“But you could at least consider it for a minute, couldn’t you?”
I shook my head. I didn’t fly. I had stopped flying when my father, Buddy Zabriskie, died, which was to say that Jonathan and I had never been on a plane together. He knew my limitations when he married me, even though he would occasionally push on them to see if they held. We had taken our honeymoon on Cape Cod, our vacations in Maine. One of his daughters lived in Philadelphia and the other in Baltimore, and in both cases it was quicker to drive than it was to fly. I understood the inconvenience I caused, but other people lived with great burdens. There were wives who wouldn’t take the subway, wives who wouldn’t get on elevators. There were wives who were afraid to drive over a bridge and wives who refused to take the tunnel that ran beneath the river. We had taken theQueen Maryto Southampton and then taken the Chunnel to Paris for our tenth anniversary. It was splendid.
Jonathan once asked my sister over Thanksgiving dinner if she didn’t know someone who could fix me—hypnotism or EMDR—and to my great surprise my sister said yes, she could put me in touch with someone if I were willing to try. I handed her a dish of roasted sweet potatoes and said I was not willing to try. I said if she had had a similar experience on a flight, she might well have come to a similar conclusion, not to mention the fact that I believed it was healthy for Jonathan to spend timewith his sister, in the same way I believed it was healthy for me to spend time with mine.
“I don’t want to leave you alone now,” he said. “I wish you’d come.”
“Why shouldn’t I be alone?”
“Well, clearly it rattled you, seeing him.”
“I was surprised, not rattled. I was happy to see Eddie. I loved seeing Eddie.”
“So, do you think you’ll call him?”
“Of course I’ll call him.” I looked at his profile. He kept his eyes on the road. “You liked Eddie, didn’t you?”
Jonathan nodded. “I did.”
I wondered if he’d gotten any packing done since he’d come home or if he’d just been taking apart the afternoon in his mind. “So what’s the problem?”
He stayed quiet a beat too long, then gave me a small smile that was meant to indicate bravery. “I want to be sure you’ll be here when I get back.”
“Seriously? You think I’m going to run off with Eddie Triplett?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But you have to admit, he seems to love you more than most of them do.”
“Jonathan, he’s my stepfather.”
That explanation provided no comfort at all.
I had been a young-looking thirty-one when we married, while Jonathan’s hair had gone gray around the time his wife died. More than one waitress commented on how nice it was to see a father and daughter going out to dinner in those early days. Neither one of us knew what to do with that one. I remember a particular dress I loved, a navy blue pinafore that I wore over a white blouse, and one day Jonathan asked if I would please get ridof it. “Give it to one of your tall students,” he said. “It makes you look like you’re twelve.”
These days no one looked at us twice because I was no longer his much younger wife. I was a woman safely past fifty, and Jonathan was newly seventy. We were at last a perfect match, and my husband wanted to make sure I didn’t mess it up while he was out of town.
I would tell this to Eddie someday. I would tell him that Jonathan was worried about what could happen, and then the two of us would laugh.
Jonathan and I ate our sushi in the backyard, sitting in Adirondack chairs. We stayed there until the sun, tired of waiting for us to go back inside, called it a night. We talked about his mother’s house and the work there was to do, how to dispose of a lifetime’s possessions. One of Bea’s sons was planning to drive over from Madison to help for a couple of days, and Jonathan’s older daughter, Sydney, was going to fly in from Philadelphia. Bea’s husband would be there, too. I still didn’t feel guilty. If anything, I felt glad there were so many hands on deck.
“It would be nice to be able to travel,” Jonathan said.
“We travel,” I said, seeing how the conversation was about to circle back.
“You get to be a certain age and you realize that time isn’t stretching out forever.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I’d brought out a box of strawberries and we ate them for dessert, dropping their little green hats into the lawn.
“I worked for a long time,” he said.
“I know you did.”
“I thought when the time came to retire, I’d be able to seesome things. I don’t need to go around the world, but I’d like to see some things.”
“Jonathan, we’ve known each other for more than twenty years.”
“It’s not just that you’re afraid to fly,” he said. “It’s that you can’t ever go places with me.”
“What are you talking about?” Was he anxious about the trip?
