Philippa's Hands Read online

BOSTON—A TWA 707 jetliner failed to take-off at Logan Airport late last night and plumetted into Boston Harbor, killing at least 257 people. The plane, Flight 18 from Boston to Washington, achieved take-off speed but failed to leave the ground at the end of the runway, which ended at the Harbor. The plane sped forward and sank in the 63-degree water.

  The jetliner remained two-thirds submerged in the water, enabling at least 9 passengers and airline personnel to escape through the two doors they managed to open.

  “There was this roar and then a huge splash,” said Elizabeth Brattle, who witnessed the crash from the deck of her sailboat moored in the Harbor. “Waves rolled in, nearly swamping the boat. You could hear people screaming. It was horrible."

  By twenty minutes after the disaster, diving teams were on the scene to assist in the recovery. Divers are expected to remain on the scene throughout the night.

  The cause of the plane's failure to lift into the air is unknown. TWA spokesperson Richard Connington expressed shock and concern but cautioned against speculation that

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  There was a second article, an eyewitness account from one of the passengers who escaped, and a picture of the drowning plane. Philippa didn't read the second article. The four rosy hideous women bent nearly double with wailing and grief, and their beautiful tears pooled on the wooden floor. Philippa watched them, feeling their pain, feeling all the pain and terror of the great plane reaching the end of the runway and still rolling along the ground, of the dizzying lurch into the water, the sudden-impact. Did the water come in right away? Did the lights go out? People screaming, choking in the darkness, and later that other choking and darkness, of the survivors.

  Sam had taken down the crucifix when he took down the ancient dingy needlepoint worked by one of Philippa's great-aunts and the framed painting of a woodland brook which Philippa had bought at The Art Shoppe in Carter Falls. She wondered if she would have been able to see the crucifix, this time. The pink thread of light shot out from one of the crying women, Philippa couldn't see which one, and touched the first joint of her right thumb.

  At the base of the thumb, just below the knuckle, was a burn blister where she had foolishly touched the pan taking an apple pie for Sam out of the oven. Sam, eating the pie at her kitchen table. Holding the square of heated metal of the wallpaper stripper against this room, while she followed him with the scrub bucket. Holding the tips of her fingers while they watched TV and never saying anything against them, anything at all about stupidity or pride or need.

  At least 257 people. “You could hear people screaming."

  The knife appeared on the bed. The glowing women cried and wailed. All the sorrow of the world seemed to flow through them, the world beyond this room, the Philippa had once thought to renounce and go be a middle-aged nun because there was nothing left here anyway.

  Philippa whispered, “No,” and the knife vanished.

  She stood shivering in a sudden breeze from the window as the silently keening women also vanished, leaving the pool of rosy tears on the scarred floor that a Sam planned to wax shining and hard and golden.

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