Everything’s Coming Up Josey (9 page)

I move to my mother next. She holds me tight, and when she leans back, she has tears, too. “Take care of yourself,” she says softly. I feel my throat tightening up, cutting off my breathing.

“'Bye, Mom,” I say, but it sounds like my voice is in Ethiopia. A rush of panic slices through my veins. What if Mom, or Dad gets sick, or even,
dies
while I'm in Russia? What if Jasmine does get pregnant and I miss out on all the fun? What if Chase finds another Amazon girl, right in Gull Lake, someone who is willing to wash nappies in the river and follow him across the world?

Okay, that chance is slim, especially in Gull Lake, and that fact brings me back to reality, reboots my lungs. We have e-mail. We have IM. And, if God is especially generous, my cell phone will work.

“I'll write when I get there,” I announce to the crowd. Then, with a final smile that feels more Mona Lisa than happy, I add myself to the security line.

I'm immediately sucked into the Goodbye Vacuum. That place between warm goodbyes and actual departure. In Gull Lake, it is similar to the wave vacuum that occurs between passing vehicles. Wave too soon, and you're going to have to fill time inconspicuously, like checking if you have lipstick on your teeth in the rearview mirror. Or digging in your purse for gum.

Please, please just leave.
I stand there, feeling their stares burning my neck. I glance back, give a small smile. My mother waves, though she is standing five feet away.

The line shifts; I move forward.
Leave!

“Don't forget to write!” Jas says. I smile, nod.
Leave!

Silence. More movement toward the checkout.

And then it begins.

“Did you remember your wool socks? You hate cold feet,” my mother calls.

I grimace, smile at her, nod.

“What about your nasal strips? You know how you snore, and you don't want to wake your roommate.”

I swallow hard, move forward. The guy in front of me glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow up. Yep, that's me the old lady is yelling at, Josey the Wheezer. I give Mom a
please, don't
look. But she's just trying to care, in her own special way.

“What about your Dr. Scholl's corn—”

“That's enough,” I hiss through clenched teeth. I tilt my head, give my mother a tight smile. “I got it all, Mom.”

But she has tears running down her cheeks and suddenly she rushes to me, leans over the black ribbon and grabs me in another squeeze.

Didn't expect that. And well, I forgive her on the spot for everything—the news articles, the Goodwill donation, the lasagna, even for shackling me with a curfew of ten o'clock the summer of my senior year (even if I did sneak back out once I checked in).

We disentangle just as the man in front of me vacates his spot. I can barely see, and I hike my carry-on/anvil into my arms.

My mother moves back to her troops and I don't look at them as I walk forward, plunk my carry-on onto the belt, unzip it and pull out my laptop. I stick that into another tray, saying a brief prayer for the hard drive, and toe off my shoes, putting them in another tray.

I don't look back as I walk under the arch. To my breath-snatching relief, it doesn't buzz.

I retrieve my shoes, laptop and bag (and nearly fall over when I put it over my shoulder—it takes a second or two to reestablish equilibrium), and when I look back, they're still there.

Mom has her arm around Jas. Milton has a wry expression. H is waving.

I take a deep breath, wave back.

It's this very last second that counts. The one I carry with me, as I trudge down the terminal and board the plane. The one I revel in over the next two hours (while consuming a blueberry bagel).

Shazam! Chase has appeared out of nowhere, and he is searching for me as he runs up to the group. Wearing his smashed baseball hat and a rumpled T-shirt, he looks haggard, as if he rolled out of bed a half hour after we left in a panic. (Yes!) H points me out and for a second our eyes lock.
Cha-ching.
I can hear the echo in my heart. He gives a solitary wave. And the barest of smiles.

Chase!
What am I doing—

Then the guy behind me tries to scoot past me, jostling me. My carry-on crashes to the floor. Uh-oh…can anyone say laptop?

I scoop it up.

And when I stand up and look back, the magic has broken. They're regrouping. Turning away.
Leaving.

Leaving?

Turncoats.

I swallow hard and shuffle down the gateway.

 

I've never been to New York City. I have two words to describe it as I look out the grimy windows onto the tarmac, waiting for them to call my next flight.

Big.

Fast.

And that's just between the Northwest wing and the Delta wing. I took a conveyor belt and stood there while people flew by me with their fancy rolling carry-ons.

I want a rolling carry-on. Nearly enough to stick out my foot and send one of those business travelers flying while I snatch the bag and run. My shoulder is bruised, my arm hanging like a dead walleye at my side.

I admit to feeling a slight bit of melancholy that I don't get to see the Big Apple. I would have enjoyed a day checking out Central Park, Broadway, the set for the
Today
show. Katie Couric always has good hair. Second benefit to living in Russia, right after starvation, is no beauty parlors. I'll grow my hair out, and no one will be around to see me in that “oh-my-
do
-something-with-your-hair, please!” stage. In my defense, I should interject that I had great hair in college. Straight and long and very Jennifer Aniston.

Then I sheared my hair close to my head during my professional”-look era and discovered that Halle Berry I am not.

I looked more like a Mexican hairless. Since then, it's grown out, given me a sort of haphazard, I-don't-care-what-my-hair-looks-like-because-I'm-a-hard-nosed-reporter look.

It was a bit difficult to pull off in Gull Lake, land of big hair and high volume VO5.

But now I'm a missionary, and well, we grow our hair long. It's part of that deprivation thing we're so good at.

I listen to people eat their R's around me, the dialect of the Apple in the ever present static of conversation. Digging out my cell phone, I call home, but it rings five times and I figure I must have beaten the convoy to our destinations.

Had I really seen Chase? I'm looking for confirmation from Jas, because deep inside, I'm a Doubting Thomas. It is not beyond my mind to conjure up, in a moment of emotional angst, Chase tracking me down at the airport in a last ditch,
Friends
-episode attempt to keep me from leaving.

Still, even if it was a dream, it was a nice one that makes my stomach feel warm and gooey. And not hungry. So, maybe it's good Jas isn't home yet.

They call my flight and I check my ticket. I'm in row 16, seat B. I'm hoping that isn't the middle. Across from me, an elderly couple rises, shuffles toward the gate. Maybe I'll get to sit by them. They'll sleep, maybe read a book. Maybe it'll even be a good book and I can read over their shoulder.

Or even better, maybe I'll end up with Matthew Fox over there, the one with short brown hair, lazy eyes, who's wearing a sharp brown suit. Sure, I could somehow pass twelve hours sitting next to Matthew.

See, what a loser I am. I'm supposed to be pining for Chase.

No, he's supposed to be pining for me.

Whatever.

Still, the thought tightens my chest. What if Chase does find his own curvy brunette in Gull Lake…and I'm in Russia, eating kasha because I threw away Matthew's business card after declining a night out at the Bolshoi, or a walk through Red Square under the lights of St. Basils all for the sake of Chase?

That Chase!
How dare he do that to me? Matthew liked me, I know it. And we could have hit it off. Twelve long hours we spent together while Matthew, because he found my life fascinating, looked into my eyes and listened to my dreams of changing the world. And, because I am a missionary, he trusted me. He poured out his heart to me, and told me that he'd just broken up with his girlfriend. The poor guy.

Yeah, well, I know the feeling, I said to him, noticing again his pretty eyes.

“Are you going?”

I hear a voice behind me, turn.

Grunge 'R' Us stands behind me, and I think it is a naturally acquired fashion when I catch a whiff of him. Dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirt, chains, torn pants dragging beneath his Birkenstock sandals. Please, let that be a tan on his feet….

I see Matthew moving into the gangway. Argh! So much for a chance meeting where my carry-on (sorry, Mr. Laptop) falls and wow, do I feel embarrassed, and that's okay, Miss, can I help you—

“Maybe I can just go around you?”

“Sorry,” I mumble to Grunge and move forward, handing the flight attendant my boarding pass.

I wrestle the carry-on down the gangplank, greet the captain and troop of flight attendants, and then realize that the carry-on and I won't fit into the aisle together. I carry it in front of me like a birthday cake and nearly take out a woman in a hot pink sweater who looks like a Pamela Anderson knockoff.

Where is Matthew?

I squirm through first class, smiling at the already seated patrons when I spot him. Last row. First class. Aisle seat. Looking at his laptop, which is already open on his seat.

I'm trying not to feel robbed. Really. I don't look at him. Which is probably my folly because a gal who was watching out might not have hit him in the face with her elbow.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” I truly am! I make an apologetic face to prove it. He holds his perfect cheekbone, frowns at me.

“Watch where you're going.”

Jerk. Good thing we're not stranded together on an island.

I struggle by and suck in my breath as the aisle tightens like a corset. Happily the elderly couple isn't as touchy as Matthew the Jerk because I nearly land in their laps. I finally struggle to row sixteen, and wouldn't you know it, the overhead bin is full.

“You can stash your bag in the back,” says a helpful voice standing a few rows down. I glance at the flight attendant, and she looks about the size of an angel-hair noodle. Big smile, perfect blond hair piled on her head and no tear-smudged makeup. And you just know she doesn't right-hook people when she walks down the aisle. Instantly, I hate her.

“No thanks, I'll put it under my seat.”

She surveys me, my bag. Up goes one perfectly groomed eyebrow. You can tell she waxes. I tried that once. Put me in a very, very bad mood.

I fling the bag down on the seat. It makes an ominous
whump.
And when I then push it to the floor, I know that I'd have an easier time fitting the Titanic under the minute cubby they've allotted my feet for the next ten hours.

“Let me take that to the back for you,” says a voice I now recognize.

You lay one hand on my bag and you will lose every one of those red fingernail tips. I need my bag. Not only does it have ten bagels in it, but also my laptop and my reading material. And I still haven't decided what I want to read. “No, that's okay,” I purr. “I might empty it out some.” I smile.
Back away from the bag, honey. Slowly.

They must give lessons in psychology of stressed-out, recently dumped Midwesterners in Flight Training school because Perfect Eyebrows moves away. But I know she'll be back, so I haul the bag back up on the seat. There is still some room in the overhead bin and I know I can fit the bagels in, as well as at least three books. Maybe even the bag of red licorice. Oh yeah, I didn't mention those, did I?

I pull these items out, shove them overhead, way in the back, leaving the bagels most accessible. Then I remove the laptop, tuck it overhead and, with a grunt, push the bag into the abyss under the seat. Ahh, see? The bag fits. No need to get into a lather, sweetie, I think as I glance at Perfect Eyebrows carting another victim's bag to the back. We missionaries know how to think on our feet.

I sit down in the middle seat (Didn't the airline know about my bladder?) and wait for my compatriots.

Each face I see holds promise. A cowboy in a Stetson, an elderly woman with the look of couture, a college student still wearing her NYU sweatshirt. No takers.

I am staring the tarmac, listening to the jets whine when I feel movement. And then…a smell.

Oh, no.

Throwing his backpack on the floor, he kicks it easily under the seat. Then, giving me a glare, Grunge flops down, throws his grimy, knotted-hair head back and turns up the volume of his MP3.

Reggae.

 

I didn't see the ocean. Even though I scooted over to the window seat and pushed my face against the glass. First it was the NYC skyline, then the clouds. Then, darkness. As in
night.
I would be more than ambivalent about this little detail if exhaustion hadn't slugged me like a sledgehammer fifteen minutes after takeoff. I grabbed a scratchy synthetic airplane pillow, jammed it up against the window, and then, despite the entertainment and odor emanating from Grunge Boy, hit full slumber in about thirty-five seconds.