The Pilot's Wife

by Anita Shreve

  “For two.”

  She pressed her lips together. It didn’t mean anything necessarily, she thought. It could easily have been for Jack and a member of his crew, couldn’t it? She saw Robert’s gaze flicker to the window and back. Which member of the crew? she wondered.

  “How did you keep in touch with Jack when he was away?” Robert asked.

  “He called me,” she said. “It was easier that way, because my schedule was always the same. He’d call me as soon as he got to the crew apartment. If I had to reach him, I would leave a message on his voice mail. We had arranged it that way because I could never be sure when he was trying to get some sleep.”

  She thought about that arrangement. Had it been her idea or Jack’s? They had done it for so many years, she could no longer remember when it had begun. And it had always seemed a logical system, too practical to question. Odd, she thought, how a fact, seen one way, was one thing. And then, seen from a different angle, was something else entirely. Or perhaps not so odd.

  “Obviously, we can’t ask the crew,” she said. “No.”

  She thought about the question Mattie had asked her on the day she’d learned of the suicide rumor: How do you ever know that you know a person?

  Kathryn stood up and walked over to the window. She had on an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with shot knees that she had been wearing for days. Even her socks weren’t clean. She hadn’t thought she would see anyone today. With grief, she thought, appearance was the first thing to go. Or was it dignity?

  “I can’t cry anymore,” she said. “That part is over.” “Kathryn . . .”

  “It’s unprecedented,” she said. “It’s absolutely unprecedented. No pilot has ever been accused of committing suicide in an airliner.”

  “Actually,” said Robert, “it’s not unprecedented. There is one case.”

  Kathryn turned from the window.

  “In Morocco. A Royal Air Maroc airliner crashed near Agadir in August of 1994. The Moroccan government, basing its opinion on the CVR tapes, said the crash was caused by the captain’s suicidal act. Apparently, the man deliberately disengaged the autopilot and pointed the aircraft at the ground. The plane began to break up before impact. Forty-four people died.”

  “My God,” she said.

  She put her hands over her eyes. It was impossible not to see, if only for an instant, the horror of the copilot as he watched his captain kill himself, the terrified bewilderment of the passengers in the cabin as they felt the sudden descent.

  “When will they release the tape?” she asked. “Jack’s tape.” Robert shook his head. “I doubt very much that they ever will,” he said. “They don’t have to. The transcripts are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. When tapes have been released, either what’s on them isn’t sensitive or else they’ve been heavily censored.”

  “So I won’t ever have to listen to it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But then . . . how will we ever know what happened?” “Thirty separate agencies in three countries are working on this crash,” Robert said. “Believe me, the union hates the accusation of suicide more than anyone — even the hint of suicide. Every congressman in Washington is calling for stricter psychological testing of pilots, which from the union’s point of view is a nightmare. The sooner the case gets resolved, the better.”

  Kathryn rubbed her arms, trying to get the circulation going. “It’s all political, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Usually.”

  “It’s why you’re here.”

  He was silent as he sat on the bed. He smoothed the bedspread with his palms. “No,” he said. “Not at the moment.”

  “So you’re here as...?”

  “I’m here,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m just here.”

  She nodded her head slowly. She wanted to smile. She wanted to tell Robert Hart how glad she was that he was there, how very hard it was to go through all of this alone, to not have with her the one person she needed, who was Jack.

  “Is that a good shirt?” she asked quickly. “Not particularly,” he said.

  “You feel like doing some chores?”

  RAIN FALLS IN HEAVY SHEETS OUTSIDE THE MAS-sive paned windows of the auditorium. The room is old and sloping, built in the 1920s and not yet renovated. The walls are wood paneled, etched here and there with declarations of love and students’ initials. Heavy maroon drapes that never seem to work exactly right hang to either side of the stage. Only the seats, mercilessly poked at and ripped open over the years with pens and pocket knives, have been replaced. Now the audience sits on seats removed from the Ely Falls Cinema when that building was demolished to make way for a bank.

  The auditorium slowly fills with parents as the band struggles courageously with “Pomp and Circumstance.” Conducting in the pit just below the stage, Kathryn manages to coax from the twenty-three high school musicians a barely passable rendition of the graduation processional. Susan Ingalls, on the clarinet, is wildly off-key, and Spence Closson, on the bass drum, seems particularly nervous tonight, hesitating just a fraction on each measure.

  Overtime, Kathryn thinks to herself. In any other job, this would be called overtime.

  Fortunately, this is not graduation itself, just Awards Night. Kathryn has five seniors in the band, two of whom might win academic prizes. It’s one of the few advantages of a small school, she thinks. Awards Night is usually short.

  With her baton still in her hand, she sits on a chair next to Jimmy DeMartino, tuba. She debates the merits of taking Susan Ingalls backstage and trying to tune her clarinet. The principal begins his address, which will be followed by talks from the vice-principal and the valedictorian of the senior class. Kathryn tries to pay attention, but her mind is more fixed on the grades she must do tonight when she gets home. The last several weeks of the school year are always harried and emotional. Every day for the past five days, she’s conducted band practice during lunch so that the seniors — all twenty-eight of them — can practice marching to “Pomp and Circumstance” for graduation. Not once this week has the song, even badly played, failed to produce tears. But by graduation night, Kathryn knows, all the tears will be used up, the wistful heartache of leaving school will be well played out, and the seniors will be thinking only of the all-night party ahead. Every year it is the same.

  The speeches over, the principal begins to announce the awards. Kathryn looks at her watch. A half hour at the outside, she calculates. Then the band will play “Trumpet Voluntary,” everyone will go home, and she can start computing grades for her sophomore history class. Mattie has a math final tomorrow.

  She hears applause, the hush of anticipation as a name is read, another round of applause, sometimes a whistle from the crowd. Seniors from the front row of the auditorium mount the stage and return with ribbon-tied scrolls in their hands, occasionally a trophy. Beside her, Jimmy DeMartino receives an award for outstanding academic achievement in physics. She holds his tuba for him while he is on stage.

  After thirty minutes have passed, Kathryn listens for the lull in the proceedings that will signal that the evening is coming to a close. In preparation, she stands and walks toward the conductor’s box, making small motions with her hand to remind the musicians to pick up their instruments. She changes the music on the stand, waits with her hands folded in front of her to begin.

  But she is mistaken. The principal is not done. There is one more award to be given.

  Kathryn hears the words highest possible score and sophomore. A name is called. A girl stands and hands Kathryn her clarinet. In a white T-shirt, a skimpy black skirt, and work boots, the girl ascends the stage. The audience, in a mixture of admiration for the achievement and relief that the assembly is over, breaks into applause. Kathryn tucks Mattie’s clarinet under her arm and claps as hard as any of them.

  Jack should be here, Kathryn thinks.

  Afterward, in the band room, Kathryn smothers Mattie in a hug.

  — I’m so proud, she
says.

  — Mom, Mattie says breathlessly, breaking away, — can I call Dad and tell him? I really want to.

  Kathryn thinks a moment. Jack is in London and will be sleeping in preparation for another trip, but she knows he wouldn’t mind being woken for this.

  — Sure, Kathryn says to Mattie. — Why not? We’ll use the phone in the principal’s office.

  Using her calling card number, she dials the crew apartment, but there is no answer. She hangs up and tries again. Through the window, she can see the wind sending gusts of rain down the street. Kathryn tries a third time, thinking that the repetition of calls alone will signal to Jack that she’s trying to reach him. It’s one-thirty in the morning in London. Where is he?

  — We’ll call from home, she tells Mattie with a smile.

  But at home, when she dials the London number, there is still no answer. Kathryn calls three times, twice while Mattie isn’t looking. She leaves a message on the voice mail. Feeling the enthusiasm and pride of the evening beginning to dissipate, Kathryn abandons the effort to reach Jack, and to celebrate Mattie’s achievement, makes up a batch of brownies. Mattie, too excited to study for her math test, sits at the kitchen table while her mother mixes the batter. For the first time ever, they discuss colleges, and Kathryn thinks of schools she might not have considered before. She looks at her daughter in a slightly new way.

  When Mattie goes to bed, Kathryn’s forced good cheer begins to wane. She stays up late, calculating grades. She calls the London number at midnight, five in the morning in London, and is frustrated to listen to the phone ringing in the crew apartment with no one to pick it up. In an hour, Jack will have to leave for the airport for his flight to Amsterdam and Nairobi. She begins to worry then that something serious may have happened to him. For a while, she vacillates between anger and concern, until she falls asleep on the couch with her grade book and calculator on her lap.

  He calls at quarter to one. Quarter to six, his time. His voice wakes her with punctuated bursts.

  — Kathryn, what is it? What’s happened? Are you all right?

  — Where were you? she asks groggily, sitting up.

  — Here, he says. — I was here. I just checked the voice mail.

  — Why didn’t you answer the phone?

  — I had the ringer turned off. I was exhausted and had to sleep. I think I might be coming down with a flu.

  She hears the congestion in his voice. Airliners are notorious breeding grounds for colds.

  — It’s a good thing it wasn’t an emergency, she says, allowing a note of pique to seep into her voice.

  — Look, I’m really sorry. But I was so tired, I thought it was more important to sleep. So what is it? he asks. — What’s the news?

  — I can’t tell you. Mattie wants to tell you herself.

  — It’s nothing bad?

  — No, no. It’s great.

  — Give me a hint.

  — No, I can’t. I promised.

  — I don’t suppose you want to wake her up now?

  — No, she has a final in the morning.

  — I’ll call her from the air, he says. — I’ll time it so I call when she wakes up.

  Kathryn rubs her eyes. There is a small silence over the phone. She would like to see her husband’s face right now. She would like to crawl into the bed in the crew apartment with him. She has never seen the crew apartment. Sterile, he has described it. Like a suite of hotel rooms.

  — So, she says.

  — Kathryn, I really am sorry. I’ll get the airline to get a system that bypasses the voice mail if it’s an emergency. I’ll get a beeper.

  She sighs into the phone. — Jack, do you still love me? For a moment he is silent.

  — Why do you ask?

  — I don’t know, she says. — I guess I haven’t heard you say it in a while.

  — Of course I love you, he says. He clears his throat. — I really love you. Now go to sleep. I’ll call at seven.

  But he doesn’t hang up, and neither does she.

  — Kathryn?

  — I’m here.

  — What’s wrong?

  She doesn’t know precisely what is wrong. She has only a vague feeling of vulnerability, a heightened sense of having been left alone for too many days. Perhaps it is only being exhausted herself.

  — I’m cool, she says, borrowing Mattie’s expression of the moment.

  — You’re cool, Jack says.

  — Yeah, whatever.

  She can almost see her husband smiling.

  — Later, he says, and hangs up.

  — Later, she says, holding the lifeless telephone in her hand.

  THEY MOVED FROM ROOM TO ROOM, DUSTING, VACU-uming, washing tiles, hauling trash, making beds, putting laundry into hampers. Robert worked at these tasks like a man, she noticed: sloppy with the beds, good in the kitchen, washing the floor there as though he were punishing it. With Robert in her bedroom and in Mattie’s, potentially dangerous objects were defused: A shirt flung over a chair was just a shirt that Robert tossed onto the floor with a bundle of other laundry. Bed linens were bed linens, in need of washing like everything else. He picked up discarded papers in Jack’s office and, without examining them, as Kathryn would have had to do, put them all into a drawer and closed it. In Mattie’s room, Kathryn felt Robert’s scrutiny, sensing that he was afraid it would be in that room she would falter, but she surprised him and herself by being particularly speedy and efficient. Even more stoically, she had helped Robert take the Christmas tree down, both of them dragging the dried-out tree through the kitchen and out the back hallway, the tree shedding its needles on the floorboards and the tiles. By the time they were finished with the cleaning, the milky swirls in the sky had given way to low, lead-stained clots.

  “It’s supposed to snow,” he said, spraying out the inside of the kitchen sink with the hose.

  She opened the cupboard beneath the sink and put away the bathroom cleaner, the Pine Sol, the Comet. She rinsed her hands in the spray from the hose and dried them on a dish towel.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, feeling the mild satisfaction that always came from having a clean house. Like having had a bath.

  “Good,” he said, turning. “I’ve got lobsters in the car.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “From Ingerbretson’s,” he explained. “I picked them up on my way here. I couldn’t resist.”

  “I might not have liked lobster,” she said.

  “I saw the picks and crackers in the silverware drawer.” “Observant,” she said.

  “Occasionally.”

  But standing there, she suddenly had the sense that Robert Hart was always observant. Always watching.

  Robert cooked the lobsters while Kathryn set the table in the front room. A dry snow shower had begun, and swirls of snow-flakes fell silently against the glass of the windows. Kathryn opened the fridge and took out two bottles of beer. She had opened one and was about to open the other when she remembered that Robert didn’t drink. She tried to put the two bottles back into the fridge without Robert’s noticing.

  “Please,” Robert said from the stove. “Drink the beer. It doesn’t bother me. In fact, it would bother me more if you didn’t.”

  Kathryn looked at the clock: 12:20. Time out of time. Once again, the envelope began to open. It was a Friday. Normally, she would be at school, fifth period. Normally, she would not be drinking a beer. Although it was Christmas vacation, she thought; she was theoretically not due back until the second of January. She had given no thought to how she would manage in the classroom. An image of students moving in a hallway rose to the surface, but she banished it.

  At five minutes before noon, Robert had turned off all the ringers on the telephones. There was nothing so urgent it couldn’t wait an hour or two, he had said, and she had agreed.

  In that spirit, she had covered the table near the windows in the front room with a red flowered cloth, the gaiety of the cloth incongruous against the
somber sky outside. Robert put on music: B.B. King. Kathryn wished she had flowers. But what exactly was she celebrating? she wondered, feeling vaguely guilty. Having survived the last eleven days? Having cleaned the house? She set utensils, bowls for the shells, bread, melted butter, and a thick roll of paper towel on the table. Robert walked into the front room from the kitchen bearing wet, slippery plates of lobsters. There were water spots on the front of his shirt.

  “I’m famished,” he said, setting the plates down and sitting across from her.

  She examined the lobster in front of her. And it was then that the swift, sharp shock of memory once again assailed her. She looked up quickly and then out the window. She brought a hand to her mouth.

  “What is it?” Robert asked.

  She shook her head quickly, side to side. She held herself still, locked in an image, not daring to move either forward or backward for fear of the crevices. She breathed in deeply, let her breath out, laid her arms on the table.

  “I’ve just had a memory,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Jack and me.”

  “Here?”

  She nodded.

  “Doing this?”

  It was like this, she wanted to say, but not like this. It was early summer, and the screens were on. Mattie was at a friend’s house, and it was later in the day, nearer four o’clock or five. The light was unique, she remembered, shimmery and green like sea glass. They had had champagne. What were they celebrating? She couldn’t remember. Possibly nothing, possibly themselves. She had wanted to make love, she remembered, and so had he, but neither of them would sacrifice a hot boiled lobster, and so they had waited with a kind of delicious tension between them. She had sucked the legs of her lobster with exaggerated kisses, and Jack had laughed and said she was a tease, which she enjoyed. Being a tease. She seldom did that.

  “I’m sorry,” Robert said. “I should have known. I’ll take these into the kitchen.”

  “No,” she said quickly, stopping his hand as he reached for her plate. “No, you couldn’t have known. And anyway, my life is filled with these. Hundreds of little memories that catch me off guard. They’re like mines in a field, waiting to detonate. Honestly, I’d like to have a lobotomy.”