The Pilot's Wife (3 page)

She looked up the steep incline. There were five hundred steps, at least five hundred. They stretched on and on. She understood that something had been set in motion and was beginning now. She was not sure she had the stamina to make it to the top.

She looked at the man from the union, who was moving through the kitchen to answer the door.

“
Mom,
” she said, and he turned. “What they usually say is
Mom
.”

T
HE
GLARE
OF
THE
SUN
,
REFLECTED
FROM
THE
occasional passing car, moves along the back wall of the shop like a slow strobe. The shop seems airless today, suffocating in the heat, the air thick with dust motes floating in the shafts of light. She stands with a rag in her hand inside a maze of mahogany and walnut tables, of lamps and old linens, of books that smell of mildew. She glances up at him as he walks in. She has a brief impression of someone official on an errand, of someone lost and looking for directions. He has on a white shirt with short sleeves that stick out from his shoulders like thin white flags. Heavy navy blue trousers. He wears old man’s shoes, black shoes that are weighty and enormous.

— We’re closed, she says.

He looks quickly behind him and sees the
OPEN
sign on the inside of the door. He scratches the back of his neck.

— Sorry, he says, and turns to leave.

She has always marveled at the speed with which the mind makes judgments — a second, two seconds at the most, even before anyone has moved or said a word. Early thirties, she guesses. Not stocky, exactly, but large. He has broad shoulders, and she thinks at once that there is nothing anemic about him. She is struck initially by his jawline, which is rectangular and smooth, and by his somewhat comical ears, which stick out at their tops. She thinks there might be something wrong with his eyes.

— I’m taking inventory, but if there’s something that you’re looking for, that’s fine, she says.

He moves into a tube of sunlight that comes from a round window over the door. She can see his face clearly.

There are tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he doesn’t have perfect teeth. His hair is cut short, a military cut, dark, almost black, and would be curly if it had any length. There is a dent in his hair, as if he had a cap on earlier.

He puts his hands into his trouser pockets. He asks her if she has any old checkerboards.

— Yes, she says.

She begins to walk through the maze to a far wall, apologizing for the mess as she goes. She is aware of him behind her, aware of her gait and posture, which suddenly seem unnatural, too stiff. She has on jeans, a red tank top, and a pair of old leather sandals. Her hair is loose and sticky on the back of her neck. She feels as though the heat and the humidity, combined with the dust she has been kicking up, have created a kind of dirty film all over her. In the mosaic of her reflection in an antique mirror on the wall, she catches a glimpse of soggy tendrils of hair on either side of her face, which is shiny with perspiration. Her bra strap is showing, a white flash under the red, and there is a blue stain on the tank top from something that bled in the wash.

The board is lying against the wall with several old paintings. The man moves in front of her and crouches to get a better look. She can see the strength of him in his thighs, the length of his back in the crouch, the place where the belt dips in the back with the strain. She notices the white epaulets on his shoulders.

—What’s this? he asks, his eye caught by a painting beside the checkerboard. It is a landscape, an impressionistic rendering of a hotel out at the Isles of Shoals. The hotel is old, nineteenth century, with deep porches and a long smooth lawn in the middle of a rocky seascape.

He stands and shows her the painting, which she has never paid much attention to before.

—This is pretty good, he says. —Who’s the artist?

She tilts her head and reads from the back of the painting:

— Claude Legny, she says. — Eighteen ninety. It says here that it came from an estate sale in Portsmouth.

— It’s like a Childe Hassam, he says.

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know who Childe Hassam is. He traces the wooden frame with his fingers, and it seems to her as though someone were trailing his fingers up and down her spine.

— How much is it? he asks.

— I’ll look it up, she says.

They walk together to the register. The price, when she finds it, seems staggeringly high. She feels embarrassed to name such a sum, but it is not her shop, and she should try to make the sale for her grandmother.

When she tells him the price, he doesn’t even blink.

— I’ll take it, he says.

He gives her cash, and she hands him a receipt, which he sticks absentmindedly in his shirt pocket. She wonders what he does in the military, why he isn’t at his base on a Wednesday afternoon.

— What do you do? she asks, looking again at the epaulets on his shoulders.

— Cargo transport, he says. — I have a layover. I borrow a car from a ticket agent at the airport and go for drives.

— You fly, she says, stating the obvious.

— I’m like a truck driver, only it’s a plane, he says, looking at her intently.

— What’s in the plane? she asks.

— Canceled checks.

— Canceled checks?

She laughs. She tries to imagine an entire plane filled with canceled checks.

— Nice shop, he says, looking around.

— It’s my grandmother’s.

She crosses her arms over her chest.

— Your eyes are two different colors, she says.

— It’s genetic. It’s from my father’s side of the family. He pauses.

— The eyes are both real, in case you wanted to know.

— I did, as a matter of fact.

— Your hair is beautiful, he says.

— It’s genetic, she says.

He nods his head and smiles, as if to say
touché.

—It’s … what color? he asks.

— Red.

—No, I mean…

— It depends on the light.

— How old are you?

— Eighteen.

He seems surprised. Taken aback.

— Why? she asks. — How old are you?

— Thirty-three. I thought…

— Thought what?

— That you were older, I don’t know.

It lies there between them, the age difference, the fifteen years.

— Look, he says.

— Look, she says.

He puts a hand on the register.

— I was born in Boston, he says, — and grew up in Chelsea, which is a part of Boston you don’t want to know about. I went to Boston Latin and to Holy Cross. My mother died when I was nine, and my father had a heart attack when I was in college. I had a low lottery number and was drafted and learned to fly in Vietnam. I don’t currently have a girlfriend, and I’ve never been married. I have a one-bedroom condo in Teterboro. It’s too small, and I’m hardly ever —

— Stop, she says.

— I want to get this part over with.

She understands then, in a way she has seldom been allowed to know such things in her eighteen years, that she holds it all in her hand at that moment, that she can wrap her fingers around it and grasp it tightly and never let it go, or she can open her hand, lay open her palm and give it away. Just give it away, as simply as that.

— I know where Chelsea is, she says.

Ten seconds pass, maybe twenty. They stand in the hot gloom of the shop, neither of them speaking. She knows he wants to touch her. She can feel the heat from his skin even across the counter. She draws in her breath slowly and evenly, so as not to attract attention to the effort. She has a nearly overwhelming desire to close her eyes.

— It’s hot in here, he says.

— It’s hot out there, she says.

— Unseasonably hot.

— For so early in June.

— Want to go for a drive? he asks. — Cool off ?

— Where? she asks.

— Anywhere. Just a drive.

She allows herself to meet his gaze. He smiles slowly, and the smile takes her by surprise.

They drive to the beach and go swimming in their clothes. The water is frigid, but the air is hot, and that contrast is delicious. Jack ruins his uniform and later has to borrow another. When she comes out of the water, he is standing with his hands in his pockets and a blanket rolled under his arm. His clothes are soaked and hanging off him, and his shirt has gone a translucent flesh color.

They lie on the blanket on the sand. She shivers against his wet shirt. He keeps the fingers of his left hand anchored, knotted in her hair, as he kisses her and moves his right hand under the tank top and along the flat of her stomach. She feels loose, loose limbed and opened up — as though someone had just tugged at a thread and was unraveling her.

She covers his hand with her own. His is oddly warm, and rough and sandy and abrasive. She feels happy. It is a pure and undiluted happiness. It is all beginning, and she knows it.

E
VEN
BEFORE
KATHRYN
REACHED
THE
TOP
OF
THE
stairs, she could hear Mattie walking into the bathroom. Her daughter’s hair had a lovely natural curl, but each morning Mattie would get up to wash her hair and painstakingly blow-dry it to straighten it. It always seemed to Kathryn that Mattie was trying to subdue her hair, as though wrestling with a part of herself that had emerged not long ago. Kathryn was waiting for Mattie to outgrow this stage and had been thinking that any day now her daughter would wake up and let her hair go natural. Then Kathryn would know that Mattie was all right.

Mattie had probably heard the cars in the driveway, Kathryn thought. Perhaps she had heard the voices in the kitchen, too. Mattie was used to waking up in the dark, particularly in the winter.

She knew she had to get Mattie out of the bathroom. Already she was thinking that it was not a safe place to tell her daughter.

She stood outside the door. Mattie had turned on the shower. Kathryn could hear her undressing.

Kathryn knocked.

“Mattie,” she said.

“What?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Mom… .”

The way Mattie said it, in that familiar singsong tone, as if annoyed already.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m having a shower.”

“Mattie, it’s important.”

“
What?
”

The bathroom door opened abruptly. Mattie had a green towel wrapped around her.

My lovely, beautiful daughter, Kathryn thought. How can I possibly do this to her?

Kathryn’s hands began to shake. She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her hands under her armpits.

“Put on a robe, Mattie,” Kathryn said, feeling herself beginning to cry. She never cried in front of Mattie. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

Mattie slipped her robe off the hook and put it on, stunned into obedience.

“What is it, Mom?”

A child’s mind couldn’t take it in, Kathryn decided later. A child’s body couldn’t absorb such grotesque facts.

Mattie flung herself down onto the floor as if she had been shot. She flailed her arms furiously all around her head, and Kathryn thought of bees. She tried to seize Mattie’s arms and hold tightly onto her, but Mattie threw her off and ran. She was out of the house and halfway down the lawn before Kathryn caught her.

“Mattie, Mattie, Mattie,” Kathryn said when she had reached her.

Over and over and over.

“Mattie, Mattie, Mattie.”

Kathryn put her hands behind Mattie’s head and pressed her face close to her own, pressed it in hard, as though to tell her she must listen, she had no choice.

“I will take care of you,” Kathryn said.

And then again.

“Listen to me, Mattie. I will take care of you.”

Kathryn folded her daughter into her arms. There was frost at their feet. Mattie was crying now, and Kathryn thought her own heart would break. But this was better, she knew. This was better.

Kathryn helped Mattie into the house and made her lie down on the couch. She wrapped her daughter in blankets and held onto her and rubbed her arms and legs to stop the shivering. Robert tried to give Mattie some water, which made her gag. Julia, Kathryn’s grandmother, the woman who had raised her, was called. Kathryn was vaguely aware of other people in the house then, a man and a woman with suits on, standing at the kitchen counter, waiting.

She could hear Robert talking on the telephone and then murmuring with the people from the airline. She hadn’t realized that a television was on, but Mattie suddenly sat up and looked at her.

“Did they say a bomb?” Mattie asked.

And then Kathryn heard the bulletin, in retrospect, the way one realizes that subliminally all the words have been heard and are there in the mind just waiting to be called forth.

Later Kathryn would come to think of the bulletins as bullets. Word bullets that tore into the brain and exploded, obliterating memories.

“Robert,” she called.

He came into the living room and stood next to her. “It’s not confirmed,” he said.

“They think a bomb?”

“It’s just a theory. Give her one of these.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a Valium.”

“You carry these?” she asked. “With you?”

Julia moved through the house with the stolid presence of a relief worker in an emergency zone: disrespectful toward death and seemingly unwilling to be cowed. With her matronly bulk and poodle perm — her only concession to age — she had Mattie off the couch and upstairs within minutes. When Julia was certain that Mattie could stand up by herself in a room alone and pull on a pair of jeans, she came back downstairs to attend to her granddaughter. She stood in the kitchen and made a pot of strong tea. She laced it generously with brandy from a bottle she had brought with her. She told the woman from the airline to be sure that Kathryn drank it down, at least one mug. Then Julia went back up to Mattie and made the girl wash her face. By then the Valium was kicking in, and except for small sudden bursts of surprise and grief, Mattie was winding down. Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.