Читать книгу Weather to Fly - Christopher LeGras - Страница 10

Sea-Tac

And it is of the highest importance that this common meeting-place should be reached easily, almost instinctively, in the dark, with one’s eyes shut.

—Virginia Woolf

After the accident and settlement it’s decided Alfred should live at home for a while. The doctors and specialists and therapists all agree it’s the best way for him to ease back into the real world. That’s how they always say it: Alfred needs to ease back into the real world after his accident. He’s just fortunate the settlement provides for his care and rehabilitation. Alfred himself has no sense of having left the real world in the first place, but all the doctors and specialists and therapists concur and so at the age of thirty-five he finds himself parked in his old bedroom at his parents’ house near Sea-Tac Airport.

The transition is hard at first. Before the accident and settlement he had a great big house in Seattle, on Queen Anne Hill. He can’t remember for sure how long he lived there and he can’t remember what he did to afford it, but he remembers the big living room and the bedroom with the oak beam ceiling and windows that looked over Lake Union. He has a particularly vivid memory of standing on the back lawn watching the Blue Angels perform at Sea Fair, especially the part when one of the gleaming blue F/A-18 fighters with the bright yellow US NAVY emblazoned on its wings screamed 300 feet over the house with its afterburners blazing. He remembers that, and there’s a girl in the memory but for the life of him he can’t remember who she was. His parents don’t seem to remember, either.

It’s strange living at home like a kid, but at least his old bedroom isn’t so bad. His parents left up some of his posters from way back, the one from an Aerosmith concert when he was in high school, and the ones of airplanes. It’s on the second floor and he can look out of his window and see the jets taking off and landing a half mile away at Sea-Tac. Their neighborhood of Normandy Park is nestled on a small hill west of the airport. From one window in his room he can see the gymnasium and football field at his old middle school and from the other he can see almost the whole airport over a grove of evergreens. He can see all three runways and the tall cement control tower and the terminals in which he knows there are people on their way to every corner of the world. Most of all he can see the airplanes.

When family and friends call on the telephone to check on him he always tells them what airlines are taking off and landing.

Even though he’s thirty-five and living at home with his parents in his old room, no one makes fun of him. When he walks into town everyone is kind and polite. At the coffee shop he gets free donuts and the kids who work at the pizza joint always give him two free slices of pepperoni. People go out of their way to help him. He wonders if they were like this before.

Each night at dinner his mother says, We’re so glad you’re home, Alfred.

His father says, Yes, compared to the alternatives, we’re very glad indeed.

These exchanges confuse Alfred, who doesn’t remember his parents ever being glad about much of anything, much less something he did. Still, he’s happy they’re happy. Better late than never, as the saying goes.

After a while Alfred gets restless. It’s been six months and the doctors and specialists and therapists still agree he still hasn’t eased back into the real world. While they have his best interests in mind the practical effect of all their care is that they’re driving him nuts. He is a thirty-five year old man, after all, and despite the accident and settlement he still has a lot of living to do.

He decides to get a job.

The decision presents an immediate conundrum: he isn’t allowed to drive a car and public transportation is out of the question. That leaves the mall (yech!) the gas station (yawn) or the airport (yay!).

The doctors and specialists and therapists aren’t happy with the idea but if there’s one thing about Alfred, once he gets a notion in his head, as his father says, you can’t blast it out with dynamite. Besides, his parents tell them their son used to fly airplanes himself. Alfred laughs inside. He’s never even been on a plane much less flown one. Still, it’s nice they’re on his side these days.

His mother says, We should let him do at least one thing he loves.

So one Monday morning he goes to the airport. It’s a long walk, more than an hour. It doesn’t matter, because the whole time Alfred’s eyes are on the sky, watching airliners landing and taking off. Normally that distance is out of bounds but his father says, Damned if he doesn’t remember the way.

His first trip is a bit of a fiasco. His mother walks with him to the terminal and watches him walk into the huge building. He turns and waves at her like he’s going on a trip. He passes the baggage carousels and the car rental desks with long lines of people, the Information Desk and the security desk, the big wall of TV screens with the Arrivals and Departures. He takes the escalator upstairs and wanders to the Alaska Airlines gates.

Which is when all hell breaks loose.

Suddenly he’s on the floor and people are shouting at him.

How did you get through security?!

Where’s your boarding pass?!

How did you get through security?!

Have you had contact with any known terror groups in the last eighteen months?!

How did you get through security?!

It turns out his getting through security is a really big deal. They take him to a small dark room where a man and a woman in dark suits ask him more questions while two security officers stand by the door. The questions and the noise and the excitement confuse him. He just walked into the terminal like a normal person. Good grief, is the world going crazy? He says he’s looking for a job but they don’t believe him.

They keep him in the small room until his parents arrive and after an hour of answering questions themselves are allowed to take him home.

At dinner his mother says, We’re so glad you’re home safe, Alfred. I think this was too big a step.

And his father says, Yes, especially considering the alternatives you could have faced today. But we’re very glad indeed.

The next day one of the therapists comes to the house and says gravely, You see, this is why Alfred has to ease back into the real world slowly. Much more slowly.

After that it gets trickier for him to go to the airport. He’s allowed to go out again, but he just goes to the park down the street and sits on a bench under a big willow tree and watches the ducks and geese in the pond and the kids playing on the slides and swings and the people jogging, skating, and biking past. He meets a few people and it’s perfectly pleasant but it’s no Sea-Tac. His mother drives by every couple of hours to check on him. Finally after two weeks his mother and father are convinced he’s found a place to go where he won’t get into trouble. His mother stops driving by, and a few days later Alfred starts going back to the airport. He doesn’t like lying to his parents but he needs a job. He’ll go bonkers if he can’t get one soon.

The second time he visits the airport he’s more careful. He knows his mistake was not taking stock of the situation before barging in. Any old fool knows better than to do that. He chalks it up to the accident and settlement and resolves not to make the same mistake twice. He walks past the baggage carousels and the rental car desks with their long lines and rides the escalator up to the departure floor. This time instead of going into the terminal he finds a place to sit.

He sits in a seat across from the Alaska Airlines counters for an hour and then gets thirsty. He walks to an airport shop to buy a Coca-Cola. The girl behind the counter is very nice and doesn’t charge him for the can of soda. She talks to him and he tells her he’s going to apply for a job. She seems very happy to hear that. He feels much better about this visit.

A few minutes after he returns to his seat he sees another girl. He nearly drops his can of Coca-Cola. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. She has long red hair and a round face and skin that makes him think of the pink roses in the garden at home. She’s wearing a blue sundress with white polka dots. As she passes he sees that her face is freckled and she has bright blue eyes.

Something else strikes him, and it’s the reason he doesn’t talk to her. There’s a look on her face, something at the corners of her lips and in the blue of her eyes. She’s like one of those Seattle days when you can’t tell if the sun is breaking through the clouds or the clouds are racing across the face of the sun. It throws him off, just enough to keep his butt planted in the seat when she walks by less that five feet from him and gets on the escalator to the ground floor. As she passes he smells vanilla, like the smell of the kitchen when his mother makes her famous chocolate chip cookies.

He doesn’t see her again for two weeks. But what a time! He becomes a full-time airport employee. His job is to watch the terminal. He gets lunch each day at the Red Robin and they never charge him because he’s an airport employee. He takes his lunch break when there’s a lull in activity and the wait staff and bar staff and managers talk with him. He never pays for his Coca-Cola breaks at the shop, either. He does the job for the love of the airport and goes home with a few dollars in his pocket every day. He’s very proud but he can’t tell his parents about the money he’s earning because they’d know he’s going back to the airport. He keeps the money in a shoebox under his bed. It feels a little adolescent but it will do for now.

The next time he sees her she’s wearing a pale yellow dress with blue butterflies on it. It’s about the most beautiful dress he’s ever seen. Her hair is tied in a ponytail and she’s carrying a red purse and pulling a black carry-on.

This time he stands up and introduces himself. She looks at him and smiles but doesn’t say anything. He asks if there’s anything he can do for her here at the airport, and she smiles but still doesn’t answer. Finally he goes for the simple approach and asks her how her day is going. This time her smile fades a little bit and she shrugs.

Alfred is confused. He knows enough about girls to know that if she didn’t want to talk to him she wouldn’t have stopped, much less smiled at him.

She puts her hands over her ears and shakes her head, then one hand over her mouth and shakes her head again.

He still doesn’t understand. She takes a small notepad out of her red purse. She writes something then tears off the page and hands it to him. The note says: Hi, my name is Mandy. I’m deaf. It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?

Alfred is momentarily seized with panic. He can read just fine but writing is one of the things the doctors and specialists and therapists have said may or may not come back after the accident and settlement.

Mandy seems to sense his discomfort and gives him another note: It’s okay, I can read lips.

They talk that way for a few minutes and then Mandy gives Alfred a note that says: It’s been lovely talking with you, Alfred. My sister is waiting at the curb, I should go. She worries too much. She’s drawn a little face with crossed eyes and its tongue sticking out. He still has the note. He still has all of them.

Alfred tells her he hopes he’ll see her again. She smiles more widely than ever and nods her head. Then she is gone.

Alfred realizes now he has a new duty at his job. It’s a promotion, really. His job is to make sure Mandy is all right whenever she comes through the airport. She’s told him she travels twice a month to an ear specialist in Los Angeles, always at the same time and always with Alaska Airlines.

Sure enough, two weeks later he sees her in the terminal. It’s raining and her sister is stuck in traffic so they have more time to talk. They sit in the terminal while people hurry this way and that. She says the doctors in Los Angeles say they’ll be able to restore at least part of her hearing. It’s the first time she’s told him she wasn’t born deaf. It makes him feel closer to her, because he wasn’t born the way he is now either. He doesn’t tell her that, though. She’s so happy about her doctors’ news he mostly listens to her and watches her beautiful smile. Then her phone buzzes and she has to go meet her sister.

The next time they meet they go to lunch at the Red Robin. Mandy has told her sister to pick her up two hours later than usual so they can have a proper, unrushed conversation. The sun is shining and they can see Mt. Rainier out the window. The forest around the airport is so green the trees look like they’re made out of stained glass. The airplanes gleam as they taxi, takeoff, and land. Mandy and Alfred talk and talk and talk. Sometimes Mandy speaks but she’s ashamed of how she knows her voice sounds so mostly she writes even though Alfred tells her she has a beautiful voice, which she does. They discover they have a lot in common. Alfred tells her about the accident and settlement (it’s a short story because the details are so hazy). Mandy tells Alfred she lost her hearing seven years ago because of a rare degenerative condition. She says the doctors are doing amazing things and she knows she’ll get her ears back. She says it that way and Alfred laughs with her. Then the check comes and Mandy goes to meet her sister.

The fourth time they meet Mandy brings Alfred a present. It’s a box of sign language flash cards. At lunch at the Red Robin Alfred told her his parents say he’s always been good with languages (what he doesn’t remember is that before the accident and settlement he not only flew airplanes but he was a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Washington and spoke five languages including Latin).

Sure enough, when he takes the cards home he discovers he can memorize them almost immediately. Alfred is ecstatic.

Better still the mental exercise starts to wake up other parts of his brain, and he begins remembering snippets of other languages. One night at dinner, instead of saying Please pass the scalloped potatoes, Mom, he says, Aio, mater, quantitas magna frumentorum est. Which actually means, Why, mother, that is a very large amount of corn. Still, when she hears the words, instead of passing the potatoes his mother leaps up and hugs him.

Two weeks later when Mandy comes through the terminal and they go to lunch he has a surprise for her. He signs out: T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U F-O-R T-H-E C-A-R-D-S. I H-A-V-E B-E-E-N S-T-U-D-Y-I-N-G.

Mandy claps her hands to her chest and then leaps up and hugs Alfred. He never realized speaking other languages was good for so many hugs. He’s going to have to study a lot more. She puts her hands on his shoulders and looks straight at him, still smiling. He doesn’t see clouds in her eyes anymore. He only sees the most beautiful person he’s ever encountered.

Mandy asks Alfred to her house for dinner. She’s been living with her sister for the last year, since living alone finally became too challenging. That Saturday his father gives him a ride all the way up to Ballard, where Mandy’s sister Laura has an apartment.

As Alfred unbuckles his seat belt and opens the car door his dad says, I don’t give a damn what your mother or the doctors say. This kind of thing is good for you, son. You go in there and be a gentleman, and you’ll charm her right out of her knickers, as your grampaw used to say. He says since they’re all the way up here he’s having a drink with an old friend. See you at nine on the nose. Go get her!

The dinner doesn’t go so well. Mandy’s older sister Laura is protective and doesn’t think she should be hanging around with men these days, much less strangers from the airport. She doesn’t say as much but Alfred can tell she’s also thinking, Much less this particular stranger. It’s the first time he’s felt something come between him and Mandy, and it does a number on his nerves.

A few weeks later they go to his house for dinner and it doesn’t go any better. His mother seems embarrassed and hardly says a word. His dad seems to think that he can cure deafness if only he yells loudly enough.

Alfred and Mandy stick to the airport for a while.

Months pass. The doctors and specialists and therapists say that Alfred is making much better progress but still hasn’t eased back into the real world. The ear doctors in Los Angeles restore 10 percent of the hearing in Mandy’s right ear but she still can’t hear Alfred talking. Which is okay, because Alfred is nearly fluent in sign language by now.

After a while Alfred and Mandy start spending time together outside the airport. Laura comes to accept Alfred and sometimes they have movie nights at the apartment and Alfred sleeps on their couch. They go to Sea Fair and watch the Blue Angels. Alfred doesn’t tell Mandy about the big house where he watched the Blue Angels and he doesn’t tell her about the girl he barely remembers. They go to a Mariners game and to the museum and the library. After a while Mandy says Alfred can sleep in her bed with her. Alfred can tell that Laura, who otherwise seems to actually like him these days, really doesn’t like that idea. Mandy tells her to butt out and, to Laura’s credit, she does. Nothing happens between them in bed except they talk and sometimes cuddle before they fall asleep. Alfred discovers Mandy’s bed is the safest place he’s ever been. It’s the only place where the accident and settlement don’t linger at the edges of his thoughts. One night in Mandy’s bed he dreams in French, and when they wake up the next morning he says, Salut, jolie fille.

Then one day Alfred sees Mandy at the airport and he knows something is wrong. They’ve gotten close and neither of them can keep a secret from the other. She walks up to him and throws her arms around him. She doesn’t sign but says, Laura and I are moving to Los Angeles. She got a job that pays double what she makes now and I can see the doctors twice a week instead of twice a month.

Alfred doesn’t understand why Mandy starts crying. He feels her tears soak through the shoulder of his shirt. After all, LA isn’t so far. He tells her he can probably do the same job at LAX he’s been doing at Sea-Tac. He’s got loads of experience at this point. Most importantly, if it will make her hearing coming back faster he’s all for it. Instead of comforting her it only makes her cry harder.

She says Laura is waiting outside and she has to go. She kisses him on the cheek and tells him they’ll have him to dinner before they leave.

At dinner that weekend Mandy cries again and even Laura says how much she’ll miss him. He tells them not to worry, he’ll get a job at LAX and they can see each other all the time. After dinner they both hug him and tell him they’ll write and call. He reminds them he’ll be working at LAX soon.

Standing on the little walkway in front of Laura and Mandy’s apartment Mandy tells Alfred she loves him. He says he loves her, too. He realizes they’ve never told each other that. He says, Canit enim vobis cor meum, which means, My heart sings for you.

It’s the first time Mandy kisses Alfred on the lips. It’s a real kiss, too. He kisses her back and when he closes his eyes he feels like he’s back in her bed, in the safest place in the world. His mind explodes with thoughts in Latin, French, Italian, and languages he still doesn’t recognize. Then she hugs him and is gone.

In the car his dad asks him if he’s okay.

Alfred says, Mi recorderó tutto per lei. I will remember everything for her.

It’s harder to get a job at LAX than Alfred thought it would be. Besides, the doctors and specialists and therapists say he’s still easing back into the real world here in Seattle and moving to another city is out of the question, at least for now. It’s best for him to stay at home until the easing in is finished. He feels a little frustrated but he tells himself he’ll work even harder.

He does, and pretty soon he gets another job at the airport, one that comes with a paycheck and a timecard. He works on the grounds crew. He rides around with other employees in a white pickup with a bright orange light and a huge orange-and-white checkered flag in the back so taxiing planes are sure to see them. They look for objects on the taxiways and runways that could get sucked into a jet engine. He knows it’s not the most glamorous job but it has the best perk he can imagine: he’s getting paid to be driven around an active international airport and make sure the planes are safe. It’s a part-time job and the rest of the time he still does his old job in the terminal.

He gets letters from Mandy every two weeks and sometimes she calls. She has a special phone that lets her hear pretty well, but the conversations aren’t like the ones they had at the airport. Alfred can almost feel the miles between them. She says she’s going to visit. He’s got three shoeboxes under his bed now, two filled with his earnings and one slowly filling with Mandy’s letters. It’s like keeping a little bit of their friendship for the future. With his languages coming back a little more and a little faster each day he knows it won’t be long before he can write back to her.

He still has his Coca-Cola’s at the airport shop, and the people who work there are as good to him as ever. He has his lunches at Red Robin, and sometimes he stays longer than his hour lunch break because there are so many people to talk to. His language is really coming back and people love to hear him speak in Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Latin. One day a Chinese couple come in and he amazes them by repeating their greeting, Ni hao ma? with flawless inflection, and by the time they hurry to their flight to Shanghai he’s learned two dozen words in Mandarin. He even starts to learn to sign in his other languages and sometimes the airport managers ask him to help out. Every day he goes home with a few dollars in his pocket. He figures by the time he’s eased back into the real world he’ll have enough to go to LA. Maybe even enough to buy a house down there like the big one he had in Seattle.

In the terminal sometimes he sees a girl who looks like Mandy and he’ll leap up. It’s funny, he knows she’s in Los Angeles, his memory is good enough these days that he can retain that fact, but a girl who looks like her makes him forget everything for a moment. But it’s a nice kind of forgetting because the next second he remembers she’s getting her ears back and that’s what matters. He doesn’t care if it takes one year or a hundred. They’ll fix her ears one day and one day he’ll ease back into the real world.

In the meantime the airport needs him, and he needs it.