The Open Door

Her father asked about flying while Laura was helping clear the breakfast table.

He had been watching the weather through the kitchen window, although the view from there consisted mostly of a wet fence and the neighbor’s maple. Now sunlight was reaching the upper branches.

“I might go out to the airport,” he said. “Want to come?”

Her mother took the plates from Laura.

“He’s been waiting for you to ask.”

“I just asked her.”

“You’ve been mentioning the weather since yesterday.”

Laura looked at her father. He was trying to appear occupied with his coffee.

“I’d like to.”

“Bring a jacket. We’ll see what it looks like when we get there.”

She had driven to Portland the previous afternoon, arriving with a bag of garden produce, a small overnight case, and more work than she intended to admit. The work remained upstairs. After the week she had spent answering questions about the company’s financing, she was pleased to be invited somewhere she could not open the laptop.

At the airport, her father’s manner changed. At home, he sometimes searched for his glasses while wearing them. Beside the airplane, he moved through a familiar sequence without hurry, explaining a few things and checking others silently. Laura walked with him, carrying the jackets while he inspected the aircraft.

He had always liked knowing how things worked. She remembered him at the kitchen table with some small mechanism opened in front of him, its pieces arranged on newspaper. The airplane gave that same attention more room.

When they were seated, he helped her settle the headset and checked that she could hear him. His voice sounded unexpectedly close.

“All right?”

She adjusted the earpiece. “You sound very official.”

“Try to remember that.”

They taxied past hangars and a row of parked aircraft. Laura watched the wing move over the pavement. Then they waited near the runway while her father attended to things she understood only in outline.

She liked watching him work. It was a pleasure she had not anticipated when he asked her to come.

During takeoff, she felt the acceleration through the seat and then the slight, unmistakable release as the wheels left the ground. The runway lowered beneath them. Buildings lost their separate importance and joined the larger arrangement of roads, trees, and water.

Her father glanced across.

Laura was smiling.

They climbed into smoother air. Portland spread beneath a thinning layer of cloud, the river showing between buildings before broadening beyond them. From the road, she usually knew the city by turns and destinations. Up here, places she had kept separate belonged to the same landscape.

Her father pointed out a bend in the river. As he turned, the wing lifted, and Laura looked down through a depth of clear air.

She remembered sitting beside an open aircraft door with her feet on the edge.

---

It had been the summer before law school. She was working, saving what she could, and beginning to receive envelopes describing the things she would need when she arrived. Her life had acquired dates again: forms due, a room available, the first day she was expected somewhere.

A friend told her about the parachute jump during lunch.

Several people were going. There was room for one more.

Laura asked when.

The friend looked surprised. “You’re interested?”

“I asked when.”

She agreed before she knew enough to have useful questions. Those came later, along with a folded information sheet she read at home and then put away.

At the airfield that Saturday, the people who had been loudest about going became busy with small preparations. Someone needed the restroom again. Someone else had left something in the car. Laura stood outside a low building and watched a parachute descending over the far side of the field.

From the ground, it looked peaceful.

Her instructor introduced himself and explained what they would do. He spoke plainly, showing her the equipment and asking her to repeat the few things she needed to remember. Laura appreciated the absence of encouragement. She had no desire to be told that she was brave while he tightened the harness.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

She considered the straps.

“Secure.”

“That’s what we’re after.”

The aircraft seemed very small once everyone was inside. Laura sat where she was directed, aware of knees, equipment, and the noise of the engine. As they climbed, she watched the ground through the window.

She had been in airplanes before. She knew the gradual shrinking of houses and roads, the way fields became shapes. What she had never done was look at that view while preparing to leave the airplane before it landed.

Her instructor checked their connections. She listened carefully as he went over what would happen next.

Then the door opened.

The wind and noise entered together. Everything outside had seemed manageable through glass. With the door open, the air became something with force and movement. Laura could see the ground far below and the empty space between.

For the first time that morning, she understood the full usefulness of staying inside.

They moved toward the opening.

She had thought there would be a moment set aside for deciding, some interval in which she could examine her feelings and announce that she was ready. Instead, there were instructions, movements to make, and her own determination to follow them correctly.

At the edge, she placed her feet where she had been told.

The instructor spoke close to her ear.

She nodded.

Then the airplane was gone.

Her stomach seemed to remain behind for an instant. She had time to feel astonishment at what she had done before the air caught them.

The rush was immense. She could not have said how far they had fallen or how long it had taken to arrive at that strange steadiness. The ground was below, the sky around them, and her body had become part of a movement too large to measure by the familiar sensations of jumping or dropping.

She had expected to scream.

Perhaps she did. The wind would have kept it to itself.

What she remembered clearly was opening her eyes wider. She wanted to see. Fields, roads, roofs, the pale shape of the airfield—everything was there, and she was out in it.

When the parachute opened, the change took her by surprise again. The force settled her into the harness, and the great noise diminished.

She could hear the instructor.

She could hear herself laughing.

For a while they descended in a quiet she would not have believed possible moments earlier. He pointed toward the landing area and talked her through what would happen when they reached it. Laura listened, then looked outward again.

She wanted more time.

On the ground, her legs felt unfamiliar. She stood while the instructor disconnected the equipment, trying to arrange her face into an expression that might communicate what had happened.

Her friend came over.

“Well?”

Laura began to answer, stopped, and laughed again.

Later, waiting while the others completed their jumps, she found herself watching each parachute emerge against the sky. She could identify the moment when it opened, but from down here she could not see the person discovering the quiet beneath it.

That evening her mother asked how her day had been.

Laura was at the kitchen table, eating with an appetite she had not expected.

“I jumped out of an airplane.”

Her mother held the dish she had been about to set down.

“You what?”

Laura explained.

From the other end of the table, her father asked which airfield.

Her mother looked at him.

“That’s your question?”

“There are others,” he said.

---

Beside her now, he eased the airplane out of the turn. The wing settled, and the river returned to its place beneath them.

Laura adjusted the microphone.

“Do you remember when I went parachuting?”

He looked across briefly. “Your mother does.”

She laughed.

“I was thinking about it.”

“I wondered if you might.”

For a while they flew without talking. Laura watched sunlight move across the water. There were boats below, each carrying its small disturbance behind it. She could not hear them, or the roads, or any of the activity she knew was taking place.

“Would you do it again?” her father asked.

She considered the question.

“Yes.”

“I thought so.”

“You sound resigned.”

“I’ve had time to get used to you.”

She turned toward him. He was looking ahead, but she could see the smile.

On the way back, the air moved them enough that she reached for the edge of her seat before relaxing her hand. Her father made a small adjustment and continued. She watched the approaching landscape become specific again: a road, a line of trees, individual cars.

The landing required his attention. Laura stayed quiet while the runway rose toward them. There was a brief sound from the tires, then the familiar solidity of moving along the ground.

After they parked, she helped carry their things into the hangar. Her father stood beside the airplane for a moment, looking it over before turning away.

“That was nice,” he said.

“It was.”

“I’m glad you came.”

She touched his arm as they walked toward the car.

At home, her mother met them in the kitchen.

“How was it?”

“Beautiful,” Laura said.

Her father put the keys in their usual place.

“Brought her back with me,” he added.

Her mother looked from one to the other.

“Was that in question?”

Laura reached for a plate from the cupboard.

“We were discussing my earlier methods of coming down.”

Her mother shook her head and handed her the bread.