Joyce Hauser has lived here her whole life and never knew. Though airport is perhaps too grand a term; airfield is more like it. There is a single bare strip for a plane to land, lit at either end by colored lights: red, amber, blue. In the parking lot she cuts the engine. A small plane buzzes in the flat blue sky. Watching it, she thinks: Is that you? As though the plane were her brother himself and not merely carrying what’s left of him. She imagines the view from above, the fall foliage peaking, a wash of color over the hills. Except for some scattered sumac, there are no red leaves, none of the brash sugar maples she and Ed saw years ago in New England, where they’d driven on their honeymoon. In western Pennsylvania the fall is pure gold. She rolls down the window and sits a long time, listening to the quiet. The car is a wood-paneled station wagon, five months old, still smelling like its vinyl seats. It’s the first time Joyce has driven it alone.
