The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [101]
“If it weren’t your first, I’d say release it. Did Dad ever teach you how to clean a fish?”
Mattie stood up, hoisting the fish with muscles that were all but spent.
“I’ll get the camera,” Kathryn said. “Love you, Mom,” Mattie said, grinning.
Kathryn walked across the lawn and listened to the halyards on the flagpole sending out an arrhythmic beat of hollow notes. It was a day as fine as any they had had this summer, already a long string of fine days saturated with rich color. Just this morning, she had seen a nearly miraculous sunrise, the low clouds of daybreak giving way to a neon pink all along the horizon, with swirls of rising vapor that looked like lavender smoke. And then the sun had popped, a detonation on the sea, and the water had turned, for a few glorious minutes, a flat, rippling turquoise, reflecting the mackerel pattern of the neon. It was the paradoxical beauty of a nuclear bomb, she had thought, or of a fire aboard a ship. A conflagration of earth and sea and air together.
It was her only complaint, the rising early, like a spinster or a widow, which, of course, she was. The early risings suggested a lack of night excitement that might require sleep. In these often ghostly mornings, Kathryn read, pleased that she could read a book through now. She could also read a newspaper in its entirety, as she had read the one on the porch, read particularly the article on the front page about the cease-fire.
The story of the bomb planted on Vision Flight 384, with the unwitting though not blameless assistance of Captain Jack Lyons, had broken on New Year’s Day in the Belfast Telegraph. Also reported was the long-term history of crew-assisted smuggling on airliners, the names of the other pilots involved, and the effects of the attempt on the part of the Loyalist splinter group to discredit the IRA and sabotage the peace process. Among others, Muire Boland and her brother had been arrested, and a connection with Jack Lyons established. There had been no mention yet of a marriage or of another family, and for months now Kathryn had dreaded this final word. She had gambled with Mattie, deciding to say nothing to her daughter unless this knowledge was made public. It was a large gamble, and who could say how it would end? Mattie knew only what the rest of the world knew, which was enough.
Kathryn didn’t know what had happened to Muire Boland’s children. Sometimes she imagined them at A’s.
In the spring, Kathryn had read books about the Troubles in an effort to better understand them. She could say that she knew more facts than she had in December, but she thought this knowledge only made the saga more complex. Over the last several months, she’d also read, in the newspapers, of prison riots, paramilitary executions, and car bombings. Now there was again a cease-fire. It was possible that one day there would be a resolution, although Kathryn didn’t think it would happen soon.
But it was not for her to say. It was not her war.
Most days, it was all that Kathryn could do to manage the day in front of her, and, as a consequence, she required little of herself. She lived in her bathing suit, worn under a faded navy sweatshirt. She was knitting a tank top for Mattie in confetti cotton, and she wanted to try one for herself. This seemed to be the limit of her ambitions. Most days, Julia came by, or Kathryn stopped in town. They ate meals together, trying to re-create a family threesome. Julia had taken the news of Jack’s infidelity particularly hard. It was the first time Kathryn could remember her grandmother at a loss for words, unable to give advice.
Kathryn jogged up the porch steps, passed through the front room and the kitchen. She thought the camera was in a wind-breaker in the back hall. She turned the corner into the hallway and stopped short.
He was standing at the back door, having already knocked. She could see his face through the glass panes. She put a hand out to the wall to steady herself. Between herself and the door was a pungent