The Falling Woman: A Novel

by Richard Farrell

  As Dickie Gray walked, he favored his left leg, but he still moved quickly, purposefully, despite the limp. At the crosswalks, he fiddled with change in his pockets. Radford sensed that the man’s mind was elsewhere. A busload of tourists passed, the fumes from the coach mixing with the smell of mown grass. There were a thousand questions Radford wanted to ask, a lifetime of experience and wisdom he wanted to absorb, but he took his cues from the elder man’s silence. Radford had grown up around silent men. He understood their cues and codes.

  They passed a dozen perfectly acceptable bars and restaurants before they stopped at Sam’s. The facade was white brick; inside was an Irish pub with dim lighting. The Clancy Brothers played from overhead speakers. Radford liked the place immediately. It was worth the twenty-minute walk.

  The bartender waved at Gray, who ordered whiskey and a beer, along with a Reuben sandwich. Radford asked for a Belgian IPA and held off on food. No reason to compound the trouble brewing across the river. He told himself he’d have a quick drink, go over the results from Yankee X-Ray, and get to the appointment. Wendy would have to understand.

  “How long have you been at the agency?” Gray asked.

  Radford told Gray that he’d been an investigator for four years, omitting his first three years—when he’d worked at the agency as an analyst—as if they’d never happened.

  “You need more experience in the field,” he said. “It takes time to get good at this work. Investigating a crash is one part archaeology, one part guesswork, and one part origami. You don’t learn this job overnight.”

  Radford nodded. He wanted to be an expert, to command the same respect he felt toward Gray. But how did he get there without more experience? There were fewer major accidents these days, fewer opportunities for him to prove himself.

  “Things are changing,” Gray said, sipping his whiskey. “Everything today is by the book. Investigators are losing the feel for this job. I’m happy I’m on my way out.”

  Radford didn’t want to use the slice of lemon or the glass that came with his beer. Somehow it seemed effete, something that Gray would notice. He fingered the juicy flesh and then pushed the lemon aside.

  “You know what you need to succeed in this job?” Gray said. “You need to ask the right questions. If you ask the right questions, you won’t need to worry about the answers. Now tell me about Yankee X-Ray.”

  Radford detailed the information about weather, runway conditions, and the pilot’s logbook. “Tox screen came back clean,” he said. “On the pilot and the injured passenger.”

  “So, what are the questions you need to ask?” Gray said.

  “Was this kid in over his head?” Radford said.

  “You ran some simulated approaches?” Gray asked. “You have what, about four hundred hours?”

  Radford had less than half that flight time, but he didn’t correct his boss. He was ashamed of his scant experience. Gray probably had logged twenty times that number in the sky.

  “Take me through the approach.”

  Radford took his boss, step by step, through the landing approach. He described the winds, the tree line, and the displaced threshold at the downwind end of the runway. He resisted the urge to tell the old man how much he admired him, and how much he wanted Gray’s approval. The sandwich arrived, and Gray ordered another drink, but this time Radford demurred. He needed to be across the river thirty minutes ago. Wendy was already texting him.

  Gray listened to Radford’s summary of the investigation, nodded, and asked direct and pointed questions. By the time Radford had finished, Gray had spotted more holes in the report than were in the Swiss cheese on the Reuben. He felt sick to his stomach and began to apologize for mishandling the report.

  “I want to do good work,” he said, certain he’d failed his first real test.

  “I’ll say it again—ask the right questions. You’re never smarter than the evidence. Always let the evidence provide answers.”

  His phone vibrated once more. He worried that Wendy might divorce him after this. Gray flipped through the written report and ripped out the addendum.

  “Keep this,” he said. “Remind yourself from time to time. Always learn something. This work will demand more than it will return. It will require you to see things no one should have to see, pay attention to details no one cares about. The work will keep you away from people who love you, and will leave you to fend for yourself.”

  The phone kept buzzing. Gray’s words already coming true. Radford wanted to know if he’d passed. Would Gray sign off on the report? Would he get any hint of validation? He knew better than to ask.

  Gray said, “We’ve gone almost a decade without a major. I’m going to retire on that streak. Ten years without a major. Ten years without any fatalities on the commercial side. But no one is going to build a statue of me. Find a balance, son. Don’t make this job your life.”

  Then he took out a pen, signed the report, and handed it back to Radford.

  Forty-five minutes later, Radford arrived at the doctor’s office. Wendy waited in the building’s lobby. He was over an hour late. He expected her to cry, to shout and fall into despondency right there on the spot. Instead, she calmly asked about his meeting with Dickie Gray.

  “The man’s incredible,” he said. He knew better than to go into details, but he told her about the bar and their conversation. She listened and smiled while he finished.

  “Well,” she said, “Jesus, Charlie. Don’t make me ask. Did he sign the report?”

  Radford smiled and pulled her close. He felt her warm body press against his, and was happy.

  “What happened upstairs?” he said.

  “I went alone, Charlie. What choice did I have?”

  7

  The concourse at Dulles International Airport brimmed with the Friday-evening energy of businessmen and lobbyists rushing home for the weekend. Spring storms over the Midwest created delays across the system. Lines queued at the gates, at customer service kiosks. Irate passengers demanded drink coupons, hotel vouchers, upgrades to first class. Crowds gathered around chain restaurants, jockeying for tables and overpriced hamburgers. Outside, the delays clogged taxiways, the air heavy with jet fuel and Piedmont humidity.

  Erin dragged her suitcase through the bustling departure lounge at Dulles, wondering if it was too late to reconsider. Doug was right. She was in no condition to travel. She should’ve stayed home, resting, watching television, or getting her hands dirty in the zinnias. Her lower back burned. Both her knees had swollen to the size of grapefruits. With every step, her feet felt pierced by nails. She worried that she might collapse before reaching the gate. There was a time when she ran two marathons a year. Qualified for Boston. Won her age group more than once. Not anymore. This level of physical debilitation was staggering. She couldn’t walk a hundred yards without pain.

  At last, an airline agent waved her forward. The woman smiled, a familiar mix of pity and disgust. Erin knew that no amount of makeup could mask the consequences of sixteen weeks of poison. Her once lustrous hair grew in clumps and patches beneath her head scarf, like meadow grass in winter. After a few keystrokes and much consternation, her bags were checked and boarding passes printed.

  “Do you need assistance to get down to the gate?” the agent asked.

  Erin didn’t answer, just grabbed her ticket and left.

  It was all so normal. Long, hot security lines. Crowds of people staring into phones. As she approached the checkpoint, her bowels slackened. A cold sweat spread down her back.

  On the long list of cancer’s many miseries, incontinence ranked near the top. She’d made it six months without fouling herself in public, a streak verging on the mythic among pancreatic cancer patients. Most of her peers could make no such a claim. At all times though, she tracked a mental map to the nearest restroom, every step tethered to her turbulent bowels. She planned escape routes, backup plans if she encountered a full house. Already, she was worrying about the departure, those intermi
nable minutes while the seat belt sign glowed. Mercifully, the security line moved quickly.

  She hadn’t planned to call Adam, but the relief she felt when she reached the gate buoyed her spirits. The next thing she knew, his voice was on the phone.

  “Jesus, it’s good to hear from you,” Adam said.

  What was it about that man’s voice? His sincerity felt like warm rain on her skin, like a burst of light shot through darkness. She told him about the trip—one week among other cancer survivors, a term she hated, with its implicit finality. Surviving, perhaps, but not a survivor. Survivor implied a category that simply didn’t exist.

  “How are you?” he asked. “What are they telling you?”

  She lied about her prognosis, about the headaches and nausea. She exaggerated her chances for a full recovery. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted his desire, which she knew was gone.

  “I wish you’d told me,” he said. “I could’ve come out to see you.”

  Adam’s voice, the implication of his offer, unsettled her. Something stirred in her hips, in the place she thought had gone dormant.

  “I need this trip,” she said, doubting her own sincerity. “I need to be alone.”

  She wanted to crawl into Adam’s arms, to feel his shoulder against her cheek, to rub her hand across his stomach. But what she couldn’t tolerate, what she wouldn’t risk, was his rejection. She pictured the shape of his back, the way his lips once felt on her thighs. For a bright moment, she imagined slipping away from the retreat center, finding him at a café in Nob Hill, going upstairs to a hotel room. So much time had passed since she’d felt passion.

  Adam used to visit her in the hospital until it became too much. He’d sneak away from the office—bring her books, little bars of Belgian chocolate. She was in and out of hospitals so much at the beginning. Once, he actually passed Doug in the hallway. After that, she told him, no more. But she never regretted one second of their time together. How foolish not to take grand chances in life, she thought. How seldom they arose. How quickly it could all be snuffed out.

  “Listen,” he said. “I could get away. I can fly out for the weekend. I’m not trying to push it, but I miss you.”

  Then she caught her reflection in a window. Her once-high cheekbones had sunk, as if someone had carved out her skull like a pumpkin. Her long honey-colored hair was now a sparse desert of patchy fuzz. Her battered body was only a shell of her former self. He’d take one look at me . . . , she thought, letting the notion go unfinished.

  “Not now,” she said. “Soon, though. I promise,” lying to him only to spare herself the truth.

  Soon. What did the word mean anymore? Soon used to mean the vague but certain future—a month, next fall, before the kids graduated high school. Soon used to mean not now, noncommittal time borne out of abundance. So much time to waste, so many limitless tomorrows. She used to measure life by bountiful soons: soon-hours, soon-days, soon-decades. Now soon led only toward darkness. Termination.

  “I’m serious,” Adam said. “Say the word, and I’ll be there. I’ll book my ticket right now.”

  “They have birds here, in the airport,” she said. “They’re amazing.”

  “Birds?”

  Thirty miles away, Charlie and Wendy walked along the Potomac River, on the Virginia side, down South Union Street just a few blocks from their condo. Charlie loved the brick buildings of Old Town, where restaurants and shops retained a village feel in the midst of the crushing power of urban commerce and government. He loved cobblestone sidewalks in snow, dew-slick bike trails on an early morning jog. They spent many weekends walking these streets. Sacred time reading books in Waterfront Park, leisurely breakfasts, and catching movies at the cinema and drafthouse. They had fallen in love here, built a marriage here. Did she really want to abandon all that? He couldn’t shake the feeling that her desire for a child would pass. He didn’t want to be a father, maybe because his own father hadn’t exactly blazed a trail for him. Wendy, on the other hand, had come from good stock, a good home, Currier & Ives to his Clampetts.

  She spoke little as they walked. A thick layer of clouds settled over the buildings. The air smelled of rain. For the first time, he worried about the integrity of their marriage. Would they still be together in ten years? He would never leave her, but he worried he wasn’t enough, worried he’d disappoint her as a husband, as a man. It was an odd, unsettling thought. The way everything felt so tentative. He wanted to forget about work, about children, about everything but Wendy. She’d worn the long blue dress he loved. A dark sweater covered her shoulders. To him, she was always beautiful; it didn’t matter what she wore. He wanted to kiss her, to take her home and make love to her.

  He tried to imagine a future without her. Tried to picture her on a date with another man, in the bedroom. The thought made him feel nauseous.

  She took his hand as they passed Kempers, his favorite restaurant on Prince Street, and kept walking south, to where the neighborhoods became less gentrified. A raw smell of the tidal basin fouled the air. They walked four blocks in silence. He wanted to tease apart the nuances of her mood. She seemed happy tonight, despite the trouble they’d been having. He wished he could bottle up this feeling, to save it for when her darkness returned. Finally, she turned a corner and stopped at an Italian place. Flecked paint on the sign out front against brick walls gave the old building a rustic feel. Thick red curtains on the windows. She led him inside, ordered a glass of wine, and he ordered a beer. The waiter brought a basket of warm bread.

  He talked more about the meeting with Gray. She offered him a taste of her wine. Her voice was calm, soothing and familiar, and the wine softened her eyes, brought a hint of color to her cheeks. He remembered their first date, a fumbling affair after the night she’d brought the application to his apartment. He fell in love fast, so that when he saw her again a week later, and knew that she still had a boyfriend, his emotions and desire were horribly conflicted. They’d gone out to dinner four blocks from where they were now, a restaurant that had long since closed. That night, he couldn’t eat, could barely say three coherent words. But she smiled at him and touched his arm across the table. After dinner, they walked through an old Civil War era cemetery on the way back to her apartment. She told him she loved going to that spot. They sat on a step and she rested her head on his shoulder. Later, curled up together on his couch, in a trembling voice, she’d confessed about the abuse, about the awful things her boyfriend had done to her.

  Why couldn’t things stay simple and pure?

  “We need to talk about it,” Wendy said now, breaking his reverie.

  “I know,” he said.

  8

  The plane arrived and taxied to the gate. The pilots’ faces appeared in the windscreen, like those of innocent children playing a grown-up game. From the plane’s bulbous nose, gold and blue stripes traced down the length of the craft. Tiny American flags adorned the upturned wingtips. Lights flickered on the plane’s tail.

  “Birds?” Adam asked. Erin held the phone close to her ear, hoping to feel something more tangible than sound.

  The hallway behind the departure gate was decorated with porcelain cranes, modeled after origami paper cranes. An artist had affixed scores of these bone-white creations to walls and ceiling tiles, some birds in flight, others perched against the various signs in the cavernous concourse, fluttering over gift shops, soaring above the food court atrium. She’d read about the installation—a thousand cranes, all carved by local Japanese artists—to be hung inside the airport. Adam listened as she described the birds. Unlike Doug, he never changed the subject, never made her feel ridiculous for rambling.

  “Like the book you used to read me,” she said.

  “Kawabata,” he said. “Some of our best days. How are your kids?”

  She told him about the twins, their first year of college almost behind them. Claire made the dean’s list, while Tory was eking out a C minus in algebra. He responded by talking about the tribu
lations of raising three prepubescent boys, all of them athletes and fiercely competitive. During their time together, they never talked about their kids. They understood what they were risking. She never shared a photo of the twins with him. Their children were off-limits, terra incognita during their brief but passionate affair. It felt strange, almost healthy to talk so openly about them now. The guilt she carried centered entirely on notions of family, of what family meant, and what it meant to risk that security. She knew that through their affair they weren’t gambling with their own lives but with the lives and destinies of all those people who depended upon them.

  He offered again to go to California, but the last thing she needed was more pity. She’d wallowed in pity for six months—her own, her family’s, and that of her friends. Anything but that. She told him what she needed most was solitude.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I just want to disappear. I can’t expect you to understand what that’s like.”

  “I’m trying,” he said.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  There were other words she wasn’t saying. Perhaps there always are.

  “Wait,” he said.

  What did he want? What did she? She wanted him to confirm that she was once desired, once loved deeply. But only silence followed his imperative. After her initial diagnosis, she was ashamed to tell Adam. She hated the thought of him viewing her as sick, dying. He found out at work. She knew her sudden break of their relationship must have rocked him, but he bounced back quickly. Nothing rattled him for long, which was one of the reasons she was so attracted to him. Equanimity of the highest order. As with a knight, adversity only glanced off his armor. On the other hand, she seemed to suffer punishments out of proportion for her sins. How many times had they actually slept together? Did that level of infidelity deserve a death sentence? By the time she began the first cycle of chemo, she’d almost convinced herself the affair had been a mistake. A wonderful, exquisite mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. With disease dominating her life, it was an easy lie to believe. Mired in despair, she reached out for anything to cling to, and for a while, especially those early weeks, she’d clung to Doug. She remembered why she’d loved Doug in the first place.