Page 7 of Good Dirt

Flight

A t the airport, Ebby’s mother hugs her tight. Here she is, twenty-nine years old, and this will be her first overseas trip alone and her first stay far from home for more than a couple of weeks. Ebby went to university a twenty-minute drive from her childhood home, worked in two offices nearby, and now reviews and edits her clients’ reports from her condo in the next town over.

After high school, there was no student gap year abroad. There were no post-university rail passes for Europe. While other students packed their hiking sandals and shoved books and headphones into their knapsacks, Ebby pretended she wasn’t interested in any of these experiences. She didn’t want to live with the guilt of leaving her mother behind to worry.

Instead, she meets her mother once a week at the farmers market off the post road in her old neighborhood, just to spend the time shopping with her. And she still goes clamming with her dad once in a while, though not like they did when Baz was alive.

When Baz was still around, he and Ebby and Dad would make a show of grabbing a bucket, rake, and stick, walking down to the shore, and rolling up the cuffs of their jeans, only to spend most of their time watching other people hunt. Just being there used to be enough for them. There was something peaceful about seeing a person absorbed in a satisfying task.

But now, whenever Ebby goes with her dad, they fling themselves into activity. They scratch-scratch at the ground, then crouch down and pick out the quahogs and steamers by hand.

Scratch-scratch-scratch.

“You can search your whole life for something you’ll never find,” Dad once told her and Baz, his face sober, his right hand over his heart, “but if you do the work and you’re patient,” he intoned, letting his voice slow down and sink into his chest as he swept his arm outward, “sooner or later, you will find a clam.” He chuckled then, and they snorted at Dad’s clam wisdom. At low tide, after all, it didn’t take much looking. But now that Ebby is grown, she sees what her dad meant back then, even as he joked with them. With all the things that can happen in life, a person needs the certainty of clams.

“Text us when you land,” her mom says as Ebby breathes in the cottony, blossomy scent of her mother’s shirt collar. “Text us when you reach the town.” Her mother says text us because that’s what people do nowadays, but what she really means is call us . Call us when you get there. Call us when you wake up. Call us every day. Call us twice a day.

Her dad says nothing, only hugs her for a long moment, then nods once in that way that he does, that squinty, go-get-’em half smile on his face. When Ebby looks back from the snaking security line, she sees her parents watching her. Two people so beautiful to look at, they couldn’t hide if they tried. Even in one of the busiest buildings in the country, her parents still draw looks. Her dad in his slim-hipped chinos. Her mother, mahogany face glowing above her sky-blue shirt. But Ebby can see right through their casual elegance. Her mother and father are clinging to each other like two people trying to keep their footing on a bobbing life raft.

Ebby calls her mother while walking down the gangway to the airplane.

“You miss me yet?” she says, and she and her mom laugh into their phones. She will call again once she has landed, she promises. And again when she reaches the cottage, yes. The sense of guilt that Ebby feels as she boards the aircraft and shoves her wheelie bag into the overhead compartment has dampened the back of her shirt with perspiration, but the feeling begins to give way as soon as she taps Airplane Mode on her smartphone.

At the first whiff of jet fuel seeping into the cabin, at the upward thrust of the plane, at the ping of the seatbelt sign as it blinks off, Ebby experiences a new sensation, like a cloak falling away from her shoulders and leaving behind a cool, silken something that can best be described as relief. Her plan to run away from home may not be a terribly original idea, but it feels like the smartest thing Ebby has done all year.