All Good Children - Catherine Austen [2]
Now we’re heading home with boxes of worthless fragments from Rebecca’s childhood—hand-written letters, framed photographs, report card printouts. It’s like inheriting a recycling bin. But among the memorabilia were sixteen color markers packaged in plastic and three gray scrapbooks I’ve already filled from seam to corner with abstracts of Earth.
I’ll post a collage when I get my RIG back: Out of School Withstanding on a Perilous Planet.
Ally grips my hand when our plane takes its turn at the top of the runway. The fuselage rattles, wing flaps flutter, wheels blindly spin. We grip our armrests and fall silent. It doesn’t feel close to fast enough. The plane screams and roars. It seems almost silly to try to get off the ground. But suddenly, improbably, we rise. I laugh out loud. We rise above the patchwork city into a pure white blazing light. I wish I could tell my friends, “Look up. See that silver speck slicing the sky? That’s me!” But I’ll have to wait until I’m home to post about it. By then, no one will care. Once you’re in the past tense, you’re history, and no one has time for history anymore.
There’s a complimentary snack in my seat pocket. The chips taste like mold. I eat them fast, more disappointed with every crunch. Mom passes hers and I eat those, too, until I’m deeply miserable. “Can I have my RIG now?”
“No.”
Ally unfolds her seat tray, lays down her chips and rests her teddy’s head on them.
“Aren’t you going to eat your snack?” I ask.
She grabs the bag fast as lightning and stashes it on her lap.
“I’ll eat them if you don’t want them,” I say.
A fat man across the aisle ogles my mother and says, “Kids. They’re never satisfied.”
When I see men like this, I’m thankful for genetic testing. Whatever my future may hold, I’ll never end up a fat bald white man. This one takes up two seats and he’s still crammed tight. I point to the chips resting on his belly. “Are you going to eat those?”
“Please ignore him,” Mom tells the man.
He covers his chips with his fat white hands and winks at her.
Ally taps my shoulder and asks, in a voice soft and high, “If you’re not going to look out the window, can we trade places?”
“No.” I fake a stretch and sneak the chips from her lap. I keep my eyes on the clouds as I crack open the bag. I dip into it languorously and pop a few in my mouth. Ally doesn’t notice. “Want a chip?” I offer.
“No, thank you. I have my own.” She reaches under her tray. A look of panic floods her face. She lifts her teddy, feels her legs, scans the floor, gropes the filthy carpet.
“Lost something?” I ask.
“I can’t find my chips!”
“What did they look like?”
She stuffs her hand down the back of her seat. “They were in a red bag!”
I move the chips to the center of the window frame. “With white writing?”
“Yes! Did you see them?”
“Give her back her chips, Max,” Mom says.
Ally looks from Mom to me to the chips in my hand.
“Here. Have these,” I offer.
“Are you sure?” Ally asks. “We could do Eenie Meenie for them.”
“Nah. Just take them.”
She smiles at the half-eaten bag. “Thanks, Max. You’re nice.”
My mother sighs.
The fat man clears his throat. “Lovely children. Are they your own?”
Mom’s face is five shades darker than mine and Ally’s, and now it turns darker still. She looks him up and down and rolls her eyes. That should end the conversation, but the man is deeply defective. “And their father?” he asks, leering at my mother’s breasts.
“Our father’s dead,” I say. “He died in the flu epidemic three years ago. Drowned in his own body fluids.”
“Max, please,” Mom says.
“So she’s single now,” I add.
The fat man squirms and mumbles something about being sorry.
The man in the seat beside him peeks around his gut. I groan. It’s Arlington Richmond, my best friend Dallas’s father. He hates me. He hates my whole family. He didn’t mind us when Dad was alive, but his feelings cooled when half our income died. I salute him and turn back to the sun.
I wish I could message Dallas that his dad is surveying me at thirty thousand