Part III

Elapsed Time

She looked up from the computer where, her editing mind noticed, she had already typed five pages. The story was aching to be told, and Cate felt like it was about to burst out of her. She nearly couldn’t bear to rip her mind away, but it was unusual to hear anyone address her as Cate. She was Catherine Chao, novelist and mother. Not Cate, any longer.

When she met the eyes of the man standing in the bulkhead aisle, clutching a ticket and peering at the row numbers, she felt adrift. Unmoored. Completely taken by surprise. When she had seen him last, she was sobbing, and he was speechless with surprise and loss. It took some effort to find her voice, and say his name, because there was no doubt who it was. “Jace? I mean, Jason?”

He broke into an easy smile. His easy smile. “Yes, yes of course. Is that really you?”

She smiled back and held out her right hand. “Yes, of course. What a surprise to see you!” He bent to take her hand, shook it and then dropped it quickly, like he was unfamiliar with the custom.

‘I think I’m sitting next to you,” he said. “I’m so tall, I always try to sit in the exit row.”

“I fly so often, now, that I get assigned here automatically,” Cate said, and shook her head. “I feel so surprised to see you. How are you? I mean, how have you been?”

He exhaled sharply and adjusted his bag and jacket into the small seat. “I’m flying to Minneapolis for meetings. I, well, I’m hardly able to talk. I can’t believe it’s you.”

She nodded and shifted her computer so the words on the screen would not be visible to him. “I’m glad to see you,” she said softly, and smiled. Honesty was usually a good approach. “I can’t even recall how long it’s been.”

“Fifteen years,” he said. “Cate, how have you been?”

She also exhaled in a sigh that shuddered. Then she clasped her hand to her mouth. Removing it, she said, “You know, good. Really good. And also bad.”

He looked at her with his brown, flecked eyes and for a moment she was locked. Just like college, just like fifteen years ago. Then she shook her head once, and her long hair jumped with the motion. He said, “Will you tell me?”

She looked around for a moment, considering. “I’d rather hear what you’ve been doing. I’m sure it’s much more – you know – engaging.” This was not necessarily true, but it bought Cate a few minutes. Time to think, to impose a filter on her brain, to compose her jumbled thoughts.

Jace steadied himself, Cate thought. “Well, you know,” he began. “I just got back to the U.S. a few months ago. Before that I was in Africa for three years, and in France for awhile before that.” He smiled, paused, remembering. “Do you remember – I was thinking that my entire life would be like an extended Peace Corps stint.”

She nodded and smiled too. “Yes, I remember. I remember you talking about it.”

Part II...

No one threw rotten tomatoes at me, so here's another snippet:

Elapsed Time
...
The first time she heard that voice say her name was over 15 years ago, in freshman honors English at the University of Wisconsin. A large class of 80 students broke out into small discussion groups and Cate, painfully shy and still feeling rubbed raw from homesickness, carefully opened the door to the small classroom where her discussion group was meeting. There was a single table in the middle of the room, with eight chairs around it, and placecards set up at each seat. Catherine Solomon was in the middle on the far side, next to Jason Cross and Lauren Rich. Cate took her seat and nervously arranged her pencils and notebook, wondering the whole time if she shouldn’t have brought her laptop. She did not look up when the boy – Jason – sat next to her. But he quickly tapped her shoulder and said, “Hi. Hi there. My name is Jason. You’re Catherine?”

She stole a glance to the side, and smiled. And nodded, because her voice felt about a million miles away. She looked at him in wonder. He looked old for a freshman class. He was very, very tall – she guessed 6’5”, but she was terrible at guessing heights. He was dark – dark brown hair, dark eyes, and very tan skin. Cate looked down at her own skin and shivered, because she was so chalky pale. She stayed out of the sun, and out of the way of tall, handsome creatures like this boy.

The professor came into the room and handed out a class list and the course syllabus. Cate carefully read the syllabus and was delighted to see that she hadn’t read everything that was required. She was also excited to see the words “Daily Journal Requirements” on the last page.

“A daily journal,” Jason whispered under his breath, to her. He sounded wondering, not disgruntled.

“Cate,” she whispered back. He raised one eyebrow and wrinkled his nose in confusion. “I prefer Cate, not Catherine,” she clarified.

“Ah,” he said, even quieter. “Jace.”

Cate peeped at him during class and half-listened to the same first day speech she had heard in her other classes already. When the professor ended class, she turned her detailed attention to putting her books away. She did not dare look at Jason – Jace – and she felt rather than saw him get up.

She turned to leave the class and was stopped by a large, strong hand that touched her shoulder. “Where are you heading next, Cate?”

“Oh. I’m done for a few hours. I was planning, well, to go over to the union. I am meeting a friend there.” This was not true. Cate had not made any friends, yet, in college.

“Mind some company?” He fell easily into step with her as she left the classroom and turned into the dark tiled hallway. Cate flushed. What was happening? In her not so small high school, no boy ever – ever – gave her a second look. They all knew who she was, of course. Everyone did. She was straitlaced plain old Cate. Never been to a party. Never kissed a boy. It was old news, and she was too scared to be anything else.

“Sure,” she said, all those thoughts and images of high school flying by in a mere second. She looked again at him. “Don’t take this wrong, really, but how old are you? You seem older than everyone else in that class.”

He laughed, and slipped his well worn backpack over his shoulders. He had little round gold glasses that he peered through at her. “I am older, probably, than you. I traveled with my family during high school. We’ve been in Europe and in Africa for the past few years.”

She was instantly fascinated. Cate’s family never traveled. “Why? What brought you there?” She followed through the door he held open for her, and they were suddenly blinking in the bright September midday sun.

He smiled and turned his face to the sky. “What a lovely day.” Then he looked right at Cate. “My father is a missionary. We were mainly in Eastern Europe and in Africa. Then, for a while, in Paris.”

Cate felt utterly, utterly provincial. “I know it sounds so American, but my family hardly ever left the Midwest. Iowa, actually.” As they walked toward the union, Cate noticed that he walked close to her.

“What other classes are you taking, Cate?” He looked right into her eyes when he talked to her. It was not Iowan, and it set her off balance.

She recalled the list she had taped to her closet door. “Honors English – well, you know that one. Honors French. Creative Writing. Women Writers of 19th Century England.”

“Hmmmm. I’m engineering, all the way. Honors English is a requirement.”

She frowned. “I don’t know anything about engineering. What kind of engineer?” She tilted her head to the side, listening and waiting.

“Civil. Someday I am going to construct villages in Africa. Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire. Bridges, wells. That kind of thing.”

She couldn’t think of a response. Crafting stories, her lifetime dream, or crafting wells and bridges. There was no comparison, and no commonality.

When they got to the union, Jace strode confidently through the main hall toward the patio. He called out greetings to several groups of students, a couple professors, and even the older woman serving pretzels and beer behind the counter. Cate fell back a few steps, the familiar anxiety and dread replacing her earlier wonder. When a tall woman with sleek, long dark hair, long legs and carefully painted lips bounded up to Jace – like a horse! Cate thought for a moment – Cate mentally bowed out of the day. Feeling like a kid, she waited until the woman finished her effusive greeting, and then she cleared her throat. “Um,” she murmured, "I’ve just realized I’ve got to get something before my next class. It was nice to meet you.”

Jace turned from Horse Girl and with real alarm in his voice, said “No, Cate, no. Let’s go find a table.”

She shook her head and frowned. “No, I really need to go. I’ll see you later, in class the next time.” As she turned and left, hurrying out of the crowded union hall, she chided herself. Silly, silly, silly.

Want to Read a Story I Wrote?

So a long, long time ago I started writing a story about a woman who runs into her first love on an airplane 15 years after they broke up. (This is a totally fictional story. It is not autobiographical. OK?) I nearly finished it last summer, and it ended up being really long. Not long enough to be a novel, not short enough to be a short story. It's actually not even all the way done. But I'm going to start putting it on my blog in short pieces for you all (I mean you THREE) to read.

Enjoy? If you like it, leave a comment! If you don't like it, well, shoot. I wish you did.

Elapsed Time

When she got to the plane that night, Cate limped over the threshold, and could barely smile at the flight attendant who welcomed her. But she did smile – Cate was nothing if not Midwestern, and polite. She hated flying, though, and she gripped her red Minnie Mouse phone tight to her ear. “Yes, bunny, I have the phone you chose.” And after a pause, “Yes, I love you. I’m on my way home. I’ll pick you up at Nai Nai’s, but it will be late. You probably won’t even wake up.” Then, after another moment, “Yes, bunny, we’ll have breakfast together tomorrow.”

The flight was full, and Cate knew just where she was sitting. She had an exit row seat – not because she needed the leg room. At 5’5”, she wasn’t that uncomfortable in a regular seat. The need for an exit row seat was driven by her own superstition. If she was in an exit row, it would be a safe flight. Period.

The seat next to her was empty, even though there were only a few minutes before takeoff. Cate carefully retrieved her laptop before shoving her tote under her seat, and she sat down to write. She had a fierce story bubbling up inside, and even though she didn’t like to write on planes, she felt compelled to start typing. Her fingers shook on the keyboard as she gratefully let the words pour out. Typing was strange too – normally she wrote longhand. The feeling of that ache in her shoulder, and her hand curling around the pen meant that she was truly hearing the story and setting it down. Within a few keystrokes, her fingers became more sure on the keyboard, and her mind was engaged. She felt that familiar sensation of tunnel vision, as if her mind was focusing on something very far away but that she knew was there. Her eyes were unfocused and her hair was tumbling out of its ponytail. She was, in a word, transported.

Transported – the reason she had been writing, every day, for every minute she could snatch between kindergarten, nursery school, and chicken nugget dinners, since her husband died. It was a ticket out, a way around, a departure from the rest of her life. Alone. The mother of two little girls. No family, except her mother-in-law (former mother-in-law? Ex-mother-in-law? What do you call the mother of your deceased husband?) who disliked her. Dislike was too kind a word. Cate remembered the first time she met Nai Nai, the way Nai Nai’s brown eyes, which seemed so friendly, like a dog’s, looked her up and down. Cate blushed, setting off her pale white skin next to Michael’s gorgeous olive complexion. Nai Nai turned away from her and said to her beloved only son, “She staying for dinner at my home?”

And so Cate’s brain, long accustomed to switching over into reverie, was quickly engaged. She did not on a conscious level recognize the person who sat down next to her in the exit row, row 23, of flight 3607, New York to Minneapolis. She was typing, typing, typing, and did not feel the person’s eyes on her face or on her body. She did not notice anything until a deep, quiet voice chipped through the writing fog. “Cate?”