The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [58]
— We’ll call from home, she tells Mattie with a smile.
But at home, when she dials the London number, there is still no answer. Kathryn calls three times, twice while Mattie isn’t looking. She leaves a message on the voice mail. Feeling the enthusiasm and pride of the evening beginning to dissipate, Kathryn abandons the effort to reach Jack, and to celebrate Mattie’s achievement, makes up a batch of brownies. Mattie, too excited to study for her math test, sits at the kitchen table while her mother mixes the batter. For the first time ever, they discuss colleges, and Kathryn thinks of schools she might not have considered before. She looks at her daughter in a slightly new way.
When Mattie goes to bed, Kathryn’s forced good cheer begins to wane. She stays up late, calculating grades. She calls the London number at midnight, five in the morning in London, and is frustrated to listen to the phone ringing in the crew apartment with no one to pick it up. In an hour, Jack will have to leave for the airport for his flight to Amsterdam and Nairobi. She begins to worry then that something serious may have happened to him. For a while, she vacillates between anger and concern, until she falls asleep on the couch with her grade book and calculator on her lap.
He calls at quarter to one. Quarter to six, his time. His voice wakes her with punctuated bursts.
— Kathryn, what is it? What’s happened? Are you all right?
— Where were you? she asks groggily, sitting up.
— Here, he says. — I was here. I just checked the voice mail.
— Why didn’t you answer the phone?
— I had the ringer turned off. I was exhausted and had to sleep. I think I might be coming down with a flu.
She hears the congestion in his voice. Airliners are notorious breeding grounds for colds.
— It’s a good thing it wasn’t an emergency, she says, allowing a note of pique to seep into her voice.
— Look, I’m really sorry. But I was so tired, I thought it was more important to sleep. So what is it? he asks. — What’s the news?
— I can’t tell you. Mattie wants to tell you herself.
— It’s nothing bad?
— No, no. It’s great.
— Give me a hint.
— No, I can’t. I promised.
— I don’t suppose you want to wake her up now?
— No, she has a final in the morning.
— I’ll call her from the air, he says. — I’ll time it so I call when she wakes up.
Kathryn rubs her eyes. There is a small silence over the phone. She would like to see her husband’s face right now. She would like to crawl into the bed in the crew apartment with him. She has never seen the crew apartment. Sterile, he has described it. Like a suite of hotel rooms.
— So, she says.
— Kathryn, I really am sorry. I’ll get the airline to get a system that bypasses the voice mail if it’s an emergency. I’ll get a beeper.
She sighs into the phone. — Jack, do you still love me? For a moment he is silent.
— Why do you ask?
— I don’t know, she says. — I guess I haven’t heard you say it in a while.
— Of course I love you, he says. He clears his throat. — I really love you. Now go to sleep. I’ll call at seven.
But he doesn’t hang up, and neither does she.
— Kathryn?
— I’m here.
— What’s wrong?
She doesn’t know precisely what is wrong. She has only a vague feeling of vulnerability, a heightened sense of having been left alone for too many days. Perhaps it is only being exhausted herself.
— I’m cool, she says, borrowing Mattie’s expression of the moment.
— You’re cool, Jack says.
— Yeah, whatever.
She can almost see her husband smiling.
— Later, he says, and hangs up.
— Later, she says, holding the lifeless telephone in her hand.
THEY MOVED FROM ROOM TO ROOM, DUSTING, VACU-uming, washing tiles, hauling trash, making beds, putting laundry into hampers. Robert worked at these tasks like a man, she noticed: sloppy with the beds, good in the kitchen, washing the floor there as though he were punishing