Chapter 15
Saturday was bags and politeness, the house wearing its program face.
Lina zipped the suitcase all the way until the pull tab clicked.
Extra socks, still doubled in the pair. The paper dictionary.
The wallet photo of Tomas facing out now, allowed to see the room as she left it.
The notebook went under the shirts, last pages thick with lids.
Friday Diane had run “a last load”; Lina had stood at the top of the basement stairs with the ruined guest spread in her arms and Diane had taken it from her without looking down the steps.
The washer drummed. Lina did not follow.
The museum map—churches, civic star, grease memory—she dropped in the kitchen bin.
Later the bin was empty. She did not ask who had saved or thrown it.
Mark brought the visa folder upstairs like a small graduation.
“All yours again. Don’t lose the stamp. Coordinator will want a scan when you land.”
The envelope was heavier than paper. She slid it into the bag beside the passport. Their fingers missed on purpose.
Cole carried the suitcase down and set it in the hall too carefully, as if it might bruise.
Ryan stood with an apple and offered her the rest of it.
She said no thank you. Diane wrapped a banana muffin in foil, the church muffin’s cousin, and put it in Lina’s coat pocket.
Lina said she would eat it on the plane.
The foil sat against her hip like the old map.
Breakfast orange juice, too bright. Four voices on traffic, terminals, which airline desk. Lina said the flight number once, clearly, so the table would hear a girl with a ticket and not a girl with a chair.
Saturday night she left the chair in the corner. Theatrical, now that Sunday had a clock. She lay in the cardigan and watched the hook. Sleep came in minutes, not hours.
Sunday at four they gathered in the kitchen. Leftover roast in the fridge, unnamed. Mark had the keys in his hand already. Diane had a sweater over her church blouse. Cole and Ryan wore clean shirts, collars straight, send-off sons.
“Whole family,” Mark said, and smiled the airport smile from the first day, the paper with LINA.
She sat in the back between the twins. Suitcase in the trunk. Folder in her lap. The peppermint was only a ghost in the upholstery. No one mentioned third levels. No one turned toward the bar street when they passed the mouth of it.
The city unrolled in reverse of her arrival: clock tower, library block, gallery corner, a dome far off like a dropped coin.
Diane talked about taking shoes off at security.
Mark talked about three hours early, parking rates, water after the checkpoint.
Cole said, “Don’t join a cult on the plane.”
Ryan looked out the window and said nothing, his shoulder against Lina’s, not a press, just the size of the back seat.
Lina watched the first airport signs. Green. White. A simple plane icon. Arrows that did not argue.
Her mouth tasted like toothpaste and the end of something.
The folder had her name in a window.
Tomas would have flowers, or he would have his hands empty and a bus ticket stub.
The four people in the car had taught her English that would never appear on a quiz: okay, wonderful, fine, space, family, independence, brave.
She held the folder closed.
Five o’clock in a kitchen had become a highway and a dashboard clock.
The house fell behind without a bolt sounding.
It had never needed a bolt.
It had needed a semester, a coordinator’s smiley, a girl who said thank you, and a flight time that was now a number Mark glanced at the way he glanced at a coordinator email.
Lina sat between the twins and did not put on her seatbelt until Diane said, “Belt, honey,” high and proper, and Lina clicked it, a small lock that worked, the first one all semester that had only one job.
The terminal was glass and lines and a voice naming gates.
Mark parked. Cole pulled the suitcase. Ryan carried nothing and stayed close. Diane had the muffin foil in her hand because it had fallen out of Lina’s pocket in the car. She put it back without a joke.
Check-in. The folder. The stamp. A woman at the desk smiled at the host family and said what a nice send-off. Mark said the program had been a joy. Lina signed where she was told.
Security would not let four people through.
That was the line.
They stood before it, a small clumsy cluster to the side of the stream.
Lina’s eyes were already wet. She had not planned the wet. It arrived with the sight of the bins for shoes.
She kissed Mark on the mouth.
Not a hairline. The mouth. Quick. Salt. He looked surprised and then not. His hand squeezed her elbow.
She kissed Diane on the mouth. Lipstick. Vanilla ghost. Diane held her face a second, thumbs at her jaw, and let go.
She kissed Cole on the mouth. He made a small sound like a laugh that had lost its joke. The scar at his eyebrow jumped.
She kissed Ryan on the mouth. He did not smile. His hand found her sleeve and dropped.
She was crying in a way that looked like gratitude to the woman at the desk, like a student who had loved her placement.
“Goodbye,” Lina said. Careful English. “Thank you.”
“Visit,” Mark said.
“Safe flight,” Diane said.
Cole said, “Don’t be a stranger.”
Ryan said, “Bye, Lina.”
Maybe, she said, to visit, and maybe was another lid.
She put her shoes in the bin. Laptop. Folder. The muffin foil she left in the coat.
On the other side of the scanner she did not look back until the belt gave her the bag.
They were still there, four shapes behind glass.
She lifted her hand.
They lifted theirs.
Then a stranger bumped her and the line moved and the house became a terminal that did not know her name.
At the gate she sat with the folder on her knees and the extra socks in the suitcase at her feet.
She did not open the notebook.
She watched planes.
When they called her row she stood like a person who had only ever studied and seen a city.
The jet bridge smelled like cold air and metal.
Lina walked it without a chair, without a hook, with mint on her tongue and four kisses cooling on her mouth in a stack the boy with flowers would taste as chapstick if she was lucky, and as goodbye if she was not.
The plane was a long white noise again, the same as the first day turned backward.
Lina sat by the window and did not watch the city shrink. She watched her hands. The folder under the seat in front of her. A movie she did not turn on. The muffin stayed in the coat. Somewhere over water she slept and did not dream of washers.
Landing was announcements and phones lighting. She followed BAGGAGE like a sign that had always been simple.
Tomas was at the barrier with flowers that were a little crushed from the bus.
No paper with her name. He was the paper.
She kissed him.
Lithuanian in her ear. His mouth. The flowers between them, awkward, good. He tasted like gum and home. She tasted, she hoped, like mint.
“You look the same,” he said.
“You look the same.”
Both lies were kind.
In the taxi he asked about the family. She said they were loud and they cooked too much and they drove her to the gate. He said he would still write a thank-you. She said she had already done it. Another small lid. He held her hand. She let him.
The flat. The river poster. Her mother’s soup later, probably.
She unpacked modest shirts into the drawer that had waited. Extra socks. Dictionary. Passport. Visa folder like a finished book. The notebook she put in a desk she could lock, and she did not open it.
She did not unpack Friday night.
She did not unpack the washer, the garage, the coins, Diane’s kitchen, brave.
Tomas made tea. He talked about the wedding she had missed, the uncle, the suit. Lina smiled in the right places. She said the exchange had been good for her English.
That was true.
It was not the whole vocabulary.
At night he reached for her, boyfriend-gentle, familiar. She let him. Her body knew more rooms than this one and she kept those rooms behind her teeth. After, he slept. She looked at the ceiling and counted nothing.
Monday she would enroll in the next thing. Study. Walk a city that belonged to her. Ride a bus whose stops she had always known.
She was home.
She was not the girl who had packed extra socks against the wrong cold.
She was a girl who could say wonderful and mean a plane ticket.
Tomas snored the old snore.
Lina put her palm on her own stomach and left it there.
The house on the other side of the ocean would send no letter.
The coordinator would ask for a scan and a smiley and she would send the stamp.
Fine.