Survive

by Alex Morel

“I didn’t like what Lila’s had. It all smelled of mothballs.”

  The attendant smiles and says, “I’m not much of a vintage gal myself. You know, Dowden’s isn’t on the list, Jane.”

  “Can that be our secret?” I say, with the deftness of a lifetime liar at the peak of her game. “I wasn’t thinking about that when I went in; it was just close by and I wanted to get back here in time.” I pause for a minute, searching her face, which is unreadable.

  “I’m not a substance abuser, you know,” I add in a rush. “That’s not my bag; you could check my records. Really. I know it’s important not to be late, too.”

  She smiles, nods, and winks at me.

  We make small talk after that and exchange our family Christmas rituals. She’s from a don’t-open-presents-until-morning family and we are a blow-your-brains-out-before-morning family, so we didn’t have a lot in common. I lie, of course, and say we are also never-before-morning present openers. Blah blah blah.

  Before I get on the bus, I give her an impromptu hug, which she returns. It makes her feel special and, hopefully, that will seal her silence. She likes me now and we have a secret; she’ll never turn me in, right?

  It’s only five after one when the bus pulls out of Powder River. I sit in the back, which looks weird because I’m one of only three people on the bus. Be normal, Jane. Just do normal things.

  My heart starts to pound fast, my lungs seize up a bit, and I wonder if the woman five rows ahead of me can hear it and if she suspects why I’m here. Nobody knows about the Plan, I tell myself. I’m just a girl flying home to New Jersey. I’m not from Life House. How could they tell? I look myself up and down. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all.

  The bus rolls through town and then hits the highway to the airport. I see a rabbit dash across the snow, and I wonder how big the world must seem through those eyes. Or if the landscape is seriously abbreviated because he’s so low to the ground. Or maybe the rabbit can’t see very far at all and therefore nothing matters. I’ll never know; I can’t look it up at home. My mind races a million miles per hour. I am driving myself bonkers, so I close my eyes, steady my breath, and imagine the deep, blue-black horizon I’ll be seeing through the airplane window. Slowly, I feel a sense of relief and quiet wash through me. I am so close now, I tell myself over and over.

  Twenty minutes more and we are at the airport. It’s one fifty-eight, two minutes ahead of schedule. My heartbeat slows. My mind clears. I can taste oblivion.

  I walk off the bus with determination and more confidence than I’ve felt in years. It is a kind of euphoria, and I remind myself to ignore its siren—it is not a feeling I can hold on to. It only exists because I am preparing to execute the Plan. Nothing more complicated than that—don’t let your mind play tricks on you, Jane. I felt this feeling before my first “incident.” Don’t believe for a second this is a feeling you can sustain. This is your body trying to trick your mind into giving up the Plan.

  Chapter 8

  The Boise Airport is tiny, with just a handful of runways, a totally different species compared with Newark or Kennedy. Holiday travelers bustle from ticketing over to the main gate, and arrivals move from the main gate to ground transportation. It’s a little beehive of activity and a lot busier than I imagined. Somehow that’s comforting; it makes me feel invisible.

  I head directly to West Air. As I walk, I feel a buzzing in my bag. I look in and pull out the Life House cell phone. It’s lit up with the general number to Life House. I debate for a second about answering it, but then decide against it. If they’re trying to reach me, it can’t be good. Why did you have to show off to the attendant, Jane? I pinch my leg hard, just to give myself a reminder about screwing up anymore.

  I look up at the departure board and I see a long list of canceled departures, beginning at 5 p.m. My flight’s status is still on time. There must be a storm coming through. Damn it. Damn it. My heart starts to race and I swear to myself about how much I hate life and the unexpected and how if God will just get me on a plane, I promise I won’t go through with the Plan. I’m lying, of course, but frankly, if I thought God paid attention to the details, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place. I put my mother’s credit card into the ticketing machine and it prints my boarding pass. Boarding at 3:30 p.m. Thank you, God!

  Before I can go to gate 12, I have to pass through security. They have two scanners for the whole airport, and the thought of missing my flight makes me break into a sweat. I check my watch; it’s still only two twenty. I’ll be fine, I tell myself.

  There’s a line of about ten people waiting to be processed. A young guy with a punkish haircut and a snowboard is having trouble passing through the right-side scanner. He probably has a metal plate in his head from falling off a ramp. I could just kill him. He looks at me as if to say, “Sorry—it isn’t me.” He’s cute, but really annoying right now.

  Behind him, there is a group of rock climbers who all wear T-shirts that say Matternaught: Avalanche Valley, Grand Tetons. They are surrounded by a massive amount of baggage and gear.

  They are loud and boisterous, like they are not used to congregating in crowded public places. They simply prove to me what I’ve always thought: there isn’t a group of people in the world that doesn’t bug me, given the right time and circumstances.

  I check my watch again. It’s already two thirty. My anxiety is causing me to bite down on the inside of my cheek to avoid screaming right now.

  A newlywed couple stands directly in front of me, waiting to go through the left scanner. Their names are Margaret and Eddie, two of the many facts I’ve gleaned from their unusually loud conversation. I never had any particular issues with the newly married, but now I begin to radiate contempt in their direction. Their incessant, narcissistic conversation about themselves is enough to make me vomit. I bite down harder on my cheek and I taste the salty metallic flavors in my own blood.

  Margaret is complaining about her wedding ring; “Eddie, it’s just so heavy, it makes my wrist tired.” Eddie looks proud and embarrassed all at once and says, “You may have to start working out, Margaret . . . heh heh heh.”

  They keep up this nauseating chatter, all interspersed with unnecessary touching until they kiss goodbye before Margaret passes through the scanner without Eddie. Then they both get teary and actually blow each other kisses. I want to scream, but I keep my head down and know I’ll be thirty-five-thousand feet in the air soon enough.

  After Margaret walks through, I approach the scanner, but the TSA officer puts his hand up to stop me and asks the punk rocker to walk through my scanner. I explode with anxiety and shout, “My flight is leaving soon!”

  I must have screamed really loudly because the immediate area goes still and both the snowboarder and the TSA officer turn around.

  The TSA officer looks me up and down and assesses my level of crazy. Is it Christmas crazy or real crazy? That’s what he’s trying to determine.

  “Miss, what time is your flight?”

  “Four.”

  He checks his watch and looks at me strangely. “You have an hour and a half, miss. I suggest you take a deep breath and calm yourself down.”

  I bite down harder as I nod and now I’m swallowing blood.

  The snowboarder picks up his bag and his board and moves a few feet to the side. I can’t help looking at him. He is stone cold, completely devoid of emotion. His cheekbones are sharp, like they were carved from rock.

  “It’s cool,” he says. “Let her go.”

  I nod thanks, mostly because I can’t open my mouth. I put up my hands and pass through the scanner and body check. No alarms go off, so I guess there’s no detector for somebody who’s planning to do bodily harm to herself.

  I grab my bag from the tray and walk quickly to the first restroom, where I lock myself in a stall and spit out a little blood into the toilet from where I bit my own mouth. I can barely breathe, so I sit down and cover my mouth with my hands, trying to limit the air comi
ng in and out of my lungs. It works. I gather myself and splash some water on my face from the sink. I look at myself in the mirror and am alarmed at the high color in my cheeks. Calm down, I order myself before I walk back out.

  I make my way to gate 12 and find a seat. I check the time. Two forty-five. I look at the flight board and pray again that my flight doesn’t get canceled.

  I check my watch again, just out of habit; it is still two forty-five. I wonder if I can make it another forty-five minutes. I slide my tongue between my teeth and clamp down. Not too hard, not enough to bleed, but just enough to focus my mind and clear my head. I’m gonna make it. I say it over and over.

  Chapter 9

  To my relief, West Air actually has their shit together. They board us early and prepare us to lift off early if the controllers will allow it. My seat is three rows from the back and I have a window seat.

  I make my way back without incident and without really making eye contact with anybody, including the attendant, whom I naturally don’t trust.

  A couple of climbers with large bags come down the aisle, and I pray they don’t sit next to me. They stop in the row in front of me and start unloading their stuff. It’s a lot. And there’s a lot of loud and tedious discussion about a green duffle bag that won’t fit in the overhead compartment, which is finally resolved by stuffing it, with a lot of force, under a seat. Then the captain comes on and asks the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for takeoff.

  I finally breathe a sigh of relief: to have a row to myself is simply too good to be true. Then, at the last moment before takeoff, there’s a commotion at the front of the plane. The seat next to me is still empty, though many others are as well. I start muttering to myself, “Please don’t sit next to me, please don’t sit next to me, please don’t sit next to me.” But God giveth and He taketh away.

  I look up and find the snowboard punker looming over my row in the aisle. He folds himself into the seat next to mine. I see that he’s even younger than I thought, now that we are face-to-face.

  “Sorry, I don’t fit very well,” he apologizes after stepping on my bag and elbowing me on his way down into his seat.

  “No worries,” I say so quietly I don’t think he hears me.

  I turn away, fingering the netting on the back of the seat in front of me.

  The captain comes on shortly after and asks flight attendants to take their seats. I take a deep breath. My dream, my plan is coming true. Some minor bumps and a little anxiety, but I’m on the runway. I smile to myself and look sideways to make sure skate-punk guy didn’t see me.

  The plane taxis to the runway, stops, and then does a one-eighty. It slowly picks up speed again, and then the engines roar to life. The g-force pulls me back into my seat and we zip down the runway. I turn to the window and mumble a prayer to God to watch over my flight. It’s instinct, and even as I say it, I know how ridiculous I am. I’m about to hit my own switch and I’m praying for a safe takeoff.

  Whenever I fly, I say the same prayer. I call to the dead before me: my father, my grandfather and grandmother, a cousin I only knew one summer who has since died of an infection in his gallbladder, and my English teacher, Miss Lathrop, who had a seizure and choked on a ham sandwich. She died alone in her apartment. It is my private parade of dead angels, and I ask them to carry the wings of the plane, to take me home. I guess I’m asking them to carry me far enough along so I can take my life. Miss Lathrop would have said, “How ironic.” I always wonder what she was thinking just before she died.

  The plane skips up and then bends steeply to the left. We hold the trajectory for about ten to fifteen minutes, and then we level off.

  “Paul Hart, Cambridge, Mass.,” my neighbor says, extending his hand. He has a muted New England accent and is trim with strong, wiry muscles in his forearms. I accept his hand automatically, but frowning, and withdraw mine almost immediately. His hands are big and rough with calluses.

  “They used to be softer.”

  “What?”

  “My hands. I hadn’t realized how calloused they got until right now.” He nods at my soft, pale hands. “I guess you weren’t here for the climbing.”

  I glare at him. He stares back, and we just kind of gaze at each other in a very awkward way. There’s an insult or an assumption in what he just said. I have no idea whether he meant to be rude or if he’s sort of an idiot, but I feel my eyes welling up, so I look down.

  “Everything okay?” he asks.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” he assures me, “just an observation.”

  I look up, having regained my composure. He has thick brown hair and his face is cherubic except for the dark stubble that sandpapers his chin. I can hear the relentless beating of some punk band that probably nobody but he and his snowboard buddies know tinning out from his unplugged earplugs. Annoyingly, he’s still wearing his sunglasses.

  “I saw you say a prayer there,” he says, withdrawing a bit as he organizes himself in his seat. His voice sounds like gravel. He’s probably a smoker. “I hope you have wings; it looks like there’s a huge storm coming.”

  He laughs a little at his own joke and removes his sunglasses. Baby blues, no surprise—all the jerks have them. I wonder if everything that comes out of his mouth is annoying or if I would find anything anyone did annoying at this moment. I decide it is probably just Paul Hart.

  “Yes. God is dead and all that,” I say a little more abruptly than I intended.

  “What?” he says. “I don’t understand.”

  I realize I was having a conversation in my head that was about three responses ahead of Paul’s innocuous quip. I tend to do that—imagine conversations before they happen. That’s why people sometimes have a tough time understanding me and I them. But Paul’s a bright one and catches up quickly.

  “I bet you’re a philosophy major,” he says, if not a tad smugly. “I get it.”

  “Yes, how did you know?” I say. It is very difficult for me not to lie in a situation like this. It just feels safer. I open my mouth to lie more, but I am too tired, too anxious, and I will myself to stop.

  He looks at me strangely. “I think they’re all full of shit. They don’t know anything more about life than you do.”

  I take in his face for a moment. I can see where he will grow old, where the crinkles will carve a path from the corner of his eyes. I bet he’s a worrier. I bet he’s a fronter—all bravado up front and a squirming mass of anxiety underneath.

  “Right,” I say, picking up the emergency information card and studying it.

  He looks at me for a second and then a crooked smile opens his face. He thinks I’m a bitch. Or just not worth the trouble. He puts on his headphones, pushes his sunglasses back on, and leans back in his seat.

  I put on my headphones too, close my eyes, and turn away. I hope he doesn’t try talking to me again. I listen to him rustling through his bag and adjusting his seat belt. There’s a lot of show in it, like he’s trying to get my attention, but I resist, which is not so much a part of the Plan but more my nature. Show-offs repulse me.

  The captain comes on: “Folks, I’m sorry for the abrupt departure this evening, but Control wanted us out before the runway got snowed in. There’s a bit of a storm ahead of us, so I’m going to have the seat belt sign on for the duration while we try to stay a step ahead of it. We’ll be heading a bit farther north than we normally do, but we should right our course just past this front and land in Chicago as scheduled. So please cooperate and try to stay in your seat if possible. Thank you for making the choice to fly West Air, and enjoy your trip.”

  “Dude, where would we be going?” Paul says loudly. He looks to me with that crooked smile I’ve now come to despise. Is he talking to me? Or is he responding to the captain? I do not look at him. I pull the blanket from the netting in the seat in front of me and wrap myself up in it. I close my eyes and wait. One more unexpected benefit of the Plan, I think. I’ll never hear this Masshole’s accent again.

 
Chapter 10

  Unbelievably, I nodded off. Or, I guess I did, because when I open my eyes, the lights are out except for a few reading lights in front. The plane is mostly empty, so it looks like a ghost town in here. Paul is asleep with a map propped on his stomach. His book is tucked underneath his elbow.

  I check my watch, and it is after five. I look into my bag and pull out my pad of paper. I’ve thought about this note forever. I steady the pad, but there’s some turbulence and it makes it difficult to write. Thankfully, what I have to say is very brief.

  Dear Mom,

  I’m going with Dad. I’ll see you on the other side. Don’t blame yourself. I was born with it and there’s nothing to be done.

  Love,

  Jane

  I fold it up and write MOM on the front. I tuck it into the netting of the seat in front of me. I try to place it where somebody will find it, but I am suddenly overwhelmed by a fear that the letter will go unnoticed and my mother won’t ever read it. That she’ll go through the rest of her life blaming herself for my death. I stare at it awhile, then take the letter and stuff it into my pants pocket. I unfasten my seat belt and turn so I’m facing the seat and Paul and then step over him, balancing myself until I can lift my back leg over. He stirs for a moment but does not wake.

  The bathroom sits directly behind me. I check my watch, and it’s forty-five minutes since takeoff, which is cutting it close. If I dose now, by the time we land in Chicago, I should be gone. A brief shiver runs down my spine as I imagine myself clinging to life and being wheeled on a gurney through O’Hare airport. That must be hell. Focus on the now, Jane.

  The lone flight attendant is sitting at the front of the plane, flipping through a magazine, probably relieved that the turbulence means she doesn’t have to wheel the drinks cart down the aisle filling orders like a waitress. Finally an element of the Plan comes to fruition. I open the bathroom door and step in. I push the bolt lock and close the door. I turn and sit on the toilet. I put my face in my hands and wonder what my mother is doing now. I cry a little, not because I’m afraid, but because I am so relieved to be here and at the same time I am sad for my mother. Something will happen to her when she hears this, something permanent. I feel sad about it, but it’s not enough to stop me.