Are We There Yet?. David Levithan
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and he wasn’t old enough to figure it out. All he knew was that one day his brother stopped wanting to be a superhero, stopped wanting to save their backyard world. Elijah stopped dressing up then, too. He retreated to the realm of his room, to his drawings, to his stuffed animals.
It wasn’t the same.
Sisters dress up to rehearse for what will really happen to them. But brothers, Elijah realises, are never rehearsing that way. They rehearse their own illusions, until reality takes a turn and they are asked to rehearse for other things. You go to school. You graduate. You sell snack cakes. You hang up your cape and put on a suit.
DANNY WAKES UP INTO THE STRANGE TIMELESS NIGHTTIME OF AIR travel. The window shades are drawn. The flight attendants float down the aisle like guardian angels. The guidebook has fallen at his feet. A woman is talking.
“… And then, it was the strangest thing, I walk into the room and there’s Courtney Love. Have I told you this? No? Good. So I can’t believe it. Now, this is after she was the lead singer of – what was it called? – Hole. Don’t think I’m that old. I’m not that old. So it’s after Hole, and I walk into the room, and there she is. I can’t believe it. So I walk over to her and offer her a joint. Real cool. I can tell that my boyfriend’s real impressed at how smooth I am. And she says yes. But neither of us has a match. I’m fumbling around, pulling the rolling papers and the dope out of my pockets, and I can’t find a light! So my boyfriend just leans over, Courtney looks up at him, and all smooth, he lights her up. I’m still there fumbling. She says thanks to him, offers him a puff, and when he’s done he doesn’t even offer it to me. Because now they’re talking and sharing and it’s like I’m not even there. I say his name, and he just gives me one of those side smiles. I can’t believe it. Some other guys join the conversation and I’m out of the circle. And I’m sure Courtney has seen me. But does she say anything? No. Not a word. My boyfriend’s treating her like the Pope and my head’s all screwed up, so I just say real loud, ‘Well, why don’t you just kiss her ring!’ Everyone stares at me. Like, it makes perfect sense to me, but I’m the only person in the room with the context. I have to get out of there. Right away. My boyfriend’s staring at me like I just called his mother a whore. And everyone else thinks I’m insulting Her Highness Courtney Love. So I run out of the room. But I’m not looking where I’m going – I crash into this guy in the doorway – and that’s how I met Billy Corgan.”
It’s the woman next to Elijah. Danny is paralysed by her talking.
“No way!” Elijah exhales in admiration.
“Uh-huh.”
Danny tries to fall back to sleep. He can’t believe they’re still awake.
PENELOPE SLEEPS SOUNDLY ON ELIJAH’S SHOULDER. WHICH IS TO say, soundlessly. He doesn’t mind, even though it makes his arm sore. Pins and needles, Elijah thinks, and then he figures that having an arm full of pins and needles would hurt a hell of a lot more than this.
Danny stirs on the other side of him, waking up and turning to Elijah, his eyes unaccustomed to the simulated day. He registers Penelope on Elijah’s shoulder and smiles groggily. It’s not like that, Elijah wants to tell his brother. But he doesn’t want to wake Penelope up.
It’s like comfort, Elijah figures. Being a comfort is itself pretty comforting. Having someone find a place on your shoulder and be able to rest. Not seeing her face, but picturing it from her breath. Like a baby sleeping. Feeling her breath so slightly on his arm. Breathing in time. Comfort.
The quiet times are the ones to hold on to. In the quiet times, Elijah can think of other quiet times. Staring at the ceiling with Cal. Driving home from a concert, the road silent, the music in his head. Sharing a smile – for a moment – with a beautiful stranger passing in a car.
Beside Elijah, Danny shifts in his seat and signals to the flight attendant for another Diet Coke.
Danny would never let a stranger sleep on his shoulder, Elijah thinks. Danny would be afraid of the germs.
He closes his eyes and tries to drift off.
AMAZING. DANNY THINKS IT’S AMAZING TO BE MOVING SO FAST WITHOUT feeling movement. To be sitting in an airplane, travelling as fast as he’s ever travelled, and still it feels like he’s in a car, steadier than a train, not even as fast as sliding down a slide. How can this be? Danny wonders. He wants to ask someone. But who can he ask? Elijah, even if he were awake? The girl on Elijah’s shoulder? (Isn’t she a little old for him?) The pilot? No one. There’s no one to tell him how it can feel so slow to go so fast.
The phone is embedded above the fold-down tray. He could make a collect call from above the Atlantic Ocean. He could slip the corporate card into the proper slot and dial any area code around the world. He does it – slips in the card – just to see what the dials are like. Thinking, Wouldn’t it be funny to slip your credit card into the slot, ten thousand miles in the air, and find a rotary phone? But no – just the usual buttons. He can pretend it’s home. Just a local call.
He pauses before dialing. He pauses too long. He pauses long enough to realise that no one comes instantly to mind. He doesn’t have anyone instant. He doesn’t have anyone worth a twenty-dollar-a-minute call.
Quietly, Danny places the phone back in its receiver. He presses a little too hard, and the woman in front of him rustles in her sleep. Danny looks at Elijah. He looks at Elijah’s eyelids and tries to tell whether he’s awake. He used to do that all the time when they were kids. Elijah would be faking sleep – he didn’t want to leave the car, he didn’t want to go to school – and Danny would catch the small, betraying twitches. He would try to point them out to his mom, and Elijah would mysteriously pop out of sleep before Danny could finish his sentence. Their mom would shake her head, more annoyed with Danny’s tattling than with Elijah’s fakery. Or so it seemed to Danny. Back then, and still.
Now Danny concentrates – staring into his brother’s closed eyes. Waiting for one eye to open, to see if anyone’s looking. Waiting for a telltale giggle of breath, or the twitch of an itching finger. Instead, he observes Elijah and the woman both breathing to the same silent measure. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Rise. Fall. Speed and slowness.
DANNY REMEMBERS THE NIGHTMARES HE WOULD HAVE. THE STRANGERS climbing through the window and stealing Elijah from the crib. He remembers waking the house without waking the baby. Running to Elijah’s room to make sure. Because if Elijah was OK, that meant everything was fine.
ELIJAH TRAVELS IN AND OUT OF SLEEP, LIKE THE AIRPLANE TRAVELLING in and out of clouds. Moments of fleeting wakefulness, dreamlike. The rituals of airline travel, meant to guard against your fears. Words of conversation. The echo of the in-flight movie from too-loud headphones many rows behind. The wheels of the beverage cart and the crisp opening of a soda can. The pad of feet in the aisle. A child’s questions. The flipping of a magazine page. Penelope’s breathing. The sound of speeding air. The realisation that clouds sound no different than air.
He dreams of Cal’s Camaro and of driving to Italy.
Then he wakes up, and he is there.
THE PLANE LANDS IMPECCABLY. DANNY IS UP AND ANGLING FOR THE aisle before the captain’s announcement can tell him to keep his seat belt on. Elijah watches him with a certain degree of embarrassment. He can’t see what the rush is. It’s not like they can leave the plane any faster. All it means is they’ll have their bags in their laps for that much longer. Even the flight attendants are still strapped in; they can’t make Danny sit down. Along with the rest of the passengers, Elijah hopes a sudden stop will jolt Danny to the ground.
Elijah remains in his seat until the plane has come to a complete stop. Danny passes over their carry-ons. Penelope