by Anita Shreve
“Why?”
“The winds, I think. That big red one there? That’s a Fokker Thirty-two. Wingspan ninety-nine feet. It has four rooms, a kitchen, two lavatories, and sleeps sixteen. That one there — taking off? — that’s a Travel Air open cockpit. One hundred and twenty-two miles per hour. That’ll be headed out to New York. Most of these planes, they go to New York or to Boston, and then the passengers make a connection to another plane and go off to Miami or Saint Louis or Havana. There should be a crowd of people in the waiting room today, all trying to get home for Christmas. That one there? Coming in? That’s a Boeing mail plane. Pretty plane, isn’t it? It’ll be loaded with cards and packages today.”
Alphonse and McDermott walk through the snow, and even though it goes in the sides of his boots and sometimes reaches above his sock line, Alphonse doesn’t care. He can see a man in the tower with a microphone in his hands. To think that the airfield has been here all this time at the end of the trolley line and Alphonse hasn’t known it! Even if he was too shy to go all the way to the building he could have stood at the end of the field and watched the planes taking off and landing.
McDermott steers Alphonse into the waiting room. The warmth is a surprise, though everyone still has a coat on. In the corner there’s a woman in a fur coat talking to a woman in a cloth coat and when Alphonse looks at them again he notices that the woman in the cloth coat is the same woman who was in the brown bathing suit at the beach that day, the one who dug her hands and knees into the sand.
Alphonse worries that someone will come over and ask McDermott and him to leave, because everyone in the room is so beautifully dressed and there he is in shoes without laces and his pants not even reaching his socks, and McDermott — well, McDermott looks better than Alphonse does, but not as good as the people standing around drinking coffee and chatting as if they did this every day. And then Alphonse glances down and spots the light green sweater with a frill, which everyone can see now because he’s opened his jacket in the warmth, and he freezes the way a dog does when it knows it has done something bad.
“I’ll get you a cup of hot chocolate,” McDermott says.
Alphonse wraps his jacket tight across his chest and nods. He should have let his mother fix the zipper. McDermott goes to the counter and comes back again with a white china cup that has a blue line and an airplane on it, and Alphonse takes a long drink of the hot brew and thinks that it is just about the best thing he has ever had to drink in his whole long life.
The schedule is printed in chalk on a blackboard beside the ticket agent’s window. The 2:15 flight to New York has been crossed out twice and now reads 3:35, which is only ten minutes away. The woman in the fur coat says something to the woman beside her, and when they laugh, Alphonse imagines bits of beautiful glass falling through the air.
Honora
Honora has never been to an airfield before and is glad she thought to ask Vivian if she needed someone to ferry her automobile back to the beach. At first the Ford wagon felt stiff and unfamiliar (Don’t ever buy a Ford, Sexton said that first day at the bank), and Honora wasn’t at all sure she could manage it. But before they passed through the marshes, she had adjusted her driving to suit the quirks and oddities of Vivian’s automobile, and after that, the journey was simply fun. It strikes Honora that it has been quite some time since she has experienced anything like fun, surely not since the summer, before she and Sexton learned that the house was for sale. She left Sexton a note on the kitchen table. Gone to take a neighbor to the airfield in the neighbor’s car. Will explain later. Should be back about 5:00. Happy Christmas. Love, Honora. Of course she will forgive her husband for having missed the promised Christmas lunch, but it won’t hurt Sexton Beecher one little bit to be the one left waiting for a change.
The trip to the airfield took Honora and Vivian through Ely Falls, where they drove slowly past the displays in the windows of Simmons Department Store, exclaiming over the dioramas of old-fashioned Christmases with mannequins in high-necked dresses and long dressing gowns sitting around trees decorated with ribbons and cranberry chains and candles (though surely those cannot really have been lighted candles, Honora thinks now). Vivian and she played a game in which they tried to guess, by the demeanor and the dress of the shoppers darting in and out between traffic, what was in their packages. Vivian saw a dapper little man in a tweed coat and a bow tie and guessed a Charis foundation garment with an adjustable belt (for his mistress, of course). Honora saw a plump middle-aged woman and guessed a Hormel ham. Vivian hooted beside her.
Honora and Sexton had talked about traveling to Taft for the holiday, but Sexton said he was reluctant to take too much time away from his clients. Honora wrote her mother asking if she and Uncle Harold might get on a bus to Ely Falls and spend the holiday with them at Fortune’s Rocks (Honora anxious to show the house off), but her mother replied that Harold was still too feeble to travel (no surprise) and that they would have to make do this year with packages and letters.
“Are you afraid to fly?” Honora asks.
“Gosh, yes,” Vivian says, drawing a mother-of-pearl compact from her purse. “White knuckles all the way.”
“Where’s your luggage?”
“I had the trunks sent on ahead. Useless stuff. What on earth did I imagine I was going to do with a white ermine wrap?”
“And you’ll take Sandy with you on the plane?” The dog, in a small wooden basket, looks nearly as apprehensive as Vivian.
“He’ll be fine. Most people find flying is quite lovely, actually, and I’ll admit the service is miraculous, and the gin is first-rate. The cabin has six rooms. The ceiling is painted with stars, the toilets are modern, and the club chairs pivot so you can play cards. I’ll hardly have time for a rubber before we land.”
“I envy you.”
“They say it’s safer than driving a car, but don’t believe it for a minute.”
Wooden chairs line a spare but freshly painted room. A woman in a flying suit disappears behind a door marked “Operations” and emerges carrying a map, and when she crosses the room on her way to the landing strip, everyone pauses to gape, especially the half dozen men who are waiting for their planes. The face of a small boy next to the window can only be called rapt. Honora wonders if the boy is getting on a plane himself, but then decides not; he is poorly dressed and pitifully thin. She’s surprised that his father, who is standing next to the boy, would let him out in such bad weather in boots that have no laces and in pants so short they don’t reach his socks. As Honora watches, the father takes an empty china cup out of the boy’s hands. The boy turns and presses his face against the glass.
“That will be my plane,” Vivian says.
“Where do you want me to put the car?” Honora asks.
“Right out in front of the house,” Vivian says as she reapplies her lipstick. “I’ve a man who’ll take care of it.”
Vivian’s hair is ridged like sands after a storm. Honora studies the woman’s fur-trimmed afternoon coat and the tweed sport suit she has on underneath. The suit is beautifully cut and fits her too well not to have been made especially for her. Honora envies the woman’s fur-lined ankle boots as well — much smarter than her own shower boots, which she neglected to put on in their haste to leave the house. Her brown pumps are wet and cold and will have to be dried out by the stove when she gets home.
“You needn’t wait for me,” Vivian says, snapping the compact shut. “You have a bit of a drive.”
“I’d like to see you take off. If something happens and your plane doesn’t go, you’ll be stranded here.”
“I’d find a ride back somehow. It’s almost dark already. You should get a start.”
“When will you be back?” Honora asks.
“Not till May, I think.”
“Oh,” Honora says, suddenly minding that her newfound friend is leaving her. “Such a long time.”
Vivian nudges Honora and tilts her head in the direction of a man in a smart fedora and a Harris Tweed over
coat. He is carrying a flat rectangular package wrapped in red paper with a gold bow.
“Mint green silk charmeuse nightgown, cut on the bias,” Vivian says, and the two women laugh.
Despite the gathering darkness, Honora cannot bring herself to leave the waiting room. She watches the passengers climb up the steep steps of the plane and duck under the low door. When Honora glances around, she sees that only she and the small boy remain inside, and she wonders where the father has gone. “It’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?” Honora says to the boy.
The boy turns, leaving a nose-and-lip print on the glass. The plane outside starts its engine. Honora puts her hands up around her face to shade her eyes so that she can see into the lighted windows of the plane. If she spots Vivian, she will wave. But though she can make out figures in the small circles, she can’t identify anyone who might be her new friend. The plane makes a turn and rolls away.
“If we hurry,” says a voice behind Honora, “we can catch the last trolley. I just asked the maintenance fellow outside.”
Honora turns, drawing on her gloves. She has a brief impression of dark curly hair and vivid blue eyes. And seeing the man close to, she realizes that of course he can’t be the father of the boy — he’s too young. Perhaps he’s the boy’s brother, though the two don’t look much alike.
When Honora pushes the door open, the wind fills the spaces of her coat. She prays the beach wagon will start. Will there be a trolley to Ely at this late hour? Beside her, the boy and the man hunch their shoulders against the weather and start out on the long road to the trolley stop. The boy must be terribly cold, Honora thinks.
“Excuse me,” she calls. “Can I give you a lift?”
The man and the boy stop. Honora moves closer to the figures so that she can see their faces. “Where are you headed?” she asks.
“Back to town,” the man says after a brief hesitation.
“I have to go through town to get to my house, so why don’t I give you a ride? It’s too cold to have to wait for a trolley.”
The man puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says simply.
McDermott
McDermott and the boy follow the woman to her car. He wouldn’t have accepted the ride for his own sake. The woman’s hat tilts in the wind, and she has to hold it with her hand. Her shoes make precise imprints on the snow as she lifts each foot up and places it down.
McDermott hasn’t ridden in a vehicle, discounting the trolley, since Mahon took them all to a speak in Rye in his bread truck in November. McDermott and Ross and Tom Magill sat on the floor in the back, the smell of yeast and waxed paper all about them, his ass sore as hell afterward from all the hard bumping on the road. A breeze, gusty and erratic, makes glittery snow showers from the tops of the half dozen automobiles parked just beyond the airfield tower. McDermott glances at the boy and sees that he is nearly as excited as he was when he first spotted the airplane taking off, and he wonders if the boy has ever ridden in an automobile.
The woman turns abruptly, and McDermott nearly walks into her.
“It’s not mine,” she says. “I hope I can get it to start.”
Her eyes are watering some in the cold. He judges her to be about his age, perhaps a year younger. Under her hat, there is just a fringe of hair. Dark like her eyes.
“I’m sure that between us we can manage something,” McDermott says.
“Are you good with engines?” she asks.
“I’m good with machines,” he says and holds out his hand. “I’m Quillen McDermott.”
The boy flashes him a dubious look. “He’s just called McDermott,” the boy says.
“My name is Honora. Honora Beecher. What’s your name?”
“Alphonse,” the boy says. “I saw you at the beach one time.”
“Really?”
“You had on a brown bathing suit.”
“So I did,” she says, sounding mildly surprised. “Are you brothers?” she asks, gesturing from McDermott to Alphonse. McDermott notes that Alphonse hesitates a moment before he shakes his head.
“I think we can all easily fit in front,” the woman says.
The Ford’s seat is taut and springy. The floorboards are covered with sand and wet snow. The woman’s coat falls open, and her skirt rides up over her knee. McDermott watches her slim leg move back and forth. Between them, the boy stares bug-eyed out the window. Every time McDermott catches sight of the green sweater under the boy’s jacket, he has to turn away and smile.
The car glides along the icy road. He wants to tell the woman to take it easy because they might skid on such a slippery surface, but he doesn’t know her well enough to give advice. The three bodies, wedged together, are producing a sort of warmth.
The woman asks him a question, but with the rumble of the car, McDermott can’t quite make out what she has said.
“He’s almost deaf,” the boy says protectively. “You have to look right at him so that he can see what you are saying.”
The woman smiles. “Well then, I won’t say anything at all,” she says lightly. “My husband taught me to drive only recently and I don’t dare take my eyes off the road.”
“I’ll just lean forward,” McDermott says. “Like this.”
He has a good view now of the woman’s face. There’s a neat furrow of concentration between her eyebrows. She drives hunched forward over the steering wheel, a slight smile on her lips. “Were you born deaf?” she asks.
“The mills did it,” he says. “The looms. The sound of all those looms in one room. Almost everyone gets a bit deaf. Mine is just worse.”
“We both work in the mills,” the boy says.
The woman looks surprised. “Aren’t you too young to be working?” she asks.
Lights have been lit in farmhouses, and smoke rises from intermittent chimneys. McDermott has nearly lost the feeling in his feet. He wants to wrap the boy’s wet boots in his jacket and dry them. He wonders where the woman lives. He tries to imagine what sort of house she is going back to, but all he can picture are the displays in the Simmons Department Store windows of the impossibly fake old-fashioned Christmases. No one really lives like that, do they? In the distance, he can see the silhouettes of chimneys against the night sky. The mills are silent now — no plumes of smoke spreading across the city — and already this afternoon he noticed that the air was cleaner. Men and women are joining the unions in droves now, and when the weather is warmer, McDermott is certain there will be a strike. You have to have a strike in summer, Mironson said, so that the workers who get evicted from their apartments won’t freeze to death in the tent cities.
Fucking bosses, McDermott thinks.
He gives the woman directions to the boy’s house, though, truthfully, he wishes they could just keep driving. He imagines them all stopping for dinner at a roadhouse. It wouldn’t be too crowded because everyone would be home for Christmas Eve, but it would be warm. The three of them would sit in a booth and McDermott would say things that would make the woman laugh.
When they reach the corner of Alfred and Rose, McDermott and the boy get out of the car. He hands the boy a small package wrapped in brown paper. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You have a good Christmas,” he says and watches as Alphonse sprints around the corner.
McDermott walks back to the car and leans on the driver’s-side door.
“He’s happy,” McDermott says.
“What did you give him?”
“A pocketknife. It’s for fishing. For cleaning fish.”
“You take him on outings?”
“Once in a while. I feel kind of sorry for the kid.” He pauses. “Hey, thanks for the ride. How long is your trip home?”
“Not far,” she says. “Only to the beach.”
“So you live on the beach.”
“I do.”
“Lucky you.”
“I don’t know. Not this time of year.”
“Still, though.”
“Still, though,�
� she says, smiling.
“How will you spend Christmas?” he asks.
“We’ll get up late,” she says. “Then we’ll wander into the living room and open our presents. What about you?”
“I’ll go to my sister’s. It’ll be chaos. My brothers won’t like their presents. The usual.” He pauses. “What do you want for Christmas?”
“A baby,” she says without hesitation. “And you?” she asks.
“Peace and quiet,” he says.
She laughs and he tries to laugh with her, but his mouth is nearly frozen. Jesus God, he feels happy. It’s Christmas Eve and he doesn’t have to work tomorrow and the city is almost beautiful and when the weather gets warmer there will be a strike, and in a gesture that shakes him right down to his socks, the woman reaches over and touches his hand briefly where it rests on the window.
“I’m sure you’ll get what you want,” she says.
With effort, McDermott pushes himself from the beach wagon and watches as the woman pulls away from the curb and turns the corner. He raises the collar of his leather jacket and looks up at the stars. He says a quick prayer — for Eileen, for the boy, for the woman in the car, and even for his brothers, who are a handful — and then he shakes his head and laughs. He hasn’t said a real prayer — a hopeful prayer, a message direct from himself to God — since he was a kid.
Honora
Honora drives through the marshes, shaking her head. She can’t imagine why she told that man that she wanted a baby, nor why she touched his hand. It’s because of Christmas, she decides; it makes you do impulsive things — like telling Vivian she’d drive her to the airport. She’s glad she did; it was good to get out of the house. She thinks about the boy, his possessiveness, his pride. The rapt expression on his face at the airport. His grin when the man gave him the present. The way the man had to look at her, to watch her speak her words.
She hopes now that Sexton isn’t too upset that she wasn’t there to greet him. She will explain, and she is certain that he will understand. She steers the beach wagon around a corner, waiting for the sight of the house and the Buick parked out front, but when she completes the turn, she is so startled by what she sees — or, rather, by what she doesn’t see — that she inadvertently takes her foot off the clutch and stalls the automobile.