Thomas decided to use his neighbor’s idea to block out his father. He grabbed his headphones and closed his eyes as the plane took off.
As Thomas slept, his father watched over him silently. When the flight attendants brought the meal, he leaned in toward his son.
“I thought you wanted to make up for lost time.”
“I don’t think this is the best place for a chat—that is, unless you want to see me put in a straitjacket.”
“Fair enough. But I can still talk.”
“My God, for someone who was so reserved in life, you’ve certainly become chatty in death!”
“Would you stop invoking God for every little thing? I’m not exactly sure how high up the information about my leave went ... And if I didn’t talk much back then, well, maybe it was because you never asked me any questions.”
Thomas glanced at his neighbor, who was watching him suspiciously.
“If you’re that worried about what that woman thinks of you, why don’t you write down what you want to say to me.”
Thomas found the idea ridiculous. “We’ve waited thirty-five years to get all this off our chests. We can wait a little longer, until we get off this plane.”
“What exactly do you need to get off your chest? You don’t see me holding a grudge.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s what you said. Are you going to act like an immature child and say I didn’t care about you enough? Fine, let’s get on with it, then. But I get to go first, since I’m older. So, tell me, what was my favorite movie, my favorite song? Which poem moved me the most in life? Here we are: checkmate in a single move. You have no idea, do you? Admit it, you were going to try to trap me with exactly that sort of question.”
“So, being dead gives you the power to read my mind?”
“Being your father gave me that power a long time ago.”
“Bread and Chocolate, ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ which you sang in the shower and in the car on your way home, and Rimbaud’s ‘The Sleeper in the Valley.’ I think you’ve just lost your king.”
Raymond looked steadily at his son.
“I would take you to spend Saturday afternoons at the Jardin d’Acclimatation amusement park, and as soon as we’d get home, you’d ask for your mother and throw yourself into her arms. I went to all your soccer matches, but you played for her. I would give you your bath or read your stories, but you still wanted her to put you to bed. Whenever I would come into your room in the morning, you were always disappointed she wasn’t the one who’d come to wake you up.”
“Mom took care of me all the time—not just on Saturday afternoons. She took me to school and picked me up every day. And whenever we got home, I always asked her what time you would be back; it’s just that you weren’t there to hear it. Mom asked me aboutmy day and didn’t just keep reading the newspaper while I talked. She was gentle with me. She was patient.”
“You see? The question was never whether I spent enough time with you. I simply wasn’t raised to give you all those things. Blame masculine stoicism—I couldn’t even hug you for more than a few seconds without getting uncomfortable. My whole life I’ve struggled with affection. I was the surgeon people felt emotionally distant from, and yet, even when I was operating, I did it with love. I knew men who boasted about all the hearts they’d broken. I tried to put hearts back together.”
“Yes, spleens, livers, appendixes, and probably a whole lot of other organs too. I don’t need the details.”
“That woman is so annoying, giving us those strange looks. Tell her you’re schizophrenic so she’ll leave us alone!”
“I’m not sure she’d find that reassuring at thirty thousand feet.”
“Be quiet for a minute,” whispered Raymond. “Something’s going on up front.”
“How can you tell? We’re in the back row.”
“I can feel it. There’s agitation in the air. You don’t hear anything?”
“Death seems to be treating you well. You do remember that your hearing wasn’t the best those last few years, right?”
“Selective hearing, son. One of the rare privileges of old age is only hearing what interests you and pretending you missed the rest.”
“You were faking it?”
“Let’s just say I sorted useful information from superfluous chatter. Plus, being hard of hearing spares you from quite a few chores. What’s the point of asking someone who can’t hear to take out the trash?”
