Extraterrestrial Life

I am driving to Boston for the first time, dropping my father at the airport. I have never driven to Boston before and I am apprehensive about the airport traffic. I am nowhere near as apprehensive as my father, who sits in the passenger seat clinging to the oh-shit-handle above his right shoulder so tightly that his knuckles are white. I’m a good driver, but you wouldn’t know it based on the look on my father’s face when he rides shotgun.

I am attempting to navigate one of those twenty-lane toll stations where Massachusetts’s drivers feel obligated to drive like maniacs just because there’s space enough. A plane passes low overhead, and the engines rumble, vibrating the car’s windows. It starts out low in pitch as it comes up behind us and then transitions to a higher drone as it passes overhead and becomes a speck in the windshield.

I am no longer a twenty-year-old girl sitting in the car with my terrified father, but a five-year-old who has snuck out of bed in the middle of the night and is peeking out under the window shade to check for UFOs, my brother beside me. We never do more than peek; we are convinced the aliens will abduct us if we actually lift the shade to look properly. It is always just a normal plane, but that doesn’t stop us from sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night, whispering in voices we think are quiet, to make sure. We are so sure that the next one will be a UFO that we lay awake in our bunk beds long after bedtime, waiting for the next rumble of engines so that we can run to the window again.

Our house is not far from the Manchester airport. Every hour, planes pass overhead low enough to rattle the windows in their frames. Whenever we have guests from out of town, they never sleep well because of all the noise. It never bothers me. When we go to visit relatives, I find it too quiet.

When we are awake, the airplanes are a game. In the summer, we pause at the first faraway rumble. We stand there, barefoot, wearing the mismatched t-shirts and shorts we threw on that morning in our haste to be outside, with our necks craned, gazing toward the sky. We try to guess how big the plane will be based on the sound of the engines in the distance. Sometimes we try to guess what company owns the planes, because the planes are low enough to see, and we are old enough to read. Whoever guesses wrong has to run and get the ball the next time it rolls out of bounds or down the hill into the woods.

In the winter, we play hide-and-seek with the planes, running into the trees and burying ourselves with snow to hide until the forces of evil have left the area. The fact that my garish fuchsia snow pants are visible from the air for miles never even occurs to us.

They are especially a game after the sun has set and it is time to be sleeping. The planes pass low enough that we can see their wing lights flashing around the edges of the light blocking shade our mother has hung in our window. The UFOs are not our idea. there is a story about extraterrestrial life on the news. I do not know what the story is about, and it is not important. The square glow of flashing light around our shade and its alien brightness is what’s important.

One night, we actually see a UFO. The lights are so much brighter than any other plane we have ever seen. The noise is so much louder, an entirely different breed of drone. We panic and run straight back to our beds and pull the blankets over our heads, as though that can protect us from anything. It takes me longer to hide, since the top bunk is mine. I slam my knee on the railing as I clamber up the ladder. I’m breathing heavy and shaking when I finally to pull the plush green blanket over my head.

We wait a full minute after the windowpanes stop shaking and the last rumbles of the engine have faded into the distance, before we finally run down the hall, to where our parents are watching television in the living room. We tell them that we just saw a UFO! My father is angry, but he isn’t shouting. His quiet-angry is worse than his shouting. He tells us calmly that it was just a military jet, and to get back in bed now. We are offended by his incredulity, but know better than to argue.

My father is shouting at me to pay attention to the road, damn it. I am no longer a five-year-old peeking under the window shade to check for UFOs. I don’t live in a house near the airport anymore; I haven’t for many years. I’m a twenty-year-old driving through a chaotic toll plaza, and my frantic father’s knuckles are now nearly purple from the strain of clinging to the oh-shit-handle too tightly. I roll my eyes, because, yes, I am paying attention and, yes, I do see the black SUV that is about to cut me off.

Then we’re through the tolls, and my father’s hand is relaxing ever so slightly.

I think back to the UFO that my brother and I saw that night. My father was probably right; it was probably just a military jet. But I want it to be a UFO, even though I don’t believe in UFOs anymore. I glance up again, looking for the plane, but it’s gone. I don’t know whether it has landed or simply passed over the horizon. I wish I had seen where it had gone.