“Okay sir. Thank you for your business okay.”
“Uh, sure. Yeah. What do I, uh, owe you?”
“Twenty-two ninety-three please.”
The passenger reached into his back pocket and extracted a worn bifold. He pried the wallet open and fingered his cash.
“You, uh, take plastic?”
“Yes sir. Of course sir.”
The passenger proffered his credit card to the driver. The driver prepared a receipt. They completed the transaction. The driver exited and slid the side door open.
“Let me get your bags for you Mister Itner sir.”
“Oh, I’ve just got the one.” The passenger lurched out of his seat. “I think I can manage.”
The driver reached for the dated Samsonite as the passenger started to heave it out of the taxi. The driver backpedaled. The passenger groaned and stomped one busted loafer on the pavement, then the other.
The passenger looked toward the entrance. “It’s, uh, been a while. Do I make a right or left in there or what?”
“Of course sir. Go through these glass doors and make a right. Follow the signs for your airline. They can help you further sir.”
“I hope so.” The passenger hoisted his suitcase off the ground. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome sir. Safe travels Mister Itner sir.”
The passenger hobbled across the exit lane, his free arm protruding for balance. He paused to wipe his brow and continued.
Though it was not yet dawn, the terminal gleamed with bright, cold light. High overhead, a smooth concave ceiling capped the chaos beneath with matte white serenity. To his right, clumps of people clotted around computer stations. A bank of screens displayed arrivals and departures in flashing yellow and white text. The first of many lines wound behind a blue and red counter.
The passenger checked his watch. 4:52. He had a little over two and a half hours before takeoff.
***
People hug, and people kiss. People wave and smile, frown and cry. Some merge back into traffic, onto ramps and highways, and off to familiar streets where the days drone on with bleak sameness. Some merge into queues, onto planes and runways, and off to distant lands where constant novelty saturates experience until it doesn’t.
***
The passenger walked towards a bright red counter with a pair of nested triangles mounted above it. He stood behind a young couple who were trading barbs in hushed tones. A child in a nearby stroller swung her toy.
“Is this the, uh, line to get on board?”
“What? No. Security’s over there. Down the escalator.” The woman gestured to the checkpoint.
“Oh.” The passenger put his suitcase down. “Then what’re we waiting for?”
“This is where you check your bags or check in or try to change your flights or whatever.”
“I just bought my ticket last night. Over the phone.” He adjusted his glasses. “They really gouge you. No such thing as bereavement fare anymore, I guess.”
The woman checked on her child.
“So you think this is where I’m supposed to be?”
“If you haven’t checked in, then yes.”
“I dunno. Guess I’ll stay.” The passenger wiped his brow. “I haven’t flown in a long time. Since you were your daughter’s age I bet.”
The woman turned towards the man she was with and said something.
Hearing high-heeled steps behind him, the passenger slid his suitcase ahead. The passenger looked back to see a business woman digging through her bag. “I don’t know how you ever find anything in those things.”
The business woman did not reply.
The couple’s child tossed her toy on the ground. The passenger started to gesture towards it, but the father had already bent down. “You’ve gotta hold onto your toys, Lena, okay hon? What’re we going to do if you lose it, huh? We’d all be so sad.”
The child clutched her toy and shook it. The crackle was absorbed by the cavernous space.
***
Welcome! (to the place where control is proven illusory) Bienvenue! (to the place where rules are rules and enforced as such) Wilkomen! (to the place where no one wants to be for as long as they are) Witaj! (to the place where convenience is anything but) Yokoso! (to the place where humans are cargo) Καλώς ορίσατε! (to the place where time loses its timing)
***
What the business woman said: Hello? Hi, yes. Hello? Justin? I’m having--I’m having trouble hearing you. The reception’s terrible here. Where? St. Louis. St. Louis! Right, look. I know. I know I said I would. It’s been kind of hectic, sorry. They rescheduled the meeting at the last minute. Yeah. It’s with the underwriters, now. I think so. I should be home by 9:45 at the latest. Long layover at O’Hare. I need to drop some things off at the office. We’ll see. Maybe not. What? No, no. Don’t do that. That’s not necessary. I’ll figure something out. I said I’ll figure!... Don’t. I’m going to go. I said I’m going to go! to go! You, too. Bye.
What she felt: a vibration in her purse and a need to respond.
Why she responded: it being so early, either something had already gone awry on the east coast or Justin was checking up on her again. He did that. He was right to worry. When she saw his name, she took the call. If she hadn’t, there would have been more texts, more calls, more desperate voicemails. There would have been a heated exchange as soon as she sat her bag down on the dining room table, a precious hour lost arguing from room to room, and pointed distancing atop their bed.
The best course was to answer him, sound weary, and keep it brief. Justin would be concerned for her. He would buy a bottle of wine to help her decompress. Merlot would be waiting in the fridge once she finally returned. They could split it while she unpacked. Answering now would grant her another few days of goodwill and ease them back into normalcy. Normalcy inoculated against suspicion.
Why she does anything: not for the money, though she requires it. Not for the title, though she has earned it. Not for the attention, though she’s regularly the object of it. Not out of misanthropy, though she does not care for people. Not out vindictiveness, though she does have a long memory.
She simply wants her will to be done. Like everyone else, she wants her way. She wants to hear “yes.” She wants to be obeyed. She wants to win. But unlike everyone else, Nicole makes it happen.
Examples of obedience: her chignon remaining intact in the urban wind; her clients accepting the contracts’ terms even when they’re less favorable than the competitions’; her husband accepting she is no less her own after the wedding; her doctor prescribing a class 2 narcotic after she insists the pain has not subsided; a salesperson overlooking exclusions after she asks nicely for the discount anyway; a bureaucrat backing down after she threatens legal action on tenuous grounds; the CFO acquiescing to her demands after she’s posed them as suggestions.
Why she is indomitable: because she can be. Because she has proven herself to be one of the givers of direction while most are the takers thereof. Because people, like things, need direction if they’re going to go anywhere.
How she gives: not always directly or forcefully, though sometimes it is. The giving need not be explicit or articulated, though it might be. It depends on the recipients. Takers disclose how they prefer to receive, and Nicole will earnestly listen. If she shows them that initial grace, makes that preliminary accommodation, if she cedes that little slice of authority to them from the start, she can seize the rest for herself.
Being heard allows the takers to participate in the exchange. They will cooperate because they have been understood. Once you demonstrate you understand them, they will help you put them in their place. Everyone wants to be in their place, regardless of where it is.
She has been accused of being manipulative, usually by deluded men. It is not true. She does not manipulate anyone. Her hands are completely off. To prove it to them, she apologizes to the accusers. Face to face, she says she is sorry for the misunderstanding. When she says she means it, they believe she does. When they speak, Nicole listens with open posture and good eye-contact for their favored mode of subjugation. Usually, she invites them to lie down in their place more softly and gently than before.
In their faces, she can see the delighted relief. “Thank you for asking. I think I will lie down.” She eases them into their resting place with a smile, each party getting what it deserves.
How she takes: with equanimity, if it is unavoidable. Everyone must take sometimes, but the givers can distinguish when those times are. If following orders and abiding by rules is prudent, Nicole acts with aplomb. She smiles and may eagerly nod her head. She utters phrases like, “will do,” “I agree,” or “good idea.” When it benefits her, she excels in pursuing another’s ends. Assistance engenders loyalty, which can be redeemed later. When it is beneath her, she delegates the task to a peer as an honor. She is generous in giving credit in low leverage situations because it reflects well upon her.
Conforming creates the socially valuable attribute of relatability. As needed, she can be a good neighbor and water plants when someone is vacationing or be a good friend and have a meal delivered to a sick colleague's house. Civil gestures or met expectations frequently yield a higher return on investment than combativeness in the long run. Not all games Nicole plays are zero sum. What counts is that she comes out ahead.
What she will say: Good morning, [reads nametag] Andrea. I like your pin. It’s cute. Oh, really? I’ll have to check into it. Anyway, I’m in a pinch and I was hoping you could help me. I’m headed to Reagan via Chicago, but something’s come up. I need to stop by Atlanta first. Is there any way you can reroute me? I see. And that can’t be waived? I see. Well, we have a problem then. My employer won’t cover the change fee. They’re very strict about allowable expenses and I don’t have time for pre-approval. No. I don’t have the money for that, either. Please. I have a lot riding on this, and if it falls through… Can’t you?... I see. Is there a manager around that may be able to straighten this out? Well, when does he or she start? That’s too late. How about this: how about I talk to my friend in our finance department and make sure we switch our preferred air carrier. Then, I’ll reach out to your company’s customer service division and notify them of the switch and cite our dispute this morning and the disrespect you showed me as the proximate cause and I’ll be sure to state your name, Ms. Holt, when explaining why a Fortune 500 company stopped flying Delta. Sure. I’ll wait.
***
A woman reaches into her purse. Connect me elsewhere by disconnecting me here.
A man reaches into his pocket. Help me to see what is beyond my sight.
She bows her head. Aid my escape without letting me leave.
He moves his hands. Blind me to my surroundings.
She blinks. Free me from my mind.
He sniffs. Think for me.
She does not look. Talk to me.
He does not listen. Shut me up.
They ask. I am a train; derail me.
They plead. I am a bullet; deflect me.
They beg. I am a river; divert me.
An emotion arises in him. Disrupt me.
A fact occurs to her. Distract me.
He takes a step. Be my subject, object.
She stares down. I am your object, subject.
He flicks his thumb. Take me away.
She twists her wrist. Take me back.
He bends his neck. I’ll love you for it.
She steps forward. I already do.
***
Multiple times an hour, air travelers ask Allen how his day is going. They presume that because they can read Allen’s name on his government-issued ID they have an open invitation to engage him. Like he’s their concierge. Like he’s there to help them pass the time. He’s not. Allen isn’t there to be anyone’s 10-second friend. He is a public servant.
Do these passengers really think he can simultaneously chitchat and usher them through a federally mandated screening process governed by a constantly revised list of protocols and hundreds of unwritten policies into one of the ripest venues for terror upon verifying credentials at a rate the rest of the endless people in line would approve of--had they ever thought of approving anything that he or his fellow agents ever do? Why does it only cross their minds to be friendly with him when he’s at the scanner station but when he’s on cordon patrol or doing pat-downs, they can only avert their eyes or say things under breath as though he’s to blame for these rules and regulations? Allen can hear them. Allen has ears as well as a name.
Even if he were tasked with being friendly, do they think Allen could give them a forthright answer while concurrently performing the mission-critical tasks of his job? Can they appreciate how his sworn duty requires Attention To Detail and how the singular Detail is truly comprised of thousands of discrete particulars and six different categories in which to arrange them? Measly little eight point font particulars that can’t be overlooked even when you have a tension headache from the consequent eyestrain. A 1 instead of a 7, an l instead of an I, and an individual on the No Fly List passes the entry checkpoint does because Allen told a traveler how his wife has stopped kissing him goodbye in the mornings and now his mind is on his floundering marriage instead of the five relevant fields on Luca Bischoff’s boarding pass.
Of course the odds are slim any given person has forged a document, but small talk raises the odds Allen would overlook an inconsistency. On whose head would that fall? Allen has a conscience. He remains attentive because he knows what’s riding on his visual acuity. His agency’s mission, which he has sworn under oath to uphold, is to mitigate actual and potential security threats. Have his would-be chums fathomed just how many of these there are or how many everyday objects can become dangerous weapons in a criminal’s hands?
Most civilians have not felt the pressure of a job at once so repetitive and so crucial. Allen is charged with securing the homeland. Have they considered that? What does it matter to them if a jihadist gains access to a soft target, so long as he isn’t on their flight or headed to their destination? Are they liable for criminal prosecution if they allow a disassembled mass destruction device concealed by teflon tape through the X-ray machine? US Attorneys aren’t going to drop the charges because he was opening up to a flight attendant about how he’d really like a drink even though he hasn’t had one in 11 years.
Allen’s chief professional goal is to operate at the optimal point where speed and accuracy intersect. real life cyborg. His body needs to be machinelike. It needs to be indefatigable while executing all the repetitive motions of reaching for documentation, inspecting documentation, and returning documentation. His mind needs to be judicious. It needs to make true judgments about the reflectivity of a hologram on an Alaskan driver's license or what Dirkan Tankanian’s downcast eyes indicate.
The public should attempt abiding by standard operating procedures when there are so many procedures and no overriding procedure for how to prioritize them all. The more drawn lines, the more openings the enemy can slip through. Allen stands guard in those gaps, but the ground is constantly shifting. Unexpected complications are always arising: new products, new forms of identification, new airline apps.
And the travelling public makes matters so much worse. He used to tally how often they disobeyed posted directives in a day. Despite the plain English and pictograms, they’re incessantly trying to bring 20 ounces of water in their backpack or a bowie knife on their belt. It’s not Allen’s fault there are consequences for ignorance. His lawyer once told him we’re all culpable under the law, even if we don’t understand it.
The garnish atop this cocktail of stress is his workplace. Allen serves where all these travelers hate being. He’s stationed amidst the commotion, rush, and inconvenience. Inside this makeshift border that stinks of sweaty feet and resounds with plastic bins slamming together and luggage clanking down casters, the cacophony overlaid with a chorus of the same three imperatives barked a thousand times every hour, Allen checks, circles, underlines, and initials hundreds of bits of data. He verifies that “Aubrey Morrison” is spelled the same on her boarding pass as on her passport, that an iridescent eagle appears on the latter’s third page when held under a blacklight, and that her flight number matches her airline’s coding. He swabs dozens of hands and belt buckles a day, none of which have ever come back positive for anything other than glycerin-based hand lotion, looking for traces of explosives to react to the treated paper. But he can’t stop to shoot the breeze, can’t relax and blab about last night’s ballgame, can’t look the other way because a VIP is running late, because a nefarious pair of hands or terrorist’s belt buckle may trip the Explosive Trace Detector, someday.
On that day, Allen is going to react by the book even though his adult son belongs in rehab but prefers to live on the street. Allen’s personal life and biography are not germane. He leaves these with his possessions in the staff locker room. He has to. For his country’s sake, Allen needs to be flawless.
***
“Name and destination.”
[pause]
“Thank you. Row one.”
[pause]
“Step forward.”
[pause]
“Name and destination.”
[pause]
“Thank you. Row Two.”
[pause]
“Step forward.”
[pause]
“Name and destination.”
[pause]
“Thank you. Row Three.”
[pause]
“Step forward.”
[Pause]
“Behind the line, please!”
***
The concourse in the early morning feels like a movie set before the day’s shoot. A few stranded passengers sleep contorted on benches designed to discourage being slept upon. Unstaffed kiosks guard their overpriced wares under locked plexiglas shields. The stores are empty except for the clerks. They wait like spiders out front of their stores, ready to pounce when a customer pricks their web. The bars’ HD screens cast ESPN News to vacant stools and shiny tabletops. Rows of liquor bottles darkly gleam on shelves. Talking heads address empty rows of seats.
Everyone awaits the action.
Walking the gallery is like touring a failed amusement park. Your surroundings are scaled-down replicas of actual places. The spaces are designed to facsimile the world for you, giving you the sense you have already arrived. An 8’x12’ section of vinyl floor inside pretends to be an outdoor patio. The awning shades CFLs instead of UVL. A Best Buy store is condensed to an oversized vending machine. An ersatz food truck is fabricated out of sheetrock and molded plastic overlays. From certain angles, standing inside the potemkin Starbucks is like standing inside a real one. From most, it isn’t.
This is Disney without the rides.
***
A middle-aged man seated at Gate A28 was en route to Winchester, England to present a paper entitled, “Imagining the Unthinkable: Neoplatonism and Proto-Nominalism in the Cloud of Unknowing.” He appeared to be studying, but he wasn’t. He eyed sentences without comprehension. He absently gnawed on his highlighter’s cap. He was telling himself it shouldn’t be this way, but who was he to say that?
He’s Timothy Eshenbrenner, PhD. Tim. From Missoula. In Montana. The largest state in the contiguous US no one cares about, hah. A professor. English and literature. Early medieval Europe, but he doesn’t want to bore you. Really? Who’re some of your favorite authors? Oh, uh. No, he hasn’t read any David Baldacci, but he’s seen his name in bookstores. Very prolific. Yeah, it’s fairly interesting, he guesses. The students keep him young. The summers are great. Hey, would you like to get a cup of coffee sometime and discuss... Ah, sure. Yeah. He should’ve noticed.
That’s who he was when he spied a young woman in a dark suit lick her finger and turn the page in a binder. Is she a lawyer on her way to argue a case? Is she a junior partner on her way to make a pitch? Would she love me? Would she have my child? He pondered these hypotheticals until he tired of them. Then he returned to his book and his determination life was uniquely unfair to him.
Everyone Tim knew was happier than he was. Not everyone could possibly be more deserving. Tim was a decent guy. He considered himself a good listener. He had plenty to say. He was conversant in three languages, two of which are still spoken. He was interesting. He was in good shape for 47. Yet he was alone.
Sure, he had his faults, but so did everyone. Take the people with whom he worked. Professors were the self-absorbed types who neglect to ask how you’ve been even when, from the looks of your matted hair and wrinkled apparel, you’ve not been well. His peers were the sort of petty people who spend the entirety of two-hour-long department meetings listening for an opening to snipe and who scan the hallway before leaning in to whisper in his doorway. They’ve earned happiness? Davis in comparative religion has a doting wife, and he couldn’t care less about her.
Injustice is one reason why Tim was a radical agnostic. Traditional agnostics claim ignorance as to whether God exists. Tim’s ambivalence was more profound. He knew God exists, and he knew God does not exist. Tim knew God exists because only an essentially living Being could create life and ultimately make life fair and knew God does not exist because life is not fair and cannot be made fair. The more Tim craved justice and needed God to guarantee it, the more he hated God for failing to make it happen and, thus, for not existing. In effect, Tim cursed God for not being God.
Tim did not shy away from inconsistency. Contradiction was unavoidable. Like everything humanly relevant, he’s complicated. He’s a reluctant pessimist, a half-hearted romantic, a double-minded fatalist. Not a year went by without Tim endeavoring to be more positive, open, and engaged. He has tried to look on the bright side and to be more patient. He has read about mindfulness and practiced the art of intentional breathing. He has taken up running and cut his sugar consumption. But the fledgling strategies have failed him like so many fad diets. What actually sticks are the truths that render him even more of a tragic figure. He cannot help himself.
He hated the complications, too. Tim freely admitted he harbors a lot of hate. The longer he lived, the more hateful he grew. Want to know why? Here’s a start: being indebted to obscenely well-endowed institutions isn’t right; being single and, therefore, conspicuous whenever you venture into the coupled world isn’t right; being rejected by an academic journal for reasons that betray a bald misunderstanding of your subfield isn't right; being condemned to celibacy when you crave intimacy and your body is still capable of it isn’t right; learning who you really are and what you really desire once it’s too late to do anything about it isn’t right; being diagnosed with MS at 27 and ever since living in constant fear your limbs will stop functioning reliably isn’t right; and, paradoxically, having mental lists of what isn’t right isn’t right.
What made this all worse was that he was blameworthy and blameless for his quagmire. Tim was at fault to the extent he has acquiesced to the universe’s blind machinations, and he was faultless to the extent he wasn’t the Prime Mover and hadn’t been involved in any cosmological planning. Tell him which is guiltier: the apple or gravity, the ball or the cue, the bullet or the gun?
Or what about this boy: how responsible was he? A few years ago, when he was grading papers in a park, Tim looked up and saw a blindfolded boy be spun around, handed a pole, and shoved. His friends and family were all shouting where to go and when to swing. The boy stumbled forward and tentatively swiped the air. Once his balance returned, he kept going straight, flailing, and picking up speed. A couple kids dove out of the way as the boy made a beeline, practically running and swatting now like he was out for blood. His father had to restrain him before he assaulted a jogger. Tim would have done the same–had the Eshenbrenners celebrated birthdays. He would have forged straight ahead. That’s what he was made to do.
He never corrected course because he was taught not to question his lot. “All things work together for good to them that love God,” Tim’s mother insisted. “Do as you’re told by your earthly masters,” his father instructed. Tim obeyed, listening to outer voices rather than inner. He did his chores, his homework, his job: all as he was told. He saw things through, things like living the Life of the Mind when his public school teachers started referring to him as gifted and his professors insisted he should become one of them.
The biggest difference between then and now is how he conceived of his station. He lost faith in universal beneficence and a lovable fate, but it did not slow him down. He maintained inertia. He squandered decades living monkishly, cloistered in an efficiency apartment literally walled off from the wider world by piles of books. He clawed his way to the top of the academic mountain. He was published. He was tenured. He was a distinguished chair named after a dead man whose name means nothing to anyone save those in accounting services who deposit the trust’s annual checks. What has he gained? Extremely limited notoriety, disc degeneration, and unspeakable regret.
Call him stubborn. Label him “passive” and “cowardly.” Tim concurred. He has made it this far being a stubborn, passive, cowardly projectile. He kept on the path before him until his eyes were so strained he couldn’t read anymore or his hands were so cramped he couldn’t write anymore or his mind was so fatigued he couldn’t think anymore. Only then did his deepest longings consciously register and his spite rise up. Like his pining for Allison Zaleski, the girl who made him feel seen and known and understood for once in his life, the same one he didn’t pursue because he was mired in a dead-end relationship with Vanessa Madesen, the girl that ended what she started a year and a half later and six months after Allison had moved away to pursue her own dreams. He wanted to go back then and do otherwise. But that wasn’t an option.
In the seating area, he was convinced he wasn’t going to get another chance. He only received reminders of the forks in the road that carried him away from the path he would have chosen. He gazed at the embodied reminder nearby with his worsening vision. As she brushed her hair behind her ear, Tim spotted a diamond glint in the artificial light. Of course she has a ring on her finger. All the objects of his attraction either had rings on their fingers or wouldn’t open their hands to let him slide his own on theirs. It’s not right.
“Sorry! This thing has a mind of its own.”
Tim looked up at a middle-aged woman settling herself in a chair across from him. Her suitcase had grazed his foot. “That’s okay.” Tim looked down again.
“What’re you reading?” she asked while corralling her possessions.
Tim flipped the book over and addressed the cover. “The Book of the City of Ladies. It’s for a class I’m teaching this fall.”
“Oh really? Interesting. What do you teach?”
“I’m a professor. English and literature.”
“Oh? I loved literature in college.”
“Yeah.” He opened the book again. “I thought I did, too.”
***
A green polo, pressed golf pants, shined loafers worn sockless, and a Bluetooth headset. A white tank top, black yoga pants, red flip flops, and ear buds. A black tank top, black yoga pants, pink flip flops, and ear buds. A Big Dog T-shirt, relaxed fit jeans, and sneakers purchased in 2009. A chambray tunic, pilled leggings, New Balance walking shoes, and a FitBit. A silk Hermes blouse, capris, and black D&G flats. An oxford with rolled sleeves, no tie, black khakis, and black running shoes. A worsted wool suit, a navy and white striped oxford, and Cole Haan cap toe shoes. A Disney T-shirt, Nike basketball shorts, and Adidas pool sandals. A red polo, navy shorts, and tall, white socks with matching tennis shoes. An untucked Hawaiian shirt, black soccer shorts, black compression hose, and black Crocs clogs. A zipped hooded sweatshirt, jeans with rolled cuffs, and black and white athletic shoes. Short-sleeve periwinkle oxford, a red and navy crossover tie, navy sweater vest, navy slacks, and Nine West kitten heel shoes. An unzipped fleece jacket, turquoise leggings, and blue and pink athletic shoes. A slate gray golf shirt, plaid cargo shorts, and black penny loafers worn sockless, and a Casio watch. A glen check blue sports coat, starched oxford, tan suit pants, and Gucci monk strap shoes.
***
6:29A: 26 minutes to boarding. An hour and six minutes to takeoff. Five hours and 37 minutes to landing. Approximately seven hours until they’re on the streets of Boston, their honeymoon officially underway! Paul Revere, Bunker Hill, and the Common. A stroll along streets flanked by Second Empire row houses. Another twelve or fourteen hours until the hotel. Reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Langely. A room with a view. And a king bed. Room service in the morning. Then a drive to Cape Cod. A ride through the windy Route 6A. Hyannis, lobster bisque, and the beach. Next, a queen bed. Alyssa squeezes Conor’s hand. She can hardly wait--for this day and for the rest of them.
6:31A: 24 minutes to boarding. An hour and four minutes to takeoff. Approximately six and a half hours until she’s back in her condo, her ordinary life resuming. She has laundry to put out. Maria will be by tomorrow. The rooms will be quiet save for the grandfather clock’s resounding chimes and slippers’ heels clicking on the marble tile. She has a tour to lead at MFA next Tuesday. 3 in 30. O’Keefe, Gaugin, and Renoir. She has an appointment with Arnold about the endowment next Friday. She has a Patek Phillipe watch on the dresser that hasn’t been wound in years. Everything else of her husband’s was boxed, bequeathed, or auctioned. That timepiece remains still, its golden moon forever waxing gibbous.
6:33A: 22 minutes to boarding. An hour and two minutes to takeoff. 14 hours and 13 minutes from when they were supposed to be in Salt Lake City. Three hours and three minutes removed from an alarm that rang in a hotel they had no intention of booking in a city that had no intention of visiting. They paid for two hotel rooms last night, one more than a thousand miles from the other. One outside Capitol Reef with its martian beauty, the other outside a Huddle House with its earthy squalor. Ethan’s chin is stubbly. Sarah’s bangs are wavy with grease. They’re supposed to be eating a big breakfast to fuel their hike to Hackman Bridge arch. Instead, they’re splitting a Nature’s Valley bar they’d bought for the trails. All because of a freak tornado in a city that wasn’t on their flight itinerary.
6:35A: 20 minutes to boarding. An hour to takeoff. Thirty-four days and 50 minutes until seventh grade. Lockers and home room and six minute passing periods. Two minute warning bells. Chess club and drama club and young writers circle. Homework, pop quizzes, and rumors. First, this trip. Right now, Instagram. She likes everything she sees: pretty outfits, amazing sunsets, hot celebs. She puts down her phone and picks up her book. She puts down her book and picks up her phone. I’ll be back.” Where’re you going?” Not far. I just want to film something real quick. “Okay, but five minutes. You hear me? We’re boarding soon.” The girl stands up, walks to the center of the terminal and starts to record. She narrates, her voice full of suspense. She’s telling the story of a girl going on family vacation that will go terribly wrong. There’s going to be a storm, and the family’s going to land in another dimension. She’s going to be the first to discover the truth. She will be the one to save them.
6:37A: 18 minutes to boarding. 58 minutes to takeoff. Six hours and 23 minutes until the funeral service gets underway. Eight or so hours until the hor d'oeuvres and forced conversation with barely recognizable relatives. His nieces have crow’s feet above their thinning lips. His brother-in-law’s mustache has grayed below his red eyes. The artichoke dip is good. Still with her, yeah. Coming up on 40 years. He was, uh, forced to retire last January. Two days until he can drive a rental to the beach again, ease his way down the steep dunes, and hear the sand’s whistle underfoot. He will forget everything voluntarily, staring into Lake Michigan’s familiar face. Two to four years before he forgets most everything involuntarily. The dogs’ names, sitcoms’ plotlines, the first paragraph by the time he’s on the third, whether or not he left something in the oven. Maybe another eight to ten years before he goes in the ground, too. His life didn’t go as planned, but what does?
***
An electric motor’s hum rises and falls rhythmically. Up, left. Down, right. Up, left. Down, right. In the buffer’s wake: high gloss. Feel it in your wrists: the pad’s slight bite. Too much, and it careens into a wall, marring another formerly clean surface. Too little, and it hovers in place, burnishing orbits of abrasive into the wax.
Waltz with her. She is a lithe partner. Back and forth. Back and forth. Side to side. Side to side. Together, you erase the frantic’s harried scuffs and the bored’s plodding scrapes. You apply the wisdom of waxing: shine though wear. Reveal reflectivity with patience and persistence. Rub harder, more determinately, more dependably than the hopscotching sojourner’s footwear. Back and forth. Side to side. Subtracting from the barrier rather than adding to it.
Take heart and keep pace. More drips will drop. More sodas will spill. More heels will harm. And we will return, my date and I, to polish what has been sullied. We are agents of renewal. We are revivalists. Don’t discount us. We are not doomed to repeat our steps endlessly. We are invited to dance so long as there’s dirt.
***
No one was waiting for Shana at the end of the gangway. No one is allowed to do that anymore. Her reunion will be curbside, where her father has been circling since 7:30A. Her mother was supposed to meet Shana, but she dispatched Shana’s father instead. Cancelling when it counts is classic Mom.
The flooring resonated with her strides’ hollow thud. A man raced past her with a leather satchel slamming against his back. The corridor was lined with posters of smiling people and slogans. She listed to compensate for her carry-on’s heft. The slight physical discomfort augmented the general discomfort surrounding her flight. The whole trip felt cursed, maybe because she was raiding her own tomb.
She had returned to clean house. Her parents’, specifically. The foreclosure sale was next Thursday. She had four days to sift through all her childhood belongings in their basement: the bins of Troll dolls she had coveted and the Happy Meal toys from dinners with dad, the stack of board games the family never played and the Hot Wheels she never got into. She had four days to wad up the middle school clothing her mom had picked for her and make them go away like she wanted the memories of those days to. She had four days to rummage through a closetful of high school fashion, her largely unsuccessful attempts at signaling to classmates she was one of them, and spare a couple that might earn social approval now. Her assignment was to shove the brunt of her abandoned possessions into big black plastic bags and drag them to the curb. The evidence of Shana’s former selves was slated to be scattered and interred in an exurban landfill. She mourned for them.
She imagined her parents’ house as she passed the gate’s half empty seating area and the travelers with priority seating starting to assemble. Her former bedroom will be preserved under thick layer of consumerist sediment. The forsaken purchases had been strewn everywhere else around the house until, eventually, her mother broke the seals on Shana’s door. Surface areas will be buried beneath: a plush floral comforter with matching bedskirt, a once-used electric griddle, an unopened air purifier, stacks of trade paperbacks, sundry orthotic braces and splints, an immersion blender, piles of clothes that no longer fit her mother, and piles of clothes that will fit again someday.
This was where Shana came from. Disarray was her heritage.
But first, outside, she’ll hug her dad who doesn’t realize his dire need of deodorant. She’ll sling her bag on the backseat, crinkling strewn newspapers. She’ll stare at the crevices around the floor mat, where bits of french fries and cracker fragments have settled. He’ll do the talking. Her mother and him have had it pretty rough, lately. The dishwasher and the fridge crapped out within a week of each other. He’ll bemoan his finances and talk about how it could have been.
Driving through their subdivision, she won’t sense anything is amiss. The aging homes are being updated: new siding, new roofs, new landscaping. Turning into her parents’ driveway, the first inklings of decay will greet her. The red maple is fully leafed, but the lawn underneath is sparse. The porch’s white railing is clean enough, but the empty flag holder is held up by zip ties. The yews flanking the garage are six feet tall, but the midsection is bare with dead twigs visible. The imperfections present like early warning signs. These are symptoms. When she opens the door from the garage into the kitchen, though: shambles. Complete and utter shambles.
The clank of the quarantined dogs’ nails against the sliding glass door will be the first sound she hears. Half-packed boxes will occupy the counter and kitchen table. Her mother’s absence will be felt at first, the master bedroom being closed as usual.
It will take less than an hour for Shana to regret coming home. That the VCR, broken turntable, and Dreamcast that hasn’t been turned on in 15 years but are still plugged in will get her down. How her bedside table holds a stack of nostalgia-inducing photos from when film was a thing will creep her out. That her shed blonde hair and mementos from senior year trysts can still be found a decade later on her old mattress will crush her. The dumbest stuff persists.
It will take less than a day for Shana and her mom to pick up where they left off, fighting the same fight. Her mom will complain of her loveless marriage and what the world’s coming to. Shana will lose her patience immediately after summoning it. Reprising a former role, Shana will raise her voice and slam her door. Trapped within her former bunker, she’ll wish she had left something in the bottles she had lifted from her dad’s dusty collection and hid under her bed.
It’s so heavy. Like her carry-on. Like her footsteps. Like the duffle bags veering down the baggage carousel’s chute. Like her mom’s hypochondria and debilitating depression. Like her dad’s outlook on life and staggering defeatism. Everything about her family is fraught with resonance that reverberates into her chest even though she lives a one-stop flight away and only checks in on Christmas and birthdays.
The gravity of the situation is multiplied by how tightly bound her identity is to this city and these two people, her parents. Try as she might to dissociate, as adult and functional as she is, this is all still very much her and somehow is the key to understanding Shana. To know her, you have to tour her parents’ cluttered kitchen and read the decontextualized Bible quotes taped on the cabinets. To get her, you have to roam her parents’ halls and smell the Lysol masking the scent of animal piss.
It’s all laden with relevance. How her mom interprets certain good news as a kind of bad news, even though she has been preoccupied by the outcome for weeks and fretted about something being horribly wrong with her, and will seek out second and sometimes third opinions to dispel the good news for the sake of having something physical, measurable, nameable, and, therefore, medically treatable wrong with her instead of the opposite is Shana’s own yearning after dark certainty alternatively manifested. How her dad, who knew his town so well after years of driving its streets working for the municipal government, now gets very anxious and unsure of himself going anywhere he hasn’t been before, even if it’s three blocks away, and how the map in his head has faded, and he’s scared to leave his neighborhood, reflects back her own lostness.
Her whole life, even before Shana was on her own, has been a struggle to convince herself that she’s other than this, other than them. Above it all. In a lot of obvious ways, she is. But the nausea she feels returning stems from how exactly the same she is–despite appearances. She’s the same appetitive child and unsure adolescent. She’s her solipsistic mother who considers herself giving. She’s her pessimistic father who blames fate for his foundering.
Despite all her accomplishments, the fact she Got Out and Made It, this is still absolutely who she is. She’s defined by the superficial clashing with the subcutaneous. Like her parents’ house, she looks mostly fine, but she isn’t. Like the air she breathed, she’s masking filth.
Trudging up the staircase to the passenger pick-up area, the air feels lighter though. She spots the rusting Escort, her father, and his ever-graying, ever-thinning hair. He’s parked too far out and is blocking traffic. A hotel shuttle lays on its horn, but he’s already rounding the trunk. He opens a creaky backdoor and hastily tosses aside copies of the Post Dispatch. He looks at her with cloudy blue eyes that haven’t changed since when, held in his arms, she used to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. It’s clear he’s happy to see her. He says he’s sorry for the mess.
Shana says it’s okay. She’s no better.
***
People separate, and people reunite. People point and hail, rise and board. Some head to highrise hotels, over rivers and past civic monuments, to immerse in the unfamiliar. Some head to distant addresses, over potholes and passed derelict properties, to take refuge in obscurity. Taken together, we are not so different. Wanderlust and homesickness share an etiology.
Prefiguring the mode of transportation, we are up in the air here. Displacement is the stated goal. Though our identities are meticulously verified, we anonymously progress through this waystation’s stages. Its attributes are our own: transience, impermanence, liminality. Our blemishes are on display, having stowed away civility’s mask. Excited, exhausted, or exasperated, we are waiting for somewhere to reside.
