13. Gavin
GAVIN
Ihave a son.
I’m standing in the little glass office at the back of our Farnborough hangar with my phone against my ear, and I have a son I didn’t know about until a few minutes ago.
My wife has heard his heartbeat for months.
She knows what his doctor says and where he’s going to sleep.
I know he’s a boy because she told me while she was breathing through a contraction.
Questions pile up behind my teeth. Who went to the scans with her?
Who felt him kick? Did she pick a name? Did she ever pick up the phone to tell me and put it down again, and how many times?
I don’t ask any of them, because she’s in a hospital bed and I’m in an office with a tray of untouched canapés and a view of my own party, and even I can tell that’s the wrong moment to start listing everything I’ve been robbed of.
The hurt comes anyway, hot and fast. So does the shame, a second later, because my mind’s already using the hurt as an excuse to stay.
She kept this from me since April. She’s had half a year to tell me, and she’s giving me an hour.
I make that comparison in my head, and it’s an ugly one, and I make it anyway.
On the other end of the line she breathes through another contraction, and I grip the edge of the desk until the pain lets her go.
“The doctor said hours,” I say. It comes out like I’m reminding myself.
“She said she couldn’t promise anything.”
“I know. I heard her.”
I did hear her. Stable. Reassuring. First labors usually take a while. I wrote the words on the back of my speech while Dr. Shah talked, and now I keep reading them over, as if they’re a guarantee.
Through the glass I can see the hangar filling up.
Our first London jet sits in the middle of the floor with its stairs down and every inch of it polished, and there are round tables around it with white cloths and waiters carrying champagne.
Every client we’ve signed is out there. So are the crews, in the new navy uniforms they tried on for the first time this morning, pilots and flight attendants and mechanics who sold houses and pulled their kids out of schools to follow me across an ocean.
There’s a little stage at the far end with a podium, and cameras along the wall, waiting for me to stand up there and tell everybody we’re open.
None of them know my son is on his way in New York. They only know I promised I’d be here.
The door opens and Rebecca comes in with her tablet. She looks at my face, then at the phone in my hand.
“What happened?”
I cover the phone. “Allison’s in labor. The baby’s mine. A friend drove her in.”
For a second she doesn’t move, and then she’s Rebecca again. “Is she all right?”
“The doctor says yes. Both of them.”
“Then here’s where we are.” She taps the tablet. “Ellis has the crew getting the plane ready. Operations can hold it until you’re done, and then you walk off that stage and straight up the stairs. The doctor says a first labor takes hours, Gavin. One speech isn’t going to change that.”
“Stop.”
“If you walk out before the speech, they walk. You know they do. Half of them came tonight to see whether you’d really show up.” Her voice drops. “She has a doctor. She has her mother. She has the man who drove her.”
“Scott,” I say. I don’t know why I say it. The name sits in my mouth wrong, and jealousy goes through me so hot and petty that I’m ashamed of it before it’s even finished.
“Give the speech, shake some hands, and you’re in the air before the band packs up.”
She’s right. The doctor said hours, Allison has her mother, and a first baby takes its time. I’m already working out the flight in my head, and it works if nothing goes wrong. My collar feels too tight, and I run a finger around it.
I uncover the phone.
“Allison.”
“Are you leaving?”
There’s no room left for a careful answer, so of course I give her one.
“I’m going to give the speech and come straight to you. I’ll be there before he’s born.”
She’s quiet for a moment. When she talks again her voice is flat and tired, and it scares me more than if she’d screamed.
“You’ve made that promise before.”
“The doctor expects hours.”
“I didn’t ask you what the doctor expects. I asked you to choose.”
My wedding ring digs into my finger where I’m holding the phone too tight.
“I’m choosing both.”
“That’s what you always call it when you choose work,” she says, and the line goes dead.
I look at her name on the dark screen. I could still go. Nobody’s holding the door, and the plane’s right outside. I could walk out through that hangar and let every one of those cameras watch me do it.
Our events manager taps on the glass and holds up a hand to tell me they’re dimming the lights.
I walk out onto the floor.
The party runs long, and I barely remember it.
On my way to the stage I pass Deb Kowalski, who runs this base and hasn’t slept properly in a month, and she tells me the family in the front row only ever wants to talk to me, and asks me again to let her start taking their meetings.
“Later,” I say, and keep walking. I stand at the podium with my phone face up on it and the ringer on, and I tell the story I always tell, about one leased plane and a hangar at Teterboro that leaked so badly we kept a kiddie pool under the worst spot.
People laugh in the right places. Allison doesn’t call.
I look out at the crews in their new uniforms, at Tanya, a flight attendant from Queens who sold her car to make the move, and I hold on to them, because they make staying feel like it’s for somebody besides me. It doesn’t work very well.
When I say the words, “Callahan Air is open in London,” the whole hangar applauds. I’ve been working toward that sound since spring. I don’t feel a thing, except that my hands are ice cold on the podium.
The cameras push forward. Rebecca’s hand lands on my arm as I step down, light and practiced, the way it has on every stage we’ve ever shared. I step out from under it.
“Get me to the plane.”
Her hand drops. I don’t stay for pictures, and I don’t shake any more hands. I call Allison on the walk across the apron and it goes to voicemail.
“The speech is done. I’m leaving now. I love you.”
It sounds thin, because it is.
The whole way across I’m working out how early I’ll land.
The plane’s sitting outside the operations building with its cabin lights on.
It isn’t moving. Captain Ellis meets me inside the door with his cap in his hand instead of on his head, and dread spreads cold through my gut before he says a word.
“Why aren’t we rolling?”
“The last safe window closed while you were on stage, sir. The storm moved faster than forecast. New York’s restricting arrivals, and if this crew takes the long way around they’ll run out of flying hours before they get you there.”
“Then get another crew.”
“We’re trying.”
“Try harder.”
He doesn’t react to that. It’s more patience than I deserve. “I sent you the final warning before the party started.”
“I never saw a warning.”
“It went to Ms. Kendall. She was handling your travel.”
He turns his tablet toward me. His message is right there, sent before a single guest walked into the hangar: the last safe time to take off, and a plain warning that leaving after the speech meant a long delay or a detour, and a real chance New York would close before we got there.
I read it twice. The second time doesn’t help, and my ears have started to roar.
Rebecca comes in behind me, and I hold the tablet up so she can see what I’m looking at.
“You had this.”
“Operations was still working on other routes.”
“You told me I had time.”
“The doctor said you had hours.”
“My pilot said I had one window.”
“That was him playing it safe, Gavin.”
“It was the last safe one,” Ellis says, and his voice has gone hard.
Rebecca doesn’t look at him. She looks at me. “If you’d walked out before your speech, the clients would have walked. London would’ve been dead before it opened, and everybody out there in a new uniform would be looking for a flight home.”
“You don’t get to decide which facts reach me.” It comes out loud enough that the dispatcher across the room stops typing. “Give me your phone.”
“Gavin.”
“Forward every message about my travel to my assistant. You’re off my plane, my car, my phone and my calendar, starting now.”
Her mouth goes tight, but she does it while I watch. I tell security to drive her back to London.
I don’t fire her. I stand in an operations building with my son being born across an ocean, and part of me is still working out what firing her tonight would do to the base on its first night open.
I hate myself so much for it that I can taste metal.
I tell myself I’ll deal with her after I get to my wife.
I spend the rest of the night trying to buy time that doesn’t exist. Ellis finds a second crew, but not before the direct route closes, and every detour lands after New York shuts its doors.
I call Allison again and again, and she doesn’t pick up. I leave one message.
“I missed the window. I’m trying every route there is. I should have left when you asked me to.”
Out in the hangar the band plays on without me, and then it stops, and the caterers start stacking chairs.
My whole body is humming with the need to move, and there’s nowhere to go.
I sit in the operations room with my coat beside me and the hospital’s number open on my phone, and the plane sits outside with its lights on, going nowhere.
After midnight, my phone lights up with a message from the hospital’s patient liaison. It’s the only thing Allison has let them send me.
Henry Barrett born 7:27 p.m. New York. Mother and baby stable.