“You have to be really sure.”
“Absolutely.”
“And does a really sure person plan a last-minute wedding in the middle of our most important holiday?”
Lurch, lurch, lurch.Anna tried to think of something supportive to say, but the shuddering of the plane was a total distraction.
Even if the right words didn’t come to her, Anna was proud of herself, she realized. Sure, she was scared—but there was a clarity to her fear. As the plane careened and floundered, something felt like it had started to shift inside her. It was as if none of the things that had worried her so much as she was boarding the flight could touch her anymore. She didn’t care that her suitcase was probably stuck in a snowbank at DenverInternational. She didn’t care that she might not make it to the Vandergreys’ Christmas cocktails or any of the other fancy events her boyfriend’s family had planned. And she especially didn’t care that she might never get to wear the engagement ring she had found in Nick’s luggage that morning.
The truth was, she was relieved.
“Oh no,” she said as she truly came to understand the seriousness of this. She was actually thinking she would rather get in a plane crash than have Nick propose to her. If her moments on earth were numbered, she needed to find a way to work through this. She turned to Maryam as the plane took a sudden nosedive and said, “I think my entire life is a lie—”
Just as Maryam said, “I’m so tired of being someone I’m not.”
The two young women’s eyes were wide as they stared at each other. The plane lurched hard, once, twice. “What are we supposed to do?” Anna asked Maryam, her voice strangled by fear. “Assume the crash position? To be honest, I never pay attention when the flight attendant explains the emergency protocols, it’s too terrifying...”
“What if we just kept talking?” Maryam suggested.
“Distract each other. Okay. So tell me more. Why exactly do you feel like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not?”
“I’m so tired of taking care of everything,” Maryam said. “Everyone relies on me for everything. Instead of being upset with my sister about upending Ramadan this year, my parents are secretly delighted she’s marrying a fellow doctor, even though she’s off traveling the world and never home. Why should they care? I’m the dutiful one, the one who decided tobecome a pharmacist to keep the family business going. You’d think that would make them happy. But it doesn’t feel like enough.” Her eyes were filling with tears. “And my sister calls me Bor-yam.”
“ ‘Bor-yam’?”
“Yes. Boring Maryam. That’s my nickname. But theworst partis they’re right! Iamboring! I bore my-selfsometimes! For the record, being a pharmacist is possibly the most boring job in the world!” Anna thought about the way she had felt the night before, back at her apartment, as she had carefully chopped one tiny Dramamine tablet in half. It hadn’t been the most interesting task.
“What would you do instead, if you could do anything at all? Sky’s the limit,” Anna asked, curious now.
“I’d be a writer.” Maryam responded so quickly, Anna could tell she really meant it. “I’d have a fascinating, interesting, creative life and not have to worry about anyone but myself. Please, don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but I don’t want to carry around every single detail about everyone else’s life inside my head because they all think I’m too boring to have my own dreams! But there is zero money and zero future in writing. Ask my parents.” She took a deep breath. “Do you know what I also want? To be seen for who I really am by a certain someone. But he, like everyone else, only sees one thing when he looks at me: Bor-yam!”
“Who is this certain someone?” Anna said, her voice hoarse. Her knuckles paled as she gripped the armrest while the plane gave a particularly pronounced shudder.
“His name is Saif,” Maryam said. “He’s probably on this plane, sitting in the front with the rest of my family. I’ve had acrush on him since I was old enough to talk. But I’m sure he’s never noticed me once in his life.”
“Oh, Maryam. I’m positive that’s not the case. I mean,Inoticed you at the airport!”
“Oh, please—you only noticed me because of my hijab and because we were making such a scene, and so different from you.”
“That’s not true,” Anna said, and meant it. “I noticed you because you’re gorgeous, poised, and seemed in charge of everything—so calm and collected. And also, totally surrounded by family. In the middle of this circle of people who needed you.”
“What about you, don’t you have a family who needs you?”
“I’m an only child. My mom died when I was too young to remember her, and my dad”—she swallowed hard here, trying to keep it together, because even if she was about to die, she didn’t want it to be while she was a sobbing mess with mascara running down her face—“passed away two years ago, from a heart attack.” She wasn’t able to help it, though; a tear slid down her cheek. “Then this year, my ex-stepmother, Beth, got remarried and...” She wiped her eyes and kept talking as the plane made a strange whining sound and she realized a potential crash probably was really on the table here and if she didn’t get this all out now, she might not ever get the chance. “She has a new husband and another stepdaughter now, and I don’t have any family left at all. Like, truly. I’m an only child, and so were both my parents. I suppose I have some second or third cousins somewhere, but we’re not in touch. So, I’m heading to Toronto to spend the holidays with my boyfriend’s family. We’ve been dating for six months and he’s the perfectguy: good looks, good job, good family, good everything. Except I’m realizing now that being with him has made me realize how veryun-perfect I am. I’ve started feeling like I’m playacting a role in my own life. Like my life is a movie. Ideal job—except my boss is a tyrant. Ideal boyfriend—except I’m not sure Nick knows the real me. But maybe that’sgreat, right? Who doesn’t want a perfect-looking life and a happy-looking ending? Does it even matter if any of it’s real? Is anyone being honest about who they are and how happy their life really is?” Anna shook her head, trying to dislodge all these swirling, complicated thoughts so she could breathe properly again. “I suspect Nick is going to propose on Christmas Eve because that would be the fairy-tale way to do it. And I’ll say yes, becausewhowould say no to a fairy-tale ending? It’s just that it doesn’t feel right.”
“I had no idea, Anna,” Maryam said softly.
Anna wiped away another tear. “And all I can think about is how something will be missing as I celebrate Christmas with his family. It won’t be like my past, likemyfamily did it. Beth is Jewish, so we celebrated Hanukkah, too, from when I was seven onward. It started to feel like part of who I was. And this year, with Hanukkah falling at the same time as Christmas, it feels really special. And I miss... well,everything. It’s hard, feeling like you don’t have any family at all. Like your past is all just... gone. I’ve been trying to put my past behind me, but it isn’t working.”
“Tell me about your holiday celebrations as a kid,” Maryam said as the plane continued to behave like it was a ship in a stormy sea, not an air vessel cruising at high altitudes. Anna felt a wave inside her as well—but instead of fear, it was gratitudetoward Maryam, a woman she hardly knew but who wanted to talk to her and distract her from her abject terror. This was the only person she had been able to really tell her truth to in a very long time. A person who was asking her about something she had tried to pretend did not exist in her life, for two lonely years.
Anna closed her eyes, but instead of seeing visions of the plane crashing into the mountains, she could see the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree she and her dad would cut down together at a farm every year. Her dad never rushed her choice—even though one year that meant he got frostbite on one of his hands, a fact he tried to hide from her until she saw the bandage. “Totally worth it to make my little Anna Banana happy,” he had said.
In addition to the Christmas tree lights, Anna could see the soft candle glimmers in her mind’s eye. Those were coming from the brass menorah that always sat in the center of their dining room table during the eight nights of Hanukkah, a menorah that had been passed down to Beth by her own mother—a woman who had died when Beth was young, too. This shared sadness had bonded them close, carried them through some of their rockier early days, when Anna had worried there might not be room for her in her father’s new marriage. “No matter when Hanukkah fell, we’d always try to get our tree up at the same time. Then there’d be extra lights. Extra sparkle. We’d wait to decorate the tree until closer to Christmas, but always turn on our Christmas tree lights, light the menorah, say the prayers—and then Beth and I would make Christmas cookies together. Or Nutella rugelach, which is truly the best thing in the world. And latkes, she makes—made—thebestlatkes.” Shesmiled and continued. “We’d walk to the carol service at church on Christmas Eve. At the end, the lights in the sanctuary would be dimmed, and everyone would get to take a candle—total fire hazard, I guess, but nothing bad ever happened—to hold. The choir would sing ‘Silent Night’ while everyone filed out of the church holding their light. We’d walk home with our candles, and I would always think about how light and goodness were so important to both holidays. I’d look down at my candle and feel like maybe it could light up the world.”
Maryam clutched her arm and Anna jolted back to reality. “I think it stopped!” she said. “I think we’re going tolive!”
Anna waited a beat and realized Maryam was right: the plane was now sailing gracefully through the air as if that had always been the case. There was a crackle on the intercom, and the pilot’s calm voice was in their ears again.
