Cat's Eye

In the present, Elaine walks the route that she used to walk home from school. Girls are playing in the street, and Elaine thinks they are far less unruly than she and her friends were. She thinks maybe this is because they have seen her, an adult, watching. It is Halloween and the porches have pumpkins on them. Elaine thinks about razor blades hidden in apples and about how we refuse to think about or name the dead.

Elaine remembers Stephen’s death, five years earlier. Stephen was traveling to give a lecture in Frankfurt when his plane was hijacked by terrorists. Elaine knows a lot about what happened from witness accounts. In Stephen’s briefcase was his talk on the composition of the universe. Stephen was made to jump from the plane. Elaine identifies the body, and she wonders whether they shot him before or after throwing him out of the plane. She hopes it was after, so he could experience the freedom of flying for a moment. She thinks about the twins he told her about who aged differently because one was in space. Like them, now she will get older and he will not.