Eight
Eight
The plane lands at night.
It was, simply put, the worst flight of Ellie’s life. The aircraft bounced and shook and at one point dropped so hard and so fast, like a trackless free-fall ride, that all the seat-back television screens went black and never turned on again. Not once did the pilot click off the seat belt signs. The flight crew stayed strapped into their fold-down seats, unable to safely push the beverage cart down the too-narrow aisle. From the minute they took off until the wheels touched the runway, a woman behind Ellie screamed out “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” every ten seconds while her toddler furiously and forcefully kicked the back of her seat like a frightened donkey.
Other than their fellow passengers, the airport is practically empty when they deboard. The other gates are mostly quiet, save for a few stranded strays who use their travel gear as pillows. The snack stand’s lights are clicked off. A cleaning crew vacuums the carpeting. In silence, Ellie and Jonah pass through a hallway of windows. Outside, the world is all wind and sideways rain. Their transparent reflections blend with it.
Ellie can hardly walk, her back a mess of knots and spasms thanks to their awful flight. Her fingers ache from gripping the armrests. She feels the way she imagines one must feel after participating in one of those intense boot camp–style exercise classes—the sort that she, an almost newly single woman, ought to consider taking but won’t. She already feels beat up. Fatigued. Sore.
Ellie and Jonah—still travel partners, if only for a few more minutes—pause outside the restroom near the departure gates. Jonah—who, despite the panic-inducing environment, managed to calm himself down midflight—steps into the bathroom first. While she waits, Ellie slides her phone from her pocket and sends her two obligatory texts, one to her mother and another to her daughter, whose plane somehow arrived back in Vermont hours earlier, to let them know they’ve landed. Bunny sends a return message almost immediately.
Think about what I said, Ellie , Bunny types back without posing a single question about the treacherous weather and flight. Ellie imagines her mother seated in her reading chair, unable to sleep, wearing her tropical robe while she watches old game show reruns and thinks and thinks and thinks. The vow , Bunny writes, as if her point is not already clear. A new bubble appears. Also, I meant what I said about Christmas.
Ellie shakes her head at her mother (How can she even begin to think so far ahead?) and swipes back to her message chain with Maggie. She sees from the time stamp that her daughter has read her note, though she’s chosen not to write back. Frustrated, Ellie is about to close the screen but then sees three dots appear, an indication that Maggie is right here with her and typing back. Her heart racing in her throat, Ellie waits. But her efforts are a waste. A few seconds later, the bubbles disappear, Maggie disappearing along with them.
“Here,” Ellie says when Jonah walks out and rejoins her. She clicks her screen closed, then hands him her book bag, like always, so she doesn’t need to carry it into the bathroom stall. “Just give me a minute.”
Maybe it’s the harsh fluorescent lights or the fact that it’s late or that she’s been awake and moving since roughly 4:00 a.m. Whatever the reason, as Ellie sets her phone down on the counter, washes her hands at the filthy sink, and then splashes cool water on her face (probably filthy, too, though she needs it—she feels like she’s dead), she can’t help but notice that she looks terrible. Her skin appears a touch gray. Two puffy bags hang like unwanted accessories beneath her eyes. Back outside the bathroom, Jonah looks washed out and terrible, too. Is this what they wanted? Are these the people—these new, fabulous versions of themselves—they felt so desperate to become without each other? Or is this only the start—the chrysalis before the final, sought-after metamorphosis?
“Are you going to be okay?” Jonah asks Ellie when she exits the bathroom. He hands her back her book bag. His T-shirt is wrinkled from a long day of travel. His hair, typically styled, is rumpled. Although impossible, it appears to contain more silver strands than it did when they departed forty-eight hours ago. “Your back,” he clarifies, scratching at the new stubble that’s grown in on his face since the morning. “You’re practically limping.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insists while maneuvering her arms through the bag’s nylon straps. “Really. I have some of those pills at home.” They’re nothing too strong or too dangerous—she’s not a dummy—just something she needs sometimes to subdue the muscle spasms so she can rest. “I just need to get home and sleep in my own bed,” she adds, and the words hit them both like bullets, even though she hadn’t meant for them to sound this way. Home. My own bed. The suggestion that these two things are now hers—no longer his.
A short while later and they are at the baggage claim, Ellie’s suitcase collected, everything they set out to do on this weekend trip officially done. They stand a few feet away from each other near the airport’s wall of glass doors. Outside, several cars are parked at the curb, trunks wide open, hazard lights flashing. Other travelers, also anxious to get back home, hustle out into the miserable weather.
Jonah runs a hand through his gray-flecked hair, sucks in a deep barrel of a breath. He offers Ellie a timid half smile, like a kid with something embarrassing to say. “Maybe we should turn back around,” he announces, and for a second Ellie can’t tell if he is joking. “Maybe we should go back through security, get on a different flight, go someplace else, and run away from all this.”
Ellie gives herself permission to release a quiet puff of a laugh. “Oh yeah?” Her body—her bones and her brain, just everything—is so tired. This small dose of entertainment—she needs it. “And where would we go?”
His eyes—which often shine gold but now look so dimmed—are locked on hers in a way they haven’t been in a very long time. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice a hint above a whisper, like it’s just the two of them who stand in this public space. “Somewhere far away,” Jonah continues. “Someplace where we can start over. Have a second chance, maybe.” He smiles, but it’s quiet. Sentimental. Sad. “Or maybe just a good beach.”
“Yeah.” Ellie nods and imagines the two of them at some poolside bar, sipping fruity drinks, this whole weekend and the many months that have led them to it merely a bad figment of their imaginations. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Jonah tosses his hands up at his sides, shrugs his wide shoulders. “Well,” he says, “I guess this is it, then.” He leans in and hugs her, not too long, and not too brief, just enough for a proper goodbye. When he pulls back, he looks at her—his wife of over twenty years—for one more extended beat. “We’ll talk in a few days, Ellie. Okay?”
A lump of emotion clogs Ellie’s throat, heavy and cumbersome like a brick. She nods again, reminding herself that this is what they wanted. That no one has made this choice but the two of them. That the decision Jonah references—for Ellie to be the one to call the attorney first thing tomorrow morning to get the legal process started, and in the interim for the two of them to not communicate for the rest of the week so they can both take a cool-off period before litigation begins—is all part of the agreement they made together, too. “Okay,” she echoes as she twists her simple wedding band on her finger, just so she’ll have something to do with her hands.
Jonah steps forward first. The electronic doors open in front of him. “You know ...,” he begins before briefly turning back. “I meant what I said last night, Ellie. Despite where we’re at, I still think our marriage was a success.” Behind him, a family from their flight—two exhausted, sunburned children passed out like rag dolls over their parents’ shoulders—exits the building, tired but satisfied to have collected several days of new happy memories together. “And even though I know how our story ends,” Jonah continues, “if I got to go back to the first chapter, I’d still do it all again.”
Ellie sighs heavily. It feels like whatever she releases has been held inside her for ages. “That’s quite the literary metaphor for a guy who thrives on numbers,” she says with a smile. It’s the only thing she can do so that she doesn’t cry.
Jonah chuckles. Lines crease around his mouth and eyes. “I wanted to make sure I phrased things in a way you’d understand.”
Outside, the world is dark, flooded, the whole state wet thanks to this absurd, theatrical storm. Ellie briefly thinks of her books, wondering if maybe the weather is symbolic, like a form of baptism, a ceremonial cleansing before she and Jonah go their separate ways. Ellie shakes the thought away, knowing, of course, that life is most certainly not a book. Not a series of happy endings. This moment—the last real one in her marriage—is not a proverbial purification rite. Not an emblem. Not an example of fate or free will. It is not anything, really. It just ... is.
“I’ll see you soon,” Jonah says as he steps outside and into the rain. “We’ll talk next weekend.”
Ellie lowers her eyelids like window blinds so she won’t have to watch him walk away. When she reopens them, he’s gone, and she’s left here alone. She tugs the handle of her scuffed suitcase and moves forward, too. Before she exits, she peers back over her shoulder, as if she’s outside herself, like she might see herself and Jonah still standing there behind her. When she does this, she notices the time on a digital clock above the baggage claim.
11:11 p.m.
She doesn’t even know what she’s wishing for. Not really. Even so, certain habits, as she’s come to learn, are hard to break.
Ellie closes her eyes and wishes for it anyway.