After This by Alice McDermott

Author:Alice McDermott
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440337300
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, on the plane, his first flight, he leaned his head against the window and tried to distinguish the streets and highways and parks below, looking for the thrill of spotting something familiar. He looked for the church and the school, certain they would be his surest landmarks: the roof of St. Gabriel’s, from up here, would indeed look like a flying saucer. The school and the gym made identifiable, from up here, by the way they jogged around Mr. Krause’s store. But the plane was banking already and wisps of cloud touched the rising wing. He could not get his bearings. Down below, there were green yards and long gray roads and more baseball diamonds than he would have imagined. There were the blue ovals of backyard pools. There was the Unisphere and then the stadium and then the spires of the city, a glimpse of limitless ocean before the plane banked again and the clouds took over. He sat back. He was aware of an obligation to say something to the woman beside him—she was a smallish woman, older than the girls he knew, younger than his mother, she was already reading a paperback—but he was uncertain of the protocol. Where you headed, maybe. Or, Good book? Fly much? He was leaving home for the first time and already he saw how ill equipped he was, how unready. He could not make conversation with strangers, and yet conversations with strangers were perhaps the first thing required of him in his new life. He touched his seat belt. Put his hands in his lap. He closed his eyes and thought to pray but all petition was undermined by Jesus’ superior prayer, on the night before his death: Your will, not mine. Jacob wanted only to say, Take care of me. Give me a break. The change of light in the cabin made him open his eyes again. The plane had cleared the clouds—they now ran like a great white field just below the wing, they were touched with gold—and the sky was a solid blue. “Incredible,” Jacob said, and the woman beside him put down her book and leaned forward, their shoulders brushing, her hair smelling fresh, like green leaves. He had a memory of the scent of green willow leaves on yellow, pliant stems, small starbursts of blood on his palms. “Isn’t it pretty?” she said.

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