Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

Turbulence

TIFF PROMISED DANIELLE Steel he would come to San Francisco for the Star Ball, a benefit for the Nick Traina Foundation, a trust named after her late son. When Philip heard about it, he suggested they fly up on his jet. (Lisanne was shocked to learn Philip even had a jet.) A high-end bunch tagged along: Clive Davis and Quincy Jones, Sharon Stone and a friend, Robin Williams, Steve Bing, and Mattie’s friends Rita Wilson and Tracey Ullman. When Mattie had to cancel over some kind of dental problem, Lisanne became convinced it was a harbinger that the plane was going to crash.

Until takeoff, she hadn’t dwelled on her fear. But just as they began the steep ascent, she said to herself, What have I done? Tucking her head into Roslynn’s shoulder, she gripped the poor woman’s arm in viselike panic. Lisanne thought of those Quecreek coal miners and how much better off they were because even though the water was rising to their chins they could still be rescued, whereas no one in this cave would have the faintest glimmer of a chance. Then she thought of that skydiving woman she read about in People whose parachute had failed. The woman plunked straight down onto a hill of red ants and somehow survived. (At least she was already falling outside the plane, a detail that now seemed positively merciful.) Her descent had probably been slowed by the unopened chute, whereas Lisanne was locked inside the unforgiving crypt of fuselage and wouldn’t be free until an infinitesimal remnant of her charred cells commingled with rocky mountain or gulfstream or wherever it was they’d be blown to. Roslynn kindly stroked her head and said the usual bromide about little jets being safer than big commercial ones, and it sounded like the saddest, most fantastic lie anyone ever told — pure chicanery. The soothing pillow talk of demons when dying children lay their heads down to final rest.

Lisanne set her right hand atop her left, palms up, and closed her eyes. She’d learned a lot from Buddhist classes and workshops, and from her readings too, and thought now might be a good time to put some of it to use. She tried focusing on the breath at her nostrils but only managed to fixate on the rush and precipitation of freezing air outside the paper-thin winged missile — a skittish, sacrificial dance of crazy gusts, currents, and wind shear that teased at flawed engines, themselves nearly spent. The low thunder of turbines reminded her of the diabolically codified sounds described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

She tensed, bringing herself back with near-violence to the meditation that a friend had guided her through while on lunch break at the Santa Monica Zen Center: she struggled to visualize a tiny rainbow in her heart-center. Lisanne made the rainbow expand while envisioning the dissolution of all fear in her body, all disease, all obstacles. As in the Temescal Canyon metta workshop, she tried to imagine herself becoming abstract, losing human form until she was a lamp whose light emanated to all beings, transmuting gross, unmindful, mulish nature into pure awareness, the Pure Land. Why should she cling to this life? The Buddha advised to rid oneself of the defilement of clinging and attachment, but losing Kit and Siddhama would be insurmountable, far worse than losing the Buddha himself. Maybe everything — mind, heart, void — would have to be murdered. True sages were always saying “Kill the Buddha!” but she didn’t think that meant literally. Besides, she didn’t enjoy a phrase like that; it was antithetical to her true nature. Maybe, thought Lisanne, it was antithetical to her true nature to be liberated. If that were so, than nothing mattered anyway.

A bump of turbulence made her drop the thread. She was panting now, and Roslynn pried loose her grip. Lisanne focused on the others. Sharon and her friend were having a quiet moment, like they were at some romantic beach restaurant. He held her hand and stared out the window. A stewardess served drinks to the Clive-Tiff-Bing-Quincy clique. Q and Bing were laughing at something Clive had said. Q and Bing seemed to laugh an awful lot at just about anything.

Philip, Rita, and Tracey shrieked over some bit of business that Robin was up to. The comedian was spritzing about his good friend Lance Armstrong and the love-hate relationship riders had with their bicycle seats. He was in the middle of a limp-wristed riff on pinched gonads and ass cancer when Tracey, apropos of nothing, began singing dirty lyrics from the Jerry Springer opera her husband produced. She stopped in mid-aria to say that she woke up that morning with crop circles carved in her bush. She said the same thing happened to Meg Ryan, then did an eerie impersonation of Meg calling her up on the phone to tell her about the “situation.” Q overheard the last bit and totally lost it. Then Bing lost it again, then Rita and Sharon and Philip, in that hee-haw way Philip had of laughing that drove Lisanne up the wall — in the grip of her terror, she still had the energy to hate him for not having come over to check up on her, for pretending not to notice something was wrong. Philip was of that emotional school that taught, Ignore loved ones in distress.

There was a jolt and the plane dipped. Sharon woofed and Robin Three Stooges woo-woo-wooed and Tracey mimed an Edvard Munch while Rita, Bing, and Philip split a gut. Clive and Q suddenly began to shoptalk, drinking their drinks, cool as can be. Lisanne was convinced that if the plane had somersaulted, no one would have cared in the slightest. Everyone was rich and celebrated and impervious; everyone had logged God knew how many millions of miles on all manner of rickety aircraft without the faintest whiff of anxiety; everyone was blessed and they knew it. Lisanne tried her rainbow vipassana again, but as the jet chop-surfed jagged currents, she felt something collapse like scaffolding within. That Tibetan Book blackness rolled toward her like a carpet of smoldering asphalt, and try as she might she couldn’t remember anything of the teachings except the parts about the Wrathful Bloodthirsty Visions and the homeless souls gathering during intercourse at the genitals of a couple like flies on a piece of meat—

“How’s our girl doin?” asked Philip. Finally.

“She’s going to be fine,” said Roslynn, herself shaken by the force of Lisanne’s naked agonies.

Philip took a closer look. “Wow. We should have given her a Xanax.”

“I have Ambien,” said Roslynn. “But by the time it kicks in, we’ll be on the ground.”

“I think you should give it to her.” Philip stroked Lisanne’s head and said, “She’ll be fine.”

“Oh Jesus,” said Roslynn.

She’d been smelling something, and as she got up for the pills, she saw that Lisanne’s seat was soaked in urine. There were other smells too, and she quickly went into nurse mode, telling Philip to grab some blankets. A steward came with a pile, and after he returned with towels, Rosylnn dismissed him with a curt nod. Philip lifted his girlfriend, and Roslynn shoved a towel then a blanket under her to sop it up. She put a blanket on the floor beneath Lisanne’s stocking feet, covering her up with a third. Sharon, Rita, and Tracey came over and, once they understood what was happening, tried to comfort. Sharon stroked Lisanne’s head, and Rita said, “Poor thing, poor baby,” while Tracey said her daughter Mabel hated flying too, and that the turbulence they’d just been through was really nothing, nothing at all, they all said they’d been in a hundred times worse. Tiff broke away from Bing, Q, and Sharon’s friend, joining Philip and the ladies. He started talking about a bad flight he once had into Aspen, but Roslynn twitched her eyebrows at him to stop. Philip made Lisanne swallow a pill, and then the choppiness got bad enough that the pilot told everyone to strap themselves in.