The Might Have Been (36 page)

“I haven’t done it in almost fifteen years,” Edward Everett said.

The woman gave a small, hoarse laugh, her breath clearly that of a smoker, peppermint not fully masking the tobacco odor. “Dummy me; I’m up here a dozen times a year for business. My doctor usually gives me a scrip for Ativan but it makes me feel so stupid sleepy. I didn’t take it this time, since I’m going to see my daughter and granddaughter, and she’s old enough that she’d notice if I seemed drunk.” She made her voice small and high-pitched. “Mommy, why is Gamma falling down?”

When the plane leveled off, she gave him a polite half-smile and went back to her book. He opened the shade beside him and saw that the sky was blue, the rain clouds beneath them, illuminated periodically by a pulsing pale light. Around him, everyone seemed to be relaxing, only forty more minutes in the air ahead of them. Across the aisle, the woman with the pen was writing what appeared to be thank-you notes onto cards so highly calendered they glinted under the ceiling light. She was, he realized, most likely a recent bride, her all-but-useless right hand curled in on itself, a clear symptom of cerebral palsy, nonetheless happy as any woman he had ever seen, glancing appreciatively toward her new husband.

As if she understood his thinking, the woman beside him said in a quiet tone, “They seem happy. I give them five years.”

“Five?” he asked.

“But then, I’m eternally romantic,” she replied, a laugh rattling in her throat. She opened a small silver clutch that had been pressed between her hip and the side of her seat but then snapped it shut and held it on her lap. “You’d think after all of my time in the air I’d remember I can’t smoke.” She opened her purse again and canted it toward him so that he could see she was fingering a cigarette she’d loosened from a pack of Tareytons. “Sad, isn’t it?” She set down her purse and returned to her book. Edward Everett leaned his head back, closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

He gave up after several minutes when he heard the flight attendant beginning to push the refreshment cart up the aisle, popping open cans of Coke and Sprite, pouring coffee into plastic cups, unscrewing caps from one-ounce bottles of booze. When the cart was beside them, the woman who shared his row sat up.

“Rum and Coke,” she said, plucking up her purse again and snapping it open, fishing out a ten-dollar bill.

“Anything for you, sir?” the attendant asked, already fixing the woman her drink.

“I hope you won’t make me drink alone,” the woman said.

“Okay,” he said. “Bud Light?”

He leaned forward to take out his wallet but the woman laid her hand on his arm. “The least I can do is buy.”

“You don’t have to,” he said, pulling his wallet from his hip pocket.

“I’m paying for two,” the woman said to the attendant, who glanced in Edward Everett’s direction for his approval. He gave her a small shrug and put his wallet away.

When they had their drinks, the woman clicked her plastic cup against his. “To long life.” She took a sip. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about that couple. I’m sure they’ll be insufferably adoring even when they’re a hundred.”

“That’s a long while to be insufferably adoring,” he said.

“All right, then, ninety-five.”

They sat in silence, sipping their drinks, until the woman gave him a slight smile, a gesture he took to mean she was releasing him from further social obligation. She went back to her book and he regretted not having one himself. He plucked the in-flight catalog from the pocket of the seat in front of him and read it idly: good-looking men and women wearing polo shirts with the airline’s logo stitched above a pocket; a dozen golf balls resting in a polished wood box; carved wooden ducks—so many things no one needed. He closed it, returned it to the pocket just as the plane gave a shudder and the woman let out a gasp, some of her drink splashing out of the cup, spotting her blouse. “Damn,” she said, opening her purse and taking out a wadded tissue, blotting at the stains darkening the silk. “That’s not going away.”

“Would some water help?” he asked, raising a hand to signal the flight attendant.

“Not on silk,” she said, continuing to dab at her blouse. She unlatched her seatbelt and turned sideways toward him. “How bad is
it?” One obvious teardrop-shaped spot, perhaps half an inch long, was surrounded by an irregular pattern of tiny dots.

“It’s not that terrible,” he lied. She sat back in her seat again and closed her eyes. “Fuck,” she said through a clenched jaw, then drained her drink and raised her hand, shaking her glass, an ice cube spiraling out and bouncing onto the aisle. “Stewardess?” she called. “A second rum and Coke.” She took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said, touching two manicured fingers to his forearm. “It’s only a blouse.”

The flight attendant delivered the drink. “This one is on me,” Edward Everett said, taking out his wallet, pulling out a five-dollar bill and offering it to the flight attendant before the woman could open her purse. Rather than protest, she gave him a smile of acknowledgment and took the drink. “Even without taking a sip, I know this second one will be a royal mistake.” The plane gave another shudder. “This is the first time I’ve gone to visit my daughter and her little girl since—” She shook her head. “Never mind. You don’t want to hear my sad story.”

“I don’t have anywhere else I need to be,” he said.

“You’re sweet, but it’s really all right.”

They sat in silence, the woman clearly caught in a reverie, as every so often she shook her head and let out a short hiss with her tongue against her teeth.

“You know,” she said at last. “I’m a good person. When my mother lost her mind—that’s a terrible way to put it but it’s the truth—who took care of her? Lord, not my father.” She tapped a finger against her sternum. “Me. When my husband. My ex-husband decided, after finishing law school, not to take the bar because he was no longer passionate about the law, did I ask him if he was crazy or did I take a second job so he could become a luthier? A
luthier
. Right again. When my daughter—never mind, but if your answer was that I was there for her when her father wouldn’t speak to her, well, right again.” She shook her head. “Then when I find my backbone and tell my husband—who made all of eleven hundred dollars last year selling two guitars—that I was leaving, does anything go right? Correct. I have to sell the house we bought because of money I earned so I can
pay him for his half.
His
half.” She paused. “I should’ve had the Ativan,” she said. “No muss, no fuss, no stain on a hundred-dollar blouse.” She giggled. “If I pronounce it ‘bluss’ instead, it rhymes. No muss, no fuss, no stain on a hundred-dollar bluss. It could be a book by Dr. Seuss I read to Avril.” She took a swallow of her drink. “Tell me, who names their daughter ‘Avril’?”

“I’m guessing your daughter did.”

“Actually, the idea was her partner’s. Her
female
partner.” She gave him a sideways look. “I’m open-minded. When her father wouldn’t talk to her after she came out, I supported her. Hell, sisterhood, rah, and all that, but this is not what I—I really need to be quiet.” She gave his shoulder a good-natured nudge. “Altitude plus alcohol equals … I don’t know, ‘A’ something. Ambivalence. Airheadedness. I don’t know, give me an ‘A’ word that works here.”

The alcohol from the beer had made his mind fuzzy and so all of the words that occurred to him made no sense: “aardvark,” “ambition,” “Aaron.” Still, he offered, “ ‘Aerial’?”

She gave out a laugh. “I’m definitely aerial.” She held out her right hand. “Meg.”

“Ed,” he said, and they shook.

“Well, Edward, what takes you to St. Louis?”

He considered telling her the truth but he had no grasp on what the truth was.
I’ve been summoned
, he thought before settling on an answer more vague. “Business.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “Business seems … well, business. Oh, I think we’re starting to descend.” She leaned across him to peer out. He could both feel and smell her breath, now a more complicated warm mix of tobacco, mint and rum. He realized that one of the buttons of her blouse had come undone and he could see the swell of her small breasts above a red lace bra. When he shifted his eyes, he saw that she was watching him. Instead of being incensed, however, she gave a quick wink, sat up, snapped open her purse, removed a tube of lipstick and began making herself up. It was clear they were, indeed, moving to lower altitudes; wisps of the cloud bank they’d been above drifted across the wing, at first seeming like smoke dispersing, and then the cabin darkened slightly as they moved more
fully into the clouds. From beneath them, he could hear the
thunk
of the landing gear doors, followed by a mechanical hum.

“I think I’ve monopolized our time together, Edward,” she said. “Telling you all about my troubles and asking you nothing about yourself. What business are you in?”

“Flour,” he said impulsively.

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re a florist?”

“No,” he said. “I sell flour to, you know, groceries and—”

The mechanical hum resumed, quieted, and then resumed again, changing in pitch.

“My grandfather was a wheat farmer in Kansas,” she said. “Maybe some of your flour comes from there. Wouldn’t it be funny if you were selling something that grew on the land where I used to play?”

The plane banked as it began moving through to the underside of the clouds. He could see a broad expanse of countryside but they were too high for him to distinguish landmarks in the irregular checkerboard of browns and greens. The mechanical hum began again; it became clear to him that something was wrong as the hum resumed, ceased, resumed and ceased again. The flight attendant who had served their drinks hurried past, moving toward the front of the plane.

“Who do you work for?” she asked.

Half-distracted, he gave her the name of the mill he and his uncle had sold for.

“I don’t know them.”

He had no idea whether they were still in business. “You most likely wouldn’t, unless—it’s commercial. Bakeries, private labels,” he said, dredging the phrase “private label” out of that past with his uncle. Again, the mechanical hum began, and this time it was persistent, a grinding sound with a pitch that rose and fell.

“Private label,” she said, waggling her head from side to side. “La di—” And then she furrowed her brow, studying his face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s—” he began but then the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, his words not quite audible above the thrum of the engine and the continued mechanical grinding beneath Edward Everett’s feet. All he could make out was the phrase “hydraulic system” and the
words “approach” and “gear.” The flight attendant was moving unsteadily up the aisle, pausing at each row, bracing herself on seat backs, bending to say something to passengers as she stopped. When she got to their row, her voice was even but Edward Everett could nonetheless sense tension, as her eyes would not meet either his or Meg’s. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she said. “There’s a glitch in the hydraulics that the crew are working to resolve.”

“What does that mean?” Meg asked. “The hydraulics.”

The flight attendant hesitated. “The crew has everything under control,” she said, then moved on to the row behind them.

“ ‘Hydraulics’ equals shit soup,” a man across the aisle and a row back said.

Meg let out a bitter laugh. “Of course.” She shook her head. “Thank you, God.”

The plane arced and he could once more see the countryside beneath them, the long blue snake of a river. The “fasten seatbelt” sign lit up with a
ding
and the captain’s voice came over the intercom again, clear this time, his tone making Edward Everett wonder if in pilot school they learned how to deliver bad news in a reassuring way.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” the captain said, his voice pleasant. “We’ve got a small situation with our landing gear. We’re going to divert to Scott Air Force Base on the Illinois side. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Why Scott?” a woman asked from a few rows in front of Edward Everett.

“If we crash, they don’t want us in a high-traffic airport,” a man said.

They began descending again, the engines changing pitch as they slowed. Edward Everett leaned his head back against the cushion, closing his eyes, aware of his pulse thrumming in his ears so furiously he wondered if he was having a heart attack. Around him, passengers sobbed. Several talked on cellphones. “I love you,” someone said. “Tell the kids—” another said. Edward Everett fingered the cellphone in his pocket but thought,
Who would I call?
How pathetic it was to be in a plane about to crash and have no one in his life that he could call.

Meg gripped his forearm suddenly, her long nails cutting into his skin, and he found himself laying his left hand over her right, giving it a squeeze as he began thinking of all the divergent roads in his life that had brought him here, to a plane that was most likely going to crash, holding on to the hand of a woman who hadn’t been part of his life until an hour earlier when they nodded pleasantly to each other as she sat down: if, if, if. If he had pursued football as his father wanted, he would be in an office in a high school, playing around with next year’s depth chart, his worst problem that the All-Conference running back who had graduated in June would be hard to replace. If he hadn’t gotten injured in Montreal, if he had let that fly ball go and not gotten hung up in the fence, he would be fat and retired someplace warm—a tanned hacker on the golf course, lining up a putt on eighteen, taking a phone call from his agent:
A baseball card show in Tucson would work fine next month
. But even if he had made the decision to chase that fly ball in Montreal but hadn’t gone to Cleveland for the tryout, if he had been content selling flour with his uncle, content marrying Connie, raising her son, he would have a wife and son who would sit with him at a banquet when—long after he had taken over his uncle’s territory, long after he had his own house beside a pond—someone would call his name from the dais and he would rise to applause and make his way forward to receive the sort of honor that successful men gave to other successful men.