Munich Airport Read Online Free PDF Page B

here—though I had only seen it in books and on computer screens— Music I . My father was disappointed in me. I told him to go for a walk and meet me later.
    He turned back around to me. He was still yawning, so I had to yawn. It was cold. It was windy and damp, and there was no visibility. Instead of rushing inside, we waited in the fog. We’d be indoors for a long time, breathing indoor air. I was trying not to let myself think of the journey itself. I was trying to think only of our destination, of landing and getting our bags. It’s hot at home, so once we step into the night air our clothes will feel heavy. The funeral will take place two days from now, on Tuesday. I advised my father to keep it small, but he’s invited all my mother’s old friends, so it won’t be small. He gave Trish the numbers of my mother’s closest friends—women to whom he has probably not properly spoken since my mother’s death, since her funeral—and they took over. My father’s car is parked at the airport. He says he’s certain he’s parked in the long-term lot, but I’m worried it’s the short-term lot, and we’ll have to pay a couple hundred dollars. We will drive home from the airport with the windows down. I will drive. The journey from the airport to my father’s house takes about forty-five minutes. On that drive you find long stretches of pine forests and swampland, and refineries loom and blink beside the interstate. It is very close to the Gulf. The air smells like sewage, petroleum, and salt. When we get home, my father will turn the lights on in the kitchen and the living room, but not any other lights, go to the bathroom, take his various pills. He’ll look through his mail without opening any envelopes. We might take a walk in darkness around the backyard. I might dip my feet in the pool. We will sit in front of the television, try to find a movie or some golf, or check the weather. He will fall asleep a few times finally and declare that it’s bedtime. He will get up from the sofa, stretch and yawn away the stiffness that’s accumulated in his arms and neck and back, walk sleepily to the doorway to his bedroom. He will turn around and salute me and say See you in the morning.
    When my mother died, twenty years ago, I expected that my father, Miriam, and I would go through a brief period of centripetal anguish. I expected I would come home from London to bury her, see my father and sister mourning, and closeness would develop, a strengthened sense of being responsible for each other’s well-being. I expected we’d all spend a few days together in the house, having dinners, doing housework, discussing whether to sell the house or refurbish it—my mother left instructions to sell and move away, but if we did not sell, she wanted us to renovate, tear down a couple of walls, make the place more modern, and put in skylights. Miriam had said to me, on the telephone, when my mother got sick, that she was going to quit college and travel. She had taken a while to get through three years’ worth of credits at college—more than three years, anyway. She did extremely well, but lacked motivation, and in her opinion, the time she’d spent going to classes, taking exams, studying and writing about subjects that didn’t excite her, was too long already. I knew how eager she was to leave the country—I had been just as eager, and the longer I lived in London the happier I was that I’d left home. Now she could finally go. I had a few hundred pounds saved and exchanged them for American Express travelers cheques, and had planned to give them to Miriam.
    My mother died at the age of fifty-three. She and my father first met in New York. He was studying history at Princeton. She was at Vassar, studying anthropology. My mother came from a semi-prominent and highly conservative Southern family, and she used to say it was