“Two days.”
“Two days!”
“Two nights? Maybe three days.”
“Fletch. Wake up. Get your head off my shoulder. Listen to what the steward’s saying about what to do when the airplane crashes.”
“That’s okay,” Fletch mumbled. “You’re coming with me.”
“Oh, my God! Seven-twenty on our wedding night, and he’s asleep!”
“The thing is,” Fletch said, “I never knew there was a possibility my father is alive.”
Many, many hours later on the flight from London to Nairobi, they were terribly scrunched up. The airplane was full. The seats were narrow and close to each other. There was hand luggage spilling out from under every seat.
“Did your mother know? Did she know there was a possibility he was alive?”
“I think she convinced herself he was dead. To keep her pride. To keep her sanity. In order to marry again, she had to legally assume him dead after seven years.”
“I guess in order to go to court to declare your husband dead, you have to believe he’s dead.”
“But she never really knew. When I’d ask questions about him, you know, growing up, her answers would always be so glib, so casual, you know? I’d get the idea the topic wasn’t worth discussing.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
“She says she loved him, though.”
“What sort of things would she tell you?”
“She’d say, ‘Hey, I was only married to your father ten months, and I never understood him.’”
“Then what would she say?”
“‘How do you spell “license”?’”
“Why would she say that?”
“Well, you know, she writes these detective novels. And she never could spell. She’d ask me to look words up in the dictionary for her. It was her way of getting rid of me.”
“What did you know about your father?”
“I knew he was a pilot. I knew, or thought I knew, he died about when I was born. Therefore, I always assumed he died in a plane crash shortly after I was born. Or before. I knew my mother was alone when she gave birth to me. I didn’t realize she was awaiting a husband who never showed up. A child accepts what he’s told.”
“Did you ever see a picture of your father?”
Fletch scanned his memory. “Never. That’s odd, isn’t it? Naturally, there would be pictures of your father around, if he were dead.”
“But not if there was a possibility he was alive, and had abandoned you both.”
“So that possibility must have been very much in my mother’s mind.”
“Very much, I’d say.”
The areas under the seats in front of them were filled, too.
Instead of waiting at Heathrow eight hours for their connecting flight to Nairobi or finding a place to sleep, Barbara and Fletch had bussed into London. Fletch had no clothes but the jeans and shirt he was wearing. Barbara insisted upon buying sweaters. They had lunch in a not-very-good place. They bought books. They got lost. They had to taxi back to the airport.
“This little guy just came up to me after the wedding, while everyone but the groom was kissing the bride, and just handed me this envelope.”
“I didn’t see him.”
“He was there, I swear it. He didn’t say a word. Just handed me the envelope and left.”
Barbara asked, “Are you sure he wasn’t your father?”
“I would think if he were, my mother would have recognized him.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Still … they knew each other all through school.”
“Maybe your mother didn’t even see him. We were outdoors, somewhat of a crowd, bad weather …”
“And you never know whether my mother is seeing real people or socializing with figments of her imagination.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “She must have been deeply hurt by all this.”
“And deeply puzzled.”
Barbara smiled. “The mystery Josie Fletcher couldn’t solve. Better not let her fans in the libraries know.”
“Her only fans are in the libraries, and are silent.”
“What else was in the envelope?”
“The tickets, the passports, ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and the letter.”
“You haven’t shown me the letter.”
“There’s nothing to see.” Fletch reached under the seat in front of him and picked up the envelope. “It all washed away in the rain.”
He handed her the wrinkled piece of paper.
“That’s sad.” She stared at it in her hand. “Maybe your mother could have recognized the handwriting. How do you know it was from your father?”
“It was signed ‘Fletch.’”
“What’s his real name?”
“Walter.”
“Walter. I wonder how I would have thought of you as a Walter junior.”
“A fletcher by any other name is still an arrow maker.”
“So what did the letter say?” She handed it back to him.
“In fact, it said something about my name.” He leaned forward as much as he could to put the envelope back. “Something about not liking my names, Irwin Maurice, something about my mother’s giving me these names, not him, or not with his agreement, as if he’d had nothing to do with it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He sat back again. “The letter read almost as if my mother gave the baby, me, these names which he didn’t like, didn’t relate to, on her own, and this made the baby, me, more her baby than his: that he couldn’t relate to anyone named Irwin Maurice.”
“Neither can you.”
“But I’ve stuck around. I haven’t disappeared.”
“You disappear all the time.”
“He said he was ‘mildly curious’ in meeting me and asked if I was ‘mildly curious’ in meeting him.”
“That’s the word he used? ‘Mildly’?”
“Yes. ‘Mildly.’ But the airline tickets to Nairobi and back are expensive.”
“Maybe he’s rich.”
“Maybe he was giving us each an out. He wrote I certainly didn’t have to come if I didn’t want. He said I could cash the tickets in and buy you a set of china or something.”
“A set of china,” Barbara said. “I might have liked that.”
“You’ll never see your china, but you will see Kenya.”
“Maybe this isn’t from your father at all.” Barbara wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. “Maybe somebody was trying to get you out of the country for a while. One of these stories you’ve been investigating.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Keep you out of court, keep you from raising more trouble, or something.”
“Maybe everyone on the newspaper took up a collection to get rid of me. Maybe the return tickets are no good.” Fletch smiled.
“Maybe a wild-goose chase.”
Fletch asked, “Aren’t you ‘mildly curious’?”
“Only mildly.”
