flight 5234, seat 8c, part two

Y,

Please forgive me for using email, but I think this needs to be said and I have long since lost courage for speaking to you in person. Not that I had much to begin with.

It was four in the morning, and I had less than two hours to pack and get to the airport for my sunrise flight. But I couldn't sleep. He was too much on my mind.

I don't know why you keep doing kind things for me. It was nice of you to bring the leafblower over and help take care of my yard. Last week you helped me with the flat tire. I want you to know I appreciate the things you do.

Later, on the airplane, my thoughts swirled and heaved like boiling tar. Maybe I shouldn't have sent him that email. I didn't want any awkwardness between us, especially because our separation was running like a well-oiled machine. When we saw eachother, we joked easily about the kids and how much we either loved or hated them, depending on the moment. We ran down our list of patients, mocked their exasperating families, and groaned about the fencesitters -- the ones who had no hope of recovery, didn't want to go home, hated the hospital, but still clung to it as their last line of defense against the rap of Death's hand at their door. We got along better as a separated couple than we'd ever done as marrieds. In fact, I was so practiced at maintaining a cool, arms-length friendship with him that I could barely remember all the molten-lava days of our beginnings; days when I'd convinced myself he was my blazing passion and my one-and-only.

The smart cool woman in me said, don't rock the boat. But I kept thinking about the leafblower and the flat tire and those other nice things he was always doing for me. What if it meant-- something. What if this was his way of saying-- you know. And what if I missed my chance, once again, by not opening the door to make it easy for him to say more.

I appreciate your help, but I don't know why you do those things. I write because I guess there's a slim chance that this is your way of trying to get close to me -- like the way you acted during those weeks you hung around and did housework, after you said you were leaving. I just want you to know that I appreciate it . But also, I want you to know that actions alone will never touch me, because I no longer trust your intentions as I once did. It would take words to erase all the other words I've heard from you before. I'm telling you this because I would hate for you to do kind things for me for the next hundred years and find me unmoved, and wrongly conclude that there's no way you can ever get close to me again.

The flight attendant was making his way up the aisle, canvassing for beverage requests. He was a suspiciously young boy with smooth olive skin who, in an apparent nod to Queer Eye, wore a jaunty beret cocked low over one eye. He lacked even a hint of facial hair. I wondered: do boys of today lie about their age to become flight attendants, like boys of yesterday used to lie to join the army? Maybe it's one of those modern trends I'm too old to catch on to: like text messaging, or cameras that live in cell phones. Or cell phones themselves, for that matter.

I shook out my face like a wet rag to make my mouth set right. "Coffee. Cream and sugar," I told him. My voice came out crisper than I'd intended -- in fact I sounded stern and purposeful and no-nonsense, like one of those formidable women who knows exactly what she wants and plans to accept nothing less.

As he poured, I opened my tray table and set my book aside. I'd been reading it the whole flight, having bought it that morning in the airport gift shop just as the sun was rising. It was a good story: engaging, and a bit of a tearjerker. It was Anne Tyler's latest, Digging to America.