“Look at you—a flight attendant.”
“For two years now.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“It’s fun. I get to see the world.”
“I bet. And how’s Hank?”
“Hank’s gone.”
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no! Not like that! We’re in the process of getting a divorce.”
“I thought you meant gone gone!” I was about to laugh but caught myself. “But still—I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was for the best. We shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place, but when you’re that age, what do you know?”
“Are you still in Wilmington?”
“I live in Atlanta now, but I’m lucky if I spend ten days a month at home. I’m in a different city every day.” She told me that she’d been to fourteen countries. “You know what’s the worst place to fly?”
“What?”
She looked around, then whispered, “Marrakech.”
“What’s the best place to fly?”
“Everywhere that isn’t Marrakech.”
I laughed. “Do you like it?”
She didn’t answer right away. It looked like she was staring at my shoes. I gave her a second to finish whatever thought she was lost in.
“Do you like it? Being a flight attendant?”
“I do!” she said, snapping back. “I like it now. But when I started, I was so bad at it.”
“If you already knew how to do everything, there wouldn’t be any point—”
“There wouldn’t be any point to living. Yes, thank you, Professor, I remember.”
I smiled.
“My problem was that I was so scared of being wrong. Every flight, a passenger would call me over and ask me a question I didn’t know the answer to. They’d ask me what lake we were flying over or what mountain range, and I’d be so focused on doing my job right that I wouldn’t even remember which flight I was on. Even when I knew the answer, I wouldn’t know the answer. Once an old lady asked me if the laundry room was available. I said, ‘Let me check on that for you.’ The laundry room!”
I laughed.
“Every time someone asked me something, I just froze.” Kayla laughed at herself. “And then, one day, I wasn’t pretending to be a flight attendant anymore. I just was one.”
“It’s funny how that happens.”
“But I’m not going to be a flight attendant forever. I like it, but I’m not going to do it forever. I was thinking of going back to school for an MBA. Or a master’s in psychology or social work,” she added, maybe thinking that I would disapprove of business school.
“It sounds like you’re doing great.”
“How are you? Still teaching?”
“Just a little bit right now. But I might start again soon.”
“That was a crazy class.”
“It wasn’t my finest hour.”
“You were great,” she said, probably forgetting that she’d filed a complaint against me. But it wasn’t like she’d been wrong—I was sending them to funerals. I was surprised that she remembered the class at all, three years later.
“Do you remember that story I wrote?” she said. “About the marine and the jellyfish?”
“Of course. The marine died, but then swam out to see his fiancée every day, until she found someone else. Then he saw that she was happy, and he swam away, happy for her.”
“That’s right! You have a good memory.”
“It was a good story.”
“I think I was trying to create the reality I wanted. Not with Hank dying, of course. I was in love with him. But I wanted to write something where the man would be happy for the woman if she found . . . I don’t know. Not someone else. But something else. I think even then, I wanted to write a story where he got happy from just seeing me happy—even if he wasn’t the one who made me happy.”
“I think we all want that.”
“When he was away, I was very devoted, you know. I would keep Facebook open all the time so we could chat as soon as he had a second to log on, even if it was in the middle of the night, and if he was going to be at the FOB, I’d get up early to do my makeup, and I’d wait by my computer to Skype before his shift.”
She was talking fast, swerving far outside the lines of catching up, and I wondered if she was drunk. But I didn’t smell any liquor on her.
“I never said anything when it turned out that he couldn’t Skype after all. I didn’t complain that I would be tired at school all day from getting up so early and hadn’t even gotten to see him. That’s what I signed up for. But then he came back, and he was just so angry all the time.”
She adjusted her beret and looked away. Maybe it was just one of those days when you needed someone to listen.
“That must have been difficult,” I said.
“He wanted me to have kids right away. And I want to have kids. But not right away. There are one hundred and ninety-five countries in the world! Back then, I’d only ever been to Mexico. Where has he been? Here and Afghanistan. We’re supposed to settle down after that?”
“It sounds like you made the right decision.”
She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her blazer pocket and lit one. The sight of her smoking was even more startling than the sight of her in a flight attendant’s uniform. She held out the pack to me. I hadn’t smoked in two months, but I took one. She handed me the lighter and we stood there, smoking on the curb, as hundreds of cars rolled by. The shuttle came and picked up the old couple, but I stayed. I’d cleared customs quicker than expected and there’d be another shuttle in an hour.
“Do you think I could’ve been a writer?” Kayla finally said.
“Did you want to be a writer?”
“I don’t know. I liked writing that story.” She took a drag. “Hank told me about this time a toy company donated a thousand Elmo dolls for marines to give to children in Afghanistan. For whatever reason, they sent all the toys to the village where Hank was stationed, but there were only fifty children in the village, so even after they handed out five dolls to each kid, there were still hundreds left over. They gave the extra Elmo dolls to the men in the village, who were confused, but they accepted them because they didn’t want to be rude. One man’s wife, maybe thinking the Elmo was a ceremonial gift, gave Hank a giant tote bag covered in shiny ribbons. Hank didn’t know what to do with that, but he didn’t want to be rude, so he said thank you and accepted it. In the end, everybody was stuck with these things they didn’t want, just so a toy company could say they supported the troops or the children of Afghanistan or whatever.” She walked over to the trash can, rubbed her cigarette out on the side, and dropped the butt in. “Do you think that could be a story?”
“If you write it, it could definitely be a story.”
She smiled sadly. “I just haven’t had the time.”
“There’s still plenty of time.”
“But there’s so much to do! I want to be a marriage counselor. I want to be a photographer. I want to start my own business. I want to have kids. I want to be a foster parent. I want to help Hank get his life straight and then never see him again. I want to go back to school. I want to fall in love again. I want to learn how to ride a horse.” She laughed nervously and caught her breath. “But what I really want is to stop babbling! I’m so sorry. I must sound like a crazy person. It’s the jet lag. I’m so jet-lagged. They say flight attendants don’t get jet-lagged, but we do. We get jet-lagged too.”
“Everyone gets jet lag.” I smiled. “You don’t sound like a crazy person, Kayla. You sound excited about life.”
She was quiet.
I let the quiet sit.
“It was my birthday yesterday,” she said.
“Happy birthday!”
“I’m already twenty-four,” she said sadly.
I wanted to tell her that twenty-four was nothing. But I refrained, remembering every time that someone older than me had told me that my age w
as nothing, neglecting to consider that twenty-four, twenty-seven, and now thirty was significant to me. Twenty-four was significant to Kayla.
“Look at it this way,” I said. “Most people don’t get divorced until they’re in their forties. You’re already way ahead of the game.”
For the first time, Kayla let out a real laugh.
“Thank you,” she said, still giggling. “That’s very comforting.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
“What are you doing in LA, anyway, Professor Anderson?”
“My best friends are getting married. I’ll be officiating the wedding.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s so nice.” She looked like she might cry.
And it was nice. It was nice to be asked to stand on an altar with two people you cared about as they read their vows. It was nice to be standing here with an old student, seeing she’d grown into a person that I could never have predicted, with so much to do that she’d have to live forever to find time for it all.
“I have to get going,” she said. “But I’m so happy we ran into each other.”
We hugged goodbye. She pulled up the handle on her suitcase and started to leave. But instead of just standing there, I said, “If you ever want someone to read your stories, you can always send them to me.”
She smiled. “That would be great.” She handed me her phone and I typed in my email address.
I watched her walk away with her little suitcase rolling smoothly and silently behind her. Then I sat down on the bench and waited for the shuttle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my teachers, especially Mrs. Novak, Courtney Brogno, Paul Tenngart, and most of all, Amy Wiley and Robert Anthony Siegel.
Thank you to my agent, Chris Clemans, who is both very good at his job and very kind. To my all-star editing team, Marysue Rucci and Zack Knoll, who did wonders for this book. To the crew at Simon & Schuster for all their hard work copyediting, laying out, and promoting this book. To Alison Forner and Tyler Comrie for the brilliant cover. To Simon Toop for pulling my novel from the slush. To Rivka Galchen for generously championing this book. To Carol Ann Fitzgerald and Jill Meyers for investing in my writing long before it was worthy.
Thank you to Chris McCormick, Jessica Thummel, and Clyde Edgerton for reading early drafts of the novel and helping make it much better. To the faculty and students at UNC Wilmington for being generous with all the bad writing I made them read. To Wendy Brenner for giving me many great books when I was in need of them. To Ashley Hudson for being my workplace partner in crime. To Jeremy Hawkins for his writerly friendship. To Peter Baker for being the person I call with all my book problems.
For providing helpful information, anecdotes, and inspiration, thanks to Camilla Alin, Larry Inchausti, Max Mayo, and Sara Shepherd. Thank you to Annie Murphy and Molle Kanmert Sjölander for their advice on bridges and meatballs and other important points of Swedish culture. Thank you to Janine for always listening.
Thank you to I.B. and all the other young men at MUFR who so generously told me about their lives and asked me about mine. To the team at MUFR for creating a little light in the darkness.
Thank you to Antonia, Samuel, Lena, and Astrid & Christer for helping make Skåne home. To Jakob Nilsson for being my guide to Swedish.
Thank you to Kelly and Tony for their enduring friendship.
Thank you to Mike and Nina for being my second family.
Thank you to Per and Emile for all the laughter and love. To Gloria for making a house a home. To Stu for being such a supportive and enthusiastic fan. To Åsa for showing the way to love and art. To Lance for always being there, calm and caring, always ready for a good talk.
Finally, thank you to Sherilyn. You are the best to wake up to, the best to fall asleep to, and the best for every minute in between. How lucky I am to get to spend my days with you.
TEXT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
101:
“Journalism is the art . . . I’ll never learn that.”: Quoted in Olof Lagercrantz, Stig Dagerman (Stockholm: Nordstedts, 1958), 128. (Translation mine.)
162–63:
The article “about unaccompanied-minor refugees living in Germany”: Katrin Bennhold, “Migrant Children, Arriving Alone and Frightened,” New York Times, October 28, 2015.
180:
“The sheer solipsism . . . implicated in the critique.”: Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” Feminist Theory, 8, no. 2 (2007): 164–65.
192:
“Everyone staying at . . . one for the record.”: Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq, trans. Jonathan Wright (New York: Penguin, 2014), 157.
250:
The Fox News segment is called “Do Syrian refugees pose a threat to national security?” and it aired November 15, 2015.
268:
“ ‘You Really Have’ . . . delighted with this story.” Taken from a letter I received from John Purugganan (the letter was later published in slightly different form in the correspondence of the Sun).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© KATALINA BERBARI
JOHANNES LICHTMAN was born in Stockholm and raised in California. He lives in Portland and Ukraine.
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Education is the most empowering tool we can give children. Yet during any conflict or natural disaster, this critical service is typically the first service interrupted and the last to be restored. Today, half of all refugee children—3.5 million—are out of school. Studies show that the longer refugee children are out of school, the less likely they are to return and acquire the knowledge and skills they need to rebuild their lives and hope for the future.
With the average refugee displacement lasting seventeen years, millions of children are at risk of being left behind.
Save the Children, a leader in the education-in-emergency sector, understands that education must underpin the life of every girl and boy—especially when all else is in flux. That’s why the organization recently launched the Return to Learning initiative for refugee children, which aims to restore learning opportunities within thirty days of displacement. The initiative provides the resources needed to build temporary learning spaces, recruit teachers and tutors, provide books and supplies, and more.
A portion of the author advance was donated to the Return to Learning initiative for refugee children. If you would like to make a donation, please visit: www.savethechildren.org.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Johannes Lichtman
The first chapter of this novel appeared in earlier form in the Sun.
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2019
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Interior design by Carly Loman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lichtman, Johannes, author.
Title: Such good work: a novel / Johannes Lichtman.
Description: New York: Simon & Schuster, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018016723 | ISBN 9781501195648 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781501195662 (trade paper)
Classification: LCC PR9145.9.L53 S83 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016723
ISBN 978-1-5011-9564-8
ISBN 978-1-5011-9565-5 (ebook)
Such Good Work Page 22
