The Falling Woman: A Novel

by Richard Farrell

  He turned left at the stop sign. Darkness had begun to fall in the east, but a purple-umber sky glowed in front of them, with bands of pink-orange cloud stretching out as far as they could see. He switched on the headlights as they drove, the darkness slowly circling the car, the road, the prairie around them. Ahead, faintly glowing in the distance, lights from a farmhouse guided the way.

  “Here?” she said. “You’re taking me here?”

  She leaned across the seat and kissed him on his cheek. “You are a sweet man, Charlie Radford, and brave too. You have given me back my life, and I will always be grateful to you for that. And you know what? You will make a wonderful father.”

  42

  U.S. House of Representatives Panel Investigating Pointer Airlines Flight 795 (Final Session):

  “Almost a year has passed since the public hearing in Kansas, Mr. Radford. And now you’ve come forward to tell us that you lied at the hearing. Do you have any regrets about the lies you told?”

  “It wasn’t my job to expose that woman,” he says. “My job was to ask the right questions. She had a right to her privacy, a right to decide what to do with her own story.”

  “And now, a year later, all the bodies have been identified, all except one. And now you come forward to tell us that you knew all along. And you want us to accept your explanation?”

  “You can believe what you want. I’m here to answer your questions.”

  “Then please answer the question that was asked. Do you regret what you did at the public hearing?”

  “I do not,” he says. “I believe I did the right thing.”

  “Where did you take her after the public hearing?”

  “To the farm in Goddard. Yes. The same one where she was found after the plane exploded. There seemed a certain symmetry to that. I had a feeling about those people, about Millie and Norbert Werner. I knew they’d take care of her. Help her figure out what to do next.”

  “And you told no one until now?”

  “Yes. She lived as she wanted. Quietly, comfortably. The world eventually forgot the story, went back to its own concerns.”

  “And yet so many families held on to false hope. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “It does and that’s why I’m coming forward now.”

  “And her family, Mr. Radford. You are now telling them that their mother, their daughter, their wife was alive for months without their knowledge. How do you think they’ll take that news?”

  “I hope they will understand what she did. I hope they will see that her decision was intended to spare them more pain.”

  “How is that possible to believe? Wasn’t she just being selfish?”

  “You can think that if you want. I did for a while. But there’s another explanation.”

  He took a long sip of water and cleared his throat.

  “Please understand the great irony here. Mrs. Geraghty was sick. She was dying. When she got on that airplane, she was traveling to California to a retreat for cancer victims. She knew that her cancer would eventually come back. Her family had been mourning her for several months, and the retreat was for her an opportunity to consider how she wanted to deal with the remaining time she had. That she, of all the people on that Pointer flight, should have survived in such a miraculous manner was ironic in a way that feels almost cruel. Her family had mourned the inevitability of her death from cancer, and then, suddenly, they had to mourn her death in the plane crash. To go home, back to all the attention and notoriety around her fall, would have made her life crazy, and I think she wanted to spare her family that. Falling out of that plane changed her. How could it not? It reshaped the way she understood the world. She knew she didn’t have much time. I don’t think we have a right to judge her.”

  “You were reassigned after the public hearing?”

  “Yes, to the highway division. I didn’t object to the reassignment. It seemed a fair outcome, considering what I’d put the agency through.”

  “We still don’t have a cause for the crash. We still don’t know what caused the explosion. Does that concern you?”

  “Nothing I did during the investigation, and nothing about that woman’s story, would have helped solve the mystery of Pointer 795. They will find answers. I have faith in that. In six months, or a year, or longer, we will all understand what happened to that plane. Or maybe we won’t. Maybe some things can’t be fully understood.”

  “Why now? Why come forward with this now?”

  Radford stares up at the Great Seal on the wall. He remembers seeing the number flash across his phone’s screen. He remembers the wave of panic when he recognized the Kansas area code. “She’s gone,” he said. “The Werners took care of her until they couldn’t, and then called in a hospice nurse. Erin . . . Mrs. Geraghty did not want more treatment for her cancer when it came back. Before she died, she sent me her responses to my questionnaire. That was her way of saying that it was time to tell her story. At least that’s what I believe.”

  Radford glances around the room. He’s not certain that his testimony will change anything. He’s not certain he will be taken seriously or that his words will somehow sanctify or even clarify the choices Erin made. The prevailing wisdom will be that Radford is now trying to sell a book, to exploit this story for his own gain. But he knows nothing could be further from the truth. He simply felt an obligation to tell the story. What happens now, what people choose to believe, that is no longer his concern.

  “She had a choice,” he says. “And I believe she made the right one. She took the long road home.”

  “And this is your official statement? This is how you want it entered on the record?”

  “It is. Erin Geraghty survived the explosion of Pointer 795. She fell out of the sky and survived. That is the conclusion I’ve reached. I know nothing more.”

  Radford taxies the Cessna to the holding area and runs through his checklist again. Flaps ten degrees. Altimeter set to field elevation. Fuel mixture, rich. Carb heat, on. A crisp spring afternoon covers the valley. High clouds keep the temperature cool and stabilize the air so that the orange windsock at the runway’s end luffs lazily against the pole.

  He glances skyward and then down the runway, all the while holding the brakes with his feet. When he pushes in the throttle, the nosewheel digs into the earth. Then he releases the brakes. Surging forward, the plane swings around onto the center of the runway.

  Wendy waves from behind the chain-link fence. She is pregnant, with a little girl they plan to name Amelia.

  Though this isn’t Radford’s first solo—that took place almost fifteen years earlier—the moment feels every bit as exciting, perhaps even more so now since he understands what it means to lose the thing he once loved the most.

  After two months of flying lessons, a waiver from the heart doctor, and a fair amount of negotiating with his wife, the flight school, the FAA, and the insurance company, Radford is set to fly again. He holds the plane steady on the runway and checks the windsock again. The perfect day for it. Then he clicks the mike button.

  “Manassas Tower, Cessna 714 Charlie Pop, ready to depart runway thirty-four-right.”

  “Cessna 714 Charlie Pop, you are cleared for takeoff. Wind calm.”

  He presses the throttle and engine noise fills the cockpit. The plane lunges forward, pulling to the left as the propeller accelerates. He counters the plane’s natural yaw with right rudder, holding the nose straight and true. The wings shake as the rough pavement jostles the wheels. The smell of gasoline fills the cockpit, along with the drone of the engine. Glancing down, he verifies that all his gauges are good.

  He’ll never be like Chuck Yeager. He’ll never fly a jumbo jet over the ocean. He’ll never be a Blue Angel. He’ll never live the dream as fully as he once hoped he would, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe he just needs to be back in the air. As gently as he can, he pulls back on the wheel and waits. A second later, the nose lifts and the ground falls away. The plane climbs, gray clouds coming closer,
the wings responding like an extension of his body. He turns south, away from the airfield. Below him, the bright umber and green leaves of the Virginia countryside look surreal, almost like they’ve been painted by an artist.

  This is what he’s missed. Not the rigid need to prove something about his manhood. Not the certifications, the ratings, and the accomplishments. Not power or speed or danger. All along, he’s simply missed the view. He thinks about Erin falling through the sky and wonders, if she were still alive, whether she might have enjoyed this view. More than anything, he wishes he could have taken her flying, to show her how everything looks clearer up in the sky. But then he thinks that perhaps she already saw enough of this view.

  He banks the starboard wing toward the Occoquan Reservoir. Water silvers in the lowering sun, the reservoir shimmering like a mirror.

  Thirty minutes later, he touches down. Wendy hugs him when he climbs out of the cockpit, and he feels her growing stomach press against him. He is still adjusting to the idea of being a father, but each day he grows more confident. He knows it will be the most important thing he will ever do.

  NTSB: Witness Document 1.18.4.5

  I’ve come to the last question, the one you were gracious enough not to ask: What does it all mean?

  The more times I’ve thought about that fateful night, the more hours I’ve had to contemplate what occurred, the more I think that any explanation only detracts. If I talk about how it affected me, if I try to contextualize it, I slide further from the truth.

  The most extraordinary thing did happen to me, but it wasn’t falling from an airplane. The extraordinary thing was walking through this life. Against all odds, I emerged from nothing, from a darkness and a void at least as silent the one that will follow. We spend so much time worrying about death, but so little trying to understand the silence before we entered the world. My life, your life, all of our lives, are miracles far greater than what happened the night I fell from the sky.

  I took chances. I loved, laughed, lost, cried, screamed, became bored, impatient. I was stubborn and ignorant and full of passion and wisdom too. There never was enough time. I didn’t do any of it well. But I lived.

  Falling out of an airplane was but one small part of my time here. Those two minutes didn’t define my life. I’ve made peace with my choices, as hard as they’ve been. My only regret, my only lingering doubt, is that I may have kept hope alive for some families longer than I should have. If there is some way, please apologize to them on my behalf.

  These answers must stand in for my story. If they don’t suffice, if they merely lapse into a contrived statement, then just burn them. But if you do one day choose to share them, if you decide there is some merit in telling this story, then please tell the whole thing. Don’t make me out to be someone I wasn’t. And please be sure my daughters see these answers, whatever else happens. I know it will take time for them to understand what I did. I don’t expect them to forgive me right away. But in time, I hope that my choices will make sense to them.

  In the end, I have been well loved. I have been nurtured and cared for my whole life. If I’ve failed to see that, if I’ve failed to notice the abundance of goodness and light around me, I can only hope that some of my lapses can be understood, and if not understood, then at least forgiven.

  I’m tired. Lately, more and more, I’m run down by the simplest tasks. I could sleep for a thousand years and still not be rested enough. One gift of the fall, perhaps, is that I’m not afraid of what comes next. I feared pain before, some return to those sharpest minutes of suffering. But after the fall, even that fear passed. I am ready, as they used to say in the old songs, when people still sang about death.

  You should know that my reluctance, my deep need for privacy, was nearly ruined. You preserved that for me. Somehow, you understood and protected me. I am grateful for that, beyond what I’ll be able to express on this questionnaire. You’ve done a very brave thing. A selfless thing. You stood to gain nothing. In fact, you lost a great deal because of your actions, which makes them all the more staggering.

  You are a good man, Charlie Radford. A bit stiff around the edges, overly concerned with what everyone else thinks. You’re still young in that sense. You’re just beginning to move out into the world. But you will do well, I think. You possess good instincts.

  Most nights, after dinner, I go out and sit alone near the barn. I like to watch the sun go down, to feel the coolness of evening’s approach. I mark the end of another day. Somehow, that feels more important now.

  Everything glows here in the evenings. Dusk paints the barn, the sky, the corn stalks, a miasma of purple, orange, and gold. As I wait for that color to hit, my body lightens. My soul expands, and spreads into the air around me, as if the countryside, the sky, the world, is inside me and outside me at the same time. And then the barn swallows return.

  There is no way to describe my joy, my utter elation when the swallows begin circling. The sound of air off their wings as they bank. Their gleeful, manic, keening song. They circle, descend toward the barn rafters, and then, at the last second, zoom back into the sky. They remind me of children playing outside, refusing to come in, refusing to yield to the demands of the world. They want to fly longer, to dance in the sky a few more seconds, and I am filled with the most abundant sense of wholeness when I watch them. Holiness, perhaps as well. Somehow, I catch their joy in flight and am able to let go, and, like the barn swallows, I too surrender. I twirl my arm in front of me in a ballerina move, a port de bras in the air, my gesture to join them. I am not flying exactly, but borrowing their movement and sound and grace. I allow them to pull my spirit into the sky. Gravity releases me as the sunlight glows and fades. We were meant to fly. The sole purpose of our lives is to rediscover our wings. The swallows circle above my head, zoom left, climb, hundreds of birds engaged in this incredible, intricate, ancient dance, their wingtips so close that no light comes through, before they all lift over the barn roof and disappear, only to flash once more above and around me. The sky darkens, the colors fade, but the birds keep flying. They circle back, soar again, every bird reaching higher, resisting the urge to land, and the evening fills with their song. As they soar, I imagine myself among them, and I imagine the thrill, the ecstatic freedom that comes with flight. My own invisible wings flutter in my soul. It is almost dark now, the Kansas sky leached of color and light. The first stars appear on the horizon. The birds soar off, far away from the barn, extending their reach, perhaps never to return. But then, just before their songs fade to silence, just before their wings flutter overhead one last time, I remember. I remember the grace of flight. Finally, in a desperate flash, the birds surrender, yield to darkness, dive toward me and disappear into the barn. And so, I will go that way too.

  About the Author

  Richard Farrell is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former pilot who holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in Hunger Mountain, upstreet, New Plains Review, Potomac Review, Descant, and elsewhere. Originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, he teaches creative writing at Grossmont College in San Diego, where he lives with his wife and two children. This is his first novel.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2020 by Richard Farrell.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/201904863

  eISBN: 978-1-64375-052-1

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  Richard Farrell, The Falling Woman: A Novel