Misjudgement
Elise Adams turned
twenty three the day her plane was hijacked.
She
boarded the aircraft feeling lightheaded. She had bought and drank a bottle of
merlot at the departures lounge earlier that day, which left her mouth feeling
dry and acidic. She burped discreetly
and felt bubbles of it rising inside her throat as she cross-referenced her
flight ticket against the rows of velvet seating in front of her.
“Do
you mind if I pass you?” she asked a man in a green suit, nodding her head at
the empty seat next to him.
“My
pleasure,” he said, rising to let her pass. Elise had never seen anyone dressed
in a green suit before. She smiled politely as she passed him and wondered if
he had picked out the suit for himself, or whether a partner had helped him in
the choosing it. She tried to steal a
glance at his ring finger but his hands were rooting around in his hand luggage
searching for something to keep him entertained during the flight. He would
have been handsome, were it not for the suit.
Elise
turned away quickly, conscious that she might appear drunk if she stared in one
direction for too long. She looked at her watch and decided she would not have
another drink until she was at least twenty minutes into the flight, or in any
case, above ground. Looking through the space between the seats in front she
noticed a man with a large birthmark on the back of his palm flipping through a novel she had been meaning to
read since she left school. She wondered whether to strike up a conversation with
him about it, ask whether he was enjoying it, but feared he might try to steer
the conversation towards her own thoughts, and she wouldn’t know what to say. She
hadn’t read the book.
A
tannoy announced that the plane was due to take off and the man in the green
suit put his hands together in prayer. Elise felt irritated by the gesture.
“It’s
alright, I’m a frequent flyer,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” The man looked at
her, his tongue caught between his lips in a puzzled expression.
“I’m
a frequent flyer too...” he replied “And I thank God every time I make it safely
back on His soil.”
There
was an awkward silence which followed the remark. Elise knew the man thought
she should feel embarrassed – that she was one of those people that turned to
God out of fear or greed, instead of thankfulness and gratitude.
“Would
you like to join me?” the man asked, his hands still curved in prayer. He was
throwing her a life line – an opportunity to redeem herself, to be a good
Christian, like himself.
“No
thank you,” she slurred. “I uh, I have no faith.” The man’s lip recoiled into a moment of
distaste; an expression that went un-noticed by Elise. “There was this one
time, when I was five—“
“I’m
sorry,” he interrupted, his face rearranged into a tight lipped stare “I’d like
to finish my prayer before we take off.” Elise felt the sting of his words as
he tilted his head and silence ensued. As his head moved forward towards his
palms, Elise pushed her own head backwards, jamming it against the headrest as
hard as she could, her early childhood memory now hard to push from her
agitated thoughts. Her twenty three year old mind was hazy, slowed by fermented
grapes and a growing space of time since the incident had first happened.
It
was April, 1983. The trip to the Christian Camp at Lourdes had been planned
months in advance by Elise’s parents and excitement tingled from toe to finger
tip. Elise’s mother Angie told her that they were going to a place where angels
lived, and that if she was lucky enough, she might even see one. Elise held this
belief close to her heart and in the days before they were due to leave for the
trip, she spent each night dreaming of the angels she hoped to befriend;
beautiful creatures that would welcome her with open arms and golden smiles.
She
was at an age old enough to develop curiosity of the world around her, and
young enough to harbour irrational fears of darkness. Elise had wandered away
from her parents to go to the toilet. She hadn’t told them where she was going;
she’d wanted to impress them that she had gone all by herself. When the lights
turned off, Elise was sitting on the toilet, parlaysed by fear, and unable to
move. She prayed to God in her mind, too scared to lift her arms in case
monsters sensed her presence. She kept as still as she could, in the hours that
passed, tears streaming softly down her face in the hours that passed.. After
some time, the door flung open – Elise had been too small to reach the lock.
There was a loud hum of a generator as the lights flickered into motion. It was
then that Elise saw it. The Angel. It has scooped her up in its arms and
returned her to her bed. When she woke up, she told her parents about the
angel, who smiled, and told her she wasn’t to wander alone again. Elise told
everyone she could about the Angel. The other campers sang songs about it round
the camp fire, with acoustic guitars and roasted marshmallows, until Elise and
her family went home again.
When
Elise woke, she was twenty three and sitting on an aircraft next to a man in a
green suit, who was crying as he spoke into his mobile phone.
“Don’t
be mad, Erica, I know you’re going to be mad when you get this message, but
don’t be. It’s not your fault. I love you. I’ll try again soon. We’ll speak
again, I promise.”
Elise
was suddenly sobered by the scene taking place around her. Everyone was doing
the same thing, shouting, crying - all had mobile phones in their hands. The
man in the green suit was looking at her with red eyes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t
want to wake you any sooner than I needed to... I didn’t know whether to wake
you... I’m sorry, here,” he babbled, handing his phone to Elise. “If there’s
anyone you need to call...” his voice hung in the air, punctuated by the scream
of an air hostess as the man who had been reading the novel tied the hostess’ arms together. Three other men occupied the
cockpit with the door thrown wide open. Elise couldn’t see the pilot.
“That’s
very kind of you,” Elise was surprised at the calmness of her voice. “It’s
alright, you keep your battery. Keep trying your wife.” She wasn’t sure whether
this had been the right thing to say, the man’s shoulders began to tremble as
fresh tears swelled in his eyes, dripping down onto his green suit. She
retrieved her own mobile from her bag under the seat in front of her. She
dialled in her father’s mobile number; it was quicker than searching through
her phone book for names. It too, clicked to answer machine. She didn’t know
where her father was. She knew he would try to contact her sometime that day,
on her birthday. She tried to block out the horror he would feel when he saw
the awful news on the television and realised that his daughter was on that
flight. She knew he would be trying to frantically contact her. That’s when the
message would flash up that he received a missed call from her.
“Hi
Dad, just a quick message to say that I know you’re probably going to ring me
later to wish me happy birthday. I’ve had a great day, really, I have. Thank
you for the card and the money. I... If we don’t speak later, I love you, Dad.”
Elise
put the phone back inside her bag and tucked it away again under the seat in
front of her. She had no further use for it. The man beside her had also fallen
silent, his mobile phone returned to his pocket. Both sat staring at the
plastic trays attached to the backs of the chair in front, as if on a regular
flight, waiting for the tea-trolley to roll down the aisle, so they could flip
them down and rest glasses of merlot on them. Elise looked at the air hostess
–tied to the trolley with a knife at her throat. She imagined the curve of her
lipsticked lips as she pointed out the emergency exits at the start of the
flight. Elise had been too drunk to notice.
“So
what happened when you were five?” the man in the green suit asked.
“Shouldn’t
you be praying?” said Elise.
She had a point.
The
man laughed. “I haven’t stopped praying yet.” Elise rolled a remark around on
the tip of her tongue, biting it back. She wished the tea-trolley had come
round. She needed more wine, perhaps even something stronger.
“I
thought I saw an Angel.” She said. The man looked impressed. “I, er, didn’t really see one...” she mumbled. “I just
thought I did. We were at a Christian camp. My mother told me that it was a
place where angels lived.”
The
man was smiling, as if he too were reliving old memories. His wife handing him
a clean shirt that smelled like their laundry powder; his children dropping
sticks into rivers from bridges, then racing to see which made it out first;
his own angels.
“I’d
wandered away from my parents trying to go to the bathroom on my own. When I
was in there, the lights went out, and I was scared too stiff to move. I must
have been in there hours,” she said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “Then
all of a sudden, the lights came on, all that time in the dark it felt like a
miracle, like I was seeing it for the first time. Like heaven. She came in and
scooped me up, made me feel safe again.”
“Your
angel?” he asked hopefully.
Elise
shook her head. “I thought it was. I believed
it was, back then. I told everyone at the camp, I was so proud to have seen one,
when no one else had. But it wasn’t an angel. I didn’t realise until I was much
older, but it wasn’t an angel.”
“You
think life got in the way of your angel? Lots of people question their faith,
you know. It can be a tricky road to stick to, especially when you’re growing
up. There’s a lot of pressure on kids.”
“Nah,
it wasn’t like that.” She said. “I thought the angel appeared from nowhere,
like, from heaven or something. But it wasn’t. The lights had gone out because
they were sensor generated, if I hadn’t been so scared and actually moved, I’d have brought the lights back
up myself. Instead, my mother ran in after spending all that time searching for
me, and that’s when they came on. There was no miracle. No angel. It was just
my mom, and a bunch of energy efficient light bulbs.”
“And
you got old enough to realise it was all a bunch of science, and lost your
faith?” the man asked.
“When
I got to school, I knew there were things that didn’t make sense to me. It was
never science that made me question anything. My mom died when I was twelve. It
was in her funeral, actually, that something clicked and I realised it was her
I had seen that day, not an angel.”
“And
your mom never said anything? Never said it was her?”
“I
think she just wanted me to be happy. She wanted me to believe it, that there
was someone out there, keeping me safe when I needed them.”
“You
never saw one since?” the man asked. Elise didn’t reply. The man looked
disappointed. The aircraft took an awkward dive that made Elise’s stomach drop.
She looked out of the portal at the approaching buildings coming into view.
“Either
way, I’ve got some respect for you, you know.” The man’s hands were trembling
slightly. “Most people I know would be praying their ass off now, with...all
this...going on. I got this neighbour back at home who never says what he
believes in. He figures if he just plain don’t make up his mind, then whatever
religion’s right at the end will just let him stroll on in to whatever heaven
he got.”
Elise
smiled. “Whatever heaven he got...”
she repeated. “I guess it’s all what you make of it really.”
“Hey,
I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said quickly. “I just meant that people
like that think they’ve got it all, you know? When the way I see it, they’ve
got nothing...”
Elise
reached out for the man’s hand. He was scared. Everything had been leading up
to this moment. He had spent his whole life believing in something, and he was
about to find out whether there was someone waiting for him on the other side.
“I’m
sorry,” he said. “I’m going to try my wife again...”
It
clicked to answer phone. The man put his mobile in the pocket of his green
suit. The airplane took another shallow dip. Elise clutched his hand and closed
her eyes.
She
waited for her angel to meet her on the other side.
