Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

At breakfast this morning Theresa was in an expansive mood and talking about how she was starving. Paul instantly whipped together some French toast from day-old challah bread, which was excellent but she couldn't eat, and then after Paul sort of slunk away deflated she expressed an intense hankering for lobster and asked me if we could fly to Maine. I called the weather service for the forecast and told her probably not, as a low front was moving rapidly up from D.C. and could make for uncertain conditions on the return. I offered to pick up some lobsters at the fish market instead but she insisted and said she was finally feeling hungry for something and I figured who was I to say no to her. Paul thought it would do her (and clearly himself) some good to get her out of the house, and so we drove to Islip and went through our checks and got Donnie right up, riding a strong tailwind to Maine in what had to be record time.

On the bleached-cedar dining deck of The Peeling Skiff the sun was undiffuse and brilliant, both of us sporting baseball caps and sunglasses, Theresa's hand aglitter with the ring Richie bought for Rita and that I attempted to give back to her and that she and I quickly agreed to put to better use, by be-queathing it to the next generation. With the fat candy-store rock on her finger and her Yankees cap, Theresa was looking particularly girlish, and for a moment I felt a strange blush of accomplishment, for no other reason than that I had known her for the entirety of her years, now not so few, which is no great feat, of course, but still the sort of stirring that can make you almost believe that there might not be any more crucibles ahead, just this perennial interlude of melody and ease. When our plates arrived she got all excited and quickly tied on her white plastic bib and took the cracker right to a meaty claw, but after forking out the chubby little mitt she just sort of nibbled on it like it was her second or third lobster and after putting it down chewed idly on a couple of the small legs before neglecting it altogether. I didn't say anything because I wasn't that mad and really what was there to say that wouldn't be completely fake or depressing. After I finished mine, she pushed her plate over and I ate her lobster, too, even though I was already full, solely because I couldn't bear it slumped there unrequited between its lemon wedge pillows, staring up at us one-armed, thoroughly wronged.

"Hey, what's that?" she now says over the headset, pointing ahead to a strip of small islands off the Cape. "Is that the Vine-yard or Nantucket?"

"No, no, they're over there," I say, motioning farther out.

"You're looking at Naushon, I think. Or Pasque. Those are old-money hideouts, where I think they choose not to have electric-ity. They boat in ice and candles."

"Ice and candles?"

"That's what I hear."

"Sounds kind of kinky."

"Definitely not."

"I guess that's class."

"Yeah. Class."

We nod to each other, for emphasis, though neither of us is caring to make much of a point. This is how we talked on the way up, too, with her asking about a certain geographic or urban feature, to which I'd offer a bit of trivia about the nuclear submarine yards at New London or the history of Portuguese immigration to Providence or mention a surprisingly excellent fish-and-chips place in Buzzards Bay, where they brew their own malt vinegar. Conversing over the headsets is never like a real conversation, the overlaps and separations and pauses and canned feeling of the sound making for brief information exchanges at best, not to mention the constant pulse of the motor buzzing every nook of your being, which is not a bad thing at all if you want to feel as if you're busy just sitting there. This used to frustrate Rita sometimes, that we'd spend a whole day in the plane and seemed to have chatted nonstop but not about anything remotely personal, which suited me okay and in the end perhaps suited her as well. And why shouldn't it? Because when you're up here and aloft and all you're really trying to do is figure a word for the exact color of the sky, or count the whitecaps risen in a certain square of sea, or make sense of the almost infinite distance between yourself and the person driving his car on the lonely dead-straight road below, you don't want to engage in the familiar lingering intimations, allusions, narratives, all that compacted striated terra-firma consideration, but instead simply stir with this special velocity that is in itself worth the whole of any voyage, this alternating tug and weightless-ness of your constant departure.

"What do you think is going to happen with Jack?" Theresa says, speaking of terra-infirma.

"Jack? At some point he's going to have to sell that house.

And probably a lot of that stuff they have."

"Eunice does love that house."

"I don't think Jack does, or ever did."

"Where will they go? They have so much stuff. Not to mention Pop."

"I don't know," I say, instantly picturing the movers bubble-wrapping and crating him right there in the bed, propped up with clicker and Hot Pocket in hand.

"I can't see Jack and Eunice in a rental."

"You can get a real nice condo these days. They'll do fine."

"But there's no more Battle Brothers."

"Jack will get something going again."

"Are you going to help him?"

A loud rasp of noise squelches the end of her question, and I pretend it got lost in the wires.

After a moment, she says, "Well, are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Are you going to help Jack?"

"I'm retired, remember? And I'm not rich. At least not enough to start a new business."

"You should still help," she says, with clear alarm, her emphasis actually squawking the sound. "You have to."

"Of course I will," I say. "It's just not yet clear how."

"I can tell you how, Jerry."

"Okay."

"Why don't you invite them to live with us?"

"Are you nuts?"

"We have plenty of room."

"Plenty of room? There are three bedrooms, last time I looked. Jack and Eunice would need one, the kids another, and unless Pop is willing to go back to Ivy Acres, which I doubt, then one for him. That still leaves you and Paul, and then me, the owner of the house."

"You can convert the study to another bedroom for yourself, and Paul and I can move downstairs."

"Downstairs? That's the basement!"

"Maybe Jack can build some walls. There's already a half-bath down there. Besides, we're not going to stay with you forever."

"What are you talking about?"

"You forget I'm on leave. I'm going to have to teach again."

"What about extra maternity leave?" I say. "Isn't that the law these days?"

Theresa says, "I suppose so," though without much conviction, and not because she's someone who doesn't keep up on her worker rights and benefits. There's not been much pessimism in the house, if at all, the only indication of worry and trouble being that Paul sometimes has to excuse himself from the room or take a stroll around the neighborhood, probably so his heart doesn't suddenly shatter into a thousand jagged pieces; but by the same token there hasn't been any talk whatsoever of the future, or of any future past a few days out, which I can say over the last couple months we've been together has been a pretty liberally bestowed mercy among us, and judging from the sudden panicky hollow pinging in my gut, one I haven't appreciated near deeply enough.

I say, "You should take unpaid leave and stay longer. Paul can finally finish his book. When you have the baby you can take the master bedroom. There's an old crib in the basement that I'll clean and move up for you."

"That sounds nice."

"No problem."

"But what about the others?"

"What about them?"

"Come on, Jerry."

With the light shining from behind her sunglasses I can see her eyes searching me, perhaps not so much looking for the desired answer but rather the glimmer of a character somehow more wise and generous and self-sacrificing than the one that for some fifty-nine and fifteen-sixteenths years have come to possess. Being who she is, Theresa would never have cared for the kind of father with whom she could discuss fuzzy intimacies, talk interspersed with full-on hugs and remembrances of previous challenges righteously met and overcome, all at a pitch of loving confirmation muted only by the wistful minor-key note that we couldn't always be together every moment of our lives. Then again, I don't know if she would have even wished we were that rare pair who could take turns riffing, say, on the Lacanian imbrication of contemporary family life (another few words I've learned this summer), or talk fast and loose in slick jump cuts between our favorite neo-Realist films and hip-hop marketing and the sinister global triumph of capitalism.