by Jodi Picoult
These are all things I have read, and told my daughter. They do not prepare me in any way for what Arlo van Cleeb shows me in the middle of his cornfield.
It is a black snaking skeleton stretched over one hundred yards of black ground. In several places the rain and mud of twelve years has covered parts of the plane. Half of the tail is now buried, for example. There are large pits and gaps where the metal was broken or torn to remove the corpses. The red and blue logo of Midwest is scarred with moss. When Rebecca moves towards the frame of this airplane, I reach out to grab her but then I stop myself. As she crawls through a cockpit window the farmer speaks to me. “You can’t figure out what’s missing, can you?” I shake my head. “It’s the fire. There’s no fire, and no water gushing all over the place. This plane is just dead, now. It’s not the way you remember from the pictures.”
I suppose he is right. When I think of the plane the image I have is one made by the media: firemen pulling wounded people from the wreckage, scarred farmland, flames that reach as high as God.
“Rebecca,” I call, “are you okay?” It smells like smoke. Rebecca sticks her head out of a hole in the frame. I wave at her. I don’t know, I keep expecting this monstrous metal creature to swallow her whole.
I wonder if she will get upset. Start to cry. She never really has. She’s never really spoken to anyone about it. She claims she cannot remember a thing.
Oliver and I had this pact when we got married: we weren’t going to have children right away. We were going to wait until Oliver got a promotion, at least until he moved back to the East Coast. We expected that we would have to go to California, but we didn’t think it would be permanent. I guess I was too young at the time to really have given much thought to whether or not I wanted a baby. Anyway, Oliver didn’t.
But when he got promoted and we moved to San Diego, it became apparent that this was not a case of paying one’s dues to get back to Woods Hole. San Diego’s Oceanographic Institute was far more prestigious. Maybe Oliver knew that all along and maybe he didn’t. But it became clear to me that I was three thousand miles away from my friends, from my home. Oliver was too involved in his new job to pay attention to me, and we couldn’t afford for me to get a master’s degree in speech pathology, and I started to get lonely. So I poked pinholes in my diaphragm.
I got pregnant quickly and things started to change. At first, Oliver actually seemed excited by the idea. For a few months he did the usual things: told me to stay off my feet, and held his ear to my belly. Then work got very busy for him, and he got a promotion earlier than expected, and he started to travel with other researchers. He missed Rebecca’s birth, but by that time I didn’t really care. I had a daughter and I truly believed she was everything I could ever want.
When the plane crash happened my first thought was that this was my punishment for tricking Oliver. Then I thought it was my punishment for leaving Oliver. Whatever the reason, it was clearly my fault. My father had been watching a baseball game on TV and it was interrupted with a special bulletin on location in Iowa. He yelled into the kitchen that some plane had crashed and I didn’t even have to hear the flight number. I knew. It is that way between mothers and daughters.
I flew to Iowa and I remember looking at the other people on the flight. Were any of them relatives of other people on the Midwest plane? What about the woman in the pink jumpsuit? She was crying on and off. Did it have to do with the crash in What Cheer?
By the time I arrived in Des Moines the survivors of the crash had been taken to a hospital. I met Oliver at the front door; he was pulling up in a taxi too. We ran through the green corridors, calling out Rebecca’s name. I would not go into the morgue to identify bodies. Oliver did that for me, and came out smiling. “She’s not there,” he said. “She’s not there!”
We found a Jane Doe in pediatrics. They had been calling her Jane all this time; I found that very strange. She was asleep, heavily sedated, when we were let into her room. “Came out hardly with a scratch,” one nurse said. “She’s a lucky little girl.”
Oliver held my hand as we walked over to Rebecca, so tiny and white against the dotted hospital sheets. She had a breather tube in her nose, and a kidney-shaped bruise on her forehead. Oliver had brought her a yellow teddy bear. I started to cry, realizing that Edison, Rebecca’s old teddy bear, had probably burned in the crash. “It’s all right,” Oliver said, holding me against him. He smelled of the shampoo we had at home in San Diego. It took me several minutes to realize that the whole time, he was crying too.
She was released two days later. We went back to the site of the crash. I don’t remember it looking like this; I wonder if some of these pieces—the seats, the engine, what have you—have been moved as the years went by. I excuse myself to Arlo van Cleeb and begin to circle the remnants of this plane.
Metal ribs poke into the sky at odd angles, and although many of the hinges are intact, the doors of the plane are nowhere to be found. There are pretzeled knots of black steel at the sides of the wings. All the windows are gone. I remember hearing they exploded due to the change in pressure, when the plane was plummeting to the ground. Suddenly I realize I cannot see my daughter. I run around the plane trying to peek through the holes and the gaps, trying to catch a glimpse. Then I see her coming towards me. Her eyes are shut tight and her hands are pressed against her head as if she is trying to keep it from splitting. She is running so fast her feet are kicking up a stream of mud. I do not think she realizes it but she is screaming at the top of her lungs. “Rebecca!” I cry out, and Rebecca’s eyes fly open, that startled shade of green. She crashes against me, demanding to be protected, and this time I am waiting there to catch her.
41 OLIVER
Midwest Airlines flight 997 crashed on September 21, 1978, in What Cheer, Iowa—a farming town sixty miles southeast of Des Moines. When the pilot realized he would not be able to land in Des Moines he coasted into a farmer’s cornfield. The plane landed on its own fuel tanks and exploded.
These are the reports, as faxed to me by my secretary, that lead me to the site of the crash. It was not easy to find a facsimile machine in What Cheer, Iowa, either, but I have had two days’ advance time.
I know of Arlo van Cleeb but I have never been a fan of intermediaries. Therefore I set up shop in his cornfield without him ever noticing. I have a small folding beach chair and a thermos of coffee. A portable clip-on fan; the heat gets intense at this elevation. I sit behind a fringe of cornstalks, hidden by the greenery and yet strategically able to peer through the vertical bars. For two days I have been waiting for Jane and Rebecca, binoculars in hand.
It has not been an entirely idle forty-eight hours. You see, the partially obscured view I have of the wreckage gave me a slightly different perspective from the one splashed across the oily faxes of the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. When I first perceived the airplane’s frame, blackened by fire and age, it was through the haze of corn that forms my camouflage. And quite honestly, at first glance I thought it was a beached whale. Enormous in proportions, with the sun glinting off its slightly sunken tail—have you ever noticed the parallels between humpbacks and airplanes? The elongated body, the hub of the cockpit and the whale’s jawbone, the wings and the fingered fins, the cross section of the tail and the fluke? I have never thought of whales in terms of aerodynamics but of course it makes sense. What is streamlined underwater serves the same purpose in flight.
It has been a tedious trip here, and I have to say I’m glad it’s all coming to an end. I can take my family home with me; I can get back to my research.
I am just pouring my second cup of coffee (a lousy habit I’ve picked up on this tracking voyage, I’m sorry to say), when I see the farmer van Cleeb push his way through the cornstalks. Then out of this sea of green steps Rebecca, her hair pulled away from her face. Following her, in close pursuit, is Jane.
She stands tall with her hands on her hips, talking to the farmer. She seems to be holding
a conversation but her eyes betray her, running over the framework of the plane, assessing it; carefully checking the movements of Rebecca. She has this down to an art, I think. How is it I have never really watched her act as a mother?
Rebecca points to the plane and then moves closer. She steps into the gashes in the metal body, as I did two days ago. She runs her hands over everything, it seems, cataloguing and processing the information. Her eyes are wide, and from time to time she bites her lower lip. She is standing only feet away from me when she says, quite clearly, “This is where I sat. Right here.”
I push my hand through the stalks in front of me and pull them aside so that I can really see her face. She looks like me, in many ways. My hair, my eyes. And she has always been able to hide her emotions. Even after the crash, she would not talk about it. Not to me, not to Jane, not to the psychiatrists. They tried to get her to act the crash out on dolls and models, but Rebecca refused. At the time I thought it interesting to find such willfulness in a four-year-old. Now I have my doubts.
I could take my daughter in my arms and tell her it is all right. And she will smile like the sun itself, so surprised to see me. Like she used to do as a child when I came home from Brazil or Maui, wherever. I’d hide toys in my pockets, and shells and small bottles of sand. I told her I would always bring her back a piece of the place that took me away from her.
I am ready to push through the corn when I see Jane from the corner of my eye. She is calling Rebecca. She starts to walk towards me.
I let the corn free, a shade. I am breathing arhythmically. I am terrified of speaking to Jane.
For one thing, I haven’t any idea what I am going to say to her. I know, I am supposed to have prepared something elaborate, something akin to wooing, but everything that has crossed my mind in the past two days has simply disappeared. What I am left with is how I feel, and what am I supposed to do about it? I want to just walk up to Jane and say that I miss the way she flips pancakes. That no one but her has ever left me a love note on a steamed-up shaving mirror. I want to tell her that sometimes, when the sun is setting over the unfurled fluke of a humpback, I wish I had her beside me. That when I give a speech, I wish I could see her face in the first row. How stupid you are, Oliver, I think. You can write circles around any scientist in your field. You’ve published more than any researcher your age. You are supposed to be the expert. But you don’t know how to tell her that you can’t live without her.
The week before Rebecca’s plane crash, Jane and I had a terrible argument. I do not remember what it was about, but it could not have been any less ludicrous than this latest one about Rebecca’s birthday. The next thing I knew she had driven me to such a point that I hit her.
It was a slap, not a punch, if distinctions matter. And after I did it I thought I would die. I knew about her childhood, her father. I knew what I wasn’t supposed to be.
Jane took Rebecca to her parents’ place in Massachusetts. I wanted her back so badly I could taste it. But, like now, I did not know what to say. I just knew that where Rebecca went Jane would follow: she lived for Rebecca then, as she does now. So I threatened litigation if she didn’t send the child back. I expected her to come too, even if I didn’t say so directly.
When I heard about the crash over the car radio, I started to shake so badly that I had to pull off the highway. This has not happened, I told myself. You have not lost your entire family at once.
I drove to the airport and parked at a two-hour meter, the illogic of which struck me only after I had purchased a ticket to Iowa. I picked up a teddy bear—wishful thinking?—before I boarded. I looked around the plane wondering who else was headed to Des Moines because of the crash. When I arrived in Iowa, the wounded had already been shuttled to a hospital. My taxi pulled up directly behind another taxi, and Jane stepped out. I almost fell to my knees, seeing her there with mascara running down her face and her nose dripping. I stared at her and all the words defining forgiveness caught in my throat and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why Rebecca had not come out of that taxi as well. Stupefied, I asked where Rebecca was. I did not know that Jane had not been on fight 997; I did not learn that until several minutes later, and then only by deduction.
We were asked to go to the morgue, along with the other frantic relatives, to survey the bodies that had been pulled from the wreckage. Jane stood outside, cleaving to a fire extinguisher on the wall, while I crept into the refrigerated rooms. I do not remember looking at the bloodied shrouds of infants and children. If Rebecca’s body had been there, I am not certain I would have admitted it to myself or the coroners, anyway.
We found Rebecca in pediatrics, tangled in wires and tubes. I lifted Rebecca’s arm and tucked the cheaply-made yellow bear underneath it. I pulled Jane close to me, burying my nose in her hair and rubbing my palms against her familiar shoulder blades. I never really had to say anything to get Jane to come home. I do not think I read the signals wrong when I believed that she understood.
Jane comes around the plane and stands almost directly in front of the spot where I am hidden. This is my chance. I am going to tell her. I am going to start by speaking her name.
She is close enough to touch. Wind breathes through the wreckage of the plane. It shrieks, an unnatural note. I reach my hand through the blind of cornstalks and stretch out my fingers. “Jane,” I whisper.
But at that moment Rebecca emerges from the twisted gyves and fetters of metal. Her hands are pressed against the sides of her head. She is screaming, running from the body of the plane with her eyes closed. Jane holds out her arms. She says something I cannot hear and Rebecca’s eyes open. I push aside the cornstalks, revealing myself, but I do not think Rebecca, who is facing me, notices. She falls against Jane’s breast, clutching and gasping. Her eyes pass right over me and they do not see a thing, of that I am sure. Jane smoothes our daughter’s hair. “Sssh,” she says. She sings something very softly, and Rebecca’s breathing turns even again. She grabs fistfuls of Jane’s shirt, over and over.
I stand only three feet away, but it could be three hundred. I am not privy to this. I cannot heal. If given the chance, Rebecca would not run to me. I am not even sure that Jane would run to me. I let the corn close in around my face and I turn my back to them. Even if I could get Jane to listen to me, get her to understand why it is that I cannot live without her, it is not enough.
It hits me: I am not part of this family. I would never say I am a scientist without offering proof. How can I say that I am a father, a husband?
Jane is murmuring to Rebecca. The words get softer and softer and I realize they are walking in the opposite direction. And this is when I make what could possibly be the greatest—and most difficult—decision of my life. I will not call to them when I do not know what to say. I won’t reveal myself without having anything to show. I have much thinking to do, but right now I act purely on instinct. It is hard as hell, but I let them go.
42 JANE
After we check into the only motel in What Cheer, I find myself remembering things that I have not thought about for years. I could understand it if I were replaying the crash over and over in my head—that would make sense to me. But instead I am seeing my father, plain as day. He moves around the edges of the motel room, picking up glass tumblers and straightening the bathroom mirror. He flushes the toilet, twice. I do not dare fall asleep; I do not dare fall asleep. Then, just as I have expected, he starts to walk towards my bed. But he changes course and sits instead on the other bed, next to Rebecca. He breathes clouds of scotch and tugs the blanket away, revealing, ripe, my daughter.
I was nine the first time it happened. My mother and father had a fight, and my mother left to stay with my aunt in Concord. I did everything I was supposed to: I made dinner for Daddy and Joley; I cleaned up the kitchen; I even remembered to put the hose into the sink when I ran the dishwasher. We all avoided talking about Mama.
But because she was away, and because I felt I had earned it, I deci
ded to go into her room, to her perfume tray. Mama smelled different every day: like oranges and spice, or fresh lemon pies, or cool marble, or even the wind. When she left the room she left a memory, a scent, behind her.
I knew what I was looking for, a little red glass bottle in the shape of a berry that was called Framboise. The word was etched right on the glass. My mother did not let me wear perfume. Little girls who wear perfume, she said, turn into big girls who are tramps.
I was very careful with the fragile bottle because I didn’t want to spill a drop. I turned it over on my finger the way I had seen her do every morning, and then I touched this finger, wet with the smell of raspberries, to my throat and my wrists and behind my knees. I turned around and around in a circle. How wonderful, I thought. It is with me no matter where I go.
I stopped myself by catching my arms around the post of my parents’ bed. Standing at the door was my father.
“What the hell have you been doing?” he said, sniffing the air. He leaned closer to grab my shirt and the smell of whiskey cut through the thickness of berries. “You will bathe. Now!”
He made me strip naked in front of him, although I hadn’t done that in five years. He watched me from the door of the bathroom with his arms crossed. The entire time, I cried. I cried when the shower, too hot, scalded my skin and I continued to cry when I stepped onto the bath mat and toweled dry. “Go to your goddamned room,” my father said.
I pulled a flannel nightgown over my head and turned down the covers of my bed. I told myself aloud this was like any other night, and I tried not to lie awake waiting for punishment.
Joley came into my room on his way to bed. He was only five, but he knew. “Jane, what did you do wrong?” And I told him as best I could explain that I had stupidly been pretending to be Mama.
“There’s nothing you can do,” I said. “Get out before he hits you too.”
