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

interesting too.
    â€œDo you find yourself wondering why everyone’s here?” she asks.
    â€œYou mean cosmically? The purpose of humanity? Or only why we’re all on this plane?” He enjoys teasing her.
    â€œStart small. On the plane.”
    â€œI guess I could wonder. Or you could just tell me what you think.” He also enjoys her telling him stories; says he likes the compactness of fictions, which he considers tidier and rounder than history’s messy, straggling facts. A misconception, in Lila’s view, but no doubt she equally fails to grasp some aspects of his sense of history.
    â€œOkay,” she begins. “Susie and her mother, for instance—I’m thinking you’d need a powerful incentive to load a five-year-old onto a plane for this sort of journey. So how about if the mother’s abducting Susie?”
    â€œWhy the hell would she do that?”
    â€œBecause, let’s see, when she’s very young, she meets a rich older guy with a lot of power and connections and glamour, and she’s dazzled. He’s charming and protective, and she thinks he’ll look after her. But once they’re married, it turns out he’s a power freak, won’t let her go anywhere or do anything, starts handing out black eyes and bruises. Then they have Susie, but instead of making him better, he gets worse, punching her, once even breaking her arm. He’s rough with Susie, too, and she starts worrying about him harming her, and that’s too much, that’s the end. She can’t let him hurt her child.
    â€œBut where can she go? On her own she doesn’t have anything, or any skills. Still, one day she packs up a few things and sneaks out with Susie, rents a room, finds a lawyer.”
    â€œWhere does she get the money for that?”
    â€œOh, from an old high school friend she’s managed to stay in touch with, and her brother and sister give her some. Enough. Then she gets a part-time job waitressing, while her sister looks after Susie. She’s almost starting to think she can get on her feet.
    â€œFinally her husband says okay, she can have a divorce, but not Susie. He wants Susie. Her lawyer says her husband might well win custody, since he’s guaranteeing a good education and all kinds of luxuries, and she can’t. So what can she do? She’s desperate. She gets all her courage together and tells her husband she’ll accuse him of abusing Susie if it comes down to it.
    â€œEven when he was beating her, she’s never seen him so furious. He turns very cold. He says if she makes a move against him, he’ll kill both her and Susie. That one way or another, she won’t keep Susie. The way he’s looking at her, she believes him.”
    Tom shakes his head. “What a mind you have, Lila.”
    â€œWell, it happens, right?”
    He nods, pushes his tray away, folds his hands across his belly, closes his eyes. He knows, after all, that this is only a story. “Then what?”
    â€œShe can only think of one thing to do. She has to get away, run, hide, save Susie. She borrows more money, no idea how she’ll ever pay it back, and here they are. She doesn’t know what she’ll do or where they’ll go once they’re in England. They might be on the run through Europe for years. Till Susie’s a grown-up. But she’ll do anything, make any sacrifice, to keep Susie safe. She’s already afraid her husband has detectives on her tail and she won’t get farther than Heathrow, but she has to give it a shot.” Lila takes a deep breath.
    â€œThere. The end.”
    Tom applauds. “Very good.”
    â€œThank you.”
    It had holes, though, and flaws, Lila knows; not least of them that Susie’s mother looks much too relaxed to be a fugitive woman flying from danger into a furtive and desperate future.
    â€œKeep going,” Tom says. “Tell me more.”
    â€œAll