In the airport security line, Peter removes his belt. He rolls it up and stashes it in the side pocket of his black carry-on. The process separated him from Ana and now they shuffle through different queues. She totes Little Jeremy before her in a Moses basket and, with her free hand, thumbs through work emails. She packed her usual maroon suitcase last night and checked it during ticketing. The people around her sneak glances at the baby, hoping they will not have to fly with him.
Although still young, Peter thinks of himself as venturing into life’s thick middle, so he, a few months ago, bought himself a sensible watch to help keep him conscious of the stakes. He unlatches its clasp. Producing his sunglasses case, he folds the timepiece inside. He snaps the case shut and sets it in the pocket with his belt. No one else in line seems to have thought of preparing to pass through the checkpoint by shedding metal objects before reaching it. This baffles him, as it does each time he flies.
He considers taking off his ring, but judges it small enough that the Transit Security Officers and their scanners will not mind. In fact, he and Ana are still engaged but she likes to plan and prepare, projecting into the future by her readiness. She already wears both her studded engagement ring and her wedding band, which charms him. Peter glances at her again, hoping to share a commiserating eye-roll. But she looks ahead with an intent, abstracted look on her face, feeling behind her for a pocket on her backpack to shove her phone into. Under Peter’s gaze, Little Jeremy stirs, voicing a brief and familiar pattern of whirring coos. Then, he falls quiet. These silences between Little Jeremy’s established set of sound patterns disconcert Peter. He assumes, although they have not discussed the phenomenon, that Ana also memorized the limited collection of vocalizations some time ago. But he does not think she notices the intervals between the sounds when, it seems to him, Little Jeremy remains preternaturally quiet.
A TSA officer asks Peter to step out of the body-scanner and wait. At the head of her line, Ana places Little Jeremy, and his basket, on the conveyor belt into the x-ray tunnel.
The officer asks Peter to remove his ring and pass through the scanner again. He drops the ring into a plastic dish, smiles and asks, “Should I take out my fillings too?”
The officer only responds with a limpid stare.
“Sorry, come again?” a man says into his phone, “The damn P.A. in here is deafening.”
Everyone in the vicinity of gate C29 would know this man’s name had he stated it at the beginning of the call but, to Peter, he seems like a Chip. Chip in development, or in product. Peter huffs, pretending to himself that he has never behaved like Chip; that he does not find the announcements and too-loud TV news broadcast from above irritating. In any case, these noises cover the programmatic titters, hiccups, belches, and silences Little Jeremy emits as he enjoys a post-meal burping on Ana’s shoulder. She replaces him in his basket. He wriggles in satisfaction with his convincingly chubby hands grasping at the air. He always moves, even when he sleeps, shifting his body. Peter can see the boy breathing if he looks closely, which he often does. Only Little Jeremy’s auditory output comes out fractured, and this takes time to notice. Plus, the other passengers only snatch peeks at him, piqued in advance at the racket he will likely cause in-flight. Ana types with one hand while the other rests loosely around one of Little Jeremy’s feet.
Even before advance boarding, passengers gather near the barriers that will funnel them to the ticket checking podium. All unsure of their relative order, they jockey for position while trying to glimpse one another’s tickets. Watching this wonderful dance, Peter gets an idea.
“Ready to go get in on the ritual of our times?” he asks.
“Honey, if you keep making that joke you’re going to wear it out,” says Ana, but she smiles down at her phone, “Also, how is it a ritual if half the people don’t join?”
“Well, why don’t I take the big guy and stake us out some prime real estate?”
Peter refers to Little Jeremy this way as a kind of counterbalance to his diminutive title. Ana uses the nickname LJ instead. She leans over to check his diaper, but it remains clean for the time being.
“Sounds good.” She kisses the boy’s cheek, “See you soon, love.”
Peter hangs his carryon from his shoulder and hefts the basket. The fact that his precious cargo will provide an advantage in the game of positioning pleases him. He wades into the scrum of passengers. A teenager in headphones notices Little Jeremy and groans in open disdain before sidling out of the way. The P.A. booms, inviting active duty service members to board. Peter imagines a soldier enlisting and going to war to board planes first, snorts, then wonders if he should have this thought or find it amusing.
After many pre-boarding groups, the speakers call, at last, for members of Section One to please step up to the podium. The whole crowd surges forward, and Peter advances with it, although he belongs to Section Four. In the repositioning, he finds himself next to Chip, who alternates between excoriating some regulatory body and humming in agreement with the call’s recipient. Leading with the basket, Peter takes a shuffling diagonal step to place himself ahead and halfway in front of his friend, Chip.
A flight attendant with red-brown hair welcomes each boarding passenger in a slight regional accent Peter cannot place. He moves down the aisle with Chip behind him talking away. He drops his bag on their row, then swings the basket around and heads back towards the cockpit.
“Hold on a sec, some guy’s salmoning on the plane,” Chip says. He flattens himself to one side so Peter can pass. “You know that fucking thing where they swim upstream.”
As Peter apologizes his way up the aisle, Chip slides into a seat two rows behind his abandoned carry-on. Peter reaches the attendant, who offers another greeting and fragrant smile. She bends down to wriggle a hand above Little Jeremy’s basket.
“He looks so much like you!”
Peter looks for himself. Little Jeremy’s hair grew in dark like his, yes, and they share a certain affinity around the chin.
“What can I do for you two, sir?”
She waits with her face drawn into a practiced expression both questioning and attentive. He struggles to read the nametag on her lapel.
“Well- Martha, the tike here is actually the reason I came up. See he’s, you know, a Little Baby-” Peter trails off, hoping to sound confidential and searching.
“You all are getting some practice? That’s so sweet. I did wonder. See, some of those Buddhist-types, they have awful quiet babies. Just look around and whisper in their mommy’s ear every now and then. But Little Babies, their quiet kind of hums.”
“I hope it’s not a problem?” Peter asks, hoping very much that it will be a problem, “For the navigation instruments and so on?”
“Not at all,” says Martha. “The airline updated everything, must have been about six months ago, now. First time flying with the little one?”
Peter offers an enthusiastic thanks despite his bitter disappointment, then heads back to his seat. He closes the full overhead compartment above his row, which seems to diminish its volume. Chip still speaks behind him, in a voice not so much lowered as made huskier to signal an effort at lowering.
“It’s got to be bad enough for you, so why go inflict it on everyone else, am I right?” He guffaws.
Little Jeremy coos twice, then goes mute. For all the oddness of the silences, Peter admits that he finds the boy darling: His drool-shiny chin, his delicate wisps of hair, and the delighted widening of his eyes when new sights come into view above his basket. Although he knows their origin and their intent, Peter struggles not to let the similarities in appearance affect him too much. He makes a tickling gesture in the air, and Little Jeremy follows his fingers with big eyes, speckled like Ana’s. The boy shoots out a jerky hand and grabs Peter’s thumb. He wants to pull free, but lets the hold stay a moment before slipping out.
A short burst of fussing purples Little Jeremy’s face, and Chip scoffs from his row. Peter makes soothing sounds, his own coos.
“Does the big guy need a little pat on the back? Is his tummy upset?” Peter scoops under Little Jeremy’s armpits and lifts him out of the basket. The movement assuages the moaning a bit. Getting an arm under the diapered bottom, he holds the boy to his chest. They breathe against one another. He rubs the child’s back in gentle rhythm, shushing. As Peter soothes, he slips a finger into a fold on Little Jeremy’s fat-soft neck, into the seam there, and flips the switch. The baby stills as his breathing slows to a deep, even flow.
Ana moves down the aisle as fast as the plodding line of flyers will let her. Peter knows their first exchange will be decisive and tries to prepare himself. She sits and looks down into the basket resting on the seat between them, humming.
“Conked out before we even got all the way on,” Peter says. He rifles with feigned interest through the seat-back pocket’s banal magazines, in which even the articles advertise something or other. Ana continues peering down, twisting her Saint Christopher necklace, and trying to discern whether she can caress the child without waking him.
“Even with a good night’s sleep, the excitement must have worn him out. Let’s hope it lasts,” she says. She lowers her face closer. “Does he look maybe a little different than normal to you?”
Flight attendants standing fore and aft deliver an unheeded safety demonstration. Peter makes a point of studying Little Jeremy, “He is growing like crazy.”
Behind them, Chip launches into an involved signoff.
“Not stiller or something? Buckle your seatbelt, honey.”
Peter shakes his head then says, “What’s the point? If we crash the seatbelt won’t save me. It’ll just make me easier to ID without the impact investigators having to look up my dental records.”
“Just put it on please, they’re coming around to check.”
“Only joking. You sick of me already?” He cracks a grin. she flashes a smile, then rolls her eyes. She reaches to stroke Little Jeremy’s hair, just barely. Peter waves his seatbelt in her direction. “See? You got me; I’m buckling.”
The attendants prowl the aisle now, insisting on being allowed to adjust seats to the full upright and locked position. The plane rolls away from the gate.
“Honey,” Ana says caressing harder, with no response. Then giving Little Jeremy’s arm a light shake, still eliciting nothing. Concern rises into her voice. She shakes harder, and Peter grabs hold of her hands.
“It’s okay,” he says. “No need to worry. Our big guy is just enjoying some Deep Slumber. Nothing to freak out about. We’ll bring him out as soon as we land.”
Ana gapes at him, her hands straining against his, trying to go for the fold of fat at the back of Little Jeremy’s neck. The plane shudders through a turn towards the tarmac.
“We said we don’t want to start that, so we don’t get into the habit, and all of a sudden you just decide that–”
“It was not a decision. It’s just airline policy, baby. I didn’t want to upset you is all.” At this, incredulity draws Ana’s chin inward.
“Upset me? I just-” She shakes her head. Then, she wrenches her hand free from his grasp and stabs at the ceiling with a livid finger. She turns on the overhead light by accident, then presses the call-button over and over, making the tiny bulb in the center of the little tray-bearing silhouette’s chest, blink on and off. The intercom crackles, and the voice of an attendant filters out, somehow chipper and grim at once.
“We are taxiing into position for takeoff at this time. If you have an emergency, please turn your call button off, then turn it back on.”
Ana presses twice more and clasps her hands in a resolute knot on her lap. The plane rolls forward. After a clatter of unbuckling and unstrapping, Martha hustles down the aisle to them. She fixes a glass smile to her face as Ana demands an explanation for the policy.
“Don’t I have the same rights as any other parent? I am taken aback, to be honest.”
Martha waits a moment to see if she will continue, “But ma’am,” she says, “I explained our policy to your husband. I told him that we do accommodate all parents.” A look of recognition passes between Martha and Ana. Ana nails on a steady, dire smile of her own.
“There must have been a misunderstanding then,” Ana says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all. Unless there’s anything else I can help with, I should really go back to my seat, ma’am.”
The plane engines breathe heavily, vibrating the cabin. Martha hurries back to her jump-seat.
“It was. A misunderstanding, I mean,” Peter says. Ana stares at the back of the seat in front of her, then up at the buttons on the ceiling. He waits. At last she nods.
“I guess I just thought–”
She swats the air between them with the back of her hand, “What? You thought what, exactly?”
“I thought maybe we could use the time. To talk. Wouldn’t it be good for us to talk a little?”
As the plane picks up speed, Ana’s silence settles around him in a thick cloud. He knows this is bad; he fucked this one up worse than the Christmas tree incident and after that fiasco Ana did not speak to him for more than a week. The aircraft thunders down the runway, a hulking tube of metal looking for its improbable moment of lift. The miracle of flight always staggers him. The sheer impossibility of flight made mundane, even a hassle. His hand moves, intending to stroke Little Jeremy’s fine hair. But Ana’s glare makes him aware of his body, again, and he withdraws without touching the boy. The blank glass faces of the terminals whip past his window. The articulated, and delicate, flaps on the wings flex against the onrushing air. As the plane’s wheels leave the ground, Peter settles back into the dumbness that he will inhabit for some time, exalting a bit at his exemption from speech.
The ascent abstracts the ground outside the window into a landscape, and into a jigsaw of motley patches: neighborhood, field, reservoir. They pass through blind whiteness and emerge over a rippling sea of clouds that extends to the horizon. The plane begins to level off, and Ana lifts Little Jeremy gingerly out of his basket. He fails to react. She slips her hand behind his head.
Awakening, he registers the new pressure pushing at his eardrums. He whimpers. Ana rocks him, but he coughs out a sob. She murmurs to the boy in a reassuring whisper, and Peter strains to make out what she says.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.” The child sobs again. “No matter how much we want to, we won’t do that again.”
Little Jeremy’s mouth squirms open, and he breaks into a wail.
D.T. Moynihan is an emerging writer who lives and works in Washington, DC. Their fiction has been published in Prompt Literary Magazine.
