For a long time following the crash, I was like a sleepwalker. I moved, stunned, from one task to the next, marveling at small details as they floated past me, disjointed and disconnected, trying to decide if each detail was meaningless or deeply significant. I didn’t sleep much. I had always considered it a figure of speech when people said they couldn’t get an image out of their minds, or kept seeing something happen over and over every time they closed their eyes, but I learned that this is actually true. The mind snags. The film jumps the reel and the same sequence repeats itself ad nauseam. For me it was four frames that moved in halting succession: the jet too low, the back end of the right wing hitting the ground and flashing orange, black tree trunks and a wall of dirt and snow, and the jet at rest blooming fire. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four.
Every now and then an urgent question would present itself, some detail that seemed like the key to understanding what had happened and why, or some alternate scenario for how things could have gone, and I needed Ross to tell me right then, as precisely as possible, everything he knew about what I was asking. He was patient with this. I asked about ice on wing surfaces and fuel readings and how the wind pushes on a plane in flight. I asked about emergency landings and ejections and radio calls and where exactly each runway begins and ends. I woke up in a sweat the first night, sick to my stomach with this question: If I hadn’t been there on the road, in the way, could he have landed on the pavement just outside the fence? No, Ross said, that’s not ever something they train for when they consider emergency landings because there’s the risk of power lines or other obstructions and a road is just too small. I wanted to believe him, but it took me a while to accept this.
What I didn’t ask about at first, what I couldn’t bear, was anything about the pilot. I knew only that he was someone Ross knew and had worked with and liked, but someone I had not yet met. I was careful to use only impersonal pronouns in reference to the pilot when asking Ross about this or that procedure or decision. It seemed deeply wrong, like an unforgivable breach of etiquette approaching the level of sin, to learn someone’s name only after seeing something as intimate and precious as his last moments.
The weekend directly after the crash was the TOPGUN “Dining Out.” A Dining Out is a major social event in any squadron and usually takes place either once a year or once every couple of years; it is highly structured with traditions, toasts, drinking games, and all sorts of rules, and it was exactly the kind of thing I suddenly wanted to avoid completely, but it was also something that I understood was now entirely necessary. Collectively, the TOPGUN staff needed something to ram it back into gear, quickly, and since this event had been planned far in advance, the logical choice was to press on. So my mom flew out as planned to stay with Sam, and Ross and I packed up for a night in Lake Tahoe. He prepared his Dinner Dress Blues and I swapped the form-fitting siren red dress I’d been planning to wear for a long, shapeless black one that reminded me—comfortingly in this instance—of the abayas I’d seen Saudi women wear. I could think of nothing more enticing at that point than the possibility of moving through the evening in a column of shadow and blending in so thoroughly that I could pretend I was Photoshopping myself out entirely. In a small gesture of remembrance, I bought a few stems of white orchids and Mikayla and I pinned them in our hair. I layered concealer over the reddish purple circles under my eyes and crammed my purse full of tissues just in case I had to duck into a restroom and lose it.
The celebration seemed subdued, and as much as I felt a little tender about the idea of applauding naval aviation, the company of a bunch of people who knew what had happened and were also struggling to make sense of it was comforting. We didn’t talk about the crash much, and for my part, I was relieved that loud music and crowded tables provided a little cover for me to grapple with how strange it felt to be tottering around a casino, pregnant and in heels, with a bunch of people in Dress Blues. Luckily, everyone else seemed to be in costume too. We passed bachelorettes with condoms stapled to their veils and braying men in Hawaiian shirts and finally ended the evening in a club where an angry-looking girl in thigh-high boots, fishnet stockings, tiny little briefs, and a bustier stomped back and forth on a catwalk above the dance floor. Our group VIP booth had an iced bucket of champagne and a pyramid of stamp-sized brownies. I felt like I was in the wrong movie.