by Alice Adams
Lila, too, has trouble believing that they will escape. As she looks around at the tired clusters of people—no one, she observes again, is going it alone—she imagines that they will be there for months, that they are in fact refugees from some much larger disaster.
In the coffee shop, she finds Mark, and another man, and joins them. Mark got through to his wife, in Saratoga, who said that their chimney had fallen off, and that everything in the house that could break was broken. “But she’s okay,” says Mark, with a grin. “And the kids. You should have seen the waves in the swimming pool, she told me. You wouldn’t believe it. Tidal.”
From the lobby then, at first indistinctly, they hear an announcement: “… vans will begin to leave this hotel at nine-forty-five. Repeat: the San Francisco airport is clear.”
Lila’s seat on the morning plane is not nearly as good as the one the day before. Pushing her way down the aisle with her carry-on, she takes note of this fact, though today it seems extremely unimportant. And she does have a window seat.
Everyone on the plane is in a festive mood. People smile a lot, though many faces show considerable fatigue, the ravages of a long and anxious night. But an almost manic mood prevails: the airport is clear, we’re going home, the city has more or less survived. To all of which Lila adds to herself, and Karen is going back East, probably.
Everyone is seated, buckled in. The pilot’s voice is telling the flight attendants to prepare for departure. The engines start their roar; they roar and roar. And nothing happens.
This goes on for some time—ten minutes, fifteen—until the engines are turned off, and they are simply sitting there on the runway, in the October Canadian sunlight. But the atmosphere on the plane is less impatient than might be imagined; it is felt that at least they are on their way. There may even be a certain (unacknowledged, unconscious) relief at the delay: San Francisco and whatever lies ahead do not have to be faced quite so soon.
The pilot announces a small mechanical glitch, which will be taken care of right away. And, perhaps twenty minutes later, the engines start again. And they are off, almost: the plane starts down the runway, gathering speed, and then, quite suddenly, it slows, and stops.
Jesus Christ. Now really. What now? We’ll never. What in hell is going on? These sentiments echo around the cabin, where patience has worn audibly thin, until, apparently starting at the front row, where a smiling stewardess is standing, the rumor spreads: a dog has somehow got loose on the field; it will be a minute more. They have already been cleared for takeoff.
And then, with a motion that seems to be decisive, the plane moves forward, again. Glancing from her window, quite suddenly Lila sees—indeed!—a dog, running in the opposite direction, running back to Toronto. A large, lean, yellowish dog, whose gallop is purposeful, determined. He will get back to his place, but in the meantime he enjoys the run, the freedom of the forbidden field. His long nose swings up and down, his tail streams backward, a pennant, as Lila—watching from her window, headed at last back to San Francisco (probably)—begins in a quiet, controlled, and private way to laugh. “It was just so funny,” she will say to Julian, later. “The final thing, that dog. And he looked so proud! As though instead of getting in our way he had come to our rescue.”
Books by Alice Adams
Careless Love
Families and Survivors
Listening to Billie
Beautiful Girl (stories)
Rich Rewards
To See You Again (stories)
Superior Women
Return Trips (stories)
After You’ve Gone (stories)
Caroline’s Daughters
Mexico: Some Travels and Travelers There
Almost Perfect
A Southern Exposure
Medicine Men
The Last Lovely City (stories)
After the War
The Stories of Alice Adams
A Note About the Author
Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.