I left my pack in my purse.
Marino, who disliked flying more than I did, slept to Charlotte, where we boarded a commuter prop plane that reminded me unpleasantly of how little there is between fragile human flesh and empty air. I had worked my share of disasters and knew what it was like to see an aircraft and passengers scattered over miles of earth. I noted there was no rest room or beverage service, and when the engines started, the plane shook as if it were, having a seizure. For the first part of the trip, I had the rare distinction of watching the pilots chat with each other, stretching and yawning until a stewardess made her way up the aisle and yanked the curtain shut. The air was getting more turbulent, mountains drifting in and- out of fog. The second time the plane suddenly lost altitude, sending my stomach into my throat, Marino, gripped both armrests so hard his knuckles went white.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and I began to regret bringing him breakfast. He looked as if he were about to get sick. “If this bucket ever makes it on the ground in one piece, I’m having a drink. I don’t friggin’ care what time it is.”
“Hey, I’ll buy,” a man in front of us turned around and said.
Marino was staring at a strange phenomenon occurring in a section of the aisle directly ahead of us. Rolling up from a metal strip at the edge of the carpet was a ghostly condensation that I had never seen on any previous flight. It looked as if clouds were seeping inside the plane, and when Marino pointed this out with a loud “What the hell?” to the stewardess, she completely ignored him.
“Next time I’m going to slip Phenobarbital in your coffee,” I warned him between clenched teeth.
“Next time you decide to talk to some wild-ass gypsy who lives in the sticks, I ain’t coming along for the ride.”
For half an hour we circled Spartanburg, bumped and tossed, fits of freezing rain pelting the glass. We could not land because of the fog, and it honestly occurred to me that we might die. I thought about my mother. I thought about Lucy, my niece. I should have gone home for Christmas, but I was so weighted down by my own concerns, and I had not wanted to be asked about Mark. I’m busy, Mother. I simply can’t get away right now. “But it’s Christmas, Kay.”
I could not remember the last time my mother had cried, but I always knew when she felt like it. Her voice got funny. Words were spaced far apart. “Lucy will be so disappointed,” she had said. I had mailed Lucy a generous check and called her Christmas morning. She missed me terribly, but I think I missed her more.
Suddenly, clouds parted and the sun lit up windows. Spontaneously, all of the passengers, including me, gave God and pilots a round of applause. We celebrated our survival by chatting up and down the aisle as if all of us had been friends for years.
“So maybe Broom Hilda’s looking out for us,” Marino said sarcastically, his face covered with sweat.
“Maybe she is,” I said, taking a deep breath as we landed.
“Yeah, well, be sure to thank her for me.”
“You can thank her yourself, Marino.”
“Yo,” he said, yawning and fully recovered.
“She seems very nice. Maybe for once, you might consider having an open mind.”
“Yo,” he said again.
When I had gotten Hilda Ozimek’s number from directory assistance and given her a call, I was expecting a woman shrewd and suspicious who bracketed every comment in dollar signs. Instead, she was unassuming and gentle, and surprisingly trusting. She did not ask questions or want proof of who I was. Her voice sounded worried only once, and this was when she mentioned that she could not meet us at the airport.
Since I was paying and in a mood to be chauffeured, I told Marino to pick out what he wanted. Like a sixteen year-old on his first test drive to manhood, he selected a brand-new Thunderbird, black, with a sunroof, a tape deck, electric windows, leather bucket seats. He drove west with the sunroof open and the heat turned on as I went into more detail about what Abby had said to me in Washington.