Chapter 7 #2
When he’d finally worked up the courage, Thomas walked toward the security checkpoint. A dark mass appeared on the screen, and the agent frowned and confiscated his bag for a more detailed inspection.
“What is this?” asked the young security agent as she took hold of the urn.
“A jar of incense,” Thomas said. “I’m a concert pianist, and it helps to calm my nerves.”
“You must be really anxious to need this much. May I?” she asked as she opened the lid.
Thomas nodded and blinked in agreement. She bent closer and sniffed the contents. “It smells nice,” she said as she closed it.
She checked the urn for traces of explosives, then finally returned it to Thomas. He put it back in his bag, told the woman goodbye, and left. His anxiety grew as he looked around the gate area.
“I feel like a lost child in a crowd, desperately searching for his parents,” he mumbled. “This is all so ridiculous.”
Thomas briefly considered turning around and going home but then decided it would be silly to miss out on visiting San Francisco, since he’d already paid for his flight and come all the way to the airport.
He hurried down the gangway and into the airplane cabin, where he stored his bag in the overhead bin.
His neighbor had already claimed the armrest between them and had unfolded her newspaper, taking up the entirety of her space and some of Thomas’s as well.
He glanced at the empty seat across the aisle, hoping he would be able to move to it once boarding was complete.
As soon as the head flight attendant announced that the doors were closing, his father appeared in the seat, a huge grin on his face.
“Admit it! You missed me a little.”
“You think this is funny? Is this some kind of game to you?”
“Do you really think it’s that easy to reincarnate? I was there in the room with you, but for some reason, you couldn’t see me. I guess it was some kind of glitch. Your cologne trick was brilliant, by the way.”
“A glitch?”
“A wonderfully American word, isn’t it?”
“You want to hear about a glitch? I was about to turn my back on this whole thing. How’s that for a glitch?”
“Oh, I heard you grumbling, but you wouldn’t have given up. What did you mean when you said we’d be even? Am I to understand that you’ve finally decided that the upbringing I gave you was good enough after all?”
Thomas’s neighbor folded up her paper with a compassionate smile. She reassured him that he had nothing to worry about since air travel was the safest means of transportation. In an apparent attempt to distract him, she asked him what he did for a living.
“I’m a pianist,” he replied.
“They have excellent musical channels on board. Nothing better to help you relax,” she said as she put on her headphones.
Thomas glared at his father, who seemed to be enjoying the situation.
“By the way, what an evening last night! Your friend Serge is terribly boring. I think his girlfriend had the right idea—I would have left him once and for all a long time ago.”
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 about my 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?”
The pilot’s voice came on over the intercom. A passenger in first class needed medical attention. If there was a doctor on board, he or she should alert a member of the crew.
“What did I tell you!” Raymond exclaimed.
“That you were a rather cold fish.”
“Raise your hand,” Raymond ordered.
“Why on earth would I do that?”
“Have you seen anyone else volunteer?”
“No, but I’m not a doctor.”
“I am, though. Flag down that flight attendant. You are so stubborn sometimes. Think of the passenger who needs help, for goodness’ sake!”
Suddenly, Thomas felt his hand begin to jerk around. Unable to control it, he watched as it waved in the air overhead.
“Are you doing that?” he asked, stunned.
“No, it’s your conscience, genius.”
His neighbor gave him a look filled with both sympathy and surprise.
“You must have misheard. Probably due to your anxiety,” she offered, with a fake laugh. “They need a doctor, not a pianist.”
“I know,” Thomas sighed.
“So, why are you raising your hand?”
“Ah, see, that I do not know,” he said with a shrug.
“Well, put it down, then!”
“I can’t, it’s beyond my control.”
“But there’s no point in serenading that poor sick man,” she argued.
“I doubt there’s a piano on board. And to be honest, serenades get on everyone’s nerves after a while, not just sick people’s.”
“What are you playing at?”
“It depends on the evening. Brahms, Mozart, Bruch . . .”
“Are you messing with me?”
“I promise, I’m not,” Thomas exclaimed as sincerely as possible. “Let go of my hand, Dad. You’re going to get me in trouble!”
The woman stared at him, dumbfounded.
“Oh, I wasn’t talking to you,” he apologized.
She leaned over to look in the direction of the seemingly empty seat where Raymond—visible only to Thomas—was enjoying every second of the show.
“Are you on something?” she asked.
“Just a plane, same as you.”
A flight attendant came over, putting an end to the doomed conversation. She thanked Thomas for volunteering, explained that a passenger had passed out, and asked him to follow her.
His seatmate couldn’t believe her eyes as he stood up. “But he’s a pianist!” she protested.
Her protest fell on deaf ears. Thomas was already halfway up the aisle. The stage fright he felt before a performance was nothing compared to what he felt as he reached the first rows of the plane.
A man in his fifties was lying unconscious on the galley floor, where the crew had carried him to give him some room.