Some Things About Flying by Joan Barfoot Read Free Book Online Page A

know she’s being so unreasonable she can only laugh at herself.
    The window seat does seem to have made Susie happy. She stares and stares at the sky’s enormous, brilliant vacancy. “Is it really hot out there?” she asks Lila. “Are we close to the sun?”
    â€œNo, I think it’s very cold, because it’s a different kind of air up here than when we’re on the ground. We’re a little bit closer to the sun, I guess, but it’s still very, very far away.”
    â€œIt doesn’t look cold, it looks hot. Would you get burned if you sat on a cloud?”
    That’s a little whimsical for Lila’s taste, but still, this is a child. “It does look hot, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how cold it is. Freezing. Brrr.” Lila wraps her arms around herself, pretends to shiver.
    â€œWould I need a blanket?”
    â€œTwo, at least.”
    â€œThat’s funny, isn’t it?”
    Lila nods. “It’s a funny surprise when things look one way and turn out to be different, that’s for sure.”
    Susie looks puzzled and turns away, back to the window.
    When the first meal finally starts coming around, her mother, strength and patience restored, leans across the aisle and calls to her. “Come on, honey, time to eat.” She smiles at Tom and Lila. “Thank you so much. I hope she’s not been a bother. It really helps, having a break.”
    Tom is a kind man. His heart practically bleeds for people in need. He cannot, for instance, walk past a panhandler, and once when Lila was with him, he stopped and squatted beside a teenager hunched on the sidewalk, under a blanket, to pet and admire the boy’s dog and see, by the way, if he could do something to help. “Get your fucking hands off my dog,” the boy warned, which would have deterred Lila, but not Tom, who pulled a fiver from his wallet and put it down beside the boy. “I don’t know,” he sighed to Lila as they walked away. “I don’t understand how that happens, a kid living on the streets and only a dog for love.” She’d hugged his arm closer to her body. The same sort of instant, compassionate impulse to fix got him in trouble in politics: his kindness overwhelming obedience to fiscal policies.
    There’s a difference between kindness and gentleness. Lila would say she is more gentle than he, but nowhere nearly as kind. Who knows how many people he will set out to rescue, from boredom or doom, in the next couple of weeks? Lila might catch kindness from him, with a sufficiently prolonged exposure. She might go home good, even saintly.
    In that case, goodbye Tom.
    Elbows collide as they deal with their dinner, relatively recognizable as a mixed vegetable rice, a salad that does not involve iceberg lettuce, and meat that is evidently beef. There’s a tiny roll, and for dessert a dish of unsweetened fruit. This is truly a romantic meal; far more so than delicately designed dishes in a small, darkened restaurant, with champagne and candles. Because here they are, side by side in their cramped hard seats, dodging each other’s elbows, struggling with elfin cutlery, flying together—imagine!
    And in a way, it’s as private as any dark restaurant. Individuals get lost in crowds. Here are dozens and dozens of people jammed into this cabin, in which every morsel of space is designed for a purpose and nothing is wasted or useless; but push people together and they are quick to build walls, and Lila and Tom can be quite alone.
    All these strangers sitting in their obedient rows are headed in the same direction, but must have utterly varying purposes and sentiments, hopes and desires. Each is a story as well as a person. Lila and Tom, the two of them, are a story; very likely they are also two stories. He has his own, no doubt somewhat different from hers.
    Naturally she finds their story compelling, but others’ must be