Getting Kel a standby seat was the easy part. Marta could smell the cloudburst sheet-washing the airfield, felt the runagate’s rude epiphany while she waited for her son inside the airplane’s forward door. Out, but the kind of acrid that bloodhounds stiffen for. Free, but on that stumbly wet roundwalk leading back to the big door. 

A cold wind battered the gangplank in cruel gusts, hostile and relentless, reminding her of Adam’s rabid spleen when she told him that’s it, no more. Big snarling woofs from somewhere inside that frothing pound he keeps for shepherding his mules. Kel bounding into the muss with thumbs tucked behind his pack straps, ready for the pink eye to Newark.

“I knew you’d get on, kiddo.”

She led him to the row closest to the forward galley. She kissed his pixie waves and promised, without thinking, that it would be the last one. But he was too busy shouldering a Cheshire grin into the luxury of it all to notice. Non-rev to Jersey in an empty cabin. Mom the purser in her elegant company ensemble. No contest. Anyway hope was high that a warm cookie would appear after Marta armed doors for cross check and all call.

“Last one what?” the boy finally asked.

Before Marta could answer, a system chime heralded clickety static and warped captain-speak. She inserted the metal fitting into the buckle and pulled the strap across Kel’s lap.

“Never mind, baby.”

After crashing her jumpseat to shake the bad noise, Marta felt it come back all the same as she watched the runway edge lighting stream long across the window, one streaking diode trail after another, drip-dosing her brain with invisible worry until the narrow body rotated clear of the Chicago tarmac. It’s not like with the others, Adam used to tell her. But the rules are exactly the same.

At cruising altitude, Kel asked his mom for a drink like a premier mileage tycoon. Kid king of the midair castle. His grin faded as the plane dipped with a hideous shudder. He studied Marta for the signs, but she released the cart brake with a salaried shrug. On the way to O’hare, she’d tutored him from her space waitress cookbook: until Cindy from Omaha looks like she’s just lost her bowel, everything’s probably okay. Now she pulled two invisible buckles across her kidneys.

“Back I go.”

That’s what Marta kept telling herself as she removed the small envelope with the phone number on it, the one Adam had stuffed into her breast pocket before she left. She could still feel the hard-smack impress of his crooked hand while the pilots yoked the bird down to calmer winds. Her eyes drifted to the bin cover above Kel’s row, x-rayed the false bottom of her roller board parked quietly inside. The system chimed her back into motion. Nuke the pizza burger, Marta. Gauge the heft of two miniatures in the palm of your manicured hand. It’s his world and you’re all he has and would you look at the mess mother can make. Warm cookie, she remembered. But when she walked out with Kel’s tray, he was gone.

Apace with Marta’s hop-to strides, the aisle tossed and telescoped ahead of her as she tramped toward the rear galley. Among the deadness and scattered sleepheads in economy, one overachiever looked up from under his reading light. Rear lavatory: OCCUPIED, its twin vacant and dark across the aisle.

“Bumpety bump there, huh?” Charlotte had her head buried in a beverage cubby.

“He in there?”

“Where else honey? Shit. I got eyes on him.”

A heavy thump flung Marta head first into the unoccupied blue room. Battered and bent over the throne, she thumbed her cookbook for heavy thump. Bells and bad whistles. Cindy feeling a rumble in her colon. She looked back to see Kel appear behind the opposing accordion door, none worse for the wear. With one eye swelling shut, she rushed to her feet and grabbed the boy’s arm.

“To your seat. Now.”

Stomach beset by rogue free-falls, she peaked over her shoulder at Charlotte’s sheer-tight legs disarranging the galley floor. Slotted food trays chattered and banged. Kel stumbled over the motionless sleeper who’d fallen back down into the aisle, the bumps and lateral swings growing more severe. After seating Kel, Marta met the second officer in the cockpit door.

“Jump-seats. We’re diverting to Boston Logan.” 

“Charlotte’s hurt.” 

The pilot pushed against either side of the aisle to steady himself for a look. 

“Roger,” he said and returned to the controls.

The plane was mired in a sustained shake now, pitching and creaking in the fray, a smell of wet boots and bad disinfectant overpowering the fuselage. Cabin lights winked and fluttered as the captain spoke over the address system. Marta baffled herself by reaching for the Airfone, pressed the first digit, mispressed the second and third. By the time the pilots found asphalt, she’d turned the receiver into jagged scrap shard.

It was all supposed to be okay. Sever, duck, and egress. Warm table bread and sweet butter at the Ruby Tuesday’s next to Newark Radisson. Instead Kel got a Boston double queen for his trouble. Room-service french fries and Home Box Office, volume clickered up into the mid forties. Right by the westernmost park bench on the Charles River Esplanades, the voice on the phone had said. Look for a bearded hatchet in Celtic green with his eyes turned skyward. Kel listening but not really, barely looking up when Marta zipped her roller board before stepping out of the room.

Maybe the Cheers bar could work as a stand-in. Ten city blocks and a cheeseburger. Sam, Diane, Carla, and Norm. Everything works until it doesn’t. Jetliners feel like they’re falling when they take off and it’s only sometimes that they do. An Adam is an Adam is an Adam. But it didn’t come to Marta until she’d plucked herself up for the final errand. Until she was already hugging herself close in the elevator, one eye closed and leaking.