The Progress of Love

smile, of apology or conspiracy. “Excuse me.”
    “That’s all right,” says Mary Jo, thinking the girl is apologizing for the quarrel. Then she sees that “Excuse me” means “May I get past?” The girl wants to step over Mary Jo’s legs, which are stretched out for comfort, crossed at the ankles. She wants to sit down in the window seat.
    Mary Jo makes way. The girl sits down, wipes her eyes with a straight-across movement of her forefinger, and gives a loud snuffle that sounds businesslike and conclusive. What now?
    “Don’t tell nobody,” the girl says. “Don’t tell nobody.”
    She lays her broad hand on Mary Jo’s knee, then takes it away.
    “No,” says Mary Jo. But who would she tell and why would she tell about such a formless bit of a quarrel?
    “Don’t tell nobody. I am Eskimo.”
    Of course Mary Jo has known ever since the girl got into the aisle and opened her mouth that it was all nonsense about the Khan and the favorite wife. She nods, but the word “Eskimo” bothers her more than the fact. That isn’t the word to use anymore, is it?“Inuit.” That’s the word they use now.
    “He is Metis. I am Eskimo.”
    All right, then. Métis and Eskimo. Fellow-Canadians. A joke on me, thinks Mary Jo. In her head, shell have to start a different sort of letter.
    “Don’t tell nobody.”
    The girl behaves as if she is confessing something—a shameful secret, a damaging mistake. She is frightened but trying to be dignified. She says again, “Don’t tell nobody,” and she puts her fingers for a few seconds across Mary Jo’s mouth. Mary Jo can feel the heat of her skin and the tremor that runs through the girl’s fingers and her whole body. She is like an animal in an entirely uncommunicable panic.
    “No. No, I won’t,” says Mary Jo again. The best thing to do, she thinks, is to pretend to understand everything contained in this request.
    “Are you going to Tahiti?” she says conversationally. She knows how an ordinary question at a moment like this can provide a bridge over somebody’s terror.
    The girl’s smile breaks open as if she appreciates the purpose of the question, its kindness, though in her case it can hardly be enough. “He’s going to Hawaii,” the girl says. “Me, too.”
    Mary Jo glances across the aisle. The man’s head is lolling. He may have dozed off. Even when she has turned away, she can feel the girl’s heat and quivering.
    “How old are you?” says Mary Jo. She doesn’t really know why she asks this.
    The girl shakes her head, as if her age is indeed an absurd and deplorable fact. “I am Eskimo.”
    What has that to do with it? She says it as if it might be a code word, which Mary Jo would eventually understand.
    “Yes. But how old are you?” says Mary Jo more confidently. “Are you twenty? Are you over twenty? Eighteen?”
    More headshaking and embarrassment, more smiling. “Don’t tell nobody.”
    “How old?”
    “I am Eskimo. I am sixteen.”
    Mary Jo looks across the aisle again to make sure the man isn’t listening. He seems to be asleep.
    “Sixteen?”
    The girl wags her head heavily, almost laughing. And doesn’t stop trembling.
    “Are you? No? Yes? Yes.”
    Again those thick fingers passed like feathers over Mary Jo’s mouth.
    “Do you want to go to Hawaii with him? Is it all right?”
    “He is going to Hawaii. Me, too.”
    “Listen,” says Mary Jo, speaking softly and carefully. “I am going to get up and walk to the back of the plane. I am going to where the washrooms are. The toilets. I’ll wait for you back there. After a moment, you get up and come back. You come to the back of the plane where the toilets are and we’ll talk there. It’s better to talk there. All right? Do you understand me? All right.”
    She gets up unhurriedly, retrieves her jacket, which has slipped down on the seat, rearranges it. The man rolls his head on the cushion, gives her a glazed, gloomy look, the look of a dog half-asleep. His eyes slide under the lids and his head turns away.
    “All right?” Mary Jo mouths the words at the girl without a sound.
    The girl presses her fingers over her own mouth, her smile.
    Mary Jo walks to the back of the plane. Earlier, she removed her boots and put on slippers. Now she pads along comfortably, but misses the feeling of competence and resolution that boots can give.
    She has to get in the lineup for the toilets, because there is nowhere else to stand. The line extends into the little space by the