EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD
BY MARY CHRISTINE KANE
We buckle in dutifully. At cruising altitude, a team with soft voices and navy suits feed us pretzels, fill our plastic glasses. I choose club soda spritzed with browned lime, taking bubbly sips between silent prayers for a safe flight. I always consider death when flying.
My neighbor and I chat briefly. Later, he rests his arm along the cage of my ribs, as if it belongs there. It’s a game: He is closer than he should be. I yield to the small comfort. This is the story I tell myself. He wants to release his secrets to a stranger. He wears a ring. He loves her, I think, but that is not all. Loving is hard, a generous thought I can give someone I don’t know.
Once on an Amtrak I fell asleep in a young man’s arms after we had talked on those blue velvety seats for hours. It’s strange how close you can feel to someone once their pulse vibrates in your bones. Timmy had long hair and skinny arms which I guessed were from too much pot and not enough food. For a few hours, we pretended we were a couple as we looked out at the Montana landscape rolling by. Our bodies seemed to believe it.
Behind us on the plane, after a few whiskeys a man confesses to his seatmate: After 18 years, on my way home from work she says, “Don’t come home this time. Key won’t work.”
I can tell the other man has replied with something encouraging. I cannot hear his words, only those of the drunk man:
I got depressed. Lost my job. Then she married my friend.
Yeah, really.
NO SHIT.
“I never loved you,” that’s what she said.
Another whiskey ma’am.
Stay married, my friend, that’s my advice.
I have a friend who hears strangers’ secrets regularly. He gets a lot of sex confessions but also stories of people’s shame. He doesn’t invite this, and is often bothered by the burden. I think they tell him because he doesn’t want to know. There is safety in distance. I am hungry for people’s secrets, but I only want to overhear them. That is my safety.
I didn’t want the drunk man to talk to me, and I didn’t particularly like him either. But I suppose I loved him in a way, having known his sorrow. His story is all of our stories: I loved and lost someone. It changed me. I’m not sure what to do with what is left.
Tray tables up, seats upright. We have been groundless for hours, belly held by speed; the plane shakes with resistance as we descend. Wings cut through currents. Finally, the wheels touch, the plane quiets, the seatbelt sign turns off. We begin the reawakening to our lives.
At baggage claim, I look for my seatmate’s wife. But all I see is a crowd of faces, who, at a glance, seem as if they carry no stories.