“Gimme some gum,” she said, and so he held out the pack.
Before the plane boarded, Jim took one last walk to stretch his legs. In all of the recent excitement, he’d forgotten to feel nervous about going home. Despite the fact that Franny seemed to be tolerating—even responding to—his touch, his job would still be gone when they got home. He was only sixty. Only sixty! Jim made himself laugh. He remembered when sixty was as old as eighty. His parents had been sixty. Hell, his grandparents had been sixty. And now he was, too, just like that.
Jim did not want to go on cruises, or learn to play golf. He did not want to wake to find that his pants were too short and his neckties were too thin, or too wide. Jim walked as far as he could without having to show his ticket and pass through security again, and turned back. He passed Spanish families with their belongings strewn around them as though they were sitting in cafés, not a care in the world. None of the children were on leashes. The airport was longer than a football field, and Jim had to quicken his pace to make sure he made it back in time to board. Franny was so nervous about small things—her seat would still be there, but if a crowd had formed, bottlenecking the jet bridge, she would be up and fanning herself with her ticket, scanning the masses for his face. That was what Jim wanted—to never make Franny nervous ever again. He walked faster, so that he was almost jogging. The Spaniards around him, a slow-paced people, watched with interest.
Their gate was twenty yards ahead. There was a fairly orderly line already in place, which meant that he had somehow missed the announcement over the loudspeaker. Franny and the kids weren’t in the spot where he’d left them, and he craned his neck to see where they’d gone. He walked halfway down the line, as if he needed to get within six inches to recognize his family, when he finally noticed Franny standing by herself off to the side.
“I’m so sorry,” Jim said. He swiveled his body around. “Where are the kids?”
“They’re on the plane,” she said, and put her hand on his arm.
“Shit, I didn’t realize we were boarding so soon.” Jim was flustered, doubly so by Franny’s unusual calm.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They won’t leave without us.”
The line was getting longer, and Franny looped her elbow through Jim’s, guiding him gently to the back of the line. His heart was still beating at a rapid pace, and his underarms felt warm and damp. His forehead was slick with sweat. They waited for the line to move, which it did. One by one, the travelers in front of them boarded the plane, tucking their suitcases into the large compartments above their seats. Jim and Franny were among the last to board, but their seats were still there, empty and waiting. Franny settled into her seat and shoved her purse under the seat in front of her. She held her hands in her lap primly while she waited for Jim to sit.
Despite the circumstances, she was delighted to have Bobby coming back to New York with them, her two little ducklings under her roof together for a little while longer. She would have to remember to not baby her son, to treat him like an adult, and to expect adult behavior from him, just like she would have to not ask Sylvia too many questions about what happened with Joan. The human heart was a complex organ at any age. Teenagers were no less impervious to true heartbreak and lust than they were to getting hit by buses. If anything, the odds were dramatically higher.
Bobby’s problem was that he’d never had anything he wanted to fight for—Carmen was a comfort to him, a kickstand. Now that she was gone, he was going to have to use his own legs. Franny thought that it was true of all of them, to some extent. Jim would need to find a way to fill his days; Sylvia would have to reinvent herself as a college girl. Bobby would have to learn to be a responsible adult; Franny herself would have to find her own tiny islands and populate them with food and love and words. She would have to forgive her husband without forgetting what he’d done. No—she didn’t have to, but she wanted to.
Jim was arranging himself for the long flight—his reading glasses were already on, and he had one book in his lap and another in the seat pocket in front of them. There would be a folded-up crossword puzzle somewhere, and a pen. The skin around his eye was now a pale shade of green, the color of a peridot, his birthstone. It got lighter every day, and soon would be gone entirely.
The engines rumbled and the plane began to glide forward on the runway. The people with the orange vests and pointers had all backed safely away, on to their next departure. Franny wove her fingers through Jim’s, and held the entire knot in her lap. He leaned forward to stare out the window at the receding airport and the well-tended expanse of the runway. There were mountains on their left, and he pointed to them. The airplane turned onto the straightaway, and the noise from its body increased. As they began to pick up speed, Franny closed her eyes and rested her cheek on Jim’s shoulder. She felt it in her stomach when the wheels left the ground, the sudden suspension of disbelief that this, too, would work just as it should. She lifted her chin so that it was closer to her husband’s ear, and over the roaring of the plane, Franny said, “We made it, Jim.” There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision. Marriages, like ships, needed steering, and steady hands at the wheel. Franny wrapped both of her arms around Jim’s right one, her grip firm and ready for any turbulence ahead.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Valli Shaio Kohon and Gregorio Kohon for their Mallorcan generosity, and to Olga Ortiz for her Mallorcan brain. Thank you to the Hotel Gran Son Net in Puigpunyent for heating their bathroom floors.
Thank you to Rumaan Alam, Maggie Delgado, Ben Turley, Lorrie Moore, Meg Wolitzer, and Stephin Merritt for their help with language and logistics. Thank you to Christine Onorati and WORD, Mary Gannett and BookCourt, Julia Fierro and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, Noreen Tomassi and the Center for Fiction, the 92nd Street Y, Vanderbilt University, and Rookie for their love and employment.
Thank you to Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Stuart Nadler, and my darling husband for being such smart readers. Thank you to my family: the Straubs, the Royals, and the small but mighty Fusco-Straubs.
Thank you, as always, to everyone at Riverhead Books, especially the indomitable Megan Lynch, Geoff Kloske, Claire McGinnis, Ali Cardia, and Jynne Martin.
And thank you most of all to my son, the patient traveler, for waiting until I was done to be born.