Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

His shoulders were tight with the tension that came from knowing he wanted the impossible. He wanted kisses of reconciliation and reunion and a hero’s welcome at home and a begrudging hug from her kid. He had this feeling in his throat, as if he were coming down with something, allergies, maybe. His eyes felt dull, heavy lidded. Yes, his wants were much simpler now. He wanted a happy ending. The same faces that had looked on him in disgust at his outburst now looked away from his tears; there was nothing uglier than seeing a large man cry, his bulk heaving with sobs, his nose beaded with mucus and his breath coming in sharp snorts. As he cried, he could feel the skin of his face flush, the pink of rare meat.

The airline employee gave Mike a stack of paper napkins from the buffet table, and Mike settled enough to blow his nose, the sound a resonant, trumpetlike blurt.

“Tell me your name,” the man from the airline said.

“Sorry,” Mike said, and introduced himself.

“Who did you know onboard Flight 503? Your wife?” The exact question the training materials said never to ask.

“Her name was Mary Beth.”

“And she was related to you?” A required question, taken from the laminated card. Physical clues (no ring) suggested Mike was not married, and the man from the airline had memorized the draft passenger manifest, and there was no one with the last name Renfro on board.

“No. We were dating. She was my…I don’t know what you’d call it. She worked for me.”

“I’m not sure I understand. What was her full name?”

Mike answered, “Mary Beth Blumenthal,” a phrase that told the man from the airline seat 26C.

“I would imagine that you are going to find this entire process very frustrating, Mike. It is all right if I call you Mike?” Clearly whoever had written the training materials for the airline had experience in sales, because Mike could anticipate how the man was going to try to solicit him to say the word yes as many times as he could in the next few minutes.

“Sure,” Mike said. He regretted being so docile.

“We won’t get confirmation of anything other than the ticket audit in the next several hours. If you’d like, we can put you up at a hotel here for the next day or so, until…,” and then the man from the airline trailed off.

“What is it? What were you going to say?” Mike resettled in his chair, and the pressure against the molded plastic back of his seat made him aware of how soaked his lower back was, how his skin had gone clammy with sweat.

“If you’ll excuse me,” the airline rep said, “I’ve got to look into one thing.”

Mike knew when to call the question. “Tell me right now. What were you about to say?” Mike stood up and knew that he’d raised his voice. The same people who had turned away at his grief now looked on at the spectacle. Mike was about a foot taller and a full hundred pounds heavier than the man he was speaking to.

“I was going to say,” the airline rep stood and almost whispered at Mike, “that the airline could put you up until we can get you on a plane to Dallas.”

“Sounds reasonable. Let’s make that happen,” Mike said.

“That’s what I need to check on. I am not certain that we can. But if we can, we will. We’ve bumped all the passengers from the next two flights in order to accommodate family members. The earliest I can get you on a plane is going to be around this time tomorrow. Maybe. I don’t mean to be blunt, but there’s going to be a problem here. We’re prepared to deal with husbands and wives and parents and children, but you fall into what we might call a gray area.”

“A gray area,” Mike repeated.

“I’m not sure you have any legal standing here. You’re not a designated emergency contact for Ms. Blumenthal, and you aren’t a relative. At this point, it’s unclear whether I should even be talking to you.”

“Just what exactly is your name?” Mike demanded. The sensation he felt was stunning. His anger ran out of him, his shoulders fell. The pressure in his neck suggested that he was nearing the limit of the stresses a man could tolerate. He sat down and almost missed the chair, stumbling into it. His legs thumped against the conference table.

The man from the airline opened the other bottle of water and handed it to Mike. “You need to eat something. And you need to relax, if you can. Do you think you can do that for me, Mike?”

Once Mike nodded, the man from the airline pulled out a small pad and made some notes, then tucked the notepad into his jacket pocket. “There’s no polite way to tell you this, Mike, but your situation…,” and he trailed off again. Mike knew the pause was deliberate. “My name is Arthur McDevitt. Call me Art.” He palmed a business card to Mike. He wanted to say something to Mike that committed him to nothing. “I can’t do anything for you that might infringe on the rights of Ms. Blumenthal’s family. It’s just a strange situation. You’re someone we hadn’t anticipated. A gray area.”

Mike gave a cursory nod that meant I understand.

“Do you know who she might want us to contact? A relative? A parent, perhaps?” Art asked.

Mike took another of his business cards, wrote a name and number on the back of it. “Her brother.”

The man from the airline stood and went to the front of the room, where he conferred with another man, the two of them glancing at Mike every few sentences. What could he give Mary Beth now? He would forever be in that gray area between boss and husband and boyfriend, and maybe it was odd, but they hadn’t said a thing to him about the body or the procedures, and, most of all, they had not once mentioned the boy. The boy. Gabriel had no idea.

How do you tell a child? That would be the thought that consumed Mike the rest of the afternoon. His mission now. To protect the boy. To be the one constant in his life, the one source of comfort.

The man from the airline returned, accompanied by two more identically dressed men. They flanked Mike on either side, as if he’d been a disruption and was being escorted out of the room by security. One of the men was folding a stack of papers, tucking them into his inside coat pocket.

“You didn’t tell us that she had a son,” one of the new men said. “Where is he now?”

Mike explained the situation. “I want to be the one who tells him.”

“When there is a minor involved and there are surviving family members, we leave those decisions to the family.”

The three men nodded in agreement, and Mike assumed what he was seeing was relief that they would not be asked to take on this disheartening duty themselves.

They made their way out of the conference room, into a hallway that was nearly empty. It made Mike realize they were afraid of him, of some volcanic eruption. Mike repeated himself, “I need to be the one who explains things to the boy.”

Arthur nodded, extended his hand. It was the tone of his voice, the perfunctory “Of course,” that told Mike the man was lying.

Before Mike understood what he was doing, he had made his way out of the terminal to the parking garage. He got back behind the wheel of his rented Jeep and started his way east on the interstate. When he saw the mileage sign for Cheyenne, he thought to stop and fill the tank, made the call to arrange to keep the car for a few more days. We perform our duties out of custom or obligation, and this one, this last bit of service to Mary Beth, was somehow both.

At the first exit, he pulled off and bought a portable Rand McNally atlas, a large Diet Coke, and a cheeseburger that had been kept warm under a heat lamp. Back on the highway, he thought about Mary Beth at the office, about the ebb and flow of their Mondays, when she would review his calendar for the week, the every-other-Thursday sessions when he signed payroll checks. She’d come into the office with a stack of checks and a stack of documents affixed with yellow stickers that read ACTION REQUIRED.