Chapter 4

On the count of three, what?

Leo studies the lady. Her face is pale and blank. She seems bewildered. Possibly distressed. It is hard to be sure. He checks over his shoulder to see if people are blocking her way, but the aisle is clear.

He looks back up at her. She is the same age, height, and body type as Leo’s mother except that Leo’s mother would not be seen dead wearing sensible shoes. (Literally. Leo’s mother wants to be buried in her Jimmy Choos. Leo’s youngest sister said, “Sure, Mum, we’ll do that,” while mouthing No way at Leo and pointing at her own feet.)

Leo’s mother doesn’t like it when people “patronize” her. Would it be patronizing to ask this lady if she needs assistance?

He notices a silver brooch pinned to her shirt.

His parents ran a jewelry store in Hobart for forty years, and although neither Leo nor any of his sisters had any interest in carrying on the business, everyone in the family automatically clocks jewelry. The brooch is small, possibly antique? It’s a symbol of some kind. An ancient, old-world-y symbol. He can’t quite see it without leaning forward, which would be inappropriate, but something about the brooch is distractingly familiar. It is somehow strangely related to him. It gives him a sense of…ownership. Vague pleasure? It must be something to do with Vodnik Fine Jewels, but what?

Or is it the symbol itself that means something? Wait, something to do with school? No. University? Thoughts of university lead inevitably to one of his most painful memories, himself on a street, outside a pub, shouting like he’d never shouted before or since, nothing to do with this symbol, although, wait, he nearly has it—

“One,” says the lady.

Will she burst into song on the count of three? Is she in pain, perhaps? Trying to psych herself up to take a step forward? Neve’s grandmother suffers from terrible foot pain, poor thing, but this lady is much younger than her.

Leo’s dad always said that after September 11 he was “ready for trouble” whenever he traveled. “I crash-tackle anyone who behave even a little suspicious,” his dad would say in his Eastern European accent, so earnestly, even though he was a five foot four, benign, dapper-looking city jeweler, a sweet man who never did crash-tackle anyone in his life. “I not hesitate, Leo.”

Would his dad have crash-tackled this woman by now?

I not hesitate, Leo.

Jesus, Dad. She’s a harmless lady! You would so hesitate!

“Two.”

She’s harmless! Of course she’s harmless.

You can’t get weapons through security anymore.

And women don’t hijack planes.

Is that sexist? He hears his youngest sister: I could hijack a plane better than you, Leo.

No doubt about that.

Leo clears his throat. He is going to ask the lady if she’s okay. That is the correct, most appropriate action.

“Excuse me,” he begins, “are you—”

“Three.”

The lady turns, stretches out one arm, and points directly at the passenger seated in the window seat of her own row, a wiry fiftyish man hunched over a laptop, pounding the keyboard with two fingers.

“I expect,” says the lady. She pauses, still pointing straight at the man. It’s as though she is accusing him of something.

She expects what?

“I expect catastrophic stroke.”

The man looks up with a distracted frown and cups a hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that?”

“I expect catastrophic stroke,” she says again, diffident but definite, still pointing. “Age seventy-two.”

The man’s eyes dart about. “I’m sorry, catastrophic…? I don’t…How can I help?”

The lady says nothing. She drops her arm, pivots, and turns to face Leo’s row.

The man meets Leo’s eyes across the aisle. His mouth turns downward in faux alarm to indicate Bit weird! Leo grimaces sympathetically. The man shrugs and returns to pummeling his laptop.

Leo is calm now. No need for crash-tackling. He understands dotty old ladies. She is a welcome distraction from his misery over missing the musical. He knows how to handle this.

Leo’s grandmother suffered from vascular dementia in the last years of her life and the family was advised to play along with her alternate reality wherever possible and safe. For someone as “uptight” as Leo apparently is (that word gets thrown his way a lot, thrown quite hard), he was unexpectedly flexible when it came to going along with his grandmother’s delusions.

He will play along with whatever role this lady requires. “Catastrophic stroke”: Did that mean she’d once been a doctor or a nurse? He remembers hearing about a retired doctor with dementia who spent his days diagnosing his fellow nursing-home residents. He walked around with what he thought was a prescription pad, efficiently scribbling out the same prescription for antibiotics.

“I expect,” says the lady. She points at Leo’s seatmate, Max, who is busy taking a photo out the window of the airplane.

Max turns from the window, grins, ready for a chat. “Eh? What’s that, love?”

“I expect heart disease,” says the lady. “Age eighty-four.”

Max frowns. “Heart…? Didn’t quite catch that, love. Hard to hear over the engine!” He nudges his wife for help.

Sue smiles brightly at the lady and raises her voice. “Sorry, we didn’t quite catch that?”

“Heart disease,” repeats the lady, louder this time. “Age eighty-four.”

“You’ve got heart disease?”

“No! Not me! You! ”

“No problems with my ticker.” Max bangs a closed fist hard against his barrel chest.

“Age eighty-four,” says the lady. “As previously stated.”

Max gives his wife a baffled look and Sue steps in, as good wives do, to rescue husbands from confusing social situations.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Did you recently lose someone?”

The lady appears exasperated, but her tone is tolerant. “Cause of death. Age of death.”

That’s when it clicks for Leo. She’s not diagnosing, she’s predicting.

“?‘Cause of death, age of death,’?” repeats Sue carefully. She puts her hand on the buckle of her seat belt. “Okay then.”

“Holy guacamole,” says her husband.

The lady points at Sue. “I expect pancreatic cancer. Age sixty-six.”

Sue laughs uneasily. “You expect pancreatic cancer? As my cause of death? Goodness. At sixty-six ? You expect that for me? No, thank you very much!”

“Don’t engage.” Max lowers his voice and taps his forehead. “She’s not quite…?”

“Something’s not right,” agrees Sue beneath her breath.

She looks back up at the lady and speaks in that very specific, commanding tone Leo remembers so well from the nurses who took care of his grandmother. “We’ll be landing soon, sweetheart !” It is a voice designed to cut through confusion and impaired hearing. Leo hates it. He could never bear hearing his formidable grandmother spoken to as though she were a not-very-bright preschooler. “So if you want to use the bathroom, you probably should go now. ”

The lady sighs. She turns to appraise Leo.

Leo says, “You’re telling us how and when we’re going to die?”

Later he will berate himself. He will think he should have followed Sue’s lead and shut her down, but his feelings are mixed up with memories of his beloved grandmother’s confused face and how he—Leo!—could make it smooth and peaceful when he went along with her delusions. He was better at it than his sisters. Those were the last gifts he gave her. He will do the same for this lady. It doesn’t matter what nonsense she is talking.

“Cause of death. Age of death,” says the lady. “It’s really very simple.”

“Sounds very simple,” agrees Leo. “Give it to me straight.”

The lady points her finger like a gun at the center of Leo’s forehead. Her hand is steady. “I expect workplace accident.” Her eyes are a pretty color: the soft blue of faded denim. They don’t look like crazy eyes. They look like sad, sensible, resigned eyes. “Age forty-three.”

Forty-three! Leo does not experience it as a shock—he is taking all this as seriously as he would a fortune cookie or a horoscope—but he does feel a jolt. Fortune cookies and horoscopes aren’t usually so specific. He turns forty-three in November.

“I’m going to die in a workplace accident? Might have to give up work then.”

Max chuckles appreciatively while Sue makes the kind of worried “tch” sound of a mother seeing her child doing something mildly risky.

“Fate won’t be fought,” says the lady. Her gaze glides past Leo as her forehead creases.

“Better get my affairs in order then!” Leo is playing for the crowd now. This particular jolly persona normally only kicks in after two drinks. This guy is not uptight! He never spirals! He doesn’t lie awake at night fretting about his utilization rate. No one accuses this guy of being a workaholic.

The lady doesn’t answer. Her face is a door slammed shut. She is done with him. She takes a deliberate step forward.

Leo twists in his seat to watch. She’s stopped at the very next row. Still close enough for him to touch.

“I expect.” She points at a young woman wearing giant headphones over a headscarf. “Disease of the urinary system. Age ninety-two.”

The woman unpeels one headphone away from her ear with her thumb. “I’m sorry?”

“Oh my word,” marvels Sue as she also cranes her neck to watch the lady, while Max shakes his head and Leo grins inanely like the relaxed, easygoing guy he is not and tries to ignore the sensation of someone gently but insistently pressing an ice cube to the base of his spine.