Birds in Fall: A Novel
By Brad Kessler
4/5
()
About this ebook
As the search for survivors envelops the island, the mourning families gather at the inn, waiting for news of those they have lost. Here among strangers, and watched over by innkeeper Kevin Gearns, they form an unusual community, struggling for comfort and consolation. A Taiwanese couple sets out fruit for their daughter's ghost. A Bulgarian man plays piano in the dark, sending the music to his lost wife, a cellist. Two Dutch teenagers, a brother and sister, rage against their parents' death. An Iranian exile, mourning his niece, recites the Persian tales that carry the wisdom of centuries.
At the center of Birds in Fall lies Ana Gathreaux, whose story Brad Kessler tells with deep compassion: from her days in the field with her husband, observing and banding migratory birds, to her enduring grief and gradual reengagement with life.
Kessler's knowledge of the natural world, music, and myth enriches every page of this hauntingly beautiful and moving novel about solitude, love, losing your way, and finding something like home.
Editor's Note
Beautiful & compassionate…
Opening with a plane crashing into the sea, “Birds in Fall” is a beautiful and heartbreaking portrait of mourning, told with a naturalist’s sensitivity to the connections that bind humans, animals, and the earth together.
Brad Kessler
Brad Kessler’s novel Birds in Fall won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His other books include Lick Creek and The Woodcutter’s Christmas. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, and BOMB, as well as other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Reviews for Birds in Fall
109 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fictional story of the airplane crash at Peggy's Cover, NS. Didn't really do it for me. Read at the urging of friends.
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ш ж9иш 8кш ши9кшжиш нв шздисшкш ивсгсшищ здшцзсш-и0ши 90иш и9сшши 98и идсицши иш-ш0и шизв - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔강남오피『오피킹』성남오피£분당오피Å안산오피Å£역삼오피☆수원오피『god』서대전오피『opking.net』⇔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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my all time favorite books. Beautifully written.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I had a hard time reading this book. I was expecting something different, not so depressing, almost too real to be an interesting story. Just people that passed in the night under tragic cirumstances. Nothing to look forward to, just depressing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A very interesting book that brings you in almost immediately. A horrific plane crash is witnessed by a gentleman who runs an Inn. As the families gather at the ocean to learn of survivors they soon realize there are none. The innkeeper opens his inn for the families of the victims to find closure after this tragedy. The personal lives of the families begin to weave through each other's emotions, forming bonds and healing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will probably be one that I will read again. The author did a wonderful job of describing the area, made you feel you were right there with the characters.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5nice quiet book. Kind of sad but not depressing to me, different cultures have to deal with the los of a loved one. And the birds bring a nice touch into the book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kessler is a wonderful writer. I loved the mixture of nature and human emotion. The book begins with a plane crash from the perspective of passengers, which is quite frightening. The plane crashes in the sea off Trachis Island in Nova Scotia and the relatives of those lost assemble at an inn run by two gay men, Kevin and Douglas. The beauty of the book is Kessler's depiction of those who stay at the inn and their individual expressions of grief and the transformation which occurs during their visit. One of them stays at the inn and others reunite over time.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maybe I was just expecting to much from this book. It wasn't horrible but I had to really struggle to finish. Althought the content was about loss their individual greiving just seem hollow. When Mrs Kim gets trapped by the tide looking for items belonging to her daughter or when the Barvanian is playing his wife's favorite peices on the paino in the dark, these scenes should have transmitted more emotion to the reader but instead I just found it lacking.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A beautiful book, beautifully written. Rich imagery, with lots of mythological connections. The individual tales are woven into one narrative, with the themes of birds, flying, falling, Icarus, and even 9/11 playing a small part. Loved the characters, particularly Kevin, the innkeeper. A great read!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this gorgeously-written, quiet book. It's not long, but it encompasses a LOT: a tragic plane crash, families and relatives in mourning, bird migration, metaphor, people from many different walks of life...and an innkeeper who only wants peace and quiet but must keep watch over his grieving, fumbling guests. This is a haunting book and one I will remember always. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reminiscent of Bell Canto, in that a group of strangers come together in an unfamiliar place after a tragedy, in this case a plane crash off Nova Scotia. Lovely writing.
Book preview
Birds in Fall - Brad Kessler
I
One
It’s true: a few of us slept through the entire ordeal, but others sensed something wrong right away. We grew restless in our seats and felt what exactly? An uneasiness, a movement in the air, a certain quiet that hadn’t been there before? Several men craned their necks about the cabin. We caught each other’s eyes, exchanged searching looks, and just as quickly—embarrassed—glanced away. We were eighty minutes into the flight. Orion on our left, the bear to the right. The motors droned. The cabin lights dimmed. The whoosh of the engines was the sound of erasure: Shhhhh, they whispered, and we obeyed.
The woman beside me clicked on her overhead light and adjusted a pair of reading glasses. She laid a folder of sheet music on her tray. Thin, black-haired, she smelled vaguely of breath mints. Her blue cello case lay strapped to the seat between us. She was giving a concert in Amsterdam and had booked an extra ticket for her instrument. I’d joked about her cello on the tarmac: Did she order special meals for it on flights? Did it need a headset, a pillow? She was retying hair behind her head and cast me a barely tolerant smile.
When the drink cart passed, she ordered a Bloody Mary—I, a scotch. Our pygmy bottles arrived with roasted nuts. I reached across the cello case and touched her plastic cup.
To your cello, I tried again. Does it have a name?
She nodded tepidly over the rims of her glasses.
Actually, she said, it does.
I couldn’t place her accent. Something Slavic. Romanian perhaps. She wore a lot of eye shadow. She returned to her music. I could just make out the title of the piece: Richard Strauss’s Metamorphoses: A Study for Twenty-three Solo Strings.
Over the Gulf of Maine, the moon glittered below us. I wanted to point out to the cellist as I would to my wife, Ana, that the moon hung actually beneath us. I wanted to tell her we were near the tropopause, the turning point between the stratosphere and the troposphere, where the air is calm and good for flying; tropo from turning,
pauso from stop
(I prided myself on my college Latin). And surely she’d know these musical terms. But the woman was counting bars now. Across the aisle, a man in a wine-colored sweater lay snoring, his mouth opened wide.
Somewhere over the Bay of Fundy the cabin lights began to flicker. The video monitors went dead (they’d been showing a map of the Atlantic, with our speed, altitude, and outside temperature). The cellist looked up for a moment, her lips still moving with the sheet music. Then the cabin fell entirely dark, and a strange silvery light poured into the plane through each oval portal and lathed the aisles in a luminous, oddly peaceful glow. One by one, people tried to press their dome lights on, not yet in alarm but bewildered, to be up so far in the atmosphere, bathed in that frozen blue moonlight. A flight attendant marched up the aisle and told us to keep our seat belts on. The clouds lay effulgent below, edged in gold; another attendant shouted that there was nothing to be alarmed by. The lights blinked, faltered, turned on again. A sigh rose from the seats, and the cellist glanced at me with nervous relief.
The captain came over the intercom then. He apologized and mentioned we were going to make a short stop
in Halifax before we get on our way.
He was trying to sound unfazed, but in his Dutch accent—we were flying Netherland Air—his comments sounded clipped and startling. He got back on the intercom and added that we might want to buckle our belts for the rest of the ride and—incidentally—not to get out of our seats.
The cellist turned to me.
What do you think it is? she asked.
I don’t know, I shrugged.
Her glasses had slid halfway down the bridge of her nose. She squared her sheet music on the tray table. The man in the wine sweater had awakened and was demanding answers. People flipped open their cell phones—to no avail. Outside, the tip of the wing looked laminated in moonlight, the Milky Way a skein above. We had started sinking fast, that much was clear, the nose of the plane dipping downward; and there was a curious chemical smell, not exactly burning, more like a dashboard left to bake in the sun.
The man in the wine sweater bolted from his seat and ran toward the bathrooms at the rear galley of the plane. Beside his empty seat a young Chinese woman in leather pants lay sleeping, earphones on her head, seat belt cinched across her hips. She wore an eyemask across her face.
Someone ought to wake her, the cellist said.
She’s better off sleeping, I replied. Besides, it’s probably nothing.
Probably, she whispered.
Tell me, I asked, about your instrument.
She looked at me with disbelief.
My cello?
Yes, I urged. I wanted to distract her; I wanted to distract myself. Then, as if she understood the reason for the query, she swallowed and began talking about her cello, how it was built by one of the great Italian cello makers, a man named Guadagnini, and how he traveled between Cremona and Turin, and how his varnishes were famous, though they varied with each place he worked. She talked of the thinness of the plates, the purfling, the ivory pegs, the amber finish he was known for. I could barely hear her voice; she kept toying with one of her earrings. I asked if it was old and she said, yes, it was built a few years before the execution of Marie Antoinette.
She snapped off her glasses and drained the meltings of her Bloody Mary and placed the cup back in its bezel. Her hands were trembling slightly. The Chinese girl hadn’t moved; we could hear the tinny sound of hip-hop through her earphones.
For several minutes neither of us said a word. Clouds shredded past the windows. The cabin rattled unnervingly. The entire plane was silent now, save the shaking and the whisper of air in the vents. The name Moncton appeared on the video map. We were being passed from one beacon to the next, a package exchanged between partners, Boston Control to Moncton Control. The cabin grew noticeably hot. The moon was now the color of tea.
I told the cellist I had a particular interest in orientation and flight. In birds, actually. That I was an ornithologist, my wife too; I told her about the study skins and museum collections. She nodded, clenching and unclenching a cocktail napkin in her fist. I rabbited on to fill the empty space, so my voice might be a rope that both of us could cling to; and I told her about polarization filters and magnetic fields, the tiny pebbles, no larger than poppy seeds, found between the skull bones of migratory birds. Magnetite, I said. Black ore, which helps them home, to the same nest or tree across an entire hemisphere. I kept the patter going, reeling and threading out more rope, whatever came to mind, cladistics, the systematics laboratory, how we needed new bird specimens for their DNA (which you couldn’t obtain from the old study skins), and how I collected birds (killed them actually), and that I was going to Amsterdam to deliver a lecture and then visit the Leiden Museum to inspect their collection of Asian Kingfishers. I told her about Ana as well, her work with Savannah Sparrows and migration—but the cabin was growing hotter by the minute, my collar sponged now in sweat, the little hairs on my arms damp. The plane shuddered and pitched and my heart leapt and I could hear the cellist’s breath catch beside me. Gravity
comes from the Latin gravitas, I explained. Heavy, grave, a lowness of pitch. The impulse of everything toward the earth. Newton’s universal law, Kepler’s virtue.
Someone vomited in their seat; we heard the vile gurgle, then smelled the sickening odor. The cellist yanked the paper bag from her seat pocket.
Shut up! she hissed.
Was I still talking? I hardly knew. She fished inside her pocketbook and fumbled a tube of lipstick and a hand mirror, and held the trembling glass in front of her face. Her forehead gleamed. She skull-tightened her lips but kept missing, dabbing dots of pigment on her cheeks.
Fuck! she screamed and clicked the compact and tossed it in her purse.
Then she pushed up the cotton sleeve of her black blouse. Her arm was slender and pale. With the lipstick, she composed an E just below her elbow. I watched as she wrote each letter on the inside white of her arm: E, then V, then D, then O.
When she finished it spelled Evdokiya.
She handed the opened tube across the cello.
What do I do with this? I asked.
You write your name.
You’re being dramatic.
Am I? she asked.
The name of the lipstick was Japanese Maple. Against her pale skin, the letters looked lurid and blotchy.
The Japanese maple on our roof was slightly more purple than the lipstick. Its leaves in fall the color of bruises
Ana once said. She would have looked good wearing that pigment. I held the glistening tube in my hand, not knowing what to write or where. I wanted to write Ana’s name, or both our names, as though we were a piece of luggage that, lost, would find its way back to our loft. So I put our address down, taking care with each number, each letter: 150 First Avenue; and then I showed my arm to the cellist, and she said: Your name. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to write it down.
The smoke seeped in slowly and curled to the ceiling. The smell of burning plastic was distinct now. The video monitors were still working and showed we were twenty miles from Halifax. A man in a silk prayer shawl stood bobbing up and down in the aisle, the white cloth a cowl over his head. The girl with the earphones still lay fast asleep; no one apparently had woken her. Now and again a pilot or a flight attendant raced up the aisle, urging us to keep calm. We all had our life vests on by then—some inflated theirs against instructions, and you could hear the alarming pffffff of them filling with air. The cellist found my hand across the cello case and burrowed her fingers into mine, as if to hide them there. Others were grabbing hands across the aisles. I kept jerking open my jaw to pop the unbearable pressure in my ears; the cellist was doing the same. I imagine, in the end, we all looked like fish.
An eerie whistling filled the fuselage like someone blowing into a soda bottle. The cellist named the notes as we were going down. The pilot was uttering the word pan, pan, pan.
We could hear it over the intercom. It sounded as if he were shouting for bread.
We dropped between layers of atmosphere. Clouds tore past the wing. The whistling lowered to a gentle warble, the fuselage a flute with one hole left open, an odd arpeggio in the rear of the plane. Someone shouted land! and I pressed my forehead to Plexiglas and saw, between scraps of cloud, lights below, pink clusters like brush fire, four or five of them, the brief flames of villages and towns checkerboarded, scalloped along the coast, yet distant; and some began to cheer, thinking, We will make it; we are so close to land, Halifax couldn’t be far. We were coming over the spine of the world, out of the night, into the welcoming sodium lights of Canada. We hit clouds again and the plane shuddered; the ocean hurled to the left, and the plane rammed hard to the right.
Oxygen masks sprang from the ceiling panel and swung in front of our faces. I caught mine and helped the cellist with hers. The plastic was the color of buttercups.
She took the belt off her cello and unfastened the buckles.
Help me! she screamed through her mask. She was in a sudden rush, fumbling, standing, a flight attendant shouting for her to sit. I helped her prop open the shiny plastic case and saw inside the instrument—amber-toned, varnish gleaming, the grain a fine and lustrous brown. In its capsule of red velvet it looked like a nesting doll. She slipped a finger in through the F-hole and touched the sound post and closed her eyes. The instrument was humming a sympathetic vibration.
It’s the D, she whispered.
It’ll be safer with the case closed, I said.
She leaned over and kissed the cello’s neck and let the cover drop.
The cabin rattled. The bulkheads shook. The overhead bins popped open. Bags, briefcases, satchels rained down. The cellist clenched her eyes. I felt her fingers tightened on mine—but it was Ana I felt beside me.
We broke cloud cover and dropped into a pool of dark. The bones around my cheeks pressed into my skull. I saw the sheet music flattened like a stamp on the ceiling. The metamorphoses. I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down and out the window a green light stood on the top of the world, a lighthouse spun above us, a brief flame somewhere in the night.
Did I feel it then, the beginning of this pilgrimage, from air to thinner air, from body to body, before the impact? Was it then or after or in between, before the seat belts locked our pelvises in place and unleashed the rest of us. The ilium. Why is it the same name for Troy? Ana once asked, tracing the upper bone of my hip with her finger. Because it’s a basin, I said, and told her the Latin word ilia. More like wings, she said and climbed above me and laid the two points of her hips on top of mine. Our bones tapped together, like spoons.
The cabin burst into light, sunbright, dazzling, an orange edging around it. I could see the bones beneath my flesh like pieces of pottery. And then we were entering the sea.
Two
The sunset over Trachis Bay had been brilliant, and now the ocean lay pewter in the lingering dusk. It was the perfect end to the final Sunday of the season; families lingered on the beaches until the last possible moment, dragging children—red-faced, reluctant—into vans, locking up cottages, stuffing suitcases, shutting hot water heaters for the summer. They crammed into the last ferry and headed back to the mainland and the cities. It was the middle of September. They wouldn’t be back until Christmas—or more likely the following spring.
This was the season and the hour Kevin Gearns liked best, after the crowds departed, the guests thinned at the inn, the beaches emptied again, when the island itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. In another few weeks, they’d close the inn for the year. Kevin couldn’t wait. After months of nonstop guests, of cooking each night for a dozen strangers, arguing over bills and diets and bedding, they’d shutter the cottages and hang the wooden sign on the Peninsular Road Closed for the Season.
The nights would turn chill, the trees grow bare, the roads untraveled. By the time the first frost arrived, they could finally relax. Douglas was even talking about a vacation. Lisbon, perhaps. Lake Averno. It didn’t matter much where.
The night was warm; a cotton of fog hung over the sea. Kevin had come outside for dill but lingered on the lawn, inhaling the wild tobacco, the potted jasmine. Ever since they’d bought the inn on Trachis Island, he’d wanted a moon garden, but he’d had neither the time nor the energy until that summer. He’d planted the night blooms as a surprise, furtively, on afternoons when Douglas was away. But Douglas didn’t appreciate the subtleties of trumpet lilies or Himalayan musk roses. Why, he asked, would you want flowers blooming when no one can see them? If you have to ask, Kevin felt like saying…but resisted. He simply replied: For the moths.
That summer was their tenth anniversary on Trachis Island. They’d bought the inn with money from the sale of Kevin’s mother’s house in Brookline. Kevin had the most tenuous connection to Nova Scotia: a childhood trip there one summer with his grandparents. Yet the memory of brick-red cliffs, blue water, beaches of white, speckled stones had stayed in mind, stored away, a seed lying dormant all those years. When his mother’s estate was finally settled, Kevin knew exactly what he’d do with the money—though he’d never spoken it before. Nova Scotia. The words nearly surprised him too. They would move there. They would find a place, on an island preferably. No matter that he and Douglas were Americans. No matter that he hadn’t been back since that one childhood trip. Why not the Cape? Douglas asked. Why not Fire Island? Why not—for that matter—the Jersey Shore? Kevin wouldn’t hear of it. So fraught were all of those places with memories and ghosts of those he’d cared for with Hickmans and cocktails—not to mention his abandoned dissertation (left in a box bound in rubber bands)—that all he wanted was to leave everything behind. A fresh start. A new place, a terra nova. An island.
But how would they live? Douglas protested.
Kevin remembered his face when he told him his idea for an inn. And what exactly, Douglas inquired, one hand on hip, made him capable of running an inn?
Nothing, Kevin shrugged. But he’d cared for so many sick people for the last eight years, how much harder could it be looking after perfectly healthy ones on holiday?
Besides, Kevin added, he liked the ring of the word innkeeper.
It sounded so Chaucerian.
In the end Douglas consented; what