I watched her on the plane, and I sent a wish into the clouds for her release. Her body grew heavy with the dread of what would come but in this heaviness was at least relief. The stewardess handed her a small blue pillow and for a little while she fell asleep.
When they reached Philadelphia, the airplane taxied down the runway and she reminded herself both where she was and what year it was. She hurriedly clicked through all the things she might say when she saw her children, her mother, Jack. And then, when they finally shivered to a halt, she gave up and focused only on getting off the plane.
She barely recognized her own child waiting at the end of the long ramp. In the years that had passed, Lindsey had become angular, thin, every trace of body fat gone. And standing beside my sister was what looked like her male twin. A bit taller, a little more meat. Samuel. She was staring so hard at the two of them, and they were staring back, that at first she didn’t even see the chubby boy sitting off to the side on the arm of a row of waiting-area seats.
And then, just before she began walking toward them – for they all seemed suspended and immobile for the first few moments, as if they had been trapped in a viscous gelatin from which only her movement might free them – she saw him.
She began walking down the carpeted ramp. She heard announcements being made in the airport and saw passengers, with their more normal greetings, rushing past her. But it was as if she were entering a time warp as she took him in. 1944 at Camp Winnekukka. She was twelve, with chubby cheeks and heavy legs – all the things she’d felt grateful her daughters had escaped had been her son’s to endure. So many years she had been away, so much time she could never recover.
If she had counted, as I did, she would have known that in seventy-three steps she had accomplished what she had been too afraid to do for almost seven years.
It was my sister who spoke first:
“Mom,” she said.
My mother looked at my sister and flashed forward thirty-eight years from the lonely girl she’d been at Camp Winnekukka.
“Lindsey,” my mother said.
Lindsey stared at her. Buckley was standing now, but he looked first down at his shoes and then over his shoulder, out past the window to where the planes were parked, disgorging their passengers into accordioned tubes.
“How is your father?” my mother asked.
My sister had spoken the word Mom and then frozen. It tasted soapy and foreign in her mouth.
“He’s not in the greatest shape, I’m afraid,” Samuel said. It was the longest sentence anyone had said, and my mother found herself disproportionately grateful for it.
“Buckley?” my mother said, preparing no face for him. Being who she was – whoever that was.
He turned his head toward her like a racheted gun. “Buck,” he said.
“Buck,” she repeated softly and looked down at her hands.
Lindsey wanted to ask, Where are your rings?
“Shall we go?” Samuel asked.
The four of them entered the long carpeted tunnel that would bring them from her gate into the main terminal. They were headed toward the cavernous baggage claim when my mother said, “I didn’t bring any bags.”
They stood in an awkward cluster, Samuel looking for the right signs to redirect them back to the parking garage.
“Mom,” my sister tried again.
“I lied to you,” my mother said before Lindsey could say anything further. Their eyes met, and in that hot wire that went from one to the other I swore I saw it, like a rat bulging, undigested, inside a snake: the secret of Len.
“We go back up the escalator,” Samuel said, “and then we can take the overhead walkway into the parking lot.”
Samuel called for Buckley, who had drifted off in the direction of a cadre of airport security officers. Uniforms had never lost the draw they held for him.
They were on the highway when Lindsey spoke next. “They won’t let Buckley in to see Dad because of his age.”
My mother turned around in her seat. “I’ll try and do something about that,” she said, looking at Buckley and attempting her first smile.
