The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [56]
She thought about that arrangement. Had it been her idea or Jack’s? They had done it for so many years, she could no longer remember when it had begun. And it had always seemed a logical system, too practical to question. Odd, she thought, how a fact, seen one way, was one thing. And then, seen from a different angle, was something else entirely. Or perhaps not so odd.
“Obviously, we can’t ask the crew,” she said. “No.”
She thought about the question Mattie had asked her on the day she’d learned of the suicide rumor: How do you ever know that you know a person?
Kathryn stood up and walked over to the window. She had on an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with shot knees that she had been wearing for days. Even her socks weren’t clean. She hadn’t thought she would see anyone today. With grief, she thought, appearance was the first thing to go. Or was it dignity?
“I can’t cry anymore,” she said. “That part is over.” “Kathryn . . .”
“It’s unprecedented,” she said. “It’s absolutely unprecedented. No pilot has ever been accused of committing suicide in an airliner.”
“Actually,” said Robert, “it’s not unprecedented. There is one case.”
Kathryn turned from the window.
“In Morocco. A Royal Air Maroc airliner crashed near Agadir in August of 1994. The Moroccan government, basing its opinion on the CVR tapes, said the crash was caused by the captain’s suicidal act. Apparently, the man deliberately disengaged the autopilot and pointed the aircraft at the ground. The plane began to break up before impact. Forty-four people died.”
“My God,” she said.
She put her hands over her eyes. It was impossible not to see, if only for an instant, the horror of the copilot as he watched his captain kill himself, the terrified bewilderment of the passengers in the cabin as they felt the sudden descent.
“When will they release the tape?” she asked. “Jack’s tape.” Robert shook his head. “I doubt very much that they ever will,” he said. “They don’t have to. The transcripts are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. When tapes have been released, either what’s on them isn’t sensitive or else they’ve been heavily censored.”
“So I won’t ever have to listen to it.”
“I doubt it.”
“But then . . . how will we ever know what happened?” “Thirty separate agencies in three countries are working on this crash,” Robert said. “Believe me, the union hates the accusation of suicide more than anyone — even the hint of suicide. Every congressman in Washington is calling for stricter psychological testing of pilots, which from the union’s point of view is a nightmare. The sooner the case gets resolved, the better.”
Kathryn rubbed her arms, trying to get the circulation going. “It’s all political, isn’t it?” she said.
“Usually.”
“It’s why you’re here.”
He was silent as he sat on the bed. He smoothed the bedspread with his palms. “No,” he said. “Not at the moment.”
“So you’re here as...?”
“I’m here,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m just here.”
She nodded her head slowly. She wanted to smile. She wanted to tell Robert Hart how glad she was that he was there, how very hard it was to go through all of this alone, to not have with her the one person she needed, who was Jack.
“Is that a good shirt?” she asked quickly. “Not particularly,” he said.
“You feel like doing some chores?”
RAIN FALLS IN HEAVY SHEETS OUTSIDE THE MAS-sive paned windows of the auditorium. The room is old and sloping, built in the 1920s and not yet renovated. The walls are wood paneled, etched here and there with declarations of love and students’ initials. Heavy maroon drapes that never seem to work exactly right hang to either side of the stage. Only the seats, mercilessly poked at and ripped open over the years with pens and pocket knives, have been replaced. Now the audience