Long Bright Line

Through the window Clara could see the men: dark still hats huddled together. The only thing moving was their pipe smoke. It curled in lamp-lit clouds. Then—a whoop!—the clouds blew, the huddle burst, the hats were flying.

Out in the street the gaslights seemed to feel her father’s cheer; on her mother’s face she watched them gutter.

Stephanie Shieldhouse

“Look at him.” The woman’s grip was strong as any man’s. “How happy!” But the fingers were bonier, worn to hooks. “Look,” she commanded, “and tell me where he sets his heart.” Then the grip became a shove. Her mother’s fetch your father, and that damn club.

The Society for Aeronautical Enthusiasm. Sometimes, when she was sad, or scared, or simply felt the inexplicable weight of herself, she would intone the strange words like an incantation: Aeronautical enthusiasm, aeronautical enthusiasm, aeronautical . . . She said it now . . . enthusiasm . . . starting up the station steps . . . aeronautical . . . shoe-clacking through the empty lobby . . . enthusiasm . . . to the shut door . . . aeronautical enthusiasm. She knocked.

Inside it was all smoke and suit backs, elbows at her head level, her father bending down, face flush as drunk, but eyes clear, grin pure, whoop a straight shot of glee. He scooped her up.

“Fifty-nine seconds!”

How long had it been since her father had held her like that?

“Eight hundred and fifty feet!”

Lifted her so high? With each hoist and drop she felt her years shake off, seven, six, five, her brother’s age, Larry in the corner watching, this is what it’s like to be him.

Before her face: a piece of paper, some smiling stranger lifting and lowering it for her to read. At the top, the stationmaster’s name. At the bottom, that of the man her father called their father: Bishop M. Wright.

“The Flyer!” Her father raised her high again. Near the ceiling the air made her eyes water. “The Flyer!” He lifted her into the pipe-smoke clouds.

But she wasn’t, wouldn’t be. The balloon ride he’d won—best guess at time and distance of the first flight—was a prize he unwrapped on the cold walk home: how they would scale the sunset, skim beneath the stars, a Christmas present more miracle than gift. Just not for her. Why? The basket size, the limits on weight. Besides, he said, ascending so high would surely swell that head of yours. He tugged her braid. No doubt big as the balloon itself. Laughed. While around them little Larry ran in circles, whooping.

On Christmas Eve all she wanted was to stay up late enough to watch them float by above. But if she did, her mother told her, putting her heavy shoulders into the rolling pin, how could Saint Nick bring her her gifts? She spoke in sentences choppy with work: What did Clara think they were doing up there, her father, her brother, in that balloon? Airborne beside the sleigh, pointing out good children’s houses, steering the reindeer toward the right roofs. Why else would they have had to do it on Christmas Eve? The last word pressed out by a hard push. Why else leave their women alone this one night a year she liked to share a little brandy with her husband, squeeze beside him on the chair, sing carols, hear that sweetness in your father’s voice, let her own loose just a little. . . .

“But what about Larry? He won’t be asleep.”

Her mother set the pin down, crouched: her face suddenly level with her daughter’s, her eyes strangely soft, her brow smooth as the dough she’d rolled, her hand ice cold on Clara’s cheek. From her forearm flour fell like snow. “You know,” she said, “they won’t see anything. Going up at night. Sweetie, out there it’ll just be cold and dark and not one damn thing to see.”

There was the whole world. Edge to edge. Lit by the stark stare of a full Yule Moon. And, out...