In Medias Res
Man pursues happiness. Time pursues man.
As the second — and only remaining — engine fell silent, Chaim calmly removed the phone from his shirt pocket and gazed at his own reflection. Satisfied that the expressionless visage before it did indeed belong to its owner, the device splashed a hearty “It’s a great day, Chaim!” across its high-resolution screen and unlocked.
It had been four hours since the plane — a brand-new Boeing 777–300ER — had departed on Chaim’s as-yet uneventful trans-oceanic return to his home town. But now the twin Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines — mammoth things, throat-singing their own power as they impelled the aircraft down the runway, transferring their burden into the air with the care of a nurse handing a newborn to its mother — had fallen silent.
Chaim didn’t know why this had happened; nobody did, not yet. Had someone explained it — You see, there, right there, in secondary ventral conduit AE-347? See that? Those cables, throwing off sparks? Yeah, that shouldn’t happen — it wasn’t yet known whether Chaim or anybody else could have done much about it anyway.
Even if they’d known where to find secondary ventral conduit AE-347.
The plane’s descent was so gentle that, at first, Chaim didn’t even notice. It was the pilot’s businesslike announcement that had first alerted him. Folks, as you can probably tell, we’ve got a little mechanical problem. There’s no reason to worry; we’re sure we’ll get things restarted here shortly. But we do have our protocols, so if you’d please all take your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and pay attention as the flight attendants explain our water landing procedures, we’d sure appreciate it.
Chaim considered the situation: the aircraft was about 7 miles in the air, with a glide ratio he guessed to be about 10 to 1. They would stay aloft for about 70 miles — given their current position, about 1,000 miles from land, Chaim figured. He wondered briefly if a water landing in a Boeing 777–300ER were even possible; and if so, what would happen afterwards. Deciding there was little he could do either way, he opened the note-taking app on his phone and began making a list of things to do after the flight.
1. Set up a profile on J-Date.
It had only been a year since the divorce was finalized; eighteen months since the incident. Fourteen years of marriage, largely free of rancor (if somewhat unadventurous), vaporized in an instant. His anger and disillusion still smoldered, flaring occasionally into full-blown fury. Chaim had learned to live with the rage — it was the ever-present loneliness that threatened to overwhelm him. He was alone when he went to bed, alone when he awoke; he was alone when he boarded this flight, and he’d still be alone when it ended.
Even Dor, his twelve-going-on-forty son, had started pushing Chaim to engage in more social activities: “Get a life, Dad — Mom did.”
Hard to argue with that.
2. Update my LinkedIn.
It wasn’t only his family life that had hit a pothole. Chaim’s career had come to — well, if not a screeching halt, at least a significant plateau. It was time to consider other options.
Chaim was a software engineer, a coder — somebody for whom all problems could be solved by simply recording the correct sequence of steps, and then executing them. Take, for example, the matter of the paralyzed Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines. It seemed to Chaim that this was exactly the type of thing that could be addressed through a series of appropriate actions, the instructions for which no doubt to be found in some kind of manual.
(In reality, no such procedure was recorded in any manual—or for that matter, anywhere else. An NTSB investigator would later conclude that the demyelination of the cables presently aflame in secondary ventral conduit AE-347 could easily have been prevented, but was unrepairable once manifested.)
But even if a salvatory plan had existed, it would have been of no use to Chaim. Restarting the useless engines may have been an engineering problem, but it was the pilot’s problem, not Chaim’s. Either the plane would recover, or it would not. And so, even as the passengers around him grew increasingly alarmed, and the messages from the cockpit markedly less confident, Chaim kept working on his list — a program for pulling himself out of his own personal nosedive.
The distracting thought kept intruding, though, that it would be easier to work out a solution for a broken engine than for a broken heart. Somewhere between the moment he had opened the bedroom door to find his nude, panting wife bucking her curvaceous backside against the equally unclad rabbi of the synagogue Chaim had insisted they join, and the moment in the courtroom when a single gavel strike ended both his marriage and his role as an at-home parent, Chaim had begun to suspect that the most significant barriers in his life were uniformly of the variety that resisted an algorithmic solution.
Logic was Chaim’s hammer, however; he had little choice but to treat even the messy — and decidedly non-mathematical — problems of career, marriage, and fatherhood as nails.
Chaim had no concrete plans, as of yet, for changing the trajectory of his professional life; so, like many others with few viable options, he considered writing. He had some experience: he’d published a short story in a small-circulation literary journal, and had penned a regular column in his synagogue newsletter (that is, until Chaim’s calamitous encounter with his wife — receiving spiritual guidance, as it were, on all fours — had shut down that particular channel).
His recent misfortunes only fed Chaim’s long-held belief that he had many stories to tell — if he could only figure out where to begin. (Had his craft been more mature, he might have known that — as in life — storytelling often begins with the tale already well underway, and ends with much still unrevealed.)
3. Spend more time with Dor.
The divorce that had robbed Chaim of romantic companionship had deprived him of the filial variety as well — a much greater blow. The boy lived with his mom; Chaim only saw him on alternate weekends, alternate Thanksgivings, and alternate Passovers. Chaim was the alternate parent, perennially second on Dor’s emergency contacts list, his name carefully culled from invitations to PTA meetings and school events at which Chaim’s ex was expected to be present.
With so little opportunity to be together, phone and video became the primary channels through which Chaim connected with his son. But engaging with Dor in this manner was shallow and painful, and only underscored for Chaim his relegation to backup-parent status. A brief hello and goodnight before bedtime fell immeasurably short of Chaim’s accustomed experience of fatherhood: at the movies, sharing a deceptively large box of Raisinettes; rehashing the school day at the dinner table; lying beside one another beneath a spray of stars on a July night, counting the flaming streaks of meteors fleeing Perseus.
This gap was so painful for Chaim that he began, unconsciously, to find reasons to avoid calling. A day, or two, or three would go by between calls — sometimes more. At the airport, Chaim had realized that nearly a week had passed since they had last talked. Feeling guilty, he’d tried to reach his son on the phone, but the boy didn’t answer. So Chaim had texted his ex, who replied curtly that Dor was still at school for. . . say that again? Yes of course I’m liste— did you say “band practice”?!
When had that happened?
Because their time was limited, Chaim paid considerable attention to activities he and Dor might enjoy while together. His latest idea was to spend Passover at one of those all-inclusive resorts that takes care of everything from the hard-boiled eggs at Seder to the matza brie at breakfast. Not that Chaim was observant; in truth, the recent events with his wife (not to mention current events on board the Boeing 777–300ER, which — notwithstanding the lack of any clear reference points in the empty sea outside his window — had clearly lost a great deal of altitude) had led Chaim to strongly question the existence of an All-Knowing Creator of the Universe.
A family vacation would be just the thing. Dor had spent last Passover with him, but Chaim didn’t want to put it off another year. By then his son would be nearly 14; still a child, certainly, but more worldly, less credulous — and thus not quite as much of a child as he was right now. The boy was speeding towards independence; before long he would be off to college, and thence to career, marriage, and whatever else awaited him. Chaim’s status would change from alternate parent to an even lesser rank: occasional parent, available for contingencies but otherwise mostly useless. In case of emergency, break glass and remove father.
A joke pops into Chaim’s mind, one his own father had told him. A doctor walks into an exam room, regarding his clipboard with a serious expression. He raises his eyes to meet those of his begowned patient, shifting uncomfortably on the examination table. “I’m afraid I have bad news. Your condition is terminal. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do.”
Tears jump to the patient’s eyes. “How. . . how much longer?”
“Six.”
“Six? Six what?! Months, years — what?!”
The doctor continues: “Five. Four. Three. . .”
Chaim reflected on the old formulation that humor is born of tragedy plus time, and he considered that perhaps the recipe for happiness is much the same. But the tragedies are great and the time fleeting; contentment — if it is to be snared before the season ends — demands pursuit. Chaim could see now that he had left the hunt some time ago — beginning, if he were to be honest with himself, long before his wife’s infidelity.
Still, as long as the race continued, Chaim decided, it could be rejoined. Images wheeled in his mind: those whom he loved and those who had hurt him; his fuck-ups and his accomplishments; the good memories and the bad. Up in the cockpit, the altimeter wound nearer and nearer to zero while, in seat 36-C, Chaim made a silent vow that he would spend his remaining time — in whatever units it might be measured — stalking joy and cherishing the pursuit, even though it might forever prove elusive.
It was in that instant that — to Chaim’s great surprise — joy caught up with him.
