Flight by Jane Wageman

Our first place is near the airport. We sit on the balcony some evenings and watch the planes rip into the sky. The space fits two folding chairs so close our knees touch. Flying makes me anxious but before it did, I used to travel. It’s not the planes themselves—I like being up in the air—it’s a recurring fear of landing in a place I won’t return from. It makes no sense, so I haven’t tried to explain it, and to your credit, you mostly haven’t made me. Mostly, you talk about how you stopped driving for a time after your accident. This is the way you refer to it—my accident—as though it’s a possession that you’ve carried from the past, before I knew you. I’ve heard you tell this story before, but it doesn’t stop you from repeating it. You retell stories like a kind of currency. An exchange for something I’m never quite sure how to give.

Your words are drowned out by a new plane crossing over us. It feels like we’re deep under water, like the jets are skimming some surface far above. But I don’t have to hear you to know what you’re saying. You tell me that you let your car sit idle for months that fall; you just moved it from spot to spot to avoid tickets.

You pause and sip whatever we’re drinking that night—off-brand LaCroix or whatever beer you picked from Aldi or, once, for some reason, orange juice. You tell me you walked everywhere or took the light rail or bus or accepted rides from friends. I believe it. Though you drive without qualms now, it’s not hard for me to see you in this other life, living downtown. I picture you sitting alongside strangers on public transportation or walking on a busy sidewalk. It seems more natural for you to hop into other people’s cars than be stuck on a solitary commute down the highway, like you are now. I think, sometimes, that you must have preferred this life before. Though you’ve assured me, often, that you didn’t.

I prefer myself here with you. I like you here with me, though I am always imagining you elsewhere.

When did you start driving again? I ask. I already know—you’ve already told me—but this is the one thing I can offer. The other half to your story, the permission to keep telling it.

Winter, you say. And I know this is meant to be more than a fact—it’s meant to be some kind of wisdom for me, about necessity and the passage of time. But really it’s none of those things.

It was a bad accident—I know this because you told me, but also because other people have. It was spring, and you had a neck brace until the start of September. So for months you weren’t choosing not to drive. For the time when you still couldn’t turn your head, you were told: don’t. It’s understandable and astonishing that you were walking around so much that fall. Understandable and, yes, astonishing, that you would return to driving in those slick, cold months.

There’s nothing keeping me from flying except perhaps the passage of time. I haven’t got on a plane in a couple years now. Nothing will happen if I do—I won’t have a panic attack; I won’t even cry. I’ll just have that sinking dread in my gut, that certainty. I’ll know it, and I’ll know I’m right. The plane will land where it’s not meant to land—in Phoenix, when I’m going to Boston. In Alaska, when I’m heading to Florida. In Nepal or New Zealand or no country at all—and the way back will snip off like a thread. I’ll be loose in the world with no one—not you, not even myself. Cut off from memory and time and place, I won’t remember. I won’t be anyone anymore. 

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JANE WAGEMAN — Jane is a writer and teacher from Minnesota. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Lake Effect, Wigleaf, trampset, and others. She writes about teaching, writing, and craft at the Substack Quick Bright Things.

Art by TINAMARIE COX — Tinamarie is an Arizona-based creative. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and printed publications under various genres. Explore more of her work at: tinamariethinkstoomuch.com and follow her on social media @tinamariethinkstoomuch.