The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [97]
And then there was that moment when you would skim across the surface of the great woolpack before starting to descend underneath it, and your plane would feel more like a submarine than a jet. It was like going underwater—deep underwater—right down to the darkness that abruptly would enfold the aircraft once you were inside the clouds. One minute the sky would be blue and the flight deck bright, and the next the world outside would be gray soup and the flight deck dim.
You know the technical names for clouds as well as a meteorologist, just as you know the federal aviation definitions for ice: Glaze. Inter-cycle. Known or observed. Mixed. Residual. Runback. Rime. You have always loved the alliteration that marks those last three, the poetry of the memorized cadence. And you can do the same thing with clouds. You know the names of the ones that grow in the low elevations and the ones that exist in much higher skies. Even now, sitting in the backseat of the Volvo as Emily and John Hardin drive you home from the hospital, you can see perfectly in your mind the leaden sheets of gray stratus as the nose of your plane would start to nudge through them; the fleece of the cumulus, bright and cheerful when lit by the sun, dark and shadowy when not; the ominous towers and anvil plumes of the cumulonimbus you would steer your plane around when the traffic and the tower permitted. You close your eyes and see once again the gauzy layers of cirrus, their wisps strangely erotic, or their cousins, the rippling cirrocumulus. (Some people call these clouds a mackerel sky, but a flight instructor you liked very much called it a lake sky because it reminded him of the days he would spend with his own father fishing.) You see the rain on the flight deck windows and feel the bump as you break the plane of a layer of dark nimbostratus.
And now you open your eyes and the clouds disappear and you stare at the back of John Hardin’s head. It is an indication of the toll your breakdown is having on Emily that she needed cavalry help to bring you home from the hospital. It is a sign of how ill they think you are that they have squirreled you into the backseat. John has pulled the passenger seat so far forward that his knees are pressed against the glove compartment, though you have told him over and over you are fine. You have been telling people precisely this all morning long. I am fine. Fine. Just fine.
You still have in your mouth the taste of the oatmeal cookies that John Hardin handed you when you first climbed into the backseat. Immediately you ate two. Anise had baked them. Of course. You are aware of raisins and cinnamon and a bitter spice you don’t recognize. The truth is, you were never an especially creative cook, and you don’t recognize very many spices and seasonings.
There is midday sun coming in through the car window, and you stare up into it. Into a cloudless sky. Apparently a psychiatrist—not your psychiatrist, not Michael Richmond—is going to come visit you tomorrow afternoon. Examine you. At your house. Imagine, a psychiatrist making house calls. You have no idea what to make of that, none at all. But she’s a friend of John’s and, like all of John’s friends, seems to want to help you. To help you and Emily and your girls.
You run your tongue between your teeth and your gums. You decide that you don’t honestly understand the appeal of Anise’s cooking. She seems to be a hit-and-miss baker. Of course, it may simply be that