I always pay attention to my parents’ fights. They’re incredible. It is hard to understand how so much anger could come from such indifference. When I picture my parents, I see them walking in concentric circles, in opposite directions. My mother’s circle is inside my father’s, for financial reasons. My father walks clockwise. My mother walks counterclockwise. Naturally they do not cross paths. From time to time they look up and see each other from the corners of their eyes. And it is this break in the line of vision that sparks an argument.
They are fighting, today, over me. My fifteenth birthday. My father is planning to be out of the country on my birthday. Out of fourteen birthdays, he has been here for seven. So it is not like this is something new. But my mother seems to have lost control. She yells at him in the kitchen, things I choose to ignore. I walk away from them on purpose, and turn up the game shows on TV.
But it is when they get upstairs that things begin to get interesting. My parents’ bedroom is directly over the living room where I am watching TV. I can hear shouting. Then I hear very distinctly the thud of something being dropped. And something else. I jump up and throw my baseball cap down on the couch. I tiptoe up the stairs, hoping I can catch the tail end of this.
“I’ve had it,” my mother shouts. She has a big cardboard box, the kind my father keeps his research files in. She lifts it with all her strength-she’s not so big-and chucks it into the hall. I think she sees me on the staircase, so I duck. Then my father walks out into the hall. He takes the box my mother has thrown and rights it. He lifts it by its handles and sets it back inside the door.
For reasons I don’t understand, my mother is faster than my father. A wall of cartons builds up so quickly that I cannot see much of anything at all. They have blocked off the access to their bedroom. “Jane,” my father says. “That’s enough.”
I cannot see what my mother is doing. This makes me angry. So many days of the year I put up with them ignoring each other; the moments they connect, even fighting, are so rare. Anything, to watch them together. So I creep to the second floor of the house and shove the cartons a certain way. I push and rearrange them gently so that I don’t make too much noise but I create a peephole. I see my father standing in a pile of loose papers and graphs. He looks helpless. He moves his hands in front of him, as if he can still catch them falling.
Then he grabs my mother’s shoulders. I think maybe he is hurtingher. She struggles back and forth, and with a force I didn’t realizeshe had, she breaks away.
My mother lifts one of the cartons still out there and holds it over the banister. She rattles it like a maraca.
My father comes charging out of the bedroom. “Don’t,” he warns. Then the carton breaks. Slow-motion, I can see white bones in Ziploc bags, sharp strands of baleen, ribbons of charts and observation logs, all falling. Just like that, I stop breathing.
This is when, out of the blue, I remember the plane crash.
My father hit my mother once, when I was a baby. And she took me and flew to the East Coast. That’s how the story goes. My father insisted she bring me back, so she put me on a plane headed to San Diego. But the plane crashed. I tell it like this, matter-of-fact, because I do not remember it. I was, as I say, a baby. What I know of the crash I have learned from reading newspaper articles, many years later.
I don’t think about this crash much-it was a long time ago- but I believe that it has crossed my mind now for a reason. Maybe it is the thing that gets me to stand up and turn away. Maybe it is the reason I walk into my bedroom and pull out clothes and underwear, stuffing them into a small bag. Don’t get me wrong, I have no master plan. I keep my face turned away from my parents when I run out of my room and into the bathroom. I grab some dirty clothes of my mother’s from the hamper, and then I run down the stairs. My heart is pounding. All I want to do is get away. I hear my father say, “You bitch.”
When I was around twelve I thought about running away. I suppose all kids do at some point. I got as far as our backyard. I hid underneath the black vinyl cover of the barbeque, but it took my parents four and a half hours to find me. My father had to come home early from work. It was a big deal when my mother lifted up the vinyl cover. She hugged me and told me I had scared her half to death. What would I do without you? she said, over and over. What would I do without you?
Sneakers. I grab mine from the living room, my mother’s from the hall closet. They are what she calls her “weekend shoes.” So I am packed. Now what do I do?
When the plane crashed, I was brought to a hospital in Des Moines. I was in the pediatrics ward, of course, and all I can really remember is that the nurses wore smocks with smiley faces. And hair nets with Ernie and Bert on them. I didn’t know where my parents were, and all I really wanted was to see them. It took a while, but they came. They came in together, I remember. They were holding each other’s hands, and that made me so happy. The last time I had seen them my mother was crying, and my father was yelling very loud. It had been very scary, the crash. But it was what had to be done. It brought my parents together again.
Just as I am thinking about this, I hear the sting of a slap. It’s a sound you can recognize from any other, if you have heard it before. It brings tears to my eyes.
I slide the front door open on its hinges. I run to my mother’s car, parked at the edge of the driveway. She has a clunky old station wagon that has been around forever. I perch on the edge of the passenger seat. They say history repeats, don’t they?
My mother comes out of the house like a lost soul. She is looking-into the sky and she is wearing nothing but her underwear. As if it is a magnet, she is being drawn towards this car. I am sure she doesn’t see me. She holds some clothes in her left hand. When she gets into the car she slides them on the seat between us. She has red welts on her wrists from where he grabbed her. I don’t know where he hit her this time. I put my hand over hers; she jumps in her seat. “I have everything,” I say. My voice sounds too high and thin. My mother is looking at me as if she is trying to place the face. She whispers my name, and sinks back against the seat. So do I. I take a deep breath; wonder how long it will be before I see my father again.