The Idea of Him. Holly Peterson
39. Surprise in the SUV
The taxi driver took off down Seventh Avenue as if he’d just mainlined a pound of crystal meth. This guy was on a kamikaze mission, reckless even by New York standards where taxi drivers charge down the streets with no regard for their passengers’ lives.
“Slow down, sir, please!” I yelled through the opening in the glass partition as I contemplated ditching this driver at the next corner.
He slammed on his brakes. “Okay, lady! I’ll slow it down a little. Yeah.” But when the light turned green, he began weaving between cars and playing chicken to blow past the giant city buses. We brushed a bike messenger who retaliated with a fisted punch on the trunk. I again waffled about getting out, but it was that bustling time of early rush hour just before the taxi shift change, when I wouldn’t be able to get another, so I stayed put and latched my seat belt. Besides, my kids were waiting for me at home, and I was already half an hour late leaving the office.
I sat strapped in the ratty backseat, tossed back and forth down the length of Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue like a Ping-Pong ball.
This car is going to crash.
The lethal night of the plane accident came back to me in waves, starting with the instinctual pangs telling me not to step up from the tarmac onto the slippery, rickety staircase of the little six-seater. This plane is not made for all this stormy snow, I had said to myself that night. And I was right.
So much of my life had gone according to plan since then, much of it mapped out in a two-decades’-long fit to fix wrongs—the most evil happening on the eve of my sixteenth birthday that winter night, eighteen-years and four-months ago.
MY FATHER HAD been planning the trip all year. He had told Mom it was his chance to spend a few days one-on-one with his only child, teaching me the secrets of ice fishing at his favorite spot on Diamond Lake up north. He’d been talking about this as long as I could remember, and, finally, a week before my sixteenth birthday, Mom said I was old enough to go.
Dad had handed in his boarding pass outside, and he came onto the small commuter plane in Montreal, dusting snow off his beard and shoulders once he managed to jam his huge frame into the seat. I knew Dad saw the fear in my face and tried his best to reassure me. All I could think about was how small and fragile that plane seemed against the howling winds outside. Deep down that voice was telling me this was a bad idea, but I kept my mouth shut at first. I didn’t want to look like a frightened little girl.
Dad smelled of metal and cold air, a scent that further unsettled me because it was so far from his usual salty warmth. I rubbed his arm to chase away the odor and he smiled down at me.
On the plane, I thought danger was nearby but I didn’t want to scare anybody. Others have certainly had that same feeling before they board a plane with severe weather forecast in the flight path, wondering if they should resist getting on because this could be the one that goes down. A moment’s hesitation before they step over that little gap and feel the rush of cold outside air between the boarding ramp and the aircraft front galley. Is my mind playing tricks or do I somehow know this plane is going down? Am I having some kind of psychic experience? Am I going to be on the local news as the one person who survived only because I didn’t get on at the last minute?
The whole body stiffens on the ramp for a moment to stall and consider the possibility.
But then, No. That’s ridiculous. Screw it. I’m getting on. Statistics say it is more dangerous to drive to the airport than to get on this plane.
At least most often it goes like that. I guess you don’t need to be clairvoyant to know that during a blizzard, when a lumberjack pilot in a plaid shirt working for a low-budget commuter airline in Canada’s outback says, “It’s just a little snow,” you get out of the twin-engine Cessna and run for your life.
MY PLAN SINCE then has been to run for my life. Run away from a boyfriend who kept traveling too far, run into a marriage that I thought would work. Rush to have kids to cement the union. Rush home to them today. This plan means I’ve tried to solve everything quickly before all hell descended on me again. Trauma is like that. It smashes into your life out of the blue and just lingers, dripping like a broken egg.
The kamikaze taxi lurched me back into the New York present, and the frayed seat belt snapped into place, jerking me hard. “Please slow down, sir,” I yelled again at the driver. “That light was clearly turning red, and you were never going to make it, so you don’t need to speed up just to slam the brakes.”
“Okay, lady. Thanks for the driving tip. All I need at the end of my shift.” This time he took off two full seconds before the light even turned green. I clenched my teeth and again started to feel that old tingle I’d felt in my bones as the pilot had swung the plane out of the boarding area some eighteen years earlier.
THE ENGINES HAD revved up as he made a ninety-degree tight turn at the end of the snowy runway. I gripped my armrests, imagining how my funeral would be. Matching father-daughter coffins. That’s what it would look like. I blinked hard against the image.
Dad seemed oblivious to my fears. “You don’t actually sit outside and fish all day. You can leave the lines in and then go check them,” Dad went on. “You’re gonna love it, Allie Lamb. No trout tastes like this anywhere in the world. This lake is crystal clear in the winter; beneath five feet of ice those damn fish still manage to …”
“Dad,” I rasped. “The snow, it’s just …”
He held my hand and kissed my forehead. “It’s okay, honey. A dozen guys I know have flown to this paradise in weather like this. All good.”
The plane made a high-pitched whine as we sped down the runway into a cloudy, billowy, late-afternoon haze. The takeoff was absolutely normal, save a few little bumps when we made the initial ascent, and I let out a small breath. Dad patted my thigh. “You see, honey. It’s all fine. We’ll be above the clouds soon and see the sun.” Our craft coasted up toward the sky.
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW of the taxi, I could see we were now speeding west across Forty-Second Street, past a seedy commercial section of town, heading toward the flashing lights of Times Square and standstill traffic. I said through the glass, “You might want to loop over to Ninth …”
The guy slammed on the brakes and turned around. “Look, lady, I’m gonna get you there.” Two blocks later, we were parked in traffic. I did the math: it would take me about twenty minutes to walk, but if this traffic jam broke after five minutes, then it would only take fifteen more to reach home. Same difference. Same exploding anxiety over something with the same result that I couldn’t change. I sat back against the seat again, frustrated and sweaty, my hands clammy from the plane ride down memory lane.
“YOU’RE NEVER GOING to forget the first time the fish bite, it’s so exciting out there, the nature so delicate,” Dad yelled over the whirl of the propellers, still