[op] 7.11
She stared up at the monitor overhead until the words on the screen began to make no sense anymore. When she was nine, she considered the word ‘banana’ until it became no more than a combination of letters, put together arbitrarily until it meant something. She had stared at the word until even the letters became nothing more than lines. She had a habit of looking at words this way until she had to look away to regain the ability to read them coherently whenever she was worried. The word delayed did not change.
She was at the airport an hour early to make a flight to see her girlfriend Jane in Janesville and now she was four hours early.
(“I like people to be on time,” Jane said. “I like people to be where they say they will be at the time they say they will be. No exceptions.”)
She checked again to make sure her wallet and keys were still in her carry-on. She began to become vaguely worried about the perfume she had wrapped in two pairs of socks in her suitcase. Suppose TSA figured they ought to search every luggage with liquid or gels in it and suppose there was a new, unpublished report that morning that said all perfumes were hazardous and could not get off the ground? Or the officer finally extracted the delicate pale pink bottle from the sock and turned it around in their hands and dropped it and the rose water soaked into the floor? (“I heard on the radio that if you smell roses before bed you have pleasant dreams,” Jane said, putting the bouquet of carnations she had bought her on the counter, seemingly forgetting she had a vase in the cabinet to her right.) Well, there was nothing she could do about it now.
Her terminal was C9. Right now it was boarding passengers going to Tuscany. The Tuscany flight was on time. She went up to the counter and asked, “Is the flight to Janesville still delayed?”
“Is that what it says on the monitors?” the woman said.
“I guess so.”
“Then it’s delayed. If you have nothing else to ask, please step out of line; there’s a whole list of standby passengers we need to take care of.” She stepped out of line and watched a frazzled mother take her two daughters by the hand, a hand supporting her pregnant stomach, hobble up to the counter to demand three spots on the Tuscany flight.
(“I never understood why people want to have children,” Jane said in bed as she traced circles in her scalp with the pads of her fingertips. “All the mothers I know don’t have their affairs in order and then they have to deal with the affairs of other people.”)
She walked around the terminal to find a seat to start waiting. She didn’t like to sit near other people and have their elbows in her arm space or hear their conversations or generally be looked at for a prolonged period of time by a complete stranger. If she could not sit at least a seat away, she settled for sitting next to old ladies. Next in her list of preferences were young women. Then young men, then older men. She did not feel like she had the patience or good humor currently to deal with someone asking for her name, her age, her phone number. She sat next to an older black woman, or at least she figured she was older, the way there were wrinkles around her eyes and she was wearing a pair of thicker eyeglasses. She had had a black cab driver once tell her he was past sixty when she pegged him for no older than early thirties. Black don’t crack, her old college roommate used to tell her.
(“You have to be careful around those kinds of people,” Jane whispered to her on their way back from a bar. “You don’t know what they look at you with.”)
When she really thought about it, which was when she was idle and not at all close to Jane, loving Jane was a thankless job. (“You love me because I love you and I’m good to you and good for you,” Jane said.) And certainly Jane was not the only person who ever loved her. In fact, during the beginning of their courtship Jane had been one of the weaker contenders but she smiled like a reassuring pat on the back when all you craved was human contact and validation and she was strong and willful. She herself was weak-stomached and weak-willed and Jane was an enabler, the one who convinced her to quit her job and accept one that she truly did love more. Jane did not find comfort in stability and she found too much comfort in stability and there was something good about that. Why did she love Jane? Because Jane loved her and was good to her and was good for her.
(And for the most part it was true but sometimes when she watched Jane, the slope of her shoulders when she worked in her flowerbeds and the way her arms tensed when she lifted the grocery bags out of the trunk made her wonder.)
She sent the inevitable text that she was to be late and Jane sent back maybe it’s better that you don’t come, i think we’re done. What did Jane mean by that? She had already gotten a seat on the plane and canceling her place now would be costly. She saved up several months worth of parts of her salary to get herself this opportunity to see Jane. She was packed and everything. Jane didn’t like tardiness but she tolerated it fairly well. And did Jane mean that they were done? Was there something else happening that was finished?
“Honey,” the older woman said next to her. “Maybe you should go to the bathroom, yeah?” She looked at the woman, who looked back to her with a half smile that said that if they knew each other better, she might have put a hand on her shoulder. She nodded and stood up and wobbled and there was something about her face probably that made the woman say something like that. She adjusted the straps of her purse over her shoulder again and walked quickly into the bathroom.
The bathroom was empty for now, all the doors to the stalls at some level of openness. She locked herself in the second to last one and took a deep breath. There was something about her face that made that woman say something like that. She took another deep breath and it sounded like a shuddering gasp echoing against the walls of the stall. She made herself breathe slower, quieter. I think we’re done. It was building up in her, a shaking angry sob. I think we’re done.