The Pilot's Wife (14 page)

For years, it had been only Julia who had fed and dressed Kathryn, taught her to read and to play the piano, and saw her off each day to school. In the afternoons, Kathryn would help Julia at the shop or would be sent outside to play. Together, they watched the soap opera of her parents’ lives unfold — perhaps not always from a distance, but from a safe place inside Julia’s tall and oddly shaped house. For nearly all of Kathryn’s childhood, Julia and she had been cast into the curious role of parents to the parents.

When Kathryn went away to college and was sitting in her dormitory in Boston, she was sometimes certain she would not ever be able to go back to Ely, that she did not ever again want to witness the endlessly repeatable drunken scenes between her parents. But on an unseasonably warm January afternoon during Kathryn’s freshman year, her parents fell into the runoff from Ely Falls, which inexplicably they seemed to have been trying to cross, and drowned. Kathryn discovered, to her surprise, that grief overwhelmed her — as if children had died — and that when the time came to return to Boston after the double funeral, she could not leave Ely or Julia.

Julia had been at least as good as two parents, Kathryn thought now, and in that she had been lucky.

She was startled by a footfall on a rock above and behind her. Robert’s hair was standing out from his head, and he was squinting.

“I was hoping you would bolt,” he said, hopping down into the protected space.

She put her arms back into the sleeves of her jacket and tried to hold her hair in the wind so that she could see his face.

He leaned against a rock and brushed his hair back in place. He took a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. He turned away from the wind, but even in the shelter of the rocks, he was having trouble with his lighter. Finally, the cigarette caught, and he inhaled deeply, snapping the lighter shut. He slipped it back into his pocket, and immediately the wind blew embers off the end of the cigarette and threatened to put it out.

Was Robert Hart telling the truth? she wondered. Was he glad she’d bolted? “Have they gone?” she asked.

“No.”

“And?”

“They’ll be all right. They have to do this. I don’t think they really expected you to say anything.”

She rested her elbows on her upraised knees, clutched her hair into a ponytail.

“We do need to have a funeral,” she said.

He nodded.

“Mattie and I need to honor Jack,” she said. “Mattie needs to honor her father.”

And she thought suddenly that this was true. Jack should be honored.

“It wasn’t suicide,” she said. “I’m sure of that.”

A gull screeched down at them, and together they looked up at the bird that was circling overhead.

“When I was small,” she said, “I used to think I wanted to come back in my next life as a gull. Until Julia told me how filthy they are.”

“The rats of the sea,” Robert said, stubbing out the cigarette on the sand with his foot. He slipped his hands into his pockets and seemed to hunch even more deeply into his coat. He was cold, she could see that. The skin around the eyes had gone papery and white.

She removed a strand of hair from her mouth.

“People in Ely,” she said, “they say never live on the water. It’s too depressing in the winter. But I’ve never been depressed.”

“I envy you,” he said.

“Well, I’ve been depressed, but not because of the ocean.” She saw now in the strong light that his eyes were hazel, not brown.

“But it’s hell on windows,” she added, looking in the direction of the house. “The salt spray.”

He crouched down near the sand, where it was warmer. “When Mattie was little, I worried about being so close to the ocean. I had to watch her all the time.”

Kathryn gazed at the water, contemplating the danger there.

“Two summers ago,” she said, “a girl drowned not far from here. A five-year-old girl. She was on a boat with her parents and got washed overboard. Her name was Wilhelmina. I remember thinking that was such an old-fashioned name to give a girl.”

He nodded.

“When it happened, all I could think was how treacherous the ocean is, how quickly it can snatch a person. It happens so fast, doesn’t it? One minute your life is normal, the next it isn’t.”

“You of all people should know that.”

She dug the heels of her boots into the sand.

“You’re thinking it could have been worse,” Kathryn said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It might have been Mattie on the plane.”

“Yes.”

“That would have been unbearable. Literally unbearable.” He brushed his hands together to get rid of the wet sand. “You could go away, you know,” he said. “You and Mattie.” “Go away?”

“To the Bahamas. To Bermuda. For a couple of weeks, until this dies down.”

Kathryn tried to imagine being in Bermuda right now with Mattie, then shook her head.

“I couldn’t do that,” Kathryn said. “They’d take it as true about Jack. They’d see us as running away. And besides, Mattie wouldn’t go. I don’t think she would.”

“Some of the relatives have gone to Ireland,” he said.

“And what? Stay in a motel with a hundred other families who are out of their minds? Or go to the crash site and wait for the divers to bring up body parts? No, I don’t think so.”

She felt around in the pockets of her parka. A used Kleenex. Coins. An outdated credit card. A couple of dollar bills. A tube of Lifesavers.

“You want one?” she asked, holding the Lifesavers forward. “Thanks,” he said.

Tired of crouching, he sat on the sand and leaned back against a rock.

He’ll ruin his coat, she thought.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said. “Beautiful part of the world.” “It is.”

She stretched her legs out in front of her. The sand, though wet, was oddly warm.

“Until this goes away, the media is going to be relentless,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Even I’ve never seen anything like that scene at the gate.” “It was frightening.”

“You must be pretty used to a quiet life here.”

“A quiet,
ordinary
life,” she said.

He had his elbows hooked around his knees, his hands clasped in front of him.

“What was your life like before this?” he asked. “What was your routine?”

“It was different each day. Which one do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Thursdays.”

“Thursdays.” She thought a minute. “On Thursdays, Mattie had field hockey or lacrosse games. I did Band at noon. It was pizza day in the cafeteria. We had roast chicken for supper. We watched
Seinfeld
and
ER.
”

“And Jack?”

“When Jack was there, he was there. He did it all. The games.

The roast chickens.
Seinfeld.
What about you? What do you do when you’re not working for the union?”

“I’m an instructor,” he said. “I give flying lessons in my spare time at an airport in Virginia. It’s just a pasture, really, with a couple of old Cessnas. It’s a lot of fun, except when they won’t come down.”

“What won’t come down?”

“The students on their first solo flights.”

She laughed.

They sat in an easy silence, leaning against the rocks. The lulling noise of the sea was momentarily peaceful.

“Maybe I should start to think about the details of the funeral,” she said after a time.

“Have you had any thoughts about where you want to do it?” “I suppose it’ll have to be Saint Joseph’s in Ely Falls,” she said. “That’s the closest Catholic church.”

She paused.

“They’ll certainly be surprised to see me,” she said.

“Christ,” Robert said.

Confused by this response, she felt Robert tugging at her sleeve, making her stand up. She turned to see what Robert had seen. A young man with a ponytail was aiming a camera as big as a television at them. Kathryn could see herself and Robert reflected in the enormous lens.

She heard the soft, professional
click, click, click
of a man at work.

They were in the kitchen when she returned, Somers rolling a fax in his hand, Rita with the telephone cradled under her chin. Without taking off her jacket, Kathryn announced that she had a short statement to make. Somers looked up from the fax.

“My husband, Jack, never gave me or anyone else any indication of instability, drug use, abuse of alcohol, depression, or physical illness,” she said.

She watched Somers fold the fax into squares.

“As far as I know,” she continued, “he was healthy, both physically and mentally. We were happily married. We were a happy, normal family living within a small community. I will not answer any other questions without a lawyer present, and nothing is to be removed from this house without proper legal documents. As you all know, my daughter is staying with my grandmother here in town. Neither of them is to be interviewed or contacted in any way. That’s all.”

“Mrs. Lyons,” said Somers. “Have you been in touch with Jack’s mother?”

“His mother is dead,” Kathryn said quickly.

And, then, in the silence that ensued, she knew that something was wrong. Perhaps there was the most minute lifting of an eyebrow, the barest suggestion of a smile on Somers’s face. Or possibly it was only later that she imagined these signals. The silence was so complete that even with nine people in the room, all she could hear was the hum of the refrigerator.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” said Somers softly, placing the shiny, folded square into a breast pocket.

The floor seemed to dip and waver like a ride at an amusement park.

Somers pulled a torn piece of notebook paper from another pocket.

“
Matigan Rice
,” he read. “
Forest Park Nursing Home, 47 Adams Street, Wesley, Minnesota.
”

The ride picked up speed and dropped fifty feet. Kathryn felt light-headed, dizzy.

“
Seventy-two years old, born October 22
,
1924,”
he read.
“Married three times. Divorced three times. First marriage to John Francis Lyons. One child, a son, John Fitzwilliam Lyons, born April 18, 1947, Faulkner Hospital, Boston.”

Kathryn’s mouth went dry, and she licked her top lip. Perhaps there was something she hadn’t understood correctly.

“Jack’s mother is alive?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Jack always said…”

She stopped herself. She thought about what Jack had always said. His mother had died when he was nine. Of cancer. Kathryn glanced quickly at Robert, and she could see from the expression on his face that he, too, was taken aback. She thought about the arrogance, the smug certainty, with which she had made her statement just seconds earlier.

“Apparently,” Somers said.

The investigator was enjoying this, Kathryn thought.

“How did you discover her?” she asked.

“She’s listed in his military records.”

“And Jack’s father?”

“Deceased.”

She sat on the nearest chair and shut her eyes. She felt vaguely drunk, the room swirling unpleasantly behind her eyelids.

All this time, she thought, and she had never known. All this time, Mattie had had a grandmother. A grandmother for whom she had been named.

But why? she asked herself.

Jack, why? she silently asked her husband.

T
HEY
WALK
ALONG
THE
BEACH
IN
THE
FOG
. Mattie, in a Red Sox jacket, runs ahead to look for crabs. The beach is flat and shallow, curved like a shell, the sand the color of weathered wood with a calligraphy of seaweed written along its crust. Behind the seawall are the summer houses, empty now. Too late, Kathryn realizes she should have told Mattie, only five, to take off her shoes.

Jack’s shoulders are hunched against the cold. He wears his leather jacket always, even on the coldest of days, unwilling to invest in a parka, or perhaps too vain, she has never been exactly sure. Her own flannel shirt hangs below her jacket, and she has a woolen scarf doubled around her neck.

— What’s wrong? she asks.

— Nothing, he says. — I’m fine.

— You seem subdued.

— I’m OK.

He walks with his hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead. His mouth is set in a hard line. She wonders what has happened to upset him.

— Did I do something? she asks.

— No, he says.

— Mattie has a soccer game tomorrow, she says.

— Good, he says.

— Can you be there? she asks.

— No, I have a trip.

There is a pause.

— You know, she says. — Once in a while you could bid a schedule that gave you more free time, more time to be at home.

He is silent.

— Mattie misses you.

— Look, he says. — Don’t make it worse for me than it already is.

From the corner of her eye, she can see Mattie twirling in circles on the beach. Kathryn feels distracted, pulled toward the man beside her by a gravity that seems unnatural. She wonders if he’s feeling well. Perhaps he is simply tired. She has heard the stories, the statistics: Most airline pilots die before they reach retirement age, which is sixty. It’s the stress, the strain of the unusual schedules. The wear and tear on the body.

She moves toward him, tucks her hands around his stiffened arm. Still he stares straight ahead.

— Jack, tell me. What is it?

— Drop it, will you?

Stung, she lets his arm go and walks away.

— It’s the weather, he says, catching up to her. — I don’t know.

Apologetic now. Mollifying.

— What about the weather? she asks coldly, unwilling to be so easily mollified.

— The gray. The fog. I hate it.

— I don’t think anyone likes it much, she says evenly.

— Kathryn, you don’t understand.

He removes his hands from his pockets and hikes his collar against the cold. He seems to slip further into his leather jacket.

— Today is my mother’s birthday, he says quietly. — Or would have been.

— Oh, Jack, she says, going to him. — You should have said.