Adeleine’s body sank lower and lower, like litter discarded in a bay searching for its resting point. Eventually her knees on the back of the seat were set higher than her cheeks, and pieces of hair moved above her on the upholstery, held hostage by static.
“You know, we took Jenny on a plane. Seven months she was. And some friends of mine, they said, what are you thinking, babies should stay safe at home where they belong. And Declan said, nope, our girl’s a flyer, I know it. I dressed her in a little corduroy jumper and she stood on my lap, tensing and untensing her toes. We were by the window and Declan said, better keep the shade down, she’ll be calmer that way. But she kept reaching for it. She wanted that thing open! She wanted to see where we were! Once I pulled it up she was glued to that patch of blue, would not look away for anything. There was another baby on the flight and it cried like it was starved, and when it would start up wailing, Jenny would stiffen and blink, like she recognized the sound but couldn’t remember from where, and then turn back to the business of cloud watching. She’d forgotten everything else, didn’t care if we never landed, couldn’t imagine any other place.”
Adeleine’s fingers darted and groped for the window button. She turned her face into the rushing air and arched her shoulders, but her vomit only made it as far as the back windshield, and Edith began to shriek.
“Sir! A young lady has just become ill in the back of your cab! Do something at once!” For the duration of the ride, the driver muttered hard consonants in Gujarati, then some of the profane variety in English. As they careened into the airport under the brash white signs of different airlines, their suitcases shifted audibly in the trunk, and the crepuscular sky fought viciously to keep its color, the violets and blues now thin and strained.
RELIEVED OF THE QUESTIONS that had propelled him, Thomas tried to restore his lost sense of purpose by familiarizing himself with the mechanics of Edith’s final home. He followed one of Song’s sons, Wallace, a tall man with a lopsided smile and prominent canines, on his rounds. He watched as Wallace affectionately chucked the red throat of a hen, then lifted the bird to retrieve her eggs; as he culled worn sheets from various beds and placed them inside a frail washing machine that sat on the outskirts of the main circle of buildings, alone and painted blue; as he scooped out cat food into a series of wooden bowls with the patience of a priest, and tugged the tips of tails as the felines appeared, one by one, to circle his feet.
Thomas had intended to sit with Wallace during the evening hour in which people spoke, to ask him plainly whether these routines, this place, gave him happiness, but it was evident even in the way the man walked, turning his head frequently to survey the bounty: the familiar faces napping in hanging chairs, the untamed sun-washed herb garden, the one-room homes built for simple lives, the well-worn paths that led to water.
Wallace, tasked with building a bed for Edith, set up on the porch of Song’s little house, and Thomas helped as best as he could. For two consecutive afternoons, he handed Wallace the lengths of wood and tools at which he pointed, offered encouraging grunts, fetched pitchers of water and plates of steaming polenta from the communal kitchen. When the work was done, Wallace led Thomas to a squat tin-roofed shed, pointed to a row of dusty paint cans, and opened his arms wide in invitation. Pleased to be handed this small authority, Thomas selected a pale yellow, and Wallace squeezed his shoulder and left him to it.
He spent the rest of the sunlight close to the wood, passing the brush repeatedly over bubbles that formed in the color, stepping back into the garden to appraise the thing from a distance as slat by slat, spindle by spindle, it began to glow.
AS HE PASSED the edge of the campground, the ranger’s hut and the silver-haired woman in her khaki uniform, Edward waved and kept running. He needed to reach the concrete highway, to get out from the cover of trees; he wanted the sun to burn off the shame he felt for snapping at Paulie, and to feel the man-made surface fixed underneath him as he moved.