Landing Shortly

Armand woke with a start.

His eyes took a moment to grasp where he was—the hum of the engines and the hiss of processed air reminding him of some hospital room before his vision could register the light grey of the cabin and the soft reading light he'd left on before dozing off. 

Long-haul flights had always been Armand's enemy when it came to sleep. Sleep he deeply needed: at his age, jet lag hit harder than it once had.

So he'd knocked himself out with three Benadryl tablets. But Benadryl either gave him deep, dreamless sleep or terrible nightmares. He'd just had one of the latter. He was drowning, Teresa and Anna just above the water's surface, crying but not reaching out. “Breathe!” he could hear Anna yell. In the logic of his dream, it was possible to scream underwater, but somehow his words couldn’t escape and he only felt heavy as lead.

He noticed the seatbelt sign was off, but he preferred to keep his fastened. Always the cautious one. Teresa always teased him about that. Back in the days when his quirks still amused her.

He was on his way to see his parents. Fourteen hours from LAX, with too much time to kill.

Where did I leave my phone? he thought, patting his vest pocket. 

"Looking for something?" the old man sitting next to him asked. The man had a quintessential grandpa-like white mustache above a somewhat charming smile.

"Yes—actually, I think I dropped my phone," Armand said.

"Oh..." replied the old man looking under the armrest. “If it’s between the seats, they say it’ll have to wait.”

“Maybe it slipped while I was sleeping. Or… Did I forget it in the cab?” He tried to think about leaving the house, the taxi ride. It was fuzzy. Damn Benadryls.

"Well," the old man said, smiling beneath his mustache, "better to let it go."

"That's an art I need to master, I suppose," Armand mused. "I'm Armand, by the way."

"Nice meeting you. I'm George."

"Pleasure."

They shook hands. Armand noticed the old man's ring on his finger. "I see you're married."

"Yes. Although... she passed away last year."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be... I'll be joining her soon!" George said with a mischievous smile. Then he patted his chest. "The old pump doesn’t work as well as it used to."

"Don't say that. You look vibrant. As the French would say, 'Les voyages forment la jeunesse'—travel keeps you young."

“Are you French?”

“I teach Linguistics at UCLA.”

“Oh, interesting,” chuckled George. “My wife was French. She was the love of my life. I miss her terribly. Anne was her name."

"Anne! What a coincidence... my daughter's name is Anna."

George's thick white brows went up. "Oh! You have a daughter... so you're married too?"

Armand felt it again, the familiar pain in his chest whenever people asked this question, like a spear through his body. "Was. I was married. We divorced three years ago."

"Sorry," George said, his eyes showing genuine sadness.

"Don't be. I—" Armand tried to make a clever response to match George's joke about joining his late wife, but only dark thoughts came to mind. "I'm in a different place now," he lied.

George nodded in silence, as if he knew Armand was hiding something but respected his choice. Or was he waiting for Armand to finally reveal the truth?

"You know, my wife had early-onset Alzheimer's.…" George started, his eyes fixed on the plastic table resting in the upright position. “There was this one time—at the doctor’s office—when I thought about just... leaving. Convinced myself she'd forget me anyway." He twisted the wedding ring on his finger. "But when I was packing my bag, she saw me. Couldn't remember what we had for dinner, but somehow knew exactly what I was doing." His voice softened. "She just said, 'The forgetting isn't the hard part, George.'"

For a reason he couldn't understand, Armand decided he actually wanted to confide in this old man. Something about that white mustache, perhaps.

"Actually... I haven’t moved on. Anna doesn't want to live with me, and my ex says I'm too absorbed in my work to have any ounce of human connection available in my heart. That's why she left me in the first place."

George studied him for a moment. "You look like a nice man, Armand. But take it from an old timer: you only truly fail when you give up."

Armand pondered those words and smiled, thinking how Teresa would find this advice particularly à propos for his situation.

A flight attendant passed and offered drinks. George declined, but Armand took a ginger ale.

Time passed. Armand flipped through the in-flight magazine, reading articles about pristine beaches and cloud-covered mountaintops that looked like AI-dreamed worlds. After failing to fall back asleep, the urge to visit the restroom became pressing. He turned to George, who was dozing. The space between George's knees and the seat in front was tiny. Armand gently shook the old man, but he seemed fast asleep.

I can pass over him without waking him, thought Armand.

He began to climb, his knee cracked (or was it his suit?), but managed to get past the old man without disturbing him.

At the end of the aisle, he waited for the bathroom to be free and found himself thinking about George's words.

What would staying have looked like? Not in the physical sense—he was still living in the house, after all—but truly being present. "You checked out years ago," Teresa had said during their last real argument. "Your body is here, but you are not.”

He leaned against the wall, suddenly feeling shaky. Had he chosen the easy path after all? Burying himself in faculty meetings and corrections rather than facing the harder work of mending what was broken? Anna was fourteen when the fights started becoming the new normal, sixteen when Teresa suggested separation. By eighteen, his daughter had become an expert at what he'd unwittingly taught her: speaking without really revealing anything.

The bathroom door opened. Armand stepped inside, catching his face in the mirror—his slightly hunched shoulders, the line between his brows. When had he started looking so... diminished? If he were to age, he'd like to age like George.

Armand returned to his seat and approached George, but realized the old man had slumped and was now slouched. There was no way he could easily pass without waking him. Armand gently shook the man's arm. And a chill ran down his spine. 

He pulled on his shoulder, trying to raise him up. George's face fell sideways onto Armand's seat, his mustache crushing against the magazine.

Armand looked around, panicked—but nobody seemed to notice anything was wrong. He placed his hand on the man's neck and, as he feared, found no pulse.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What do I do?

Armand didn't want to alarm the other passengers and be at the center of a drama. Think! How long had George been sleeping? Drinks… reading… toilet—an hour? Poor George. Years of being married to a nurse had taught him that you can't bring back people once they were that far gone.

As he retraced his steps toward the restrooms, he caught the eye of the flight attendant at the back. "I think we might have a small problem," he said quietly.

He explained the situation calmly and carefully. Siobhan (Armand had noticed her badge) and the male attendant thanked him for his discretion. They assured him there was an airline protocol for such situations. After consulting their manual and speaking discreetly with the pilot on the phone, they went to check on George and handled everything with impressive professionalism.

Armand stayed at the back, shaken. He couldn't believe he had been talking to the old man barely an hour ago.

They had attempted to revive him without causing a commotion. But to no avail. Armand didn't hear any reaction from other travelers. A quick glance down the aisle showed people dozing or watching entertainment on their screens, oblivious. George had gone quietly, and no one had noticed.

After a moment, Siobhan returned and offered Armand a scotch. “From first class. Sorry we couldn't upgrade you—the plane is full. But you can stay here as long as you like until landing." She pointed to the flight attendant seat at the back.

"Did you know him?" she asked.

Armand shook his head and sipped the scotch— which wasn’t half bad. “He told me his health wasn’t so good anymore—but I didn’t think… “

"Yes. It can be..." She paused. "People rarely see it coming. One minute they're holding on, the next..." She glanced down the aisle. "...Some just let go."

The soft bell of the seatbelt sign chimed.

"Better get back to your seat, sir," she said, reaching for the grey phone on the wall. "We'll be landing shortly."

Armand returned to his seat. A grey airline blanket covered George’s entire body and face, wrapped behind his head. His white mustache forever hidden behind this factory-made airline covering.

What an odd protocol, Armand thought—keeping a corpse on a flight next to unsuspecting passengers. Then again, what choice did they have? Force an emergency landing? Turn back?

As he climbed over his belated friend, wondering why the stewards hadn't placed him by the window, his knee cracked again. He should have it checked. Or not. Who cared? He was old. Unloved. A terrible father. A failed husband.

He glanced over his shoulder as he sat and fasted his seatbelt. The soft metallic click reminded him of happy times traveling with Teresa and Anna when she was still a kid. A strange sensation welled up in his throat. Not longing exactly. Something more raw. Clinging.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the pilot's voice resonated from the ceiling, "as we begin our descent toward our final destination, I invite you to open your window shades and enjoy the spectacular sunset one last time. It's quite a view today.”

Armand raised the blind and squinted at the view. The sun was setting over the clouds—rolls of deep honey and orange, like the egg yolks he remembered from their honeymoon in Thailand. Purple and blue grays swirled throughout. It was truly beautiful.

And that's when it hit him: the phone call… the taxi… Teresa and Anna had arrived just in time to see him before he left, but just too late to have a chance to talk. That’s what he’d forgotten: to tell them that he knew. About them. The women of his life. Leaning above the ICU bed, crying. “Breahte!” Anna was crying.

He'd been so focused on what he no longer had—a marriage, a family, love—that he'd forgotten the beauty all around him.

Teresa and Anna. They were beautiful. Even if he had lost now what he had wanted all along, they had been the beauty in his life.

He wished George was still there so he could tell him—tell him he was okay now, that his life wasn't a failure anymore…

He glanced over his shoulder and wasn't surprised to see more and more people with the grey airline blankets drawn over their faces, wrapped behind their heads, like sepulchral shrouds. Other people who had given up.

And although the thought of seeing his mom and dad again filled him with quiet bliss, the old man’s words echoed in his mind… 

…And Armand's hand moved to undo his seatbelt, knowing with sudden clarity that he wasn’t landing shortly.