The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [3]
She didn’t think Jack had ever felt the coming and going in quite the same way she had. To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.
I’m just a glorified bus driver, he used to say.
And not all that glorified, he would add.
Used to say. She tried to take it in. She tried to understand that Jack no longer existed. But all she could see were cartoon puffs of smoke, lines drawn outward in all directions. She let the image go as quickly as it had come.
“Mrs. Lyons? Is there a television in another room that I could keep half an eye on?” Robert Hart asked.
“In the front room,” she said, pointing.
“I just need to hear what they’re reporting now.” “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”
He nodded, but he seemed reluctant. She watched him leave the room. She shut her eyes and thought: I absolutely cannot tell Mattie.
Already, she could imagine how it would be. She would open the door to Mattie’s room, and on the wall there would be posters of Less Than Jake and extreme skiing in Colorado. On the floor would be two or three days’ worth of inside-out clothes. Mattie’s sports equipment would be propped up in a corner — her skis and poles, her snowboard, her field hockey and lacrosse sticks. Her bulletin board would be covered with cartoons and pictures of her friends: Taylor, Alyssa, and Kara, fifteen-year-old girls with ponytails and long hair wisps in the front. Mattie would be huddled under her blue-and-white comforter and would pretend not to hear her until Kathryn said her name for the third time. Then Mattie would bolt upright, at first irritated to be woken, thinking it was time for school and wondering why Kathryn had moved into the room. Mattie’s hair, a sandy red with metallic threads, would be spread along the shoulders of a purple T-shirt that said “Ely Lacrosse” in white letters across her tiny breasts. She would put her hands behind her on the mattress and hold herself up.
“What is it, Mom?” she would say.
Like that.
“What is it, Mom?”
And then again, her voice instantly more high pitched. “Mom, what is it?”
And Kathryn would have to kneel beside the bed and would have to tell her daughter what had happened.
“No, Mom!” Mattie would cry. “No! Mom!”
When Kathryn opened her eyes, she could hear the low murmur of the television.
She got up from the kitchen chair and walked into the long front room with its six pairs of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lawn and the water. There was a Christmas tree in the corner that stopped her at the threshold. Robert Hart was hunched forward on the sofa, and an old man was being interviewed on the TV. She had missed the beginning of the report. It was CNN or maybe CBS. Robert looked quickly over at her.
“Are you sure you want to watch this?” he asked.
“Please,” she said. “I’d rather see.”
She entered the room and moved closer to the television.
It was raining where the old man was, and later they printed the name of the place along the bottom of the screen. Malin Head, Ireland. She couldn’t picture where it might be on a map. She didn’t even know which Ireland it was in. Rain dripped from the old man’s cheeks, and he had long white pouches under his eyes. The camera moved away and showed a village green with pristine white facades of buildings fronting it. In the center of the row of buildings was a sad-looking hotel, and she read the name along a thin marquee: Malin Hotel. There were men standing around its doorway with mugs of tea or coffee in their hands, looking over in a shy way at all the news crews. The camera slid back to the old man and moved in close to his face. He looked shocky around the eyes, and his mouth was hanging open, as though it was hard for him to breathe. Kathryn