The Visibles by Sara Shepard

Author:Sara Shepard [Shepard, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 1416597409
Amazon: 1416597409
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2010-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

I talked to my father on the phone a few hours before my flight to Dublin. I had cleaned the house, I had packed my things, I had taken the dogs to their new owner, a woman down the street my father and I screened together—she loved dogs, and had a lot of room and a lot of time to exercise them. We wanted them to remain in this neighborhood—the smells would be the same for them.

When it got to that winding-down part of the conversation where it was obvious we had nothing else to say and should probably get off the phone, my father made this sigh. In it was the smallest of whimpers. “Have a wonderful time,” he said. I stared out the window, watching the kids Rollerblading up and down the Promenade. One World Trade glimmered across the water. Squinting hard, I tried to accurately count twenty-two floors from the top, but the building seemed too far away, the distance between floors too ambiguous. It made me wonder if I had ever been able to tell which office was my mother’s, or if I’d just convinced myself I could.

At the airport, I tried calling my father from the pay phone near the security line, but a nurse answered. I hung up fast.

I sat in front of the arrivals and departures board outside the international terminal. I hadn’t gone through security yet; my bags were still with me, unchecked. The big schedule board said another flight to Dublin would leave a few hours later—it was on Air France, with a stopover in Paris. I flirted with the idea of not going to Dublin at all, but to somewhere else entirely. Madrid, maybe, or Johannesburg—both were leaving at the same time as the Dublin flight. If I hung out for a while, there were late-night planes to Reykjavik or Lima or Geneva. I traced the tweed pattern on the edge of my suitcase. From the bar just past the security gate, someone spoke in what I decided was Finnish. Someone else said, Would you stop it? Someone else laughed.

And then, my flight to Dublin was boarding. I heard the attendant call for first class over the PA, then rows twenty-five through thirty, then rows twenty and higher, then rows fifteen and higher. I imagined the people lining up at the gate: two old ladies, a couple with a baby, a man in a wheelchair. A beautiful boy I might be sitting next to.

All rows for Dublin, the flight attendant called. I pictured old people pressing their hands to their knees and, groaning, standing. The flight attendant would be smiling with all her teeth as she ripped their tickets. She called my name over the PA once, then twice. But I had suddenly become so sure of something: this wasn’t how it was supposed to work. I wish it were, I wish I could have gone, but I knew I couldn’t.

The flight attendant called my name for a final time. I watched the Departures board.

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