Baggage Check

 

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For my boys—my heroes always

 

Love must be learned, and learned again; there is no end to it.

—Katherine Anne Porter

 

1

June 17, 2016

Rebecca Williamson picked up a smooth, rust-colored clay bowl for the fifth time in as many minutes. She ran her hand along the sloping curve from the base to the rim, and then bounced it lightly in her arms for heft. It was two pounds, she decided. Maybe two and a half once they wrapped it for the plane. She put it down again and stepped back to look at the rest of the artist's display, dusting her hands together.

“Oh, just buy it already!” Valerie said from a few feet away. “I've gotten married after shorter courtships than you're having with that bowl.”

“I don't need it,” Rebecca said.

“It would look nice on your kitchen table. You never buy anything, Becky.” Valerie had been calling her “Becky” since she joined the airline three years before. For the first several months, Rebecca had corrected her. Now she just accepted it.

“What would I do with it?” Rebecca said. “I mean, you can't serve food in it, not that I ever cook anyway. I don't have anything to store in it. And I'm never home to look at how my apartment is decorated. How is a red clay bowl necessary?”

Valerie rolled her eyes and patted Rebecca's shoulder with a veined hand. “Life needs beauty, doll. Every girl should have something beautiful and useless in her life. Like my first husband, for example. That man was pure eye candy; the poor idiot couldn't change a lightbulb.”

Rebecca laughed. She had never asked outright how many husbands Valerie had been through, but her current guess was four, and at least two of them had been pilots. Valerie was in her late sixties, ancient by flight attendant standards, and a legend among all the younger women they worked with. Rebecca had been paired with her during the first week of training and they had flown together more often than not since then. At first, Rebecca had resisted becoming Valerie's protégé, but through sheer force of will and nonstop chatter, Valerie had become Rebecca's only real friend at work. Tonight, they were in an artists' co-op in New Mexico, killing time during an overnight layover.

“Are you ready to go to the bar?” Rebecca asked her.

“What's your hurry?” Valerie said. “You never take anything home from there, either.”

“Don't start with that.”

“What? Come on, you know I'm right. And don't use me for an excuse, either. I may be an old lady but I know how to make myself scarce when I see a brassiere on the doorknob.”

An aproned woman behind the counter looked up, smirking.

“Shh…,” Rebecca hushed. But even she could not help but smile at the way Valerie said “brassiere on the doorknob” in her New York accent. Rebecca herself had never used this signal, but it had been a frequent sight in her sorority house at the University of Georgia. She tried to imagine finding one of Valerie's big beige contraptions hanging on their hotel room door.

“Ready to go?” she asked again.

“Oh, all right,” Valerie said. “Just let me add this to my collection.” She held up a blue-glazed mug that had been formed to look like the squished-down face of an old man.

Several of Rebecca's coworkers kept little collections from places they visited—postcards, spoons, shot glasses, snow globes, you name it. There was a sort of unspoken code that it was only acceptable to collect items from cities you had truly visited, meaning you had to leave the airport for more than a couple of hours. Even so, Rebecca could not understand this tradition. Yes, it was cute in the moment, but they went so many places. What did you
do
with all that crap? Put it in a box so you could relive your glory days of passing out peanuts? Have it gather dust on the shelves while other people pretended to be interested at parties?

Once or twice, something had caught Rebecca's eye, particularly when they flew to exotic locations. A tiny but exquisite crystal vase from Waterford in Ireland. Hand-carved candlesticks painted black and inlaid with gold in Toledo, Spain. A set of Russian dolls in Moscow. Each time, she had stood paralyzed in the gift shop, debating why she needed this thing and where she would put it and how often she would really look at it. Then she would sigh, and, to the dismay of each patient shop owner, return the item to the shelf, and walk out. Except for an irresistible silk scarf from Milan and an emergency T-shirt she'd been forced to buy in New York, Rebecca had not bought souvenirs anywhere. Once in a while she regretted this, but never for long. She would deposit the amount of the foregone purchase into her savings account with satisfaction and move on. Always move on.

A short cab ride later, they found the rest of the flight crew exactly where they expected: gathered in the small bar off the hotel lobby, all in their civilian clothing. The two pilots, both middle-aged family men, sat nursing beers at the bar, watching the broadcast of a local rodeo on the TV overhead and chatting with the bartender. Shanna and Lizzie, the other two attendants, were playing darts in a corner with some guys still wearing name tags from a convention. They waved when Valerie and Rebecca walked in. A couple of the conventioneers smiled hopefully at Rebecca.

“I think I'm just going to go up to bed,” she said.

“What?” Valerie said. “No. If I can stay for a pint of beer and some darts, so can you. Maybe we can even hustle them for a few bucks.”

“I'm terrible at darts,” Rebecca complained.

“Perfect,” said Valerie, hoisting up the support hose she still wore from the flight, beneath her elastic-waist jeans and bright-white tennis shoes. “That will make it more believable. Then I swoop in and kick their asses.”

It was hard not to smile at Valerie, and even harder to argue with her. Rebecca followed her to the booth by the dartboard. She pulled a packet of wipes from her purse and wiped the table and vinyl seat before sliding in. She managed a tired smile as the perplexed-looking convention guys introduced themselves.
I should try to learn their names,
she thought. But even that was more effort than she wanted to invest tonight.

Two hours later, Shanna and Lizzie had allowed themselves to be led away by a pair of the more attractive conventioneers, and Valerie grinned as she collected more than fifty dollars from three sheepish others, tucking it victoriously in her “brassiere.” Rebecca leaned her head back against the wall of the booth and stirred a watery rum and Coke, wondering at exactly what point it would be okay to insist that Val come up to the room with her so they could sleep for a few hours before tomorrow's flight to San Francisco.

One of the dart players sat down next to her. He had dark skin, neatly trimmed black hair, and wore a light-blue Oxford shirt open at the collar. Rebecca was not good at identifying ethnicity: Indian, maybe? Or Hispanic? His speech was smooth and without accent. “So, you're leaving tomorrow, too?”

“Yes.”

“That's too bad. I would have liked to have seen more of you,” he purred. He placed a hand on her arm.

Rebecca sighed. She was too tired to be flattered. “Um, that would be a ‘no thank you.'”

His grin slowly faded. “Hey, I was just trying to be nice, sweetheart.”

“I'm not your sweetheart, sweetheart.”

Something flashed across his eyes and he slid out of the booth. “Okay, then, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said, with a flick of the wrist and her best airline smile.

He muttered something to his companions and they looked at her appraisingly. Then one of them shrugged, and they nodded at Valerie as they made their way back to the bar.

“What the hell was that?” Valerie asked, sliding in across from her. “He was a nice-looking kid. You don't like foreign guys?”

“That's not it,” Rebecca said.

“Well, I had that one primed for you. Such a waste.”

“Thanks, Val, but I don't need you to find guys for me. And I'm sure he won't go to waste. Look, he's talking to that girl at the bar already.”

“I didn't mean him,” Val said. “I meant you. You're such a beautiful girl: educated, nice nose, and that pretty brown hair is your real color as far as I can tell. We've flown together three years and I never hear about you dating anyone.”

“Well, maybe I—”

Valerie leaned across the table with a loud whisper. “Are you a lesbian?”

“What? No!”

“Because I'm okay with it, really. I'm very hip about this stuff. I even have a lesbian niece. Very attractive, if she would just let her hair grow out. Of course, she's younger than you, but—”

“Valerie!” Rebecca said too loudly. Then softer, “I am not a lesbian. I used to date men all the time. I just haven't lately.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. The hours?”

“Bullshit.”

“Come on, Val. Why the sudden interest in my love life? Can we talk about something else?”

“No.”

Rebecca knew from experience Valerie had no intention of letting up. She took a sip of her drink, which was not terribly helpful since it was mostly melted ice. A long sigh under Valerie's unwavering stare. “I guess you could say I got my heart broken a few years ago, and I just haven't gotten over it yet.”

“Really? Who was this? How come I haven't heard about him?”

Rebecca sighed.
In for a penny
 … “You have heard of him. It was my friend Jake.”

“Jake?” Valerie furrowed her brow. “You mean … your friend, the girl with the blog, what's her name—Marci?
That
Jake?”

“Yes. That Jake.”

Valerie whistled. “So how long ago was this?”

“How long ago was what? They got married four years ago. And they have Bonnie now.”

“Yeah, but when did you stop…” Valerie trailed off.

Rebecca shook her head. “I don't think I have stopped. I know that's ridiculous, but I—I loved him for so long. It's like I don't know any other way to be.”