Falling and Rising
Lisa C. Taylor There are things you don’t know about me; the dreams I had about her falling from the sky, how fervently I researched what happens when planes lose altitude, feigning a newfound interest in physics so the librarian would direct me to books that might make sense of the inexplicable. The stories we don’t tell each other may be the most important or they may not matter at all. I began to grasp the concept that death could choose anyone, even a twelve-year-old. You don’t know that I never flew as a child, could not imagine what it felt like to be thirty-thousand feet up, that exaggeration of clouds and filtered light. I never breathed recirculated air, unlatched a plastic tray table to hold a wrapped rectangle of reheated food, yet I lived it in my head for years. I could hear her father’s panic as he tried to regain control of their twin-engine plane, her mother fragile but trusting, and my friend unquestioning that the adult piloting the plane, the one parent she could count on, would pull them out of this like he pulled her mother out of darkness. You don’t know that a letter arrived from her two days after she died, didn’t even mention the flight to Atlantic City. In her half-block, half-cursive, she wrote about algae on the lake, new chords on the guitar that she’d teach me when I returned, the school we’d both attend for seventh grade. I never told you that I kept the letter, newspaper clipping of the crash, and a plastic book she made me called Little Lisa’s Camp Book for eight years, maybe ten. I buried them in the bottom of a box when I moved, found them in my parent’s basement on Cape Cod five years later. I didn’t fly until the age of twenty-three, never convinced that something as heavy as a plane could reliably remain aloft. Reading voraciously about crashes, I’d decided that single or twin-engine planes were riskiest. My first flight, on a 747, enchanted me with its full cabin, bustling people who seemed oblivious to the possibility that this might be their last day alive. Newly divorced, traveling to California, I chatted with the businessman next to me. The flight was smooth as a bus, blocks of landscape growing smaller, cumulous clouds swallowing up my porthole view. When I landed, it was eleven o’clock at night in Los Angeles but no one had made rules about going to bed, the streets overflowing with suits and evening gowns, women teetering on heels so high, they seemed like a staircase to another floor. The gourmet food store was lit up and open, a clerk arguing with a woman who looked airbrushed, though that wasn’t a term used back then. She had a hankering for sushi but the eel must be fresh, the sticky rice made within the hour. You don’t know that I returned from California with my hair boyishly short, the shortest it’s ever been. I shed my skin, became space efficient and radical. My boyfriend of that time showed up hours late to retrieve me, hated the haircut and the billowy peasant shirt. I wish I could say I told him I was finished with fitting myself into his list of expectations but that would be a lie. When death occurs, sometimes relief follows; a grandmother out of pain, a cancer patient finally at peace. My friend had no time for failure or triumph. At twelve, she hadn’t yet invented herself though she could play Sunshine of Your Love on the guitar, cut though the green-black water of the lake fiercely with her muscular arms. It’s likely that she would have gone to college, maybe worked with children. Her own kids would be grown by now, like mine. Instead she is twelve forever, wavy blonde hair, round blue eyes, slight build, husky voice. More than forty years have passed but you know how I would remember these details as if I could open the breezeway door of my childhood, discover my small self greeting her, offering her a Coke. Five years later I took my second flight, a belated honeymoon to England. The plane bobbed up and down as we crossed the turbulent Atlantic, trays of food rattling, overhead compartments straining against their latches. My fellow passengers yawned, finished crossword puzzles, and took naps. You held my sweaty hand for seven hours. For years after that I would take medication whenever I flew, hoping an altered state would take the edge off the reality of altitude and the fact that I was forced to trust a pilot I would never know. When my father died in 2005, it became necessary for me to fly back and forth nearly weekly, locating doctors, selling a condominium, obtaining power-of-attorney so I could pay my mother’s bills. After the third flight, you noticed that I began to relax, hands flat on my thighs or turning the pages of a book. Maybe being aloft felt more secure than what I would face on the ground with the woman I had most feared as a child. Whatever the reason, I grew to love the flying, soothed by the acrid smell of engines, hum of flaps folding in, thwack of ice dropped into a plastic cup. I still had hours before I would land, talk my mother out of unpacking all the boxes I’d packed the last time, strewing her books and clothing all over the white tile floor. Although I no longer dream about falling from the sky, you don’t know that I still say a Sanskrit prayer when I fly, particularly when there is turbulence. I learned it in a yoga class when I was seventeen and an Indian woman translated it for me in my thirties. I’ve forgotten the translation and I probably mispronounce most of the words but it remains my incantation, a summoning of powers greater than mine or yours. I believe that most of us will arrive at our destinations, immersed in the celebrations and complications of our lives. We talk about the days or years remaining like a season we're not sure will return. Will winter creep by with a mere dusting of snow or bury our cars and the Adirondack chair? You may never know the tenor of my prayers or even that I regularly pray. The stories we tell each other have a more predictable landscape—the wildflower strewn mountain paths of Colorado, green hills of Ireland. May the wind be at your back and like the plane, I make plans to move forward and for now, so do you. I keep secret the amulets I carry in my backpack, a Cape Cod shell, quartz crystal, polished bloodstone. These are objects that travel with me when words are not enough to push down dread. A sheen of memory covers us like skin. When I lost my trust in permanence, I became vigilant. You tell me I worry too much about politics, injustice, or immigrants. Death has a presence in airports, malls, and schools. Even in periods of calm, there is curled paper resting at the edge of a flame. I hope you mean that it isn't enough to watch or whisper about what might happen. The wind may return to nudge the paper to ash or another day could pass without us noticing. As I walk down the narrow aisle to my seat, I no longer reach for your hand. See how I hoist my blue carryon into the overhead bin; push my backpack under the seat in front of me? I fight you for the window seat because I want to watch the landscape miniaturize. What we don't know about each other may never be revealed in our remaining years. Pain chooses individual targets and we can only comfort, not alleviate. The familiar prayer forms during takeoff, and I look at faces of people I don't recognize, my fellow travelers. This life I'm in blends panic with brightness, and my dreams rise up like vapor, then disappear. |
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About the Author: Lisa C. Taylor has a recently published collection of short fiction, Growing a New Tail, and four collections of poetry. Her next collection of short fiction is due out in late summer of 2018, and she just finished her first novel.
In 2015, Lisa won the New Works Fiction Competition sponsored by Hugo House. New writing is forthcoming or has been published recently in Crannog, Washing Windows: Irish Women Write Poetry, and WomenArts Quarterly Journal. Both her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
When not writing, Lisa enjoys hiking, riding trains, and cooking without recipes. She also teaches creative writing at a small New England College.
In 2015, Lisa won the New Works Fiction Competition sponsored by Hugo House. New writing is forthcoming or has been published recently in Crannog, Washing Windows: Irish Women Write Poetry, and WomenArts Quarterly Journal. Both her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
When not writing, Lisa enjoys hiking, riding trains, and cooking without recipes. She also teaches creative writing at a small New England College.