“Maybe we should change the subject,” she says.
“I’m going on too long, aren’t I? I’m sorry.”
“It’s not that, I just think you’re making yourself more nervous.”
“Maybe.” And there’s the Genesis probe, whose chute failed to open because a gravity switch had been mounted upside down— “Um . . .” He racks his brain. He can see a dozen lit screens in the seat backs in front of him, movie scenes set along dark city streets or on bucking airplanes, hideous and hysterical music videos, the surprisingly crude graphics of their own plane crawling up the coast toward Nova Scotia. All he can think of to say is, “Airlines today offer quite a number of viewing choices.”
She says, “Not too long ago airplanes were one of the last places you still saw people reading books. There, and on the subway. In New York City, anyway. But even there you don’t see it much anymore, except for women reading Elena Ferrante.”
“Who?”
She makes a sound. Not really a snort, what might one call it? “You’re a straight male, you don’t read fiction.”
Mark vaguely remembers an argument they had about this once. Something painful. He says, “It’s true I haven’t read much fiction for a long time. But a few weeks ago I was clearing out my mother’s house and I saw all the mysteries she read in her last years, and I saw also the novels my father left behind, Faulkner and C. P. Snow and Le Carré. I even found in the attic some old science fiction paperbacks I’d read when I was a teenager. I realized I did kind of miss reading fiction. I’m reading something right now, something Mette suggested, a very long novel called Infinite Jest. Have you heard of it?”
“Um, yeah.”
“The author clearly has a background in math and science. He doesn’t quite understand how the Brocken spectre phenomenon works, I used to be intolerant of mistakes like that, but really you can only know so much. For example, he knows much more about pharmacology than I do. I was thinking of writing to him about Brocken spectres and suggesting an emendation, in case there’s another edition.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
“He committed suicide.”
Mark thinks about that for a few seconds. “Mette said when she recommended the book to me that when she was depressed he was the only writer who seemed to understand her.”
“Mette told you she was depressed?”
“Not exactly. She said she had been depressed.”
“When was this?”
“Two, three months ago? She’s mentioned being down a couple of times in the past couple of years.”
“And you just let it go?”
“. . . I don’t know what you mean.”
“You didn’t pursue it?”
“It just sounds like something she feels now and then.”
“Why didn’t you tell me anything about this?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you didn’t already know. You talk to her all the time.”
“Depression is serious!”
“You don’t need to tell me that. My father was depressed for the last twenty years of his life. The way Mette refers to it, it sounds less severe than what my father had.”
“And you never connected this with her running off?”
“Of course it occurred to me as one possibility, among several. As I said, I thought you already knew she was occasionally depressed. The world is full of depressed people. Half of my students are on antidepressants.”
“Jesus Christ.” She seems to be angry.
“I’m sorry. I really am. I assumed you would know more about this than I did. You never mentioned anything in our recent phone calls about depression or suicide.”
“Oh my god, you’re impossible!”
Mark has already apologized, and meant it, so he’s not sure what else he can do. He remembers reading a compelling argument that penitence is genuine only when there is a sincere will to change, so after a moment he says, “I promise, next time something like this comes up, I won’t assume you already know potentially relevant facts.”
She is looking away from him. She is still angry. Mark feels bad. Now that she has pointed it out, it does seem foolish, perhaps even culpable, that he didn’t spend more time determining what each of them knew. Three or four minutes go by, during which a steward announces they’ll be coming down the cabin with their complimentary beverage service. Eventually, Saskia says, “Partly, I’m upset because it bugs the shit out of me that Mette tells you things she doesn’t tell me.”
“There must be many things she tells you that she doesn’t tell me.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
Mark ponders this for a while. Then he says, “Maybe it’s easier to say things to the parent you don’t know as well. Like what they say about people pouring out their problems to the bartender.”
“So she pours out her problems to you?”
“Well, no. We have fun doing puzzles together. This occasional mention of being down in spirits is the only thing I can think of.”
“She has fun with you.”
“Sure.”
There’s a long silence. Since they are seated in the back row, the beverage cart is a long way off.
“I’ve never understood her,” she says.
“That’s too imprecise to mean anything.”
She makes an exasperated sound. “The very fact you say that proves my point. It’s what she would say. But I know exactly what I mean.”
There’s a server at both ends of the beverage cart, and the cart blocks one row. After thinking about it for a second, Mark sees that in order to serve everyone, the servers need to alternate between advancing one row and three rows.
“Did I ever tell you I ran away from home once?” she asks.
“No.”
“I was thirteen. I knew I couldn’t hurt my father, so I was trying to hurt my mother. This thing with Mette feels like karmic payback.
