of comfort in that. Who knew what kind of life this daughter of hers was going to have and what part Lee might get to play in it? Lee would send her birthday gifts every year, and cards and letters, with her return address so Joanna could send them back unopened if she wanted to. But Lee wouldn't intrude with a call. Maybe there would be nothing but silence, maybe all Joanna'd ever want was Jim and Lila, but maybe, when Joanna hit the natural rebellion of puberty, or even later, when she was seventeen or eighteen, or nineteen like Lee had been that day she had disappeared, maybe then some of Lee's genes would storm out of her and beg to be recognized and healed, Joanna might be stealing makeup and junk jewelry from Woolworth's, and as soon as she got them out of the store she wouldn't remember why she had wanted them in the first place. She might be falling so deeply in love with a boy so wild and fresh that running off with him might seem like a good idea. And maybe then, right before she decided not to (she had Jim's genes in her, too, after all), she'd suddenly remember something similar about Lee—like a fragment of a story. She'd feel a shock, a connection. And maybe by then Joanna would want to know her. Maybe she'd have all the questions finally ready for Lee, questions Lee would have stopped running from a long, long time ago.

Lee looked out of the plane. Below her were houses and a rickrack of roads and highways and people who might have once been looking for her, counting on a reward, trying to force her back to her life.

“The captain has turned on the seat belt sign,” a voice said.

In ten more minutes she'd be back in Wisconsin. Lee clapped her arms about her body. She listened to the rustlings around her. A man dressed completely in black gave a loud, bored yawn. There was a young girl, her red hair cut into a bristling rooster cut, fiddling for something in a huge black leather purse. Lee leaned against her seat, her heart bumping so crazily that she pressed her arms against her chest to still it. Suddenly she wanted always to remember the way she was feeling, She wanted always to remember the plane, the scratchy voice of the flight attendant, the scuffs on her shoes. Lee's breath stitched up; she felt a sudden new exhilarating flicker of fear.

She felt herself lifting up, becoming lighter and lighter, even as the plane began edging into its descent. Outside, nearly invisible in the pale wash of sky, there was already a full white moon, slowly rising. Small distant stars were already growing brighter and brighter until eventually lovers or children or dreamers would catch sight of them and make their wishes. Lee rested her cheek against the plane window and looked down at the ribbon of runway that was speeding up to meet her. The plane hummed and dipped and lowered, and then slowly, finally, headed her home.