Unfortunately I learned enough from reading articles and gaping at pictures of catastrophes to know it could have been any of a thousand possible hideous falls to death in those last few minutes, or seconds, of life. Had her end come fast? Slow? Painfully?
They were questions that haunted me thirty years. Whenever I flew, I looked around the cabin at curtains that could burn, seats that might snap in half or send their jagged pieces through a body like medieval weapons. . . . Her body had burned and that was bad enough, but was the burning "all"? Was there more – worse – I didn't know? Why did I want to know?
I cannot say, but Phil's video answered my questions.
The first thing I heard was a muffled, phony voice speaking.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain, Mike Maloy. Welcome aboard flight 651 to Washington. Our flying time will be approximately one hour and fifteen minutes."
It took a moment to register that I was inside an airplane cabin, seeing it all through someone's eyes. A tracking shot. Several women wore pastel-colored Jackie Kennedy pillbox hats; men had short hair and read the Hartford Courant dated March 1960. "I" looked down at my lap and finally knew in a furious flash of recognition who I was – my mother. There was her red leather purse, the gray dress she wore only on special occasions. I'd sat on their bed the day she left and watched her carefully fold the dress in half and place it in her suitcase.
"When'll you be back, Ma?"
"Tuesday, dear. I'll be back before you're home from school."
The pilot went on speaking. My eyes, Mama's eyes, looked out the oval window at the runway and the little yellow trucks scuttling back and forth on the ground below. The plane revved up and began to move backward.
I saw through her eyes but had my own thoughts. Terrified and captivated, I knew exactly what was about to happen. Was this the way God saw things? Did he kick back in his leather Barcalounger upstairs and flick on the tube to someone's life in peril? The same way we sort of watch and get interested in the fate of soap opera characters?
What should I have done, stopped the film? All my life I'd wanted to know what these last minutes had been like for her. The questions around her death had been the basis of much of my young confusion, not to mention the inspiration for my first film, The Night Is Blond.
The man next to Mama offered her a copy of Time magazine. Fidel Castro was on the cover. She thanked him but said reading on a plane made her ill. He tried to make conversation, but she only smiled and busied herself with the seat belt. I remembered how nervous she became when strange men spoke to her. She was good-looking but shy; my father had won her through gentle persistence. She said she'd first fallen in love with his patience.
Her slim hands were so familiar. The gold engagement and wedding rings that slipped on and off her finger so easily whenever she washed her hands. The shiny scar above her thumb where she'd cut it deeply one day while making lunch.
The plane turned hard left, then began to taxi. A stewardess came by offering a bowl of hard candy, Mama's favorite. We often joked that she had a mouth full of sweet tooths. This last time she took two – an orange and a green. She looked out the window again at the nice weather. Some purple-gray clouds far off in the southern sky. In an hour and a half the plane was due to land in Washington. In an hour and a half firemen would still be trying to control the flames that licked up at the clear Hartford sky. She put a piece of candy in her mouth. The plane began to pick up speed. A blond stewardess hurried down the aisle toward the back of the plane, a nervous smile on her face.
The plane goes faster and faster, the view out the window begins to blur. Then that fast, stomach-lurching lift off the earth and the hard pull up.
A few seconds going up, up. . . .
A loud fast thunk-thunk-thunk. Thunkity-thunkity. Everything stops. Just stops. The whole plane feels . . . it's falling backward, crazy angle up and all. Someone screams. More screams. Explosions. I choke. The candy's gone down my throat the wrong way. I can't breathe! Choking, trying to get it out. Explosion. Dead.
The screen went dark, then lit again on Philip Strayhorn's face. "She was dead in half a second, Weber. One big blow she didn't even feel. I promise you that. I know it for sure.
"There's more on this tape you must see, but not now. You can watch your mother's part again if you want, but there's nothing new to be learned. That's how it happened.
"Call Sasha, okay?"
The tape went black again, then turned into the electronic fuzz that's so annoying at the end of any video film. I reached over and fast-forwarded it a count of one hundred, then pressed PLAY again: fuzz. Rewound it to the beginning, replayed a little of what I'd already seen: Phil in his living room with the dog. FAST FORWARD: Mama being offered candy again. More FAST FORWARD: fuzz.
I reached down for the other tapes (SECOND and THIRD) and tried them both: fuzz all the way. For no reason at all, I put the first one in again and ran it up to the end. "Call Sasha, okay?"
But this time there was more.
A little fuzz, then his face again. I jerked back like I'd been slapped.
"This tape goes on and gives you more and more, Weber, as you can see. You've obviously tried the other two now and seen they don't work. But they will, later, when you're ready. Like this one. The more you discover, the more the tapes will tell you. Sort of like deciphering the hieroglyphics." He smiled. "The ride starts here, Scruno. I wish I could have gone on it with you, but I tried and it ate me.
"Don't let that worry you, though. I'll still be around in here, in these tapes. I'll be able to help you in some ways. Remember Kenneth Patchen's line? 'It may be a long time till morning, but there is no law against talking in the dark.' Call Sasha, huh?"
2
Sasha Makrianes's mother was Russian and her father a Greek, one of those lucky people who invent something ridiculous like the disposable lighter and become instantly rich. Alexandra inherited not only a ton of money but the deep-set brown eyes and high cheekbones that make an attractive Russian or Greek woman intriguing, but also dark and a little scary. The words "gypsy" or "revolutionary" are in there somewhere.
Sasha and I were introduced in Vienna by friends. Although her arm was in a sling, my first impression was I couldn't imagine her ever losing, or being used. Her life must be an obedient and loving pet she led around on a silver leash without much thought. She looked spoiled but also strong and decisive. It struck me if she'd been poor she'd probably have had the same aura.
How wrong I was! A week before we met, she'd broken up with her boyfriend of two years. Her arm was in the sling because on leaving the restaurant where they'd had it out, she had stepped into the street, blind and finished, and been hit by a taxi.
"Our relationship was always thin as a spiderweb anyway: delicate and lovely, but the slightest breeze broke right through it. It got so he was like a ventriloquist with his hand up my back, moving my lips – I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing.
"Love is a bully, you know? It can't be avoided and it can't be held off at arm's length. It arrives or reappears or descends or whatever, and we might as well throw up our hands and just hope for the best, right?
"My analyst told me I ran away from my boyfriend the way a child runs when being chased by a parent – you know, laughing and yelling and looking over her shoulder the whole time, dying to be caught?"