Banishing Verona

by Margot Livesey

  “But,” he said, “I can’t fly.”

  At first she thought he was refusing. No, he meant he had no idea how to buy a ticket. She said she would get Emmanuel to help. “I’m sure he’s good at that kind of thing. Please, will you come?”

  He started to say something she couldn’t follow, something about airplanes; then he paused. Out of the machine came the single, firm syllable: “Yes.”

  Before she could thank him, the connection stuttered and disappeared. When she called back the number was unavailable. Was it possible that she was planning to spend her life with a painter, almost ten years younger than herself, who did not know how to book an airline ticket? But I can book tickets, she thought. Zeke has other talents, like telling the truth. I’ll teach him about the world, and he’ll teach me how to be simple and truthful and the same with everyone.

  Zeke

  19

  The flight took off seven minutes late and they passed rapidly through the clouds. Zeke did not relinquish his hold on the armrests until the pilot announced that they had reached their cruising altitude, an uncountable number of feet above the Irish Sea. Then slowly, cautiously, he relaxed the fingers of his left hand and, when nothing terrible happened, his right. It was unlikely that his grip contributed to their continued elevation—for years he had watched the planes passing over London with no apparent help from him—but who could tell? Perhaps one passenger was always responsible for keeping the plane aloft. Mavis had told him about a study comparing two groups of cancer patients. Both received identical medical treatment, but a convent of nuns prayed daily for one group while the other was left to the usual secular devices. The recovery rate among those prayed for was significantly higher.

  Why, he had asked.

  Who knows? Mavis had smiled. The whole point of prayer is that it doesn’t make sense. I find it reassuring that there are matters beyond our understanding.

  Zeke didn’t, perhaps because he had so many more candidates for incomprehension than did Mavis. Now he considered all that he did not know about flying. If only he’d taken the trouble to go to the library before he boarded the plane. He knew roughly that the fuel was converted into energy which moved the turbines, the turbines displaced air, which, combined with the angle of the wings, drove the plane forward and upward, but this was not a situation in which to leave anything to chance. He craned his neck, listening carefully. As far as he could tell, the engine was grinding away as it had been since they reached their cruising altitude. “I’m praying for you,” he whispered to the cogs, wheels, nuts, and bolts on which, presumably, their progress depended.

  Above his head was a light, a nozzle that, when twisted, delivered a puff of stale air, and a panel. According to the jaunty film that had appeared on the screen in front of him while the plane was waiting to depart, in case of emergency an oxygen mask would drop down from this panel. “Hold the mask over your nose and mouth and breathe normally,” the film instructed, showing calm well-dressed people holding little yellow plastic buckets to their faces. Then a different set of calm well-dressed people put on life jackets, inflated them, and blew whistles. If only, Zeke thought, I’d brought my own life jacket, but it hadn’t been on Emmanuel’s list.

  The important thing, Emmanuel had said as they parted at security, is not to think about the fact that you can’t get out. Once, on a flight to Majorca, a woman tried to force the door. It was a mess. Just pretend you’re on the Picadilly Line, per usual, and you’ll be fine.

  Now, leaning forward in his aisle seat, Zeke saw the other side of the clouds, white and surprisingly hard-edged, like the icing they used on Christmas cakes, and then even those were gone. The skies were bright and empty. No birds, no other planes, nothing to count. He remembered hearing a story on the radio about a giant asteroid, far away in outer space, that was heading toward the earth; when it arrived, in approximately nine hundred years, life in its present forms would end. Surely by that time, he thought selfishly, Ms. F and her descendants will have fulfilled their hearts’ desires.

  Between him and the window sat a courtly dark-skinned man who, even before takeoff, had already fallen asleep. In their few moments of mutual wakefulness he had carefully folded the jacket of his suit, taken off his shoes, wrapped himself in a blanket, pulled a black mask over his eyes, filled his ears with plugs of blue foam, and announced that he was going to catch some z’s. “Do me a favor,” he had said to Zeke. “Don’t let them wake me up for food or drink.”

  How trusting he was. If there was an emergency, Zeke would have to take care of his oxygen mask as well as his own. Still, he was glad to be protected from the window; it was hard not to worry that the small oval panes might fall out and he would find himself sucked into the brilliant beyond. Another reason to keep his seat belt tightly fastened.

  While he was waiting to board, Zeke had watched the planes rolling back and forth across the tarmac and tried to imagine what they were like inside. Now he registered that the cabin, for all that the plane had looked so huge, was really not much larger than two trains spliced together. And, as with the interior of a train, everything in sight was made of plastic or metal or fabric. The people too were much more like regular travelers than he had expected. With the exception of his sleeping neighbor, most of them were dressed as if they were on their way to go shopping. The woman immediately across the aisle from him, for instance, was wearing a long-sleeved turquoise T-shirt with dungarees and a red cardigan. He himself had given considerable thought as to what to wear, the clothes in which he would be admitted to America and once again put his arms around Verona, and had finally chosen a pair of black trousers, polished black shoes, a neatly ironed blue shirt, and a black V-neck pullover. Bloody hell, Emmanuel had said when they met that morning, you look like you’re going for a job interview.

  Suddenly the woman in the navy blue uniform, who had been pushing the metal trolley down the aisle, stopped beside his seat, fixed her eyes on him, and spoke. He caught only one word: something.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Would you like something to drink, sir?” She bent toward him, one hand holding a small plastic bag and a white napkin, while the other pulled down a square of gray plastic from the back of the seat in front so that it rested a few inches above his knees.

  “What sort of drink?” he said, and quickly, her mouth was already moving again, asked for water.

  “Water?” she said, and scooped ice cubes into a plastic glass, filled it with water, and placed it in the circular depression on the right side of the tray.

  The plastic bag turned out to hold peanuts, which he ignored, but the water he drank, doing his best to avoid the ice. Still holding the glass, he pushed the tray up—it snapped shut in a satisfying manner—and pulled out the contents of the seat pocket in front of him. His haul included a paper bag bearing the words IN CASE OF MOTION SICKNESS; a magazine, filled with photographs of face cream, perfume, watches, and scotch, so glossy that it almost slipped from his touch; another magazine that listed things to do when you returned to earth—play golf in Arizona, buy glass in Venice, listen to Mozart in Prague—and finally a list of safety instructions, showing emergency exits, how to use the life jacket, the system of inflatable rafts available in case of a water landing.

  Holding the last, Zeke cautiously extricated himself from his seat and, following behind the drinks cart, circled the plane, checking on the exits. Most of his fellow passengers had by now drawn plastic shades over their windows in order to watch films, and the dimly lit plane had a shimmering, mysterious quality. Keeping a careful distance, Zeke peered out of the window beside one of the emergency exits—PULL DOWN, read a threatening red lever—and glimpsed far, far below a patch of dark water, the Atlantic Ocean going wave, wave, wave. Turning around, he counted the passengers, fifty-seven unless some children were too small to be visible, and the seats, eighty-two, in his section.

  With this information he was able to return to his seat and, while continuing to focus one p
art of his brain—the chamber at the back—on keeping the plane aloft, enjoy the little tray of food that the stewardess set before him. Even the biscuits and the cheese, he noted with pleasure, were individually wrapped. Someone, somewhere, knew how to count. As he ate, he pictured Verona making this journey a few days ago, the seat belt wedged beneath her belly. She had eaten the same neat food. Perhaps she had even sat in this very seat, 22B; the mere possibility made him happy.

  When the meal was gone, dessert washed down with a cup of tea so tepid his mother would have hurled it to the floor, he leaned over to ask the girl across the aisle if she could show him how to watch a film. He had noticed, before the meal came, the way she bent toward the screen, utterly absorbed.

  “What would you like to see?” she asked, flipping up one earphone but not taking her gaze off the screen.

  “Something not too alarming.”

  “What’s your idea of alarming?”

  “Violence, talking animals, chase scenes, anything to do with boats or airplanes, too much nature, sports.”

  She pressed a button and at last turned her wide bespectacled eyes in his direction. In the dim light her skin was opalescent and her nose, beneath the dark framed glasses, was unusually small and straight. “How do you feel about nudity?” she said.

  “Nudity is—” he was about to say fine, only to be shot through with the realization that until he had seen Verona again he wanted to see no one naked of either gender, any age, even in some stupid film. “Out of the question,” he concluded.

  “So you want to watch mass entertainment but you’re unwilling to countenance the mass preoccupations.”

  “Countenance?” His anxieties were momentarily lulled by the beauty of the word.

  “The verb means give approval, the noun means face.”

  “I know what it means. It’s just not a word one hears very often.”

  “Most people use only a small part of their vocabulary. My attitude is that, besides the opposable thumb, language is one of the few perks of being human.” Her head bobbed emphatically. “Everyone should try to use a new word every day.”

  “That should be easy in America,” Zeke said, and caught a movement at the edge of his gaze. A small girl in pink was staring up at him from the aisle, her eyes and mouth forming three almost perfect circles. He widened his own eyes to match and she continued her unsteady progress. A man with jeans worn almost white at the knee followed. Zeke turned back to the woman across the aisle. “We’ll be learning all these new words.”

  “Like wow, and gee, and neat. Yes, I’m sure my vocabulary will enjoy a huge surge forward in the New World.”

  “They’re not posh, like countenance,” said Zeke, “but that doesn’t mean they’re not words.”

  “You’re right,” she conceded. “Basically I’m a snob. I think the English language reached its zenith with the Victorians and has been going downhill ever since. Now let’s see about a film for you. This is a challenge. My name is Jill Irving, by the way.” She fished a magazine out of her seat pocket, the one about golf and Venice, and studied a page at the back. Zeke watched her. Nothing she said was especially reassuring, but her peppery remarks made him feel calmer. This woman did not seem as if she were about to die, or even as if she were engrossed in fending off the possibility. For several minutes, he realized, he had forgotten his duty to keep the plane aloft, and look—nothing terrible had happened.

  Forty-five minutes later he was in the middle of watching the film Jill had chosen for him—about a boy from the Midlands who, in spite of his coal-miner father, wants to be a ballet dancer—when his body, and everyone else’s, leaped into the air and thudded back down.

  A man’s voice, American, came over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, as you’ll have noticed we’re encountering a little turbulence. Please return to your seats and keep your seat belts fastened until I turn off the sign. I’m searching for smoother air. We’ll be out of this soon.”

  Zeke pulled his belt tighter. Please, he thought. Oh, why had he forgotten for a second to pray? Every molecule of his attention should have been focused on keeping the turbines going. He looked over at Jill. Her attention remained, unwaveringly, on the film. “Excuse me,” he said.

  She remained intent.

  “Excuse me,” he repeated and leaned over to tug her sleeve. “Are we about to crash?”

  “Crash?” The plane leaped up and down again. At the same moment Jill’s mouth widened, showing two rows of small regular teeth. “Have you been on a plane before?”

  “This is my first time.”

  “What we’re experiencing is called turbulence. For some reason, and this part I can’t explain, the air is disturbed with currents that are bouncing our plane around, but it isn’t dangerous, I promise.” She patted his hand, a sure, warm touch. “No one else is worried.”

  Looking around, he discovered she was right. Across the aisle a stewardess was bent over a couple, talking energetically; Jill’s seatmates were continuing to play cards; the little girl in pink, it was true, was crying but only because the man with faded jeans was refusing to let her continue her perambulations. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This would be a particularly inconvenient time for me to die.”

  Jill’s head tilted. “I hope you’ll feel that way for a long time. Now if you’ll excuse me, this is a particularly intense scene in my film.”

  Zeke watched his tiny screen and tried not to think about Verona; he could not bear to calculate how many separate, individual units of breath and thought had to be passed through before he was back in her company. My job at the moment, he told himself, is to stay airborne. More snacks were served, more drinks; his companion slept on, peacefully, behind his mask. He thought of birds with their hollow bones and huge appetites.

  They were over the Maritimes, still several hundred miles from Boston, when a commotion rippled through the plane. Zeke saw it pass down the cabin, people removing their earphones, whispering to each other, sitting up straighter to peer over the seat in front. Jill too was leaning forward. Then she was on her feet, heading toward the front of the plane. She had taken a couple of steps when she stopped and turned back to Zeke. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said. “I’m a nurse. I think someone needs help, but you’re quite safe. The plane is fine.”

  Gradually he understood, how he couldn’t say, that a woman in business class had collapsed. At once he undid his seat belt and followed Jill. I was looking in the wrong direction, he thought again. He remembered the man on the bus last autumn sliding to the floor, his father.

  “Sir,” said a flight attendant, raising her hand.

  He raised his own hand, pointing, to indicate an urgent summons, and she stepped back. He reached the cabin he had passed through when boarding the plane, where the seats were much larger and fewer. A knot of people were gathered in the far aisle and from the knot rose a voice, Jill’s, counting: “One, one, two, two, one, one.” Somehow his urgency persuaded people to let him through. Jill was bent over, pummeling a woman’s chest. Zeke glimpsed flesh, underwear. “Tell me what to do,” he said, kneeling beside her. “Don’t they have those shock things?”

  “They’re looking for them,” she gasped. “Give me your hands.” She grabbed his hands and placed them where hers had been. “Keep pressing,” she said. “Keep counting aloud. Press on one, release on two. I’m going to try mouth-to-mouth.”

  He pressed, he counted, scarcely conscious that what he touched was a woman. Only a few hours ago she had made her way to Heathrow; perhaps he and Emmanuel had sat next to her on the train from Paddington or he had stood behind her in line, watching her possessions pass through the X-ray tunnel. Beside him Jill’s motions were the opposite of his: when he pressed down she raised her head; when he rocked back she bent to force air into the woman’s mouth.

  The crowd parted and a man in uniform was bending over them with a red case. He handed two plastic disks attached to wires to Jill. She placed the disks on different parts of the ri
b cage. Zeke took the woman’s warm, limp hand in his. Please, heart, start beating. Please, lungs, start breathing.

  A spooky mechanical voice interrupted his litany. “Stand back. Stand back. No one must touch the patient.”

  Just as Zeke grasped that the machine was issuing instructions, Jill seized his arm and pulled him away. “Go,” she said.

  Four times the woman’s body convulsed in response to the current. Then Jill held up her hand. She put her fingers to the woman’s throat and he watched her eyes turn inward—he knew no other way to describe the motion—as she listened to whatever message the flesh was transmitting.

  “Her heart’s beating,” she said quietly, and launched into a flurry of instructions.

  The woman was lifted from the floor and laid in a makeshift bed; pillows and blankets were organized; a message was sent ahead to have an ambulance waiting in Boston. The pilot announced that a passenger had collapsed but luckily there was a nurse aboard. Jill sat beside the woman, holding an oxygen mask to her face.

  “Why did you come after me?” she said. “Are you trained in first aid?”

  “Not really. I did do a course.” He pictured the room at the local library, where he had gone last autumn after the man on the bus. In two hours Winifred, the registered nurse, had walked them through what she called the three biggies: choking, drowning, and heart attacks, life-threatening situations in which anyone with a little knowledge could make a difference. They had taken turns practicing CPR and artificial respiration on the dummies, coaching each other while Winifred passed from group to group, correcting and explaining. She had praised Zeke’s Heimlich maneuver. You’re pushing at just the right angle, she had said.