Flight (16 page)

“I'd love it.”

“Thought you would. Call your mom tomorrow, so she knows to expect the kids.”

“I will.” She lays her hands on his shoulders. How close she'd come to changing the flight, she thinks. If Terry hadn't called it might have been too late. “If we're taking a drive, let me get my sweater.”

She goes to stand up, but he keeps her there. Wraps his arms around her, one side of his face pressed against her chest. After a moment, he says, “I'm sorry about this morning.”

“I know.”

“It's just when I saw Jeremy's face – ”

“I know.” She wonders if he's ever bothered looking at hers afterwards. “I didn't mean to hit him.”

He lets go and helps her to her feet. “How could you have, right?”

Halfway to her bedroom, her vision blurs. She wipes the corners of her eyes and finds them soaked with tears. She pushes open her bedroom door, then flicks the light switch. In the middle drawer of her dresser she finds her favourite beige sweater, its length going past her bum, its collar perfect for keeping the wind out of her ears. She walks to the long mirror and watches herself as she buttons up.

“Hurry up, Mom!” Lynette shouts from down the hall.

“Just a minute!” she says.

She turns back to the mirror. Quickly pushes the final two buttons through their designated holes. Stands there for a moment. Breathes in and out, in and out. It's back on again, the plan. Tomorrow will be her last day of work. At the end of her shift, she'll grab her pay and be gone. She'll toss a goodbye over her shoulder at Terry so he'll have no reason to suspect anything, no reason to think that she's planning what she is. No reason to think that they'll never see each other again.

She'll ask Sonya for all of her money this time, not just the regular sixty dollars. “A special weekend together,” she'll tell the nosey teller when she asks.

“Emily!” It's Kent's voice this time.

“Coming!”

Two days, she thinks. Not even. Two sleeps, although she knows there'll be little of that now.
Just get through Thursday
. She feels her throat tighten. Her heart races. The next breath she takes she holds, releasing it slowly, feeling herself relax a little. Just a little.
Thursday. Just get through Thursday
.

“Emily! Come on!” goes Kent again.

She turns from the mirror and heads towards the door, switching off the light as she goes.

THURSDAY

SHE'S AWAKE WHEN HIS ALARM GOES OFF. He's pressed against her. Slightly hard penis between the top of her ass and her tailbone; one of his thighs inserted between her two, the heat of the too- close limbs making their skin slippery with sweat; chest hairs tickling her back; his chin resting on top of her head. One of his arms is wrapped around her ribcage, its hand cupping her right breast. Usually, during the night, their bodies will drift apart, so that by morning each of them is one roll away from landing on the floor. Not this day, though. She'd woken with him intertwined like this nearly three hours ago. She'd disentangle herself only to have him latch on again and again.

She pushes her bum against him. “Your alarm, Kent.”

He mumbles something but doesn't turn over to switch it off.

“Time for work.” She goes to shut the alarm off herself, but he won't let her. She feels all of him harden, muscles flexing, skin on skin. “Kent!”

“No,” he says, far from asleep now. “Don't make me.”

“It'll wake the youngsters.”

“But I'm so comfortable, and you're so beautiful.”

“Please.”

He finally lets her go. Stretches out an arm and turns off the alarm. Grabs her again before she has a chance to move. “Just a minute longer.” He sniffs her hair, then the base of her neck. “I love your smell.”

Three and a half hours she'd managed last night, she figures. Asleep before her down pillows could take the weight of her head. Then waking in a panic some time later with the feeling that she'd forgotten something cramping her belly. No sleep then, just a perpetual going over of the plan for Friday. Then nearly screaming upon realizing that that is tomorrow.
Tomorrow
. Forming the word with her mouth but making no sound.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Kent's limbs like snakes, wrapped here and stuffed there. One side of his burning face against her own.

He kneads her bum, one cheek then the other.

She hates loving it, the muscles reluctantly giving themselves over to his touch. Releasing their toxins.

“Odd that you're up,” he says.

“Maybe if you'd stopped mauling me, I'd go back to sleep.”

“If you could see what
I
do, you'd be mauling too.” He laughs, then gets on top, burying his face in the nape of her neck.

“Stop,” she says, “that tickles.”

He burrows deeper, then flutters his tongue tip against her throat like a sex-starved teenager.

“Stop!” she manages, before laughter comes, the quality of which surprises her: higher-pitched than usual, younger-sounding, a girl's laugh. She twists to the left, then right, but can't budge him. She grabs his hair. Pulls. For a moment the licking stops, but then it starts again, even faster than before, all of him shaking because he's laughing too. she can't breathe. Might pee herself if he doesn't stop. She reaches down and takes hold of his balls.

He stops.

She squeezes.

“Okay,” he says, lifting his head, “you win.” He's red from laughing.

She doesn't let go.

“I said you win.”

She's still holding on, imagines squashing till something pops.

“Ouch. That's starting to hurt.”

She lets go.

“What's funny?”

“Nothing,” she says, pushing him off.

He crawls over her to get to the window on her side of the bed. She watches him twist the rod that opens the blind. What morning light there is filters in, displaying his firm hamstrings and behind, calves and shoulders, chest and still-flat stomach.

He stares out. “Looks chilly.”

“It's not raining, is it?”

“No, but there's wind.”

Wind's nothing new in Lightning Cove. Wind and more wind. Wind with sun and fog and rain and snow. Wind needs to be the centre of attention here almost as much as Kent does.

He turns to her, his now-flaccid cock coming to face her before he does, the shaft long and narrow, its foreskinned tip like pouting lips.

He stretches, pointing his fingertips towards the ceiling, arching his back.Yawns before bringing his arms back to their sides. He sits near her on the edge of the bed. Runs a hand through her hair. “Gotta go to Gander this morning.”

Me too
.
Tomorrow
. “You do?”

“Meetings. I'll try not to be too late.”

She nods.

Instead of heading to the shower, he continues stroking her hair. After a while, he says, “You don't feel neglected, do you?”

“What?” she asks, despite having heard him clearly.

“With me working so much. You don't feel neglected, do you?”

She doesn't answer.

He stops smoothing her hair. “You know it's all for us, right? You, me, the kids.”

Still she says nothing.

“It's why I do anything.”

She sits up. Rests her back against the headboard, the sheets covering her breasts and nipped underneath her armpits.

He shifts closer. “Perhaps I don't tell you enough.”

She's looking at the wall now, just above his shoulder. Finally, she says, “Tell me what?”

He takes her chin into his hand as if he's about to kiss her. “That I appreciate everything you do. For me, for the kids.”

She wants him gone – in the shower or in the kitchen or out the front door or in his truck or in whatever meeting he's supposed to be in, anywhere but here beside her, anywhere where he can't make her feel as though she might not want to go through with it.

“You look sad,” he says.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not.”

“Okay.”

He pulls her towards him. “Hug me.”

She does. And then she's first to pull away, her hands pressed to his chest.
Get out of my sight!
“Go on or you'll be late.”

“See?” he says, smiling. “See how you take care of me?”

She watches him grab his bathrobe from the hook behind the door. He puts it on with his back to her.

“I'll make you coffee,” she says.

“No, go back to sleep.”

“I want to.”

He smiles again. “Not too strong, though, okay.”

“Okay.”

* * *

SHE SITS AT THE KITCHEN TABLE LISTENING to the coffee percolate, her chin resting on cupped hands, and the chair cold against her backside. Enough wind outside to blow the house down.

She's facing the window. It's because she's leaving that she looks more closely, taking everything in as if for the first time: swaying trees and overloaded clotheslines; the sea unfurling its bullying waves onto the landwash below; the ferry making its first crossing of the morning. The tip of the sun far out on the bay, almost but not quite hidden behind a veil of mist. She tries to brand the picture in her mind, breathing it down into the pads of her feet, holding it there.

A door opens down the hall. She turns to see Jeremy in his Spiderman pajamas, heading for the bathroom, his hair stuck up. He tries the door, but it's locked.

“Your father's in there,” she says softly, so as not to wake Lynette. He twists the handle again, crosses his legs and then bends forward at the waist.

“Use the one downstairs.”

He turns to look at her. Shakes his head.

“I'll go with you.”

For a moment she thinks he might wait it out up here, but then he approaches her, his feet slapping against the hardwood.

She leads him to the door of the basement at the far end of the foyer. He's right behind her. Like she's done hundreds of times, she pulls and lifts simultaneously to get the door open, then waits at the top of the stairs, staring down into the dark, dampness filling her nostrils. The chain for the light dangles near the bottom of the stairs so they'll have to walk down into blackness.

Jeremy looks afraid when she turns around, on the verge of changing his mind, she thinks. He's bouncing at the knees.

“Come on then,” she says.

The first stair is even colder than the kitchen floor. The second one groans when she allows it to take her weight. By the third, she realizes that Jeremy is not behind her. She turns around to see him still standing at the threshold, his hands bracing the door's frame.

“Don't be afraid,” she says, “I'm here.” It occurs to her how futile those words are. She's
always
been here, and yet Jeremy's still been afraid, he and Lynette both. What has she ever really done to protect him, she wonders? Sure she's sent him to his room, but could he not still hear the yelling and banging and twisting of bodies? Sometimes, she thinks, it's worse not being able to see.

“Hold my hand,” she says, extending hers to him.

He hesitates before taking it, his grip so tight that, for a moment, she doesn't know if she can bear it. She waits for him to take the steps down to her. Side by side now, he nearly as tall as she is, nothing but the whites of his eyes in the murk.

“We'll go down together,” she tells him. To guide them, she places her free hand on the railing, her fingertips gliding downward and keeping pace with their footfalls.

His palm is sweating. Does whenever he's nervous or excited or… afraid too, she guesses.

Step six, seven, and eight. Straining wood and musty air. Their steps in sync, their shoulders nearly touching. Nine, ten, and eleven. There's a final step, but it's better to pull the chain for the light from here, not so much of a stretch upwards. She waits for him to do it. He pulls so hard that she thinks the chain has come away in his hand. It's still intact though when she looks.

They're awash in light now, so blinding they have to shield their eyes.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?” she says.

He lets go of her hand and runs toward the bathroom.

She watches him flick the light switch and then go inside, slamming the door. Listens to him lifting the seat, then his steady stream.

Finally she takes the last step down and stands for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, the floor as cold as an ice rink, goosebumps on her arms and legs.

Even though the majority of Kent's tools are in the garage, he still keeps a mini-workstation here, pressed against the wall, not far from the washer and dryer. There's a wooden table with a toolbox on top; glue gun and handsaw hanging from brass hooks, an open ratchet set near an assortment of screwdrivers and wrenches; a tan work belt, not a loop or a pocket empty, as if he'd just taken it off that second; and a map of Newfoundland attached to the wall, multi-coloured thumbtacks marking each cove or town he's visited over the years for either work or pleasure.

She walks towards the table, surprised to hear her son still peeing. Once there, she looks underneath, lifts the tarp that's covering everything and sees what she wants behind a never-used humidifier: suitcases. More than any family needs as far as she's concerned, but that's Kent – never content with just enough. She rummages through to find the two she'll need for tomorrow, so that she doesn't waste time looking. Lightheaded for a second.
Tomorrow
. It doesn't seem real somehow. Can you wait too long for something, she wonders, so that you doubt it will
ever
come? But she's here though, right?
Tomorrow.
It can't
not
happen now. All waiting comes to an end eventually.

“What are you doing?”

His voice startles her so much that she nearly falls in amongst the suitcases. She crawls out bum first, then turns around, sitting back on her haunches, looking up at him.