Some Things About Flying by Joan Barfoot

Author:Joan Barfoot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormorant Books
Published: 2013-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

seven

Radiant, she steps out of the washroom and back into chaos. Was she in there a very long time? Some people regard her impatiently, as if she’s been holding them up. Elsewhere, others continue to cry out, in a range of tones, variations on, “Oh, God, please.” To Lila, the words now do not sound as much like begging as like promising. “Let me try, give me a chance,” they plead, and then pledge, “I swear I’ll do better, and more.”

Radiant, Lila has also stepped into the arms of the old woman who was behind her in the line when she was talking to Sarah. What’s she doing, still waiting? “My dear,” she says, laying plump fingers on Lila’s arm. What happened to the shaken Sikh? In his place there’s a balding, blond, muscled man, whom the old woman gestures ahead. “You go on, I’d like a word with this young woman.” Nice, being called young; as if everything remains possible.

The old woman holding Lila’s arm may be small and white-haired, and she may be wearing the sort of innocent, flowery print dress Lila’s grandmother would have worn for, say, visiting June, but she also gleams with intention. She has made herself visible the way Lila can make herself large: with intensity, not size.

She has one of those old-lady bodies that slope downwards; a knoll of a body, a little foothill of a frame. She has the kind of body Lila could be heading towards, if Lila were heading towards any kind of old body. But what a glittering in the bright old-lady eyes.

“I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with the other young woman, and I’ve been waiting to speak with you. I’m very concerned for your soul.”

Oh dear.

Still, how interesting fanaticism is. As well as tedious.

“My name’s Adele Simpson, and I feel I simply must talk to you about how vital it is, the state of your soul. Especially now, when there may only be moments left for seeking redemption. Forgiveness for your sins. I don’t suppose you want to hear, but today! All this! I cannot stay silent.” Passion overtakes proper behaviour—fine. But why Lila and not the Sikh man who was surely, from Adele’s point of view, even more distant from redemption?

Perhaps he was so distant he wasn’t even on Adele’s horizon.

Did she try this with Sarah? That would have been something to see. “The state of my soul,” Lila says gently enough, “is my own concern, you know, not yours.”

“Oh, no, it must be mine, too, do you see? I feel this day as a test and a judgment, I feel the Lord calling to our souls, and we must listen. We must!”

What if, as her last act, Lila believed she absolutely had to make some dim, uninterested student comprehend a poem, be enlightened by a phrase or saved by a particular sentence—might she not also be grasping at arms?

Something like that, anyway.

Adele doesn’t look scared; intensity of purpose, putting salvation into words, may be her brand of hope.

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