![\"Airplane](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/11\/Airplane-Window.jpg\")
<\/a>I am boarding a plane to Detroit, and so is she, her thick coat falling onto my lap from the center aisle, the smell of smoke thick enough to make my head swim. She shoves the coat under her seat, her thick gray hair brushing my arm as she sits.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m Dianne,\u201d she tells me, wiping the hair from her eyes. \u201cBoy, am I not looking forward to this flight.\u201d<\/p>\n
I agree with her, my voice surprisingly loud. Maybe it\u2019s the migraine I\u2019m fighting, or the nausea that accompanies me with every flight I take. Maybe something inside me recognizes Dianne\u2019s movements, the way she mumbles and laughs to herself, the instability of motion that somehow demands my response.<\/p>\n
At first, I\u2019m only asked to listen. Dianne tells me that she\u2019s heading out to New York to visit a daughter and her newborn baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was married by a justice of the peace,\u201d she says, \u201cand I didn\u2019t come because she told me it was no big deal. No big deal? It was my daughter, for Christ\u2019s sake.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story, as I sensed it would, spills into me for the next two hours, its twists of plot too fluid, the words of this stranger too slippery to track without me asking \u201cWhat did you say?\u201d every few moments, my head throbbing as I try to catch how Dianne\u2019s life, as she lays it before me, holds together.<\/p>\n
What it sounds like is this: Her husband, a composer of pop music, currently sleeps in a nursing home in upstate New York, his legs too damaged from a car accident for him to move freely through his life. He is ten years younger than Dianne, which didn\u2019t keep her from marrying him, once she heard his music.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeautiful,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was all beautiful. He is a genius, and those pirates stole everything he ever wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cpirates\u201d are superstars: Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Santana, Quincy Jones. Music moguls who somehow caught a line of this man\u2019s music and took the credit.<\/p>\n
There was no written music, only the genius of her husband\u2019s fingers, and the cassette tapes, which held the only original recordings and were destroyed in the car accident that smashed her husband\u2019s legs, leaving them more penniless than they were before.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe never cared about those recordings,\u201d Dianne says, cupping her hand for a pile of airline pretzels. \u201cHe sold me the rights for a pack of gum and a yoyo. But I have it all written in my book, all the facts, so we can get back what\u2019s been stolen. All of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only problem, according to Dianne, is that she made the same mistake as her husband\u2014the only copy of this book, her memoir, is currently in the hands of David Letterman, whom she hopes to see in New York, if he\u2019ll return her call.<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep trying,\u201d she says, sifting the pretzels in her palm, \u201cbut no answer. He probably thinks I\u2019m crazy. Don\u2019t you agree?\u201d<\/p>\n
The dull blow of that question cuts straight to the bone of my childhood, my mother and father each silhouetted against the screen door of our kitchen, watching clouds, relaying the logic behind their choices in a way that made me their confessor, the medium through which sin was pardoned.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t you agree, Allison, that we deserve a better life? Don\u2019t you agree that, if you had told us how to love each other, we wouldn\u2019t be in this mess right now?<\/em><\/p>\n Those are the questions I heard, even if my parents didn\u2019t ask them directly. But Dianne looks straight at me, and I cannot help but keep listening, her lips lined with beads of spit, her blue eyes milky beneath her thick bangs.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, he was just as much a pirate as those musicians were,\u201d she says. \u201cHe used to tell me that God was punishing me for not believing in him, even though I do believe. But how do you love someone who fools you twice? Don\u2019t you agree that it\u2019s impossible to do?\u201d<\/p>\n Before I can say anything, Dianne suddenly starts hacking, a pretzel lodged in her throat, her body rocking under the demand for air. I wonder if I should do the Heimlich. I stare at her heaving frame and am unable to move, her need paralyzing me beyond the ability to act, or judge, or move.<\/p>\n But I somehow catch the words of the Jesus Prayer\u2014Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner<\/em>\u2014strumming in my ears, the prayer itself pouring through me, for her, and a moment later, she looks up at me, gasping, smiling as she reaches for her Coke.<\/p>\n \u201cGood thing I got my breath back!\u201d she says, and I nod my head, a small agreement with an essential fact:<\/p>\n Good thing, Dianne, that you have breath, that there is life, the chance to love in spite of what is taken from us.<\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t forget this,\u201d she tells me. \u201cI won\u2019t forget this conversation.\u201d She settles into her coat, her face at the window, the clouds forging their own hills and valleys in the air around us.<\/p>\n She turns to me smiling. \u201cIsn\u2019t it beautiful?\u201d she says, her hands twitching in her lap. \u201cIsn\u2019t it amazing, to see what we get to see?\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Originally published in<\/em>\u00a0Good Letters\u00a0on November 2, 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n Allison Backous oy<\/a> lives with her family, teaches, and writes in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n