flight 5234, seat 8C, part one

But-- but-- You can't leave me! I have hand! -- george costanza
Yeah, well, you're gonna need it. -- george's departing girlfriend

I flew home for Christmas. The flights were on time, more or less. On the last leg to my hometown airport, someone was crying on the airplane. I don't mean a child, but a grown person: a middle-aged woman who was traveling alone. She wasn't making any noise, but intermittently a spill of tears would roll out from under her eyelashes and she'd swipe at it with the back of her hand.

She had a book open in her lap: Anne Tyler's Digging to America. At first, I guessed it was the book that was making her cry -- but then her face buckled suddenly and drew into a grimace: her eyes squeezed shut and silent tears rolled down. She recovered immediately, and her features resumed their normal arrangement. A few moments later, though, they contorted again.

Anne Tyler has made me cry before, but not like that.

From a medical standpoint, crying is weird. We did a unit on eyes, of course -- normal anatomy and physiology as first-years and eyeball pathology the year after. Eyes have so many parts and confusing dysfunctions. Even the words are odd. Lacrimal gland, iris, vitreous. Astigmatism, glaucoma, strabismus. (As an aside: If you ever have any worries about your eyes, don't waste your time going to your family doctor. Ophthalmologists are well paid to understand eyes, but every other doctor pretty much thinks of them as two gooey pits stuck in the head, as mysterious as quasars and best avoided.)

What we didn't learn in med school was the physiology behind emotional tears. I never learned what part of the brain turns sadness into sobs, why the face suffers those involuntary grimaces during hard crying, or why the nose gets all red and sniffly.

The woman's seatmate and the other passengers failed to notice anything strange about her. Or more likely, they were politely averting their gaze. No one spoke to her. I wondered if the other passengers were annoyed by the way she'd gracelessly thrust them into the awkward position of pretending she didn't exist. It was like a tense dramatic movie, maybe the dark sequel to Snakes on a Plane! This time, Crying Woman on a Plane! Oh, the humanity.

Really, it was pretty freakin selfish of her; she could have tried a little harder to control herself. Like the rest of the passengers, I pretended nothing odd was happening. One thought crossed my mind: good thing she's not seated in an emergency aisle.


I had set out very early in the morning, and had slept badly the night before. Actually, I had slept not at all -- first because of the kids and then because of the packing, and then just because. I had a lot on my mind. My ex had come over the preceding afternoon with a leafblower, and had rounded up the kids for some spontaneous raking and bagging action in my front yard. He's been full of spontaneous acts of goodwill lately. It troubles me, because I haven't figured out what he means by it.

When he first announced he was leaving me -- this was a year and a half ago -- I answered with nothing but a shrug. "Fine," I said. "Go ahead." Inside, I was actually shocked by the development -- not because things were good between us, but simply because it had never crossed my mind that I could leave our crappy marriage with its three breakable, needy little children, so of course it had never crossed my mind that he could leave, either. Still, I don't think my face changed expression when he told me his decision. I had long since reached the point when pride, and giving no quarter, mattered more to me than any memory of love.

After his declaration we entered a strange period. For weeks, I kept expecting to come home from work and find him packing suitcases. I have to admit that the thought of this final scene filled me with dread -- a dread which, of course, I was determined not to show.

But what happened was nothing like that. With no explanation, he suddenly began acting the part of a model husband. Instead of packing suitcases, he began playing with the kids in the evenings, after years of ignoring them. He did housework, cleared the plates after dinner, made the kids their school lunches. He asked permission each night to come back into the king-size bed that for a couple months had been mine alone. Every night, he turned to me in the dark.

I observed these developments with detachment. I was cynical. Well okay, I was actually fired up with crazy hope, but I hid my stupid little double-X-chromosome gooey center under a six-inch titanium-plated shell of cynical, and even fooled myself. Almost.

One thing that irked me was that his sudden change seemed to prove what I'd suspected all along: that he knew full well he'd never pulled his weight in the home or with the kids (though for years he'd postured and stormed at me like he was the hardworking breadwinner and I was nothing but a bonbon-eating layabout). Another thing was, his motives were suspect. I didn't want to let myself believe that true remorse lay behind his change. He's scared to be off on his own, I told myself. Or else he's realizing that without me to anchor him, he'll drift right out of the kids' lives. I pictured him in a small boat drifting out with the tide, waving his arms and calling the children's names while he got smaller and smaller in the distance.

(The kids would meanwhile be clustered around me on the shore, all clamoring for my attention and oblivious to the tiny dot of a father disappearing over the horizon. Eventually one of them would remark, "Hey, where's Baba?" and they'd all glance around in mild surprise and then look toward me. Oh -- he's working, I'd explain with a vague wave of my hand, and they'd nod and go back to their games.

This might seem to my readers like the bitter fantasy of a wounded woman, but it was actually a pretty accurate depiction of our family life. There were weeks when he dropped out of their sight, leaving home before sunrise and coming back after the children's bedtime, and still it would be days before any of them asked where he was.)

So, when I saw him sweeping the floor and running the dishwasher, I didn't ask him why he was suddenly a new man. I certainly didn't ask if he wanted to stay married to me. I watched silently and waited for him to explain himself. After a couple weeks I stopped fearing a confrontation with halfpacked suitcases, and started expecting that a stumbling confession was in the offing: Honey, I don't want to leave you. I see where I was wrong about things -- I see how you worked so hard and I never appreciated you. I had high hopes. He had found out that I wouldn't beg him to stay. I had found out that he didn't want to go.

It was a complicated game of brinksmanship: like negotiating for a car you desperately want to buy from a salesman who desperately wants to sell it to you, while both of you pretend indifference as a ploy to gain advantage. But my opponent had showed his cards, and the upper hand was mine for once. He wanted to stay with me -- and that meant he understood that he was in the wrong about everything. Soon he would break down and admit it out loud. I was exultant.

But as weeks passed, and I came home to find my minvan detailed and the kids' toys set in order, I became increasingly annoyed. No confession and no apology were forthcoming. He thinks that he can stay on indefinitely without any explanation and just sweep his ugly words under the carpet with all the other rancid and decaying things that we've already concealed there. He thinks he can announce that he's going and then decide he's staying, and I'm a doormat who's going to let him walk over me in both directions.

One night in bed when he reached for me, as he'd done for weeks, I did not melt. (Sex had always been our best thing, really, right up to very near the end). As he wrapped his arms around me and whispered, "Is this okay?" I felt a surge of power. It was time I staked out my position as queen of the castle, and made clear how far he'd need to climb to win back a place at my side.

"This can't go on," I said coolly. "I don't understand what you think you're doing. You said you were leaving, but you never go anywhere. You can't just stay forever."

I meant to force his hand. I wanted a pound of flesh, and then another, and then a hundred and forty more. I wanted to hear his beautiful warm lips form around the words, I'm sorry; I made a terrible mistake. Please let me have another chance. I wanted to know he knew he was wrong and meant to do better. Also, I wanted to rip his freakin heart out and spit on it, because God knows, he had it coming. It was my moment of triumph.

At my words, he froze with his arms around me. One second ticked by, the slowest second since the dawn of time. Then he let out his breath and said "You're right."

He let go of me and drew away to his side of the bed. We lay there in the cover of darkness, not touching.

I held still for a long time in the dark, waiting, but he didn't say anything more. After a while, I could tell he was asleep.