“Gosh.” The pregnant woman frowns. “I wonder if some people are taking her seriously.”
“Yep, I’m actually trying to—”
“Ah! You should have said!”
The pregnant woman shifts herself and her enormous belly out of the way and Allegra is once more walking down the aisle as fast as she dares without giving the impression that this is an actual emergency, although she’s starting to wonder if it might qualify.
Chapter 9
“If my time’s up, so be it!”
This was the facile comment that led me to accidentally share a deeply personal story about my mother while we ate our terrible apricot chicken at that long-ago dinner party.
The man opposite me had been experiencing a health symptom of some sort but was refusing to get it checked out by a doctor. His wife was concerned.
I cannot now recall the symptom. Don’t worry about it. It’s not relevant.
I said I thought it was stupid not to go to the doctor.
I had not spoken much prior to that point and my remark caused a lull. I immediately realized the word “stupid” was too harsh for the lighthearted tone of the discourse.
“Silly” would have been a better choice. It sounded like I cared too much about this man’s health. He wasn’t my husband! I’d only just met him! I worried people might think I was attracted to this man.
I was attracted to him. He was very handsome.
I was embarrassed, so I attempted to explain my strong feelings. I told the truth.
I explained that my mother had always hated doctors. She was squeamish and superstitious, so she willfully ignored the symptoms of the illness that would eventually kill her.
“Fate won’t be fought!” she said, again and again, until I wanted to scream.
In fact, I remember once I did scream, in the car, as I drove to the shops to buy her some ginger beer, which was the only thing her stomach could handle in the last weeks. I remember a child in the back seat of the car stopped next to me at a traffic light, staring in horrified fascination as he watched me silently howl.
She died a week before her sixtieth birthday. It was a preventable death and she chose not to prevent it.
“Well, see, your mother was a determinist,” said the bearded man, and off he went on his lecture about determinism.
“My mother was a fool,” I said after he finished. I was still very angry with my mother at that time of my life. I needed her and missed her very much.
The bearded man remarked that Albert Einstein refused life-saving surgery at the age of seventy-six, the implication being, I assume, that no one would consider Einstein to be a fool.
“I have done my share, it is time to go,” said Einstein. (Apparently.) “I will do it elegantly.”
Everyone was impressed by that anecdote. As I said, we were young. We therefore believed seventy-six was a perfectly acceptable and possibly elegant time to choose to die.
But I do remember wondering how Einstein’s children felt about his decision not to have surgery, if they maybe felt like screaming in the car, if they begged him, “Dad. Please. Have the surgery.”
—
I see from the internet that the attractive man who refused to see a doctor is still alive. His time still isn’t up. His symptom, whatever it was, turned out to mean nothing.
Symptoms often mean nothing because they are not, in fact, symptoms, they are just the normal niggles and quibbles of being alive.
The attractive man still has all his hair and a second, much younger wife, which any woman could have predicted.
Chapter 10
Jesus is the only true prophet, my dear!
Paula Binici opens her eyes. What the…? Did she dream those words or actually hear someone say them?
She’s thirty-six years old, although she’s told she looks much younger; possibly it’s something to do with the shape of her face (heart-shaped) or maybe it’s her damned hair, which is wispy, flyaway, flummoxes hairdressers, and makes her appear permanently windswept. There is always the fractional lift of an eyebrow when she mentions she’s a lawyer. Now she looks like a hapless stay-at-home mother, which is what she is, rather than the competent, respected, well-paid contract lawyer she previously was, and will be again, very soon, once her children start school, which people assure her will happen in the “blink of an eye.” The days are long but the years are short, her mother says. This will apparently make sense to her one day.
She must have dozed, but she’s not sure for how long. There is something going on. She has missed some kind of important development. But what?
Her baby and toddler are both still asleep, both still breathing. The seat-belt sign has not come on. No turbulence. No oxygen masks have dropped. She shifts carefully, trying not to disturb her children, who are both using her as a pillow. Their small beautiful heads are as heavy and hard as bowling balls. It goes so fast, people tell her. Hilarious. She’s been on this plane for a thousand years. Time has never gone slower.
Timmy’s cheek is sticky with drool against her chest, one dimpled hand gripping the fabric of her shirt, pulling it to one side and exposing the graying lace of her oldest nursing bra. The cold buckle of the seat-belt extender rests against Timmy’s bare skin just above his nappy, but Paula has given up fiddling with the two belts to make him more comfortable. The main thing is he’s secure. Willow’s cheek, also sticky, is pressed against Paula’s arm, her mouth wide open in a perfect oval, a rim of chocolate around her rosebud lips. Paula has bribed her with so many forbidden treats she will probably have an upset stomach soon. It will be the obvious next development in this nightmarish flight.
When they’d been waiting on the tarmac, Willow and Timmy had initially been cheerful, unaware they weren’t getting anywhere, and that time therefore didn’t count. She knew they were using up their precious reserves of good behavior, and had distracted herself by pondering the legal implications of the delay. When would a flight delay be considered a breach of contract? When time is of the essence. It is of the essence. I’m flying to Sydney for my sister’s wedding next Saturday. My daughter is going to be a flower girl and they need time to make any necessary adjustments to her dress. What is the relevant contract anyway? A contract of carriage. Wait, the consumer guarantees would apply. Section 62: In the absence of agreement, the service will be provided within a reasonable time. But what does “reasonable time” mean? That’s always up in the air. Ha ha. Nobody here is up in the air. Nobody ever knows what “reasonable” means or who the reasonable man is. Where is that elusive reasonable man? Am I married to him? Matt likes to think he’s so reasonable.
She’d been looking up a German case where passengers stuck on a plane sued for false imprisonment when Timmy began to scream. No warning. It probably terrified the hugely pregnant passenger seated close to the front of the plane who Paula had observed cradling her bump with the prideful exuberance of a first-time mother-to-be, although the woman probably thought she’d never let her child cry like that. In fact, Paula had never heard Timmy cry so hysterically. She began to worry that he was actually dying, in her arms, from a burst appendix or something. Then Willow began to weep, piteously, as if she were a child on a television commercial appealing for foster carers. Paula heard someone say, without even bothering to lower their voice, “If you can’t control your kids, don’t fly, simple as that.”
She’d never been so stressed and sweaty in her life. A vision of herself screaming in full-throated harmony with the baby appeared in her head and then got stuck, in that familiar well-worn groove, sliding endlessly back and forth like a marble in one of those office novelty toys for executives. She imagined the horrified faces, the flight attendants running to restrain her, police called, a doctor called, a mental health assessment demanded.
She reasoned with herself, one of those exhausting back-and-forth arguments in which she specialized.
You’re not going to do that, you would never do that.
