Pilot's Wife

by Anita Shreve

  “Robert called,” Julia said.

  Kathryn looked up, and Julia nodded.

  “I’ll call him from your bedroom,” Kathryn said.

  Julia’s room was, oddly, the smallest bedroom in the house. She had always maintained that she didn’t need much space. There was only her own single body in the bed, and she had always lived by the philosophy that less is more. But it was not without charm, a kind of feminine charm that Kathryn associated with women of that generation. Long pleated chintz drapes, an upholstered chair in a peach silk stripe, a pink chenille bedspread, and an item Kathryn hardly ever saw anymore — a dressing table with a skirt. Kathryn had often tried to imagine Julia at that table as a young woman, fixing her long dark hair, perhaps with thoughts of her husband and of the evening to come.

  The phone was on the dressing table. A voice Kathryn did not recognize answered on the first ring.

  “May I speak to Robert Hart?” she asked.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Kathryn Lyons.”

  “Just a minute,” the voice said.

  She could hear other voices in the background, male voices. She pictured her kitchen filled with men in suits.

  “Kathryn.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “I told your grandmother.”

  “I thought you might have.”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I have a car.”

  “Leave it there.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “I need directions.”

  “Robert.”

  “There are people here who want to ask you some questions. I think you and I should talk first. Also, you don’t want them at Julia’s house. Not with your daughter there.”

  “Robert, you’re scaring me.”

  “It’s OK. I’ll be right here with you.”

  Kathryn gave him the directions.

  “Robert, what questions?”

  There was a short silence at the other end of the line. It seemed to her that the silence was absolute, that all the voices in her distant kitchen were suddenly quiet.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.

  Mattie was blowing on her hot chocolate when Kathryn walked back into the kitchen.

  “I have to go,” Kathryn said. “There are some people at the house I need to talk to. From the airline.”

  “OK,” Mattie said.

  “I’ll call you,” Kathryn said, bending to kiss her daughter.

  Kathryn stood, in her parka, at the bottom of the drive. She had her hands in her pockets, her collar up. A bright, hard, dry cold without wind had settled in for the day. Normally, this was her favorite kind of weather.

  She saw the car in the distance, a gray shape moving rapidly along the road from town. Robert pulled up quickly, leaned over, and opened the door.

  She sat facing him with her back pressed against the door handle. In the harsh sunlight, she could see the smallest details of Robert’s face: the faintly bluish outline where a beard might have grown if he hadn’t shaved, the white ghost of skin below his sideburns where the hair was cut shorter than an old tan line, the under-shadow of his jaw. He put the car in park and turned toward her, laying his arm, like a bridge, between the two front seats.

  “What?” she asked.

  “There are two investigators from the Safety Board who want to talk to you.”

  “In my house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I have to answer their questions?”

  He looked away, toward the stone house, and then back again. He scratched his upper lip with his thumbnail.

  “Yes,” he said carefully. “If you’re well enough. You could always be not well enough, I suppose.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I can’t protect you from the crash investigation itself. Or from legal proceedings.”

  “Legal proceedings?”

  “In the event...”

  “I thought this was just a wild rumor.”

  “It is. At the moment.”

  “Why? What do you know? What is on the tape?”

  He tapped the bottom of the steering wheel with the fingers of his free hand. A steady rhythm, thinking.

  “A British technician with the British equivalent of our Safety Board who was in the room when the tape was first played called a woman he’s involved with who works at a BBC affiliate in Birmingham. He apparently made statements about the tape. I don’t know for certain what his motivation was in revealing this, or hers, but we can speculate. CNN is reporting what the BBC has reported. So at best, this is fourth hand.”

  “But it might be true.” “It might be true.”

  Kathryn shifted in her seat, swinging her knee up so that she was not so twisted in the waist. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  Robert removed a sheet of shiny white paper from his shirt pocket. He handed her the fax.

  “This is exactly how the bulletin was read over CNN,” he said.

  The fax was hard to read. The square letters, some with wavery stems, swam before her. She tried to focus on a sentence, to begin from the top.

  CNN has just learned that a source close to the investigation of Vision Flight 384 is reporting that the CVR — that’s the cockpit voice recorder — may, and we stress may, reveal an altercation between Captain Jack Lyons, an eleven-year veteran with Vision, and British flight engineer Trevor Sullivan just moments before the explosion of the T-900. According to as yet unconfirmed statements, a malfunctioning headset caused Sullivan to reach into Captain Jack Lyons’s flight bag fifty-eight minutes into the flight. The object that Sullivan then pulled out of the flight bag may, and again we stress may, have been the source of the explosion that ripped apart the T-900, sending one hundred and four passengers and crew to their deaths. In addition, the alleged source reports that the transcript of the last several seconds of Vision Flight 384 may indicate that a scuffle of some kind took place between Captain Lyons and Flight Engineer Sullivan, and that several expletives were uttered by Sullivan.

  Daniel Gorzyk, a spokesperson for the Safety Board, was heated earlier today in his denial of these allegations, which he called maliciously false and irresponsible. This report, we repeat, comes from an as yet unnamed source who claims to have been present when the tape from the CVR was played. The CVR, as we

  noted earlier, was located last night in the waters off Malin Head, in the Republic of Ireland. . . .

  Kathryn shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  Robert looked briefly at the ceiling of the car.

  “First of all, we don’t even know if it’s true. The Safety Board has already issued a strenuous reprimand. The source who leaked the quotes has apparently been fired. They won’t say his name, and he hasn’t come forward. And second of all, even if it is true, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Or even mean anything. Necessarily.”

  “But it does,” Kathryn said. “Something happened.” “Something happened,” Robert said.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  SHE STARES AT THE COUNTER, AT THE GREASY pots and glasses and the caked roasting pan, at the sickening pile of rotting vegetables in the sink, at the dishwasher, which is full of clean dishes and will have to be unloaded before she can even begin to clear the counter. Upstairs, she can hear the muted tap, tap, tapping of the keyboard and then the stuttered start of an online connection.

  She looks down at her wool skirt, her black tights, her sensible pumps. This afternoon, she had band practice after school and was late getting home. The three of them ate dinner in near silence — not so much from strain, she thought, as from exhaustion. Then Jack went up to his office, Mattie to her room to practice her clarinet. Kathryn was left in the kitchen.

  She climbs the stairs to Jack’s office and stands silently with her glass of wine,
leaning against the doorjamb. She has no articulate dialogue, just truncated thoughts, unfinished sentences. Phrases of frustration.

  Perhaps she has had too much to drink.

  Jack looks up at her with a vaguely puzzled expression on his face. He has on a flannel shirt and jeans. He’s put on weight recently, about ten pounds. He has a tendency to beefiness when he isn’t careful.

  — What’s happening? she asks.

  — What?

  — I mean, you come home from a five-day trip. I’ve hardly seen you. You don’t say a word during dinner. You hardly speak to Mattie. And then, bingo, you vanish, leaving me with all the dishes.

  He seems surprised by these accusations, as, in truth, is she. He blinks. He turns his head to something that has caught his attention on the screen.

  — Even now, you can’t pay attention to what I’m saying. What is so goddamn interesting on the computer, anyway?

  He takes his hands off the keyboard and rests his elbows on the arms of the chair.

  — What is this all about? he asks.

  — You, she says. — And me.

  — And?

  — We’re not, she says. — We’re just not. She takes a sip of wine.

  — You’re not there, she says. — You used to be so . . . I don’t know . . . romantic. You used to compliment me all the time. I can’t remember the last time you told me I was beautiful.

  Her lip quivers, and she looks away. She hears her mother’s voice then, wailing from the upstairs bedroom of Julia’s house, and she feels sick inside. Her mother’s pleading voice, begging her husband to tell her she is beautiful. Has this bit of awful dialogue been lying in wait for her? Kathryn wonders. A kind of grotesque legacy?

  She shudders. But she can’t leave it alone. For months now, Jack has been distant, as though not altogether there, as though constantly preoccupied. Preoccupation can be tolerated, Kathryn thinks, if it is finite.

  — My God, she says, her voice rising a notch. — We haven’t been out to dinner in months. All you ever do is come up here and work on the computer. Or play on the computer. Whatever you do.

  He leans back in the chair.

  What possible answer can any man give to the accusation that he hasn’t recently told his wife that she is beautiful? she thinks to herself. That he has simply forgotten? That in fact he thinks it all the time, but just doesn’t say it? That he thinks she is desperately beautiful right that very minute?

  That’s the problem with a fight, Kathryn decides. Even when you know the words you are saying are the worst possible utterances, there is always a point of no return. Of no backing off, no retreating. She is already there, and in a flash Jack reaches it.

  — Fuck you, he says quietly, and he stands.

  Kathryn flinches. She is immediately aware, as she was not before (not when it was her own righteous anger), that Mattie is just down the hall.

  — Keep your voice down, Kathryn says.

  Jack puts his hands on his hips. His face grows red, as it sometimes does when he is angry, which isn’t often. They don’t have a history of fighting.

  — Fuck you, he says again. This time in a louder, though still controlled voice. — I work five days in a row without a letup. I come home to get a good night’s sleep. I come up here to fool around a little on the computer to relax. And before I can even blink, you’re up here complaining.

  — You came home to get a good night’s sleep? she asks incredulously.

  — You know what I mean.

  — This didn’t just happen tonight, she says. — It’s been happening for months now.

  — Months?

  —Yes.

  — What exactly has been happening for months?

  — You’re not here. You’re more interested in the computer than you are in me.

  — Fuck you, he says, brushing past her toward the stairs. She hears him descend the steps as though running. She hears the refrigerator door being opened, followed by the sound of a beer can being popped.

  When she gets to the kitchen, he is drinking the beer in one swallow. He sets the can down on the counter with a hard clink and stares out the kitchen window.

  She examines his profile, his face, which she loves, the aggressive thrust of his neck, which alarms her. She wants to give in, to go to him and say she is sorry, to put her arms around him and tell him she loves him. But before she can move, she thinks again about the sensation of being abandoned, for that is what she means to describe, and so repentance quickly gives way to grievance. Why should she back off ?

  — You never talk to me anymore, she says. — I feel like I don’t know you anymore.

  His jaw moves slightly more forward, and he clenches his teeth. He tosses the beer can into the sink, where it clatters against all the dirty dishes.

  — You want me to go? he asks, looking at her.

  — Go?

  — Yeah, you want to end it or what?

  — No, I don’t want to end it, she says, taken aback. — What are you talking about? You’re crazy.

  — I’m crazy?

  — Yes, you’re crazy. All I said was that you’re getting too wrapped up in the computer, and you...

  — I’m crazy? he repeats, this time in a louder voice.

  When he brushes past her to go up the stairs, she tries to grab his arm, but he shakes her off. In the kitchen, she stands as still as a stone as she hears his angry tread on the steps, hears his office door slam, hears the muffled thudding of objects being roughly moved around on his desk, hears the snap of wires.

  He’s leaving her and taking the computer with him?

  And then, horrified, she watches as the computer monitor comes crashing down the stairs.

  The monitor gouges the plaster wall at the foot of the steps. Bits of gray plastic and smoked glass from the shattered screen fly into the air and litter the stairs and the kitchen floor. It is a spectacular smash, loud and theatrical.

  Kathryn utters a low moan, knowing that it has all gone too far and that she has caused it, has goaded him.

  And then she thinks of Mattie.

  By the time Kathryn has made her way over the smashed monitor and gotten to the top of the stairs, Mattie is coming down the hallway in her pajamas.

  — What happened? Mattie asks, although Kathryn can see that she knows. Has heard everything.

  Jack looks stricken with the instant remorse that follows an insanely childish act in front of one’s children.

  — Mattie, Kathryn says. — Daddy dropped his computer down the stairs. It’s a mess. But everything is OK.

  Mattie gives them both the look, the one that, even though she is eleven years old, is always dead on and never misses. But Kathryn can see on her daughter’s face that superior surveil-lance is competing ferociously with sheer horror.

  Jack turns to Mattie and enfolds his daughter in his arms. That alone says everything, Kathryn thinks. There is no pretending now that this didn’t happen. It is just perhaps better not to say it aloud.

  And then Jack reaches out his arm and draws Kathryn into the fold, so that the three of them stand in the hallway, swaying and crying and saying I’m sorry and kissing each other and hugging again and then standing back and laughing slightly through the tears and runny noses, with Mattie offering, helpfully, to get the Kleenex.

  That night, Kathryn and Jack make love as they have not done in months — with a ragged edge, as though playing out the rest of the scene with open mouths and small bites, locked thighs and pinned wrists. And the voracious momentum of that night changes, for a time, the tenor of their marriage, so that they look more often into each other’s eyes as they pass in the hallway, trying mutely to say something meaningful, and kiss each other with more enthusiasm whenever they meet, in the house or outside by the cars or even, several times, in public, which pleases Kathryn. But after a while, that too passes, and she and Jack go back to normal, as they have been before, which is to say that they, like all the other couples Kathryn has ever known, l
ive in a state of gentle decline, of being infinitesimally, but not agonizingly, less than they were the day before.

  Which means, on the whole, she thinks, that it is a good marriage.

  SHE HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE — not even on television or in movies, where a spectacle, she now understood, lost its immediacy, its garish color, its menace. Along the beach road, even before she and Robert had reached the drive, there were parked cars and fat vans with their far wheels stuck into the sandy shoulders. Kathryn saw call letters on the vans, WBZ and WNBC and CNN, a man running with a camera and a complicated brace on his shoulder. People were beginning to look at the car, to peer at the passengers inside. Robert sat hunched over the steering wheel, as though at any minute they might be assaulted. Kathryn resisted the urge to turn her head away or to bring her hands to her face.

  “Remind me why we did this?” she asked, her voice tight, her lips barely moving.

  The reporters and cameramen were five deep by the wooden gate with its wire fencing. Jack and she had not chosen the gate; it had simply been left over from the convent days. Indeed,

  Kathryn thought it surprising the gate even worked: Jack and she had never had any reason to fasten it.

  “We’re sending someone over to your grandmother’s,” Robert said.

  “Julia won’t like that.”

  “I’m afraid Julia doesn’t really have a choice at this point,” Robert said. “And in the end, she may be grateful.”

  He gestured toward the crowd outside the car.

  “They’ll be all over her lawn before she can blink.”

  “I don’t want them anywhere near Mattie,” Kathryn said. “Julia looked pretty formidable to me,” Robert countered. “I’m not sure I’d want to try to get past her.”

  A man banged hard against the passenger door window, and Kathryn flinched. Robert moved the car forward, trying to get as close to the gate as he could. He peered through the windshield, looking for a policeman, and almost immediately, the car was engulfed, men and women shouting through the glass.

  “Mrs. Lyons, have you heard the tape?”

  “Is that her? Wally, is that her?”