Airplane Rides by Jake Alexander Page B

help,” I offered reassuringly.
    We each took a sip and carefully set the glasses down before
returning to eye contact.
    “Very strong,” he said through contorted lips.
    “Sometimes it’s not strong enough.”
     
    “How do you know she didn’t have any problems?”
    “Well I agree with your implication that there must have been
something or she would not have taken her own life.  I understand that.  What I
know is that she was an honor student and that she didn’t take drugs. She
attended mass every Sunday with both of her parents. Everything seemed fine.”
    “How did she kill herself?”
    “She hung herself.”
    “Did she say why?”
    “Not exactly. There was no note.  In fact, she had meticulously
cleaned and organized her room.  She even did her homework!”
    “So what does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
    “She left a journal that her mother found,” Daniel replied
cautiously.
    I listened to his thoughts and heard him question the lines of
confidentiality.
    “How well did you know her?” I asked, bringing it back to him
and testing for his discomfort with the direction.
    “She was very involved with the church,” he explained.
“Community projects, fundraisers, those kinds of things.”
    “Was she also of Japanese descent?” I asked, trying not to
suggest it made the connection any greater.
    “Yes,” he replied, without taking any apparent offense.
    “Did she ever approach you with any of the things that might
have been troubling her?”
    “Not at all. In fact we spoke the day before she died. It was
on Sunday and I had just finished giving mass.  I was standing in the entrance
to the church and saying goodbye to people as they were leaving.  I remember
very clearly putting my hands on her shoulders while talking to her and her
parents.  Everything seemed fine, and yet she already knew what she was going
to do,” he concluded, shaking his head at his confusion.
     
    I let him sit with his thoughts for a moment while I sorted out
his story.  I felt a little guilty about having treated him rudely, and wanted
to make it up to him.
    “So what did she say in the journal?”
    Daniel pressed his lips together in thought, developing the
paraphrase.
    “It said she was missing something that caused her sadness.”
    “Missing what?”
    “She didn’t know.  Something was just missing, a void that left
her unhappy.”
    There was a sadness of his own that tugged at the corners of
his eyes and mouth.
    “So what about the departure of these two people makes you
question your faith?”
     
    Again Daniel pursed his lips, but this time with more
introspection.  He took a sip of his drink to clear his throat and then turned
to face me.
    “I guess I question why these people didn’t find what they were
looking for in my parish.”
    I tried to hide my smile as the words rushed to the back of my
lips.
    “So this is about your job.”
    “These events don’t make me not like my job,” he responded with
less grace than he had previously displayed.
    “Perhaps, but you are questioning whether you’re any good at it
because you lost a few customers.”
     
    Daniel was not accustomed to being spoken to so bluntly, and I
reminded myself to be more delicate.
    “You’re an interesting man,” Daniel said to me, letting the
sting of my statement wear off.
    “How so?” I asked, permitting the conversational offensive.  It
was the least I could do, considering he was a man of God.
    “You are unencumbered by the feelings of others.”
    “Are we back on the guy from this morning or are we talking
about you?”
    “Neither, the statement was about you.”
    “And why would you find that interesting?”
    “It just seems I keep running into that.”
    “Maybe I can be a bit direct but…”
    “I was talking about people who have stopped caring.”
    There was a deafening pause between us while the question of my
hopelessness returned to mind.
    “Let’s get back to what we have a prayer of fixing here.