Midwest Airlines flight 997 crashed on September 21, 1978, in What Cheer, Iowa-a farming town sixty miles southeast of Des Moines. When the pilot realized he would not be able to land in Des Moines he coasted into a farmer’s cornfield. The plane landed on its own fuel tanks and exploded.
These are the reports, as faxed to me by my secretary, that lead me to the site of the crash. It was not easy to find a facsimile machine in What Cheer, Iowa, either, but I have had two days’ advance time.
I know of Arlo van Cleeb but I have never been a fan of intermediaries. Therefore I set up shop in his cornfield without him ever noticing. I have a small folding beach chair and a thermos of coffee. A portable clip-on fan; the heat gets intense at this elevation. I sit behind a fringe of corn stalks, hidden by the greenery and yet strategically able to peer through the vertical bars. For two days I have been waiting for Jane and Rebecca, binoculars in hand.
It has not been an entirely idle forty-eight hours. You see, the partially obscured view I have of the wreckage gave me a slightly different perspective from the one splashed across the oily faxes of the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. When I first perceived the airplane’s frame, blackened by fire and age, it was through the haze of corn that forms my camouflage. And quite honestly, at first glance I thought it was a beached whale. Enormous in proportions, with the sun glinting off its slightly sunken tail-have you ever noticed the parallels between humpbacks and airplanes? The elongated body, the hub of the cockpit and the whale’s jawbone, the wings and the fingered fins, the cross section of the tail and the fluke? I have never thought of whales in terms of aerodynamics but of course it makes sense. What is streamlined underwater serves the same purpose in flight.
It has been a tedious trip here, and I have to say I’m glad it’s all coming to an end. I can take my family home with me; I can get back to my research.
I am just pouring my second cup of coffee (a lousy habit I’ve picked up on this tracking voyage, I’m sorry to say), when I see the farmer van Cleeb push his way through the corn stalks. Then out of this sea of green steps Rebecca, her hair pulled away from her face. Following her, in close pursuit, is Jane.
She stands tall with her hands on her hips, talking to the farmer. She seems to be holding a conversation but her eyes betray her, running over the framework of the plane, assessing it; carefully checking the movements of Rebecca. She has this down to an art, I think. How is it I have never really watched her act as a mother?
Rebecca points to the plane and then moves closer. She steps into the gashes in the metal body, as I did two days ago. She runs her hands over everything, it seems, cataloguing and processing the information. Her eyes are wide, and from time to time she bites her lower lip. She is standing only feet away from me when she says, quite clearly, “This is where I sat. Right here.”
I push my hand through the stalks in front of me and pull them aside so that I can really see her face. She looks like me, in many ways. My hair, my eyes. And she has always been able to hide her emotions. Even after the crash, she would not talk about it. Not to me, not to Jane, not to the psychiatrists. They tried to get her to act the crash out on dolls and models, but Rebecca refused. At the time I thought it interesting to find such willfulness in a four-yearold. Now I have my doubts.
I could take my daughter in my arms and tell her it is all right. And she will smile like the sun itself, so surprised to see me. Like she used to do as a child when I came home from Brazil or Maui, wherever. I’d hide toys in my pockets, and shells and small bottles of sand. I told her I would always bring her back a piece of the place that took me away from her.
I am ready to push through the corn when I see Jane from the corner of my eye. She is calling Rebecca. She starts to walk towards me.
I let the corn free, a shade. I am breathing arhythmically. I am terrified of speaking to Jane.
For one thing, I haven’t any idea what I am going to say to her. I know, I am supposed to have prepared something elaborate, something akin to wooing, but everything that has crossed my mind in the past two days has simply disappeared. What I am left with is how I feel, and what am I supposed to do about it? I want to just walk up to Jane and say that I miss the way she flips pancakes. That no one but her has ever left me a love note on a steamed-up shaving mirror. I want to tell her that sometimes, when the sun is setting over the unfurled fluke of a humpback, I wish I had her beside me. That when I give a speech, I wish I could see her face in the first row. How stupid you are, Oliver, I think. You can write circles around any scientist in your field. You’ve published more than any researcher your age. You are supposed to be the expert. But you don’t know how to tell her that you can’t live without her.
The week before Rebecca’s plane crash, Jane and I had a terrible-argument. I do not remember what it was about, but it could not have been any less ludicrous than this latest one about Rebecca’s birthday. The next thing I knew she had driven me to such a point that I hit her.
It was a slap, not a punch, if distinctions matter. And after I did it I thought I would die. I knew about her childhood, her father. I knew what I wasn’t supposed to be.
Jane took Rebecca to her parents’ place in Massachusetts. I wanted her back so badly I could taste it. But, like now, I did not know what to say. I just knew that where Rebecca went Jane would follow: she lived for Rebecca then, as she does now. So I threatened litigation if she didn’t send the child back. I expected her to come too, even if I didn’t say so directly.
When I heard about the crash over the car radio, I started to shake so badly that I had to pull off the highway. This has not happened, I told myself. You have not lost your entire family at once.
I drove to the airport and parked at a two-hour meter, the illogic of which struck me only after I had purchased a ticket to Iowa. I picked up a teddy bear-wishful thinking?-before I boarded. I looked around the plane wondering who else was headed to Des Moines because of the crash. When I arrived in Iowa, the wounded had already been shuttled to a hospital. My taxi pulled up directly behind another taxi, and Jane stepped out. I almost fell to my knees, seeing her there with mascara running down her face and her nose dripping. I stared at her and all the words defining forgiveness caught in my throat and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why Rebecca had not come out of that taxi as well. Stupefied, I asked where Rebecca was. I did not know that Jane had not been on fight 997; I did not learn that until several minutes later, and then only by deduction.
We were asked to go to the morgue, along with the other frantic-relatives, to survey the bodies that had been pulled from the wreckage. Jane stood outside, cleaving to a fire extinguisher on the wall, while I crept into the refrigerated rooms. I do not remember looking at the bloodied shrouds of infants and children. If Rebecca’s body had been there, I am not certain I would have admitted it to myself or the coroners, anyway.
We found Rebecca in pediatrics, tangled in wires and tubes. I lifted Rebecca’s arm and tucked the cheaply-made yellow bear underneath it. I pulled Jane close to me, burying my nose in her hair and rubbing my palms against her familiar shoulder blades. I never really had to say anything to get Jane to come home. I do not think I read the signals wrong when I believed that she understood.
Jane comes around the plane and stands almost directly in front of the spot where I am hidden. This is my chance. I am going to tell her. I am going to start by speaking her name.
She is close enough to touch. Wind breathes through the wreckage of the plane. It shrieks, an unnatural note. I reach my hand through the blind of corn stalks and stretch out my fingers. “Jane,” I whisper.
But at that moment Rebecca emerges from the twisted gyves and fetters of metal. Her hands are pressed against the sides of her head. She is screaming, running from the body of the plane with her eyes closed. Jane holds out her arms. She says something I cannot hear and Rebecca’s eyes open. I push aside the corn stalks, revealing myself, but I do not think Rebecca, who is facing me, notices. She falls against Jane’s breast, clutching and gasping. Her eyes pass right over me and they do not see a thing, of that I am sure. Jane smoothes our daughter’s hair. “Ssh,” she says. She sings something very softly, and Rebecca’s breathing turns even again. She grabs fistfuls of Jane’s shirt, over and over.
I stand only three feet away, but it could be three hundred. I am not privy to this. I cannot heal. If given the chance, Rebecca would not run to me. I am not even sure that Jane would run to me. I let the corn close in around my face and I turn my back to them. Even if I could get Jane to listen to me, get her to understand why it is that I cannot live without her, it is not enough.
It hits me: I am not part of this family. I would never say I am a scientist without offering proof. How can I say that I am a father, a husband?
Jane is murmuring to Rebecca. The words get softer and softer and I realize they are walking in the opposite direction. And this is when I make what could possibly be the greatest-and most difficult-decision of my life. I will not call to them when I do not know what to say. I won’t reveal myself without having anything to show. I have much thinking to do, but right now I act purely on instinct. It is hard as hell, but I let them go.