Flight (24 page)

“It's leaving,” Jeremy says, barely breathing hard.

“We'll make it,” she says, not quite believing it herself.

The man doing the untying throws the last of the ropes to another man on deck, then gives a ‘thumbs-up' to the control room on the upper level.

“Wait for us!” she screams, flapping her free arm now like a castaway.

Churning water near the stern now. The ear-splitting departure horn.

She trips on a lace that's come undone. Face first into the pavement. The back of her hand coming up just before impact. Suitcase flying across the street. She feels everything shift inside of her on impact, the air being zapped from her lungs, her fingers protecting her face.

Almost immediately she is back on her feet, straining for breath.

“Are you all right, Mommy?” Lynette says. She and Jeremy have stopped beside her.

Jeremy lets go of his sister and points at his mother's hand. “It's bleeding.”

She looks, skin like raw meat, flecks of it hanging off. No pain though. She glances sideways at the suitcase. Still intact. Back to her children now. “Go, I'll catch up!”

They don't move.

“GO!”

They start running again.

She goes over and picks up the suitcase. Feels a warm ooziness spreading along the palm of her hand, into the fingers and towards the nails. Somehow it's dulling the pain.

Running again now, although it hardly feels like it. More like flying. No sensation of feet hitting the asphalt, or of body resisting. Light now where, just moments ago, she'd been heavy.

She's gaining on them.

Lynette being dragged again, but still managing to look back, charting her mother's progress. She's the one calling now, the one ushering her forward. “Hurry, Mommy. Hurry!”

“I'm coming!”

The gangway is lifting. “No!” She screams.

They're one hundred feet away. Less. Eighty feet. Seventy-five. Yet they're pulling up the gangway. No point once that starts. But can't they see them running? The man coiling the heavy ropes, his face outward, seemingly looking in their direction? How about the one on the wharf?
Turn around and you'll see us. Why won't you
?

She's beside the children now, the three of them running. Running towards freedom, she thinks, away from Kent, although the youngsters don't know it. They're hurrying because they think they'll see their father at the end of the journey.

Forty feet. Won't make it. Gangway almost up. “Wait!”

“Wait!” Lynette says.

Even Jeremy says it.

The man standing on the dock finally turns around. It's Donny Boyle.

“Please wait!” she says.

He squints in her direction. “Emily?”

She finally makes it to where Donny is. Stops. “Yes, it's me,” she says, fighting tears.

“You just missed her.”

“No.”

“Look at your hand why don't yah.” He takes a step closer.

Lynette starts to say something but Emily cuts her off, “We need to get on this boat.”

“It'll be back in a couple of hours, sure.”

In a couple of hours, she thinks,
Kent
could very well be on board.
Overnight for observation
, the nurse from the Gander hospital had said last night.
Released in the morning.
Who's to say that he hasn't already been discharged? On his way to meet the ferry himself, probably.

“No, Donny,” she says. “We can't wait.”

Donny casts a glance at the now completely-up gangway, then looks back at her, his hand smoothing the four or five days' growth on his chin. “That hand's a mess.”

“It's fine.”

“I can't stop her now, my dear.”

She takes him by the arm and drags him away from the children. Lynette starts to follow. “Stay with your brother,” she says.

Lynette steps back with Jeremy.

Once she's far enough away, she whispers, “You have to. You have to stop her.”

“I'd like to, but –”

“Kent's dying,” she says.

It's like Donny's swallowed his tongue. “What?”

“He was in a car accident last night and they don't know if he'll live.”

Quiet for a second.

“Jesus, Emily…I'm so sorry – ”

“Don't be
sorry
.” She grabs the collar of his jacket with her good hand. “Just get us on board.
Please
.”

He pries her fingers off and then runs back to the ferry. Shouts to the man on deck who, a few moments ago, had been coiling the rope. “Emergency, Doug!”

Amidst the swirling engine and another blast of the ship's horn, Donny's words get lost.

“What?” Doug says after the sound of the horn subsides.

“Emergency, I said! Hold for three more passengers!”

“But the gangway's up!”

“Then lower it for Christ's sake! It's an emergency, I said!”

Doug disappears up the stairs to the second level while Emily walks back to rejoin her children.

Donny shoots her a look: squinted eyes below scraggly red brows, lower lip trapped beneath coffee-stained teeth, square jaw pulled taut because of those same teeth.

She imagines the boat inching away from shore, a plane lifting off without them, then going back to
that
house, every room echoing the sounds of their near escape.

Donny turns back to the boat – his hands on his hips.

She stands there holding her wrist, the first pinpricks of pain starting to flutter in the hand. Still nothing though, she thinks, compared to the thought of
not
getting on board. Might as well have a broken neck or have all the air snuffed out of her lungs or have her heart stop right where she's standing. No point in any of it if she can't get on.

“It's leaving, Mommy,” Lynette says.

Jeremy says, “It
is
, Mom.”

She's so positive of it too that she feels her whole body falter, as if she might crumble into pieces. Condemned and on the cusp of demolition – that's how she feels, the heavy ball about to smash into her centre.

She doesn't even notice Donny waving at her. Can't hear his shouts either.

Lynette's tugging at her coat, she thinks.

What's Jeremy saying?

It's the lowering of the gangway that brings her back. All this time she'd thought it was the ferry moving away.

Donny's beside her now. “Didn't hear me calling?”

She turns to him.

“It's not gonna wait all morning,” he says.

She's got her arms around him now even though she doesn't remember having gone to him.

“You're welcome,” he says, gently extricating himself. “Come on.”

He takes up the suitcase and heads towards the ferry.

They follow him, Emily just behind, and the youngsters at her heels, the gangway extending towards them like an unfurled carpet. Passage into another life.

Donny steps aside and hands over the suitcase as they pass. “All the best.”

“Thank you,” she says, not looking back.

Jeremy and Lynette are waiting for her on the other end of the gangway, the sun now high in the sky behind them. Not a cloud.

She forges ahead, sensing her old life fall away with each step, a new one just beginning. Scared, yes, but excited too. Not about to make the same mistakes.

Only a few minutes after eight but already the sun is warm against her face. The lightest of breezes. The perfect day for leaving.

She stops in front of them. Looks at their faces for a moment. Already she can see the beginnings of definition around Jeremy's cheekbones and jawline, like his dad. The thick hair that Kent had had in high school too. He'll be even bigger she thinks, taller, broader across the shoulders, bigger hands and feet.

There's more of her mother in Lynette than herself. Nose wider than her own, skin smoother, that elegant neck, and fuller lips. Emily's eyes though, deep green with flecks of grey. Cat's eyes, she's been told. Greener than July grass, Kent had said to her once.

They walk up the steel steps to the upper level and then to the stern. Lay down their suitcases, their hands holding onto the railing, faces outward towards the wharf, the marina, St. Paul's, the parish hall, the dying fish plant, the playground, the makeshift soccer field where an ownerless border collie runs free. She tries to imagine the place cleared out, boarded-up windows and empty streets, no boats in the harbour and no ATV engines roaring in the night, no dirtmarked children running in the road and no plant whistle to tell the stinking workers to go home for the day. No more Lightning Cove. No more for
her
anyway, one way or the other.

“We're moving, Mommy,” Lynette says.

“Yes we are. Do you like the boat ride?”

Lynette nods.

Silence for a while. Then Jeremy says, “We'll see Dad soon, right?”

She doesn't look at him, preferring instead to focus on the receding land, everything that she's leaving. Another moment before she says, “Soon, baby. Soon.”

4

FROM THE STERN OF THE BOAT, LIGHTNING COVE is indistinguishable in the distance, a thin line on the horizon. Irrelevant almost. Easy to stuff in a box and forget.

Jeremy and Lynette are on either side of her, sipping hot chocolates. Whipped cream on the corners of Jeremy's mouth; a cute moustache over Lynette's.

She's working on her Styrofoam cup of coffee. At least that's what the girl behind the canteen counter had called it. She isn't so sure. Thick like syrup, coffee grinds on her tongue, a yet to be named colour that's blacker than black.

It's harder to move the fingers of her hand now. Her pinky, the one she'd burned last night, despite its blister, is the only one she can bend. She holds the wrist across her chest as if in an invisible sling. Thinks she can see it swelling, throbbing, stabbing pain like hundreds of needle pricks. How will she be able to sit on a plane for four or five hours like this? Something for the smarting, she thinks – extra strength Tylenol or Advil. Morphine.

“Watch out for your sister,” she says. “Mom has to go inside for a minute.”

She walks along the deck, throwing her coffee into the garbage en route, then pulls open the heavy door.

Apart from a few people playing cards at a table near the back, and an old man lying across three chairs, the lounge is empty.

She continues across the room to the small canteen adjacent the women's washroom. Stands in front of the counter while the chubby cashier piles a handful of ketchup chips into her mouth, and then holds up a red-stained finger as if to say, “Give me a second so I can swallow these.”

Emily waits. Then waits some more while the girl sucks some Pineapple Crush through a straw.

“Sorry about that,” the cashier says, smiling, pieces of soggy chips trapped in her front teeth, “but I'm starved. Left the house without so much as a Pop Tart this morning.” She licks her fingers one at a time, then says, “Another coffee?”

Emily shakes her head.

The cashier leans forward, resting her elbows on the counter. “You don't remember me, do ya?”

Emily takes a half step back. Studies the face.

“I've been away for a long time, that's probably why. And I'm heavier too. Used to be a rake like yourself.”

“Melissa?”

“In the flesh.”

“You're all grown up.”

“The spitting image of Mom, everyone says. You know my mom, Sonya, I suppose. Works at the Royal Bank.”

Emily nods, wondering how she could have overlooked the resemblance. The same thick fingers and heaving bosom, the same lips 177 and puffy cheeks.

“Yeah, well I'm back living with her now. Couldn't stand my father's boyfriend, you know. Control freak. Treated me like hired help or something.”

“Oh.”

“It's too bad really, I loved Victoria.”

Emily edges closer to the counter. “Victoria?”

“Yeah.” She takes another sip of her pop.

“As in Victoria, BC?”

“Yeah.”

“What's it like?”

“A lot better than this shit hole, let me tell yah. Big trees and it hardly ever snows. More to do besides smoke and drink like everyone around here. No one's into your business either.” She looks down at Emily's hand as if discovering it for the first time. “You just do that?”

“What?”

“Your hand?”

“Just before I boarded actually.”

“It looks like someone scrubbed it with sandpaper.”

“Gross isn't it?”

“It hurt?”

Emily nods.

“It looks like it does.” Then, “Do you think it's broken?”

“Don't know. You wouldn't happen to have some Tylenol back there would yah?”

“Sorry, nothing but hotdogs and ketchup chips behind here.”

“Okay,” Emily says, starting to walk away. “Thanks anyway.”

“Wait,” Melissa says, bending down and grabbing her purse. “I've got something a lot better than that.” She plops the purse down on the counter. “Make you forget you even got a hand this stuff will.”

Emily just looks at her.

The girl smiles a beet-red tooth grin. “Don't worry, it's nothing illegal.” She rummages in her purse. “Smile the whole night on this stuff, you will. Wake up the same way. Here.” She pulls out a prescription bottle. Holds it beside her face as if she were doing a Trident commercial. Hardly likely with all that ketchup on her teeth.

Emily comes closer. “What is it?”

“Morphine's slutty girlfriend. The pharmacist calls it codeine.”

“That's a prescription.”

“So?”

“I can't take that.”

“Why not? Mom does, whenever she can't sleep. I'm constantly having to refill the bottle.”

Emily imagines Sonya sitting on the edge of her bed, a glass of Johnny Walker Red in one hand and a palm-full of her daughter's pills in the other. Mascara tears blackening each cheek. Probably still hurt by her husband's leaving.