The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories Read Free

do not know how she knew how to contact me on the plane. Other phones rang at other seats, too, and I suppose it is possible that the airline gave these callers our numbers. She sounded the same on the phone as she had when I had last spoken with her, some seven or eight years before, but I knew that she must have looked much older than I remembered, and as we spoke, I closed my eyes and tried to add wrinkles and creases to her face, gray hairs to her scalp, liver spots to the back of the hand that held the phone.
    She told me about my father, his heart attack. She told me that she had gone to my wife’s second wedding, and that it was a nice, small affair. She asked me about what we had been eating, and, so she wouldn’t worry, I did not mention the weight I had lost, or the flavorless liquid the Pilot had us drink. She asked if I had met anyone on the plane, a nice woman, perhaps, someone, anyone to keep me from feeling lonely. So she wouldn’t worry, I told her about the pregnant woman, who had not been pregnant now for quite some time, but I was embarrassed talking about it on the phone since I knew that she could hear me saying these things to my mother even though both of us knew nothing had ever happened between the two of us except for one night, during a heavy storm, when the cabin lights blew out and she grabbed my hand out of fright. I tried talking to her once or twice after that night, but her son, who had grown into a rather big boy at seven years old, locked me in the bathroom when his mother wasn’t looking and threatened to keep me locked in there unless I promised to leave his mother alone.
    After a while, a second woman’s voice came on the line and informed my mother and me that the call would end soon and that the phones would be disconnected and shut off once we hung up. We said our good-byes. I told her to tell my wife hello. Then we hung up.

     
    Early on, I figured that what I would miss most from my former life, assuming that we would not make it through the tragedy alive, would be my wife: the presence of her, the sound of her voice, the feel of her pressed next to me at night in our bed, her small soft hand enveloped by my own. But I have found that, not being dead, not even being seriously injured, not being lost or, technically, alone, but instead finding myself in this plane, what I miss most are those basic qualities of life—standing up, walking around, sleeping lying flat, sex—and what I miss above all is food.
    We ran out of the ham and cheese sandwiches within six weeks, despite the rationing, and the pretzels were eaten within the next month after that. At first, we were disappointed that we had no more food, until it dawned on us that, unless the Pilot wanted to starve himself or, even if he had been hoarding his own supplies in the cockpit, unless he wanted to circle Dallas with a plane full of the starved and emaciated and, eventually, dead, he would have to finally land.
    A full two days passed after the last bag of pretzels had been emptied before the Pilot finally came out of his cockpit. Expecting him to admit defeat, or to inform us of his plans to land in some remote island in the Pacific or simply to crash us into the earth (by then, anything would have been preferable to the constant sight of the city below us), we waited patiently for him to speak. He frowned and looked down at his feet. “As you are probably all now aware, we have run out of food, which means we must now draw straws to see who of us will be the first to be eaten.” He paused as we each looked at our neighbor, and perhaps if he had actually made us try to eat one another, we would have then risen up, wrested control of the plane from him, found a way to land, ended the ordeal. But before we could do or say anything, he smiled broadly at us and laughed, saying, “No, no, no. I’m just joking.” He then proceeded to walk down the aisle, pulling out a bag he’d hidden behind his back, and began to