Flight

by Darren Hynes

  She thinks of Vancouver. Of the pictures she’d browsed on the Internet in the one-room library back in Lightning Cove. Mountains that make the ones here look like bruises. Buildings tall enough to reach the clouds. She imagines herself and the kids taking an elevator all the way to the top of one, then looking out over the strange city, at the ocean that’s like the ocean here yet somehow different. Big trees and it hardly ever snows. Lots of rain, though. That’s something else the Internet had said. Used to that though, living here in Lightning Cove. Never been bothered by the rain, she thinks.

  She resumes her path towards them, empty hot chocolate cups at their feet.

  Jeremy turns to her before she makes it all the way. “Me and Lynette saw a baby whale.”

  “You did?” She rushes over and dangles her head over the railing. “Where?”

  “Gone now,” Jeremy says.

  Lynette says, “Swimming with its mother.”

  “Was it?”

  Lynette manages to take her eyes off the water for a second and looks at her mother. “Just ahead of the boat.”

  “Wow.” She stands in between them, a little light-headed, her body numb from fatigue, from codeine. Lays her good hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. After a moment she looks towards the bow of the boat, at the approaching shore, their new life getting closer. Fifteen minutes maybe. Ten.

  She wonders what Kent will think when he realizes they’re not coming for him. And how long afterwards before he puts it together that they’ve gone. She said you were going to meet her in St. John’s, she can hear Myles saying. “He’s meeting us later,” that’s exactly what she said. But Myles won’t know where she is anymore than Kent will, anymore than her parents when Kent asks. She was supposed to come in on Saturday, Terry will say, gripping his clipboard so tightly that his knuckles turn white. Well, she couldn’t have just disappeared, Kent’ll say to whoever will listen. But that is exactly what she’ll have done.

  “The mother’s fin came out of the water,” Lynette says.

  “Did it?”

  “Then they dove deep,” Jeremy adds.

  Even though she’s certain they’ve gone, she scans the water’s surface, thinking that she’ll try to see more from now on. Not be inside her head so much. Look forward to the days instead of wishing them away.

  She lets a minute or two pass before saying, “We’re going on a plane today.”

  “We are?” Lynette says.

  She nods. Then, “Who wants the window seat?”

  Lynette jumps on the spot, her hand that’s holding the giraffe in the air. “Me, me, me!”

  She looks at Jeremy.

  His eyes are on the sea, not so much downward as they are pointed towards the horizon.

  She says to him, “For someone who loves planes you don’t seem very excited.”

  He won’t look at her.

  How much his face is like his father’s, she thinks: big, barely blinking eyes, tight lips, and hollows of cheeks inward as if he were chewing on their insides. He’s right beside her but not too. Close enough to touch, yet miles away.

  “Jeremy?”

  Finally he looks at her, coming back a little.

  “What’s wrong?”

  More like himself again now.

  “Tell me.”

  She senses him wanting to speak; yet he’s incapable of forming the words somehow. “What is it, Jeremy? What?”

  When she hears what she does next, it isn’t his voice but Lynette’s. “Are you leaving Dad?”

  Now it’s she unable to find the words, more numb than the bloodied hand in her pocket.

  In her mind, she’d envisioned the three of them on Jackie’s chesterfield in Vancouver, light coming through a part in the curtains, and mountains, snowcapped, in the distance. Lynette lying crossways with her tiny legs over her mother’s lap, and Jeremy drinking a Dr. Pepper with his hockey cards askew on the coffee table. Neither of them mentioning their father.

  Nothing is ever like you think it’ll be.

  “Who told you that?” she says.

  Lynette nudges a finger in her brother’s shoulder. “He did.”

  She steps closer to him, so that their bodies are almost touching. “Did you, Jeremy?”

  No answer.

  “Did you?”

  He nods, half of him looking like he wants to cry, the other half like he wants to smack her across the mouth.

  The words come out before she realizes she’s said them. “Would you come with me if I were?”

  Without hesitation, Lynette says, “I would.”

  Jeremy takes his time before answering, his face once again in profile to hers, staring out at where Lightning Cove used to be.

  It’s an unfair question, she knows. A child wants to be with both parents. She wishes she could take the words back.

  “I’d go with Dad,” Jeremy says then, his voice so quiet.

  She’d expected as much, but yet she’s shaken. And why, despite the calm water, does she feel unsteady on her feet? Could it be that, by taking him away, she’s doing him more harm than good? Torn. That’s what she is. Shoulders being ripped from their sockets, the connection between the two lobes of her brain severing, a deep fissure along the centre of her. Torn. Between wanting him with her and leaving him behind.

  “Look at me,” she says.

  He won’t.

  “Jeremy, look at me.”

  He does.

  “You too, Lynette.”

  Lynette turns to her.

  She couches down even though Jeremy is nearly as tall as she is. Looks over at Lynette. “Come here beside your brother.”

  Lynette comes close, the top of her shoulder against Jeremy’s ribs.

  She looks at them, her eyes going from one to the other and then back again. There’s the smell of spring in their clothes, in their hair, the slightest of red – from being outside all this time – on their cheeks. She holds out her good hand to them like the captain of a football team would. Lynette is the first to cover it with her own. Emily looks at Jeremy, waiting. Finally he lays his hand on top. She starts to speak, but can’t. Breathes in and tries again. “I would never hurt either of you.”

  Neither Lynette nor Jeremy says anything.

  “You know that right?”

  She thinks they nod but isn’t sure.

  There’s more she needs to say, she knows, but she can’t. Not yet. Not while they still have so much farther to go.

  “How much does Mommy love you?” she says.

  Lynette stretches out her arms as if she were about to hug a giant ball.

  “Wow, that’s a lot,” Emily says.

  She looks at Jeremy.

  “Mom,” he says.

  “Too old are you? To tell your mom you love her?”

  He stretches out his arms like his sister and then quickly drops them again.

  The ship’s horn again now.

  She stands up.

  The ferry pulling into dock.

  “Let’s go to the front,” Jeremy says to his sister.

  “Don’t run. I’ll come and get you in a minute.” She stands there watching them for what seems like a long time.

  A hand on her shoulder. She turns.

  It’s Myles.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  He adjusts his Toronto Maple Leafs cap. “I’m going down to the car. You can come, or I can meet you on shore.”

  “On shore,” she says.

  “Good enough. See you down there.”

  “Okay.”

  He goes, barely life enough to lift his feet off the ground.

  She thinks of Kent. Those perfect fingers that, so often, had grazed the side of her cheek or had run down the length of her spine or had tucked a length of hair behind her ear. Or curled into a fist. Yes, that too. Canceling out everything that came before. Him reaching out to her then, picking her up off the floor like a child, carrying her in his arms to the chesterfield, or to the kitchen table. Sitting be- side her or across from her, sh
oulders slumped. Chin lowered too. Watery eyes on her, then not. Him saying, “You make me so angry.” Then, after a moment, “Why do you?”

  A year of savings inside her suitcase. The money from the joint account too. A new beginning, she hopes.

  The gangway is lowering.

  She makes her way to the bow, sees her babies’ backs in the foreground, them waving to someone on the dock below.

  She continues forward. “Come on you two,” she says.

  Neither of them turns around, unable to hear her, she figures, under the sound of churning engines and the lowering gangway and the shouts of the men on the lower deck and the scattered boat horn.

  She goes closer. Says again, “Come on you two.” Then, “We can’t leave Myles waiting.”

  It’s Jeremy who turns just as she gets to within reaching distance of him, his face like a four-year-old at a birthday party: eyes nearly popping, the largest smile displaying big teeth, all his faith in her miraculously restored.

  He points behind him. “Down there,” he says, “he’s down there.”

  “What?” she says. “Who? Who’s down there?”

  Jeremy doesn’t answer, too busy turning back around.

  She manages to cram herself in between them, looks over the bow towards the dock below.

  If not for the railing she’d drop right where she’s standing. Each of them looking down at her, but she not coming to. In her mind praying that she’ll never.

  She’d turn her head if she could, or run back towards the stern if there was blood enough in her legs. But there isn’t any blood, all of it drained out of her.

  Kent’s waving up at her.

  She doesn’t wave back. Couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. Lifting an eyebrow would be too much now.

  Hospital greens underneath his open jacket. An arm in a sling. Blackened eyes. A blood-flecked bandage around his forehead. The same boots on from yesterday though. The only things not cut away and torn from him no doubt. “Careful with those boots,” she imagines him having said. And, “Do what you want with the clothes.” Hard to get a pair to fit his feet, that’s why.

  Even though she’s told him not to, Jeremy leaves the railing and starts running.

  She makes a grab for him, but he’s too fast. “No! Come back!”

  Lynette makes to move too, but Emily manages to reach out and stop her before she can. “Stay with me, okay baby.”

  “But I want to see Daddy.”

  Emily looks down on him.

  How strange.

  To look down on him.

  5

  SHE’S RUNNING – LYNETTE RIGHT BEHIND HER – towards the parked cars. She stops, then says, “Do you see Myles’s?”

  Lynette stops beside her.

  “We have to find Myles’s.”

  She grabs her daughter’s hand and starts running again.

  The sounds of turned ignitions, pumps of gas, the gangway lowering, echoing voices.

  “There,” she says, pointing to a cancerous billow of exhaust coming from a car near the back.

  She increases her pace.

  “Too fast, Mommy.”

  “Come on.”

  She can barely make out his face through the cigarette smoke when she gets there. She bangs on the window and tries opening the door, but it won’t budge.

  Myles lifts himself over the gearshift, then shimmies his way to the passenger side. Bangs open the door with his shoulder.

  A plume of smoke escapes.

  “It doesn’t open from the outside,” he says.

  “Get in,” she says to Lynette. She tries pulling the front seat forward so that her daughter can crawl into the back, but it won’t give.

  “I’ve been meaning to fix that too,” he says.

  “Squeeze in,” she says.

  Lynette does.

  She throws the suitcase into the back and then gets in the passenger side.

  “Changed your mind, did you?” Myles says.

  “Drive off the gangway and keep going.”

  Myles pumps the gas. “What?”

  She grabs his thigh with her good hand. “Drive off this boat and keep going.”

  He puts out his cigarette.

  “Are you deaf? Drive off and don’t stop. Ever!”

  Myles grips the steering wheel. Doesn’t so much look at her as he does through her. “What’s the matter? Where’s Jeremy?”

  The gangway’s completely down now. Up ahead, a dwarfish man with a wild beard starts directing off the few vehicles and walk-on passengers.

  “With Dad,” Lynette says from the back seat.

  Emily grips the collar of Myles’s jacket. A stab of pain shoots into her hand.

  “Jesus!” His eyes are on the hanging bits of skin. “What happened?”

  More vehicles driving off the ferry. A few horns and break lights. Rolled down windows and some lit cigarettes.

  “It’s nothing.” She’s almost whispering. “Nothing compared to what he’ll do.”

  Myles looks out the driver’s side window, then in the back at Lynette. “You’re scaring the little one.” He turns back to her, his voice lower than Emily’s had been. “Who? Who’ll do?”

  She lets go of his jacket but keeps her face close to his. Body odour on his unwashed clothes, in his hair – breath like spoiled milk. She breathes. Then breathes again. “You’re going to see my husband up ahead –”

  “Kent – ”

  “Let me finish.” She looks towards the front, then back at Myles. “You’re going to see him up ahead. Jeremy will be with him. But you can’t stop. Or roll down the window even. You have to drive. Just drive –”

  “But – ”

  “And if he follows, you have to keep driving. Except faster. So much faster. All the way to Gander airport.”

  “Why can’t I see Daddy?” Lynette says.

  The man behind them is honking his horn.

  Myles slips the gearshift into drive, but keeps his foot on the break. Looks at her. “Who’ll do?”

  She says, “You know.”

  “How would I?”

  More honks from the car behind them.

  She looks in the rear-view mirror; the man’s waving them forward.

  The dwarfish man is approaching them now, ushering them along with a pudgy finger, and mouthing something she can’t make out.

  Myles lifts his chin. “There he is.”

  She looks. It’s Kent. Not fifty feet away and staring right at them; Jeremy pressed so close to his father’s side that he looks attached.

  “But he’ll want me to stop,” Myles says, edging the car forward at a trickle, yet enough for the man behind them to stop pressing his horn.

  “Just keep your eyes ahead. Pretend you don’t see him,” she says.

  “But he’s looking right at us.”

  “Just drive.”

  “He knows it’s me – ”

  “Just DRIVE!” Then, “Please!”

  Twenty-five feet away.

  Twenty-two.

  Nineteen.

  “What about Jeremy?” he asks.

  Fifteen feet.

  She fights the urge to reach out and press the brake herself. Throw open the door and run to him. Take her boy into her arms. “This wasn’t how I planned it.”

  Lynette starts rolling down her window.

  Emily turns back to her. “Roll it back up.”

  “I want to talk to Daddy.”

  “Do as I say!”

  “Why?”

  “Do it!”

  Lynette winds the window back up, crying now as she does.

  Twelve. Twelve feet. Kent battered and tired looking, but waving nonetheless. And smiling. Him probably thinking, “They’ve come after all.”

  She says, “He’ll never let me have Jeremy now.”

  Nine feet.

  Myles applies the brake.

  She grabs his shoulder. “No!”

  “She wants to see her dad for God’s sake.”

  “No! Plea
se!”

  “He’ll come to my house,” Myles says, “tear me a new one.”

  “Daddy!” Lynette shouts.

  Kent’s saying something.

  Myles slowing further, almost stopped.

  “He’ll kill me,” she says.

  “What?”

  “He’ll kill me.”

  “No –”

  “He will! He’s tried it before.”

  Kent tapping on the driver’s side door. “What a surprise,” he says.

  Lynette knocks on the window. “Daddy!”

  Kent says, “I didn’t expect to see you, Myles.”

  Myles looks up at him. Brings the car to a stop.

  She feels something inside of her let go. Wear away. Her life, she thinks, her desire to live it.

  Kent reaches for Myles’s door, grips the handle, but before he can open it, Myles suddenly jams down on the accelerator. Screeching tires, the front of the car swerving as if on a sheet of ice.

  She turns and looks through the back window, their figures already growing smaller, falling away, like waking up and slowly forgetting the dream you’ve had.

  She turns back around.

  After a moment, Myles says, “What do you want me to do?” His foot is like a brick on the gas peddle. The engine rips into the morning like a motorboat on a lake.

  Stop. Turn around. Go back. I have to get my boy. Go back. Please!

  She doesn’t look at him, just fixes her stare ahead. “Keep driving.”

  “You sure?”

  She doesn’t answer him.

  “Are you sure, I said?”

  She hesitates a moment, then says, “Yes, I’m sure.”

  A long silence falls over them.

  Had to let him go, she thinks. To protect Lynette. Herself.

  “I just wanted to say hi to Daddy,” Lynette says then, her voice breaking.

  6

  SHE DOESN’T KNOW HOW LONG IT’S BEEN since either of them has said anything. Twenty minutes maybe. Half an hour.

  She looks again in the side mirror, expecting to see Kent speeding towards the back bumper, forward in his seat, his chest almost touching the steering wheel, bruised face against the windshield. But there’s nothing. Nothing at all since they got on the highway. Nothing speeding towards them in the oncoming lane, nothing behind them. The last three people on the planet it feels like.