by Louise Ells
You’ve placed her now. She and some guy live out the other side of town in a trailer park you know. Not much to distinguish it from the other trailer parks on the outskirts of town but theirs borders the far end of the lake, that bit where it narrows into swamp, so it’s got the made-up name of Waterside Haven. An on-site laundromat, and a barbecue area but not much else. No fitness room or pool. It’s an older place, with uneven tarmac paths and poor lighting.
You wonder how her evening will play out, imagine her getting home and suggesting to her partner that they do something romantic, take a walk say, to look for the Northern Lights. You can hear his reply: one day up the hill and you’re nuttier than they are. Or maybe not, maybe he doesn’t use words like loony, crackers, bats. Maybe instead he just turns on the TV, shakes his head, no thanks.
She might go outside anyhow, stand away from the trailer and look up. On her own, invisible against the night sky, waiting. You’ve heard her whispering to herself all day. “Joy? Yes? I love you. Good.”
A buzzer. Damn. Your last cigarette break until morning. No more time to think these crazy thoughts.
Turbulence
This morning she woke from a nightmare - she’d been staring out the airplane window at the turquoise sea when she’d felt salt grit her face. She’d reached her hand to - and through - the oval window, then felt her body being sucked from the plane. She isn’t scared of flying, she’s never been scared of flying, but all day she’s unable to focus on her work, on the last-moment jobs she should complete, and guilt at leaving her colleagues a long list of urgent tasks is adding to her anxiety.
She gets home in time to shower and when she soaps her belly she lets the hot water hide a few tears. Packing the last of her hand baggage, she hesitates. Neither of them has called this holiday a make or break - not in those words. Marriage or separation. Separation or divorce. She holds a pair of shoes in either hand, weighing the options.
If you pack comfortable beige flats, you will go sightseeing If you pack sexy black stilettos, you will go dancing
She hears the doorbell. “Lisa! Taxi’s here.” David’s yelling up the stairs and she shoves one of the pairs of shoes into her bag, zips it shut, slings it over her shoulder as she goes downstairs, outside, into the cab.
“Lousy weather, even for February. Hope you’re heading south.” She hasn’t the energy to make small talk with the cabbie; he turns up his radio and eighties love songs compete with thunder to cover the silence.
Wet snow slants into the car and she tries to ignore the panic that’s throwing multi-coloured spots in front of her eyes. Looking past the fat droplets carving paths down the window into the stormy dusk, she tries to ignore the speed of the windshield wipers and the depth of the puddles the car swashes through by making sure she’s got her passport, money, essentials. She’s left both guidebooks on her bedside table where they’ve been sitting, untouched, for a month. Damn.
“I’d like to see the sea lions,” she says. It is the only thing she knows of Montevideo: sea lions. He’s chosen Uruguay, somewhere he’d been taken as a child when his father worked in Argentina, or maybe Brazil. She remembers only one story - a big dog in dimly lit haberdashery.
He doesn’t reply, gives no indication he’s heard her. The cab hits a pothole, thunks against the pavement, and she grips his thigh. He’s facing out his window, as if the skyline view from the Gardiner expressway is worthy of intense scrutiny.
They turn up the 427 and she sees lights of a plane heading towards the airport. A shiver and she clenches her hands together in her lap. Shakes. This isn’t unease, it’s worse. Fear. Turning back towards her window she closes her eyes, forces herself to take a deep breath and let it out as quietly as possible. Opens her eyes in time to see a line of lightning bisecting the sky.
When she gets out of the taxi she stumbles over the curb or slips on ice, falls and scrapes her hands, muddies her jeans. David helps her up, asks if she’s okay, while the cabbie lifts the bags from the truck. She’s okay, she says. It’s what’s she’s been saying for the past eighteen months. She’s okay, she’ll be fine.
Together they negotiate their way to the check-in gate, skirting a mess of people awaiting news of a delayed charter flight. Before, he used to walk ahead and she had to keep up with him at a half-run, but now he reaches for her hand, keeps his pace slow. As they pass a glass wall she sees their reflection and is startled. A good-looking couple, off on holiday. She turns to him and smiles, for a moment, happy.
This is how they met: she smiled at him in an airport. Both on layovers between long-haul flights, they’d moved from the hard plastic row seats to a faux-pub with weak lager and overpriced cocktails, where she’d prattled on about how much she loved hours in a plane when no one could make demands on her time. (This is how long ago it was, there were no laptops or cell phones then.) She’d caressed the cover of a thick novel. All that time to yourself, all that time to read, she’d said. Only then had David admitted he was flying back from his father’s funeral, would make the same trip in five weeks to relocate his mother to Toronto, yet again. Yet again, he’d said. The hard edge to his voice the only sign of his otherwise well-hidden grief.
If you flirt only for the duration of your layover, you will never see him again If you have a third cocktail and exchange your ticket for one on his flight, you will sleep with him next week
They’d discovered flats at Yonge and Egg in common. We must shop in the same grocery store, she’d marvelled, and drink at the same bars. We must have passed each other in the street, she added, wondering if some part of her brain, recognizing him, had prompted her first smile in his direction.
They exchanged numbers and when he called her the following night she said yes to dinner and, after the dinner, yes to sex. That first year every time they went out to a restaurant they chose a new cuisine. Regions of Europe and countries she’d barely heard of, they co-discovered exotic, bland, sometimes inedible, menus. His adventurous spirit extended to bed as well and in her infatuation she agreed to much.
And, of course, they travelled. Favourite destinations revisited, and places new to one or other or both. He spent his air miles on upgrades, and she kept a list of all the countries in the world, ticking them off as they visited. Years have passed since that smile, that airport, and never once has she been scared of flying. But now, looking beyond the reflection of them as a happy couple off on holiday, she scans the dark winter sky for a longer flash of lightning, heavier snow, hail, anything to delay the flight.
“David,” she says when they reach the line up. “I’m scared.”
A couple arrive right behind them, all Portuguese noise and laughter. They have too much hand luggage, big bags from Toys ‘R Us and Mastermind. Lisa averts her eyes.
“Scared? Scared of what?”
“It’s-,” she barely believes she’s about to say the words aloud and she lowers her voice so the laughing couple can’t hear. “I had a premonition that this flight is going to crash.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” A touch impatient. Understandably.
She tries to explain her nightmare, though it’s difficult to describe the Caribbean in terms of menace. “I’m serious. I’m worried this plane is going to go down. Please take me seriously, I’ve never said anything like this before.”
His shakes his head, the merest movement. “But you have. And you were wrong then too.”
“Was I?” She’d been so highly medicated, she only had his version of what she’d said. No proof.
“Don’t. Lisa. Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she hisses, aware the couple behind them is letting the space between them grow, not wanting to be infected with someone else’s pre-holiday domestic. But he says nothing.
If in his silence you hear ‘don’t mention the operation’ you will feel sharp cramps in your abdomen If in his silence you hear ‘don’t mention the baby’ you will feel a stabbing ache in your heart
“Next,” from the count
er. It’s a blonde woman, who smiles at David because that’s what women do, they smile at him, his good looks, his charm, his sense of humour.
He puts down the tickets and his passport, holds out her hand for hers. Fumbling, she spills her purse, kneels to pick it up, the lipstick and pen and house keys and pain killers. Standing again, she places her passport on the counter, but leaves her hand on top of it. “Sorry,” she said when the blonde woman reaches for it. She looks at David. “No. I can’t.”
“Lisa. Honey. We’re holding up the line.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t get on that plane. I can’t.”
He sighs, glances at the woman. “Give us a moment.” Reaching for his bag with one hand, he pulls Lisa to the side with his other. “What is this really all about?”
“I told you. I’m convinced. This plane is going to crash.”
“Unlikely.” He tries again. “You didn’t sleep well, you’re tired.”
“It’s my instinct.”
“And you trust it.”
“I should. I should have learned by now-” She bites off the end of the sentence, snatches back the words before she can speak them aloud.
If you follow the doctor’s recommendation for a medically based termination, you might save a child from a brief life of extreme pain If you choose to demand a third and fourth opinion, you might have a healthy baby
She’s not sure, she can never be sure, if she really did have that same shiver of unease moments before she was wheeled into the operating room, or if it’s only with hindsight that she feels she ought to have been wary, ought to have asked for more tests. She wills herself to listen to David.
“You - we - need this holiday,” he’s saying. “Let’s get on the plane, have a glass of wine and dinner then have a good rest. You love waking up in a new climate, a different time zone.”
It’s true. She does.
“And tomorrow morning we’ll go find some sea lions for you,” he says. “First thing after breakfast. Which will be excellent coffee with a fresh pastry, warm from the oven. Cafe con leche and bizcocho.”
He knows her. Of course, after all these years, he knows her. Her stomach muscles unclench, just a fraction. He listens, he cares. If she says nothing more they’ll check in, put their matching suit carriers on the conveyor belt and go and find two chairs in the Maple Leaf Lounge. She can look at a newspaper while he reads The Economist. On the plane they’ll have a drink, two, and dinner, watching different movies but sharing the same air, same space. Then he’ll sleep, and she’ll doze through another movie, the earbuds falling away so there is only the tiny echo of sound wafting up from her lap.
It can be done. She’ll ask him to tell her his childhood stories again. They’ll make up the itinerary as they go along - walking the unfamiliar streets, visiting museums and beaches, drinking local red wine with dinner. If she stands here, perfectly still, she can imagine herself into a restaurant with a view. Feel his hand in hers as they explore some little town. Sitting next to him in a rental car, she’ll put her bare feet up on the dash, follow the map with her finger as they wind their way to the coast. There must be a ferry over to Buenos Aires where they can spend the weekend pretending they’re still in their twenties. It is the Rio de Plata, isn’t it?
There. If she can name that estuary, she can do this. She nods, once.
Their spot in the line is gone, the blonde woman gives no indication that they can cut back in, so they go to the end, waiting behind a couple and their teens, all four of them staring at cell phones.
The Rio de la Plata. River Plate. The River of Silver. A drowned river valley.
There’s a rumble of thunder and the lights flicker. A collective gasp. She bites her lip and looks down at her hands, clutching her passport. Breathes, in and out, past the lump in her throat.
Worst case scenario, the plane does go down. Will they die before they hit the water or will they drown, their remains consumed by sharks? What if he manages to survive - if anyone survives it will be David - will he remember this conversation? She can still refuse to fly. And if the flight crashes without her on it what will she feel? Unbearable sorrow? Vindication? No. Relief. The thought, so clear, shocks her.
It’s an effort to take two steps closer to the desk when the line moves. Does she trust her husband? Don’t answer that, she warns herself. Say nothing.
If you’ll do anything for your marriage, you will terminate this pregnancy If you’ll do anything for a baby, you will terminate this marriage
When they reach the desk she lets him swing both bags on to the scale, pick up both passports and boarding passes from the disinterested man. Follows him to security, answers the questions, takes off her shoes and watch and coat and empties her pockets.
In the lounge he pours them each a glass of wine and fills a ramekin with olives. She speaks. “If there is a crash, and I die but you survive, what will you miss most about me?”
“Not this crazy talk about premonitions,” he says. He opens his magazine.
“For me it’s the shared memories.” She keeps her voice low. “Having no one to turn to and say ‘remember when?’ about one of the places we discovered together. A path we followed, a moment when no one else was there.”
He turns the page with such force that it tears. “We’re going on holiday to make new memories,” he says, his voice barely audible. “Not re-hash old ones.”
There is an announcement about their flight, the weather is causing delays.
She opens the paper, reads a headline about a multi-car pileup and closes her eyes before she can see the photograph, read about the fatalities. She can still refuse. Until she steps on the plane, in fact, until it has taken off, she can still refuse. There will be a fuss because her bag will have to be pulled. She plays out that scenario, hears his terse voice and the words he might say. It might be as simple as “are you sure, okay then, see you in two weeks.” It might be as final as “are you sure, okay then, you’ve made up your mind.” She could spend the time he was away packing her things and moving out.
She blinks herself back to reality, closes the newspaper, looks around the lounge. This is not the place to end their marriage. A last whispered argument is not what this past year and a half has been leading towards.
But her brief moment of courage, conviction that she can do this, has passed. This has no hope of being a successful holiday. The meals will be mostly silence, with patches of stilted conversation, between sips of the red wine. The sea lions, if they find them, will be dark blurry lumps through her tears. They won’t break up while they’re away but they’re already broken.
If-
If-
Maybe it’s not a premonition. Maybe she’s hoping for a plane crash. She thinks of all the films she’s watched and books she’s read, all she really knows of plane crashes. Is there a warning? Or just a shudder and a falling away? In the movie version it would be a montage, a slow-motion of the crash juxtaposed over the happiest moments of their marriage.
The Portuguese-speaking couple arrive with two more bags, duty-free. Still laughing, as if determined that their holiday won’t end until their plane touches down. They pile the bags of presents for their children in an alcove and head for the hot cheesy snacks. Lisa hears the neat snap as they open bottles of beer. That use to be us, she thinks, watching them sit with their backs to the room. Imagining the smell of their food makes her queasy. Phantom morning sickness.
The storm is over. There’s an announcement apologizing for the delay, thanking them for their patience. A few more checks and they’ll start boarding, please make your way to the gate, have your photo identification open at the picture page.
David stands. He’s an Altitude member, super elite. This is how he upgrades them to business, why they’re allowed to board as soon as the gates open. Get the best of the overhead storage, the pillows and blankets, the first glass of champagne.
Lisa remains seated. Considers her options.
If you
stand, you will follow your husband and board the plane
If you were a different person, you would have risked carrying your baby full term
Preservation
Valerie heard the door open and the sound of footsteps in sensible shoes, but she didn’t acknowledge whoever was there, didn’t turn away from her mother, still and silent in the hospital bed.
“Hello, Valerie.”
She looked then. “Darlene.”
“You look rough.”
Was her older sister stating the obvious as a show of sympathy? If so, neither the tone of her voice nor her face made it apparent. Valerie ran her hand through her lank hair, imagined her eyes smudged with the crusty remains of days-old makeup. “I’ve been here for two days. I guess I probably do look rough.” She heard her own voice, harsh and defensive.
“I’ll stay with Mum.” Darlene’s voice was a little softer, maybe. “Why don’t you go home, have a shower and get some sleep?”
Her sister’s suggestion sounded like an order and Valerie’s first instinct was to refuse to obey. Had it been different when they were children? As teenagers they’d clashed on a daily basis, as adults only grown farther apart. They worked at the same university now, and lived less than an hour’s drive from each other. Yet they met only for holiday meals, more often than not at their mother’s house.
“I’ll call you if she wakes up.”
“When. When she wakes up,” said Valerie. She leaned closer to her mother, kissed her forehead. “Look, Mum. Darlene’s here. She’s going to visit with you for a while. I’ll be back later. I love you. I love you, Mum.” No hint her mother could hear her. To Darlene she said, “We’re on page one-o-six,” and placed the novel on the bedside table.
She stood, expecting her sister to take her place in the hard chair, but Darlene followed her into the hallway. “Valerie. I appreciate you’re the more optimistic of the two of us, you always have been, but our mother has had two major strokes. She’s been unresponsive since Wednesday. You have to know it’s possible she won’t recover.”