The Might Have Been

CHAPTER Twenty-nine





It had been years since he’d flown and it was only when his stomach gave its slight drop as the plane lifted from the tarmac in Cedar Rapids that he remembered how much he hated it, the anxious moments as the jets roared to give the plane its lift, the precarious bounce of the wing outside his window seat, making him question the integrity of bolts and welds; the mechanical grinding and bump as the wheels retracted; his ears filling, giving him the illusion that sound was traveling from another room—the muted hum of conversation, the scratch of paper from the woman beside him turning the pages of a pulp mystery novel, the nervous clicking of a ballpoint pen button by a woman across the aisle.

Before they finished their climb, rain began pelting the window beside him, the drops slithering like silver slugs across the scratched and clouded plastic. He pulled down the plastic shade and closed his eyes, his pulse thrumming in his jaw. A baby behind him wailed and the woman beside him closed her book.

“I really hate flying,” she said. She was near his age, gray-haired, wearing a peach silk blouse tucked neatly into a charcoal pencil skirt, small, heart-shaped diamond studs in her earlobes, her manicured nails polished pale pink. “Yet, here I am again.”

“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. “F*ck,” 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.

He realized that Meg was saying something: “… was sorry.”

“What?” he asked. His ears were even more closed up now, her voice even more distant than it had been before.

“I wish I could tell her I was sorry,” she said.

“Who?” he asked.

“Patience,” she said.

“What?” He wondered if she had suddenly gone mad: patience, for what? Was there a moment coming at which it would be better for her to answer his question?

“My daughter, Patience,” she said. “Oh, God, I was so terrible to her.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” he said.

“You don’t know,” she said. She took an iPhone from her purse but sat holding it in her lap. She laughed. “And I can’t even call her to tell her. What kind of person in the twenty-first century doesn’t have a phone?” She shook her phone at him in an accusing way, as if he was responsible for something—for whatever she’d done to her daughter. For her not being able to tell her daughter she was sorry. For the plane’s mechanical problems.

“What could you have possibly done?” he asked.

“I thought I wanted a little girl,” she said, almost so quietly he had a hard time hearing her over the drone of the engines and with his ears as clogged as they were. “Momma’s little girl. But when I had her, I had no idea what to do with her. Change her diapers. Clean up her poop. Her father was no help. ‘She’s your child,’ he said. ‘You wanted her.’ Hiding in the basement, making f*cking guitars. I took it out on her. Oh, I wish I could tell her it wasn’t her fault. ‘Am I bad, Mommy?’ she’d ask. What can a four-year-old do that could be bad? But I … there were times she would cry in her crib and I would sit in the living room and turn the volume up on whatever I was watching. Falcon Crest, Dallas, with the volume up while she wailed.” She closed her eyes and he wondered if she was going to cry but she didn’t. “That’s what I’d tell her. That I was sorry—for that and for so much more.”

Through the window now, he could see the landscape changing, becoming more residential. Tracts of homes, a shopping mall, an industrial court.

“What do you regret?” She laid her hand gently on his, giving him a small pat.

He turned his head toward her. Just because she had told him what she regretted didn’t mean he had to tell her. They were strangers. The plane shook, at first twice, then three times, and then started quaking violently. The flight attendant coming back up the aisle swayed from side to side from the force of it, not so much walking as pulling herself up the aisle, as if she was struggling against a wind.

“I had a boy,” he said, glancing at Meg and then turning away. “I had a boy but I never got to see him. His mother left before he was born and I never met him.”

“Never,” she said. She curled her hand into his, lacing her fingers through his.

“No,” he said. The photos came to him. The baby fending off bright sunlight at its baptism. The boy raising a glass. And then the boy in the image lowered the glass and glanced up at him, smiling, and Edward Everett realized he had never thought of the boy as animate before.

“I’ve never told anyone about him,” he said. “Not my wives. No one.” On Connie’s porch after the first picture came: “What’s wrong?” “Nothing. I just love you.”

“Oh, my,” Meg said. “How awful to carry that with you all this time.”

He realized he was crying and squeezed his eyes to stop the tears. “I wish—” he said, then cleared his throat to steady his voice. “I wish I could have known him a little.”

“You poor, poor dear.” Meg patted his face. “She was terrible to do that to you. Kidnapping. Did you ever try to find them?”

“I did,” he said. “I looked—”

“Maybe he tried to find you,” Meg said. “Maybe he’s looking this moment. That’s something to live for.”

The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “I’m asking the flight crew to belt themselves in,” he said.

Through the window, Edward Everett could make out something that looked like a factory and then the edge of downtown St. Louis, the distinctive Arch glinting dully against the gray sky. The loudspeaker began crackling, the captain’s voice mixed with cracks and pops. “… crash position …” and then the loudspeaker went silent. Throughout the cabin, passengers bent their faces toward their knees, locking their hands behind their necks, and Edward Everett imitated them.

The engines slowed yet again. Edward Everett could feel the pull of gravity, and pressure built in his ears. Everything seemed far away: the sounds of the engine, the crying of a baby, a woman. It seemed as if he was hearing it all through water. Then came the roar of the engines reversing. He lifted his head momentarily to glance out the window. They were coming in fast, past a parking lot filled with military jeeps, past a mass of airmen running in pale blue shorts and T-shirts. It seemed they should be on the ground by then; he braced himself, thinking, Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, but at the same time thinking of how that was cheating in a way, something he wasn’t certain he believed in but hedging his bets, in the event Sister Annunciata was right, an Act of Contrition could pull him out of a free fall toward hell at the last moment. The landscape continued to flash past, rows of clapboard military housing, a field with jets lined up as if at some sort of aeronautical parade rest, watching them speed past. From somewhere ahead of them, he caught sight of flashing blue and red lights. They were barely above the ground, all but skimming it; part of him willed them to touch down, to get whatever was going to happen over, while part of him willed them to stay up.

“Oh, my God,” Meg said, and she pushed at his head, shoving it back toward his knees, his legs pressing against his torso making it difficult to breathe. The engines were nearly deafening, and then he felt them hit the ground with an impact that jarred him in his seat, the plane bouncing, the front end rising and falling, rising and falling, shaking him wildly. His head banged against his knee hard enough that he thought he might have fractured his cheekbone. He thought, incongruously and wryly: Renee will end up a widow and not a divorcee after all, would inherit everything he had, and then the plane seemed to be careening, the fuselage screeching as they rode the ground, a long eeeeeeeeeeeeeee rising above the drone of the engines, a sound he felt in his fingertips, in his groin. All around him, passengers were screaming: was he? No. His mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. A drink cart from the front of the plane broke free of what had tethered it and bounced along the aisle, banging into seats, bottles and cans spilling out, some breaking, filling the cabin with a strong scent of alcohol and sugar. Overhead compartments popped open, carry-on bags falling all around them. The plane seemed on the verge of tumbling, fishtailing side to side.

He turned his head against his thighs to look up and out through the window. Something outside whipping madly at the fuselage: smoke, he realized, pouring up around the wing. For some reason, he had thought the impact would be the worst, tear him apart; he had not considered the possibility of fire and he sucked in his breath, closing his eyes, waiting for the fuel to ignite. His body jerked front to back, side to side, his head shaking so violently he wondered that he didn’t fall unconscious. When they hit a hard bump, his jaw clamped abruptly and a small hard fragment of something came loose in his mouth, most likely a piece of a tooth, pricking the underside of his tongue, making him taste blood. Then, suddenly, it seemed they were slowing. They were slowing, no longer careening, but skidding, smoke obscuring his view outside the window, until they came to rest, finally, with a savage bump that made the belt strain against his midsection so hard that it drove the wind out of him, and he thought, It’s cutting through me, but then they were still. They were still and, he realized, quiet, as the engines were off. There was only the distant crying of his fellow passengers, and the gentle creaking of the plane settling—as if, after terrorizing them, it had decided to lull them to sleep.