MARY ALICE AYERS
241
However, they needn't fear. I can't kill myself because there is no way
I can fall. A navy pilot explained basic aerodynamics to me. Air is matter,
and has density and weight. I am flying because my engine creates a vac–
uum over the wing. Nature abhors a vacuum. Essentially, the plane rises to
fill
the hole in the sky. The hole has no color, like the blue in the sailor's suit
my mother speaks of, but it is very much there. I am caught up in this hole
as certainly as I might be caught up in a child's swing - the only way I can
full
from it is
if
the engine stops. And I'm not going to stop the engine because
it's taking me to heaven, to be with the angels who were born flyers, not like
myself who has had to learn from scratch.
In the living room. Later. The dish holding cheese and crackers has
been emptied. There is a look of satiety in the group, but not of peace. The
elderly woman says: "It is an educational process totally. One must learn to
accept responsibility for one's mistakes - not to walk away from them. Or to
pretend they weren't made. Or worse yet, to blame someone else for them."
The younger man says: "Yes. And she should have asked him to help
make the decision. Imagine keeping the other party completely in the dark."
. In the dark. The room they discourse in is getting dark.
It
is dark out–
side, but the blinds are still open and they don't turn on a light. They are lost
in
thought, in a process casually called "second guessing."
Flying, like tender sex, is done with the tips of the fingers. But for ev–
ery touch there is a definite response, usually a positive one. Push forward
on the wheel, and the nose goes down. Pull back and the nose comes up.
When the nose comes up, the plane climbs. Down, it fulls.
To lie down is to die in a way, if the lying down involves surrender to
another person.
A doctor said: "Any woman who conceives out of wedlock does so
from deliberate self-destruction."
A woman can get over being self-destructive I've been told. Eighteen
is not forever. Self-destructiveness is a curable disease, like measles, noran
incurable one, like cancer.
If I destroy myself finally and totally I won't have to bother any more
with silly questions like these. What is worth asking - We know a fetus is as
much waste as fecal matter. We know this. What is worth asking - is there a
cause and effect between what was and what is. Inability to reproduce
cannot definitely be linked to anything, not definitely, not certainly.
Everyone who was in the living room has left it and has gone into the
dining room and they are eating there, at a cherrywood table, highly var–
nished. In it, they can see their faces ; their expressions are strained. The
