The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [40]
She shook the colleague’s hand.
Four other men came forward to be introduced now, men in Vision uniforms, with their caps tucked under their arms, the uniform, with its gold buttons and braid, its familiarity, causing Kathryn to catch her breath. They were from the airline, from the chief pilot’s office, they said, and Kathryn thought how strange these greetings were, these niceties, these condolences, these cautious condolences, when all about them there was the palpable strain of waiting.
A man with iron-filing hair stepped more forward than the rest.
“Mrs. Lyons, I’m Chief Pilot Bill Tierney,” he said. “We talked on the phone briefly yesterday.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Let me once again express for myself and for the entire airline how deeply sorry we are for the loss of your husband, for your personal loss. He was an excellent pilot, one of our best.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The words how deeply sorry seemed to float on the air in the kitchen. She wondered why all the expressions of sympathy sounded so tired, so very much the same. Was there no other language with which to express one’s sorrow? Or was the formality the point? She thought about how many times the chief pilot must have imagined himself saying these very words to the widow of one of his pilots, perhaps even practiced saying the words aloud. The newish airline had never had a fatal crash before.
“What can you tell me about the tape?” she asked the chief pilot.
Tierney pursed his lips and shook his head.
“No information about the tape has been officially released,” said Somers, stepping forward.
“I understand that,” Kathryn said, turning to the investigator. “But you know something, don’t you? You know what’s on the tape.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” he said.
But behind the wire-rimmed glasses, the investigator’s glance was skittish and evasive.
Kathryn stood in the center of her kitchen, in her boots and jeans and jacket, the subject of intense scrutiny. She felt vaguely embarrassed, as if she had committed a grievous social error.
“One of you left your car door open,” she said, gesturing toward the driveway.
“Why don’t we go sit in your living room?” Somers suggested.
Feeling unfamiliar with her own house, Kathryn walked into the front room and squinted at the six oblongs of diffuse light from the windows. There was only one seat left, an oversized wing chair facing the windows, Jack’s chair, not hers, and she felt dwarfed by the chair’s upholstered appendages. The television, she noticed now, had been turned off.
Somers appeared to be in charge. He stood while the others sat.
“I’m just going to ask you one or two questions,” he said, putting his hands into his trouser pockets. “This won’t take a minute. Can you tell us anything about how your husband was behaving just prior to his departure for the airport on Sunday?”
Kathryn saw that no one had a tape recorder out or was writing anything down. Somers seemed almost excessively casual. This couldn’t be official, then, could it?
“There’s not a lot to tell,” she said. “It was routine. Jack took a shower around four in the afternoon, got dressed in his uniform, came downstairs, and shined his shoes.”
“And where were you?”
“I joined him in the kitchen. To say good-bye.”
The word good-bye triggered a quick jolt of sadness, and she bit her lip. She tried to remember Sunday, the last day Jack had been home. Occasionally, she had fragments, dream bits, like the fluttering glints of silver in the dark. It seemed to her that it had been an ordinary day, nothing special about it. She could see Jack’s foot on the pulled-out drawer, the old green-checked rag in his hands as she passed through the kitchen on the way to the laundry room. The length of his arms, lengthened even more by the weight of his bags as he walked to the car in the driveway. He’d said something over his shoulder. She’d had the rag in her hand. Don’t forget to call Alfred, he’d said. And tell him Friday.
He’d shined his shoes. He’d left the house. He would be home, he said, on Tuesday. She was freezing