My grandmother, who was wearing the blue blouse with the small white flowers at the collar because she wanted to look right for the ocean.
My grandmother, who had said Edwin would have liked this one.
Rose’s hand found mine.
She was small.
She was eight-six and she had gotten smaller with the years, the specific physical diminishment that happens when bones lose density and posture changes.
Her hand was small and her grip was the grip of someone who has decided something.
She said: please, honey. Don’t let one rude person ruin our first vacation.
I looked at the woman.
The woman was back on her phone.
She had delivered her judgment and moved on.
She existed in the specific mode of someone for whom other people are not fully real.
I helped Rose adjust into the seat.
I put her carry-on in the overhead.
I made sure her seatbelt was accessible.
I told her I would check on her.
The flight attendant caught my eye and nodded.
I walked back to my seat.
My seat was seven rows back.
I sat down.
I was very angry.
Not the hot angry.
The cold angry, which is the more dangerous variety.
The cold angry that sits in your chest and doesn’t burn off.
I told myself: Rose asked me not to let it ruin the trip. Letting myself stay angry is letting it ruin the trip.
I did the breathing thing I had learned from a meditation app I had used exactly three times.
It helped approximately thirty percent.
The plane lifted.
The takeoff had the specific quality that takeoffs have, the acceleration and the noise and the moment of lift and then the change in the sound of everything as you leave the ground.
I watched out the window.
The city dropped away.
North Carolina from above.
The rivers and the roads and the green of the trees.
I thought: Rose is up here.
For the first time in her life, Rose is in the air.
I thought about her face watching the ground fall away.
I would have liked to have been beside her for that.
About five minutes after takeoff, I heard her voice.
Carrying back to me through the cabin, in the specific carrying way of older people’s voices.
She said: ma’am. Excuse me.
I went still.
No response from the woman.
