All night Fletcher had been awake or half awake in anticipation of his first trip to the airport. Earlier in the day he had cut airplanes from newspapers and magazines and tacked them first to his bulletin board, then somehow to his ceiling. When I left him at bedtime, he was circling his room, a truck in one hand, a giraffe in the other, learning to fly. In the morning Grandpa and I found him asleep in his chair. He had made a cape out of a light-blue blanket which was wound around his shoulders and knotted at his neck. He was curled up in it, that sweet flyer, his thumb in his mouth.
My grandfather knew what Fletcher was dreaming. He had dreamt the same things many times before his own first trip — a swirl of clouds, the sound of engines, a lifting in the chest.
My grandfather rarely missed a chance to pick up my mother at the airport. He seemed willing to drive any distance and was always sure to go well in advance so as to have time to take in all the sights. He had not at that time begun to mistake barn swallows or wasps for airplanes.
“My God, that pilot must be crazy flying so near the house,” he would shout in his last years.
“Dad,” my father would say gently, “that’s only a bird.”
He would flush then, put on his glasses, joke about being so old, then look again. “Well now, so it is,” he’d say with a bewildered look. He was shaken by his mistake, for he knew, of course, that it was much more than a simple failure of the eyes. “Well, how do you like that?” he’d chuckle, looking into our faces for any sign of alarm.
“It’s OK,” Fletcher would whisper to him, “really, it’s OK.”
Walking in the fields with me that final spring he would often say when a wasp flew by his ear, “just listen to that engine, Vanessa. It’s the modern age, all right! There’s no turning back now.”
I never corrected my grandfather. It seemed to me his hearing grew more and more acute as he grew older — sharper, more complex. In a wasp’s hum he could hear the promise of the twentieth century.
“Are we there yet?” Fletcher said, opening his eyes suddenly, looking up to where the paper DC 10’s and 727’s flew.
“Not yet,” my grandfather whispered, “but get up and get dressed. It’s almost time to go.”
Grandpa, an early riser, had already had his breakfast of melon and cereal and was dressed and all ready by 8:00 A.M. He wore a starched white shirt and extra cologne on the days he went to meet my mother at the airport, like some secret lover.
That day, Fletcher’s first day, they left hours before my mother’s plane was due, so as to have plenty of time at JFK. In the car, cinched in by a seat belt, Fletcher dozed, shifting in his seat, his arms now and then straightening at his sides like wings. “Zhummm,” he murmured.
“Come in, copilot Turin,” my grandfather would say, and my brother would relax his wings, open his eyes, and let the blue sky fill them. Afraid that he might have missed something, he looked from the sky to my grandfather worriedly.
“Relax,” my grandfather said reassuringly. “When we get near, the sky will be thick with planes.”
For another one of his unexplained reasons, my father did not like airports. If he believed in photographs, which he did not, we might have seen a picture of someone during wartime, waving and trying to smile from the cockpit of a bomber. A close relative who had plummeted to a fiery death? A good friend perhaps? We might have nodded at last, understanding why our father did not like planes and why, though he could not wait to see my mother, he avoided picking her up at the airport whenever possible. But there was no such simple clue. He refused to go; he never explained why.
So it had been decided: Grandpa who had made the trip from Pennsylvania the night before would go to the airport with Fletcher to pick up Mom, and Dad and I would make the welcome-home dinner. My father loved to cook. I could not, at age five, cook at all, but knew I was some special help to my father, who never liked to be alone on a day my mother was flying.
“Well, Vanessa, what shall we make?” he’d ask, early in the morning.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I’d say and automatically get the chair to stand on to reach the countless cookbooks he had arranged in some mysterious order on the shelf, while he dragged in piles of Gourmet magazines that we studied until we could decide on a menu.
I loved to watch my father cook. He was so animated on those days, so busy in the kitchen: measuring, testing, timing, my father the scientist flourishing among the food; methodical, exacting, I thought — though, occasionally, in the middle of whisking the beurre blanc or the béarnaise sauce, he would stop quite suddenly, against all rules of whisking, to squeeze my hand tightly and give me a kiss, as if he sensed air turbulence, landing gear that would not lower, a flock of birds flying towards the engine. We made intricate dinners the days of my mother’s homecomings with five and six courses and desserts we set on fire. It kept Father’s mind occupied. It kept his thoughts off flying. But I never worried about Mother when she was flying. I was not afraid of the air; I thought, like my father’s arms, it could hold anything.
“Where are we?” Fletcher gasped, opening his eyes, sitting straight up in his seat.
“We’re approaching JFK, my friend. We made good time, clear visibility, we’ll be able to watch lots of planes before your mother’s lands. You can hear them already,” my grandfather said quietly.
“Are the planes bigger than houses?” Fletcher asked.
“Much,” my grandfather said.
“Do they have lots of windows?”
My grandfather nodded.
“I bet you can see inside the clouds,” Fletcher murmured.
My grandfather patted Fletcher’s dovv nv head.
“I’d like to be a pilot, Grandpa,” he said. He started up his motor as my grandfather pulled the large soundless Oldsmobile into the parking lot.
“Sure, Fletcher,” my grandfather said, taking his tiny hand, “you can be a pilot if you want.”
The airport whirled around them. Everything seemed to be moving: ticket lines, conveyor belts, escalators, clouds. Fletcher, dizzy with excitement even before seeing one plane, dashed around madly, taking off and landing, taking off and landing until he collapsed in a plastic airport chair in a section where people were waiting to board.
I imagine the travelers as Fletcher saw them: adventurers, embarking on unknown voyages in these fantastic machines; all faith, all wonder. Fletcher must have studied them closely, the lucky children who got to go with their parents, the old people en route to warmer climates, those from other countries, the lost, the disoriented, those who had begun their trip at one time and ended up twelve hours later at the same time, somewhere across the world.
My grandfather and brother stepped onto the motorstairs and were taken to a large observatory window. Over the intercom announcements were being made, “Eastern flight 107 to Miami departing from gate 19.” “National flight 53 arriving at gate 12.” “Aer Lingus,” my grandfather read off a flight bag which raced by. Al Italia, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Pan Am — the various stripes and colors of the airlines blurred together. The announcements continued. Propellers whirred.
My grandfather and brother were not part of the group that hurried. They floated around the airport in slow motion, it seemed, and watched stewardesses fly by, ticket agents, anxious travelers.