Kirsten Vangsness

But it's a cheap trick.

Sometimes she takes the children down to the beach to watch the hand gliders.

She can't imagine being strapped to such a contraption, but she watches anyway, reading their faces for hints as they rise off the cliff edges like Icarus.

She wonders if they ever come here alone, secretly at night with no one around, without all the equipment, to soar through the air unhindered.

Ellie does not regret being a wife and a mother, choosing one thing for another.

The closest she has ever gotten to that feeling of flying years ago has been in labor, just as the baby's head pushed out.

She talks about binoculars, to study birds, to watch them fly through meadows and forests, but she has no real interest in the birds themselves, and no desire to learn their names or find out about their habitats.

The children are growing rapidly, two sons and a daughter, and she suspects they would understand if she confided to them that she had flown.

The feeling has begun to grow stronger these days.

Not only the certainty that she and Mac actually flew, but that she can do it again.

She considers psychological counseling but sees no point in being analyzed.

This is no metaphor.

She wants to fly, that is all.

This is not about unfulfilled desires and creative urges, a stifling marriage, a slow emotional death.

It is about memory and experience and wanting to trust in both.

One windy afternoon, Allie steps into the backyard with the thought in mind that perhaps she can test out her impulses, maybe lift off the ground a few inches, not really go anywhere, certainly not leave her children.

She pulls an orange crate from the garage, stands on it, feels the wind sifting through her hair.

She raises her arms, extends, curves, and straightens them.

What if a neighbor is watching?

Calls the police.