Ask the Passengers

Ellis cracks up.

“It’s not funny,” Mom says. Then she looks into Ellis’s eyes. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”

“She didn’t know. No one knew,” I say. “Anyway, if you’re expecting some big news about how I’m some lesbian or whatever because I got busted at a g*y club, then you’re fresh out of luck.”

I look over and see Frank S. sitting in the corner. He’s not smiling.

“So how come you didn’t go to one of a hundred normal bars to dance and drink, then?” Mom says. See that? Normal bars. As opposed to, you know, homosexual bars. I think we might have to revoke that FOTG badge, Mom.

“Because I didn’t,” I answer.

“You woke me up for this? On a weekend?” Ellis complains. “Jesus!” She gets up and slams her chair into the table and goes back upstairs.

Mom and Dad look at me. I look at the clock. It’s 4:03—exactly two minutes since the last time I looked at it. Dad looks tired. Guessing from his usual Saturday night routine, I’d bet that he only went to bed at one o’clock, after Saturday Night Live. He was probably a few notches over too stoned, and I most likely called him and woke him out of a near coma.

“I hope you’re happy,” she says. “This will ruin our reputation.”

“Oh,” I say. I thought we all knew that our bad reputation has been building in this town, birdhouse by birdhouse, but hey, I guess we can blame everything on me now. World hunger. War. Apocalypse. Mom’s unpopularity in a town her ancestors helped found.

“You can’t just think of yourself, you know. Think of Ellis. She’s going to be a target now, too,” she says. “And do you know what this means?” She’s waving the ticket. She slaps it on the table.

“I think it means I have to go to court.”

“It means you’re going to lose your license for a few months,” Dad says. “And you’re going to have a record.”

Mom sighs. “How do you think that will look now that we’re about to choose a college?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I look at Frank. Still not smiling.

We sit in silence for a while.

“Can we go back to bed now?” Dad asks. “I’m sure Astrid will realize what this all means as it slowly bites her in the ass. Right now I just want to sleep.”

“No one is keeping you here, Gerry,” Mom says. “I guess I’ll go back to bed and try to sleep, too. I hope you had fun tonight, because you’re completely grounded with no car. And I’m sure once Jeff hears where you were, he’s going to break up with you, and I can’t say I blame him.”

I put my head down and hold back laughter.

Poor Claire.

On the picnic table everything is quiet.

All of the adrenaline from getting caught has clogged in my muscles, and I’m exhausted. Frank S. is still with me. He’s sitting on the bench by the back door.

I wave. “Hi, Frank.”

He waves back. “Hi, Astrid.” He still isn’t smiling. “Shame you had to lie.”

“I just didn’t think it was the right time,” I say.

He nods. “Is there ever a right time?”

I don’t like him right now, so I look back at the sky. There’s a plane making its way west, and I mentally put myself on it. Where would I be going on that little thing? Pittsburgh? Cleveland? Would it matter? Wouldn’t any of us catch a flight to Anywherebuthere right now?

I ask the passengers: What does the airport look like at four o’clock in the morning? Did they even have coffee brewing? Was there toilet paper in the stalls?

And why don’t I feel ashamed right now? Is that a sign?

PASSENGER #1298

JANE TILBERTS, SEAT 2A

FLIGHT #9321

NEWARK TO CLEVELAND

I sit bolt upright in my seat and suck air as if I’d been drowning. The flight attendant immediately offers me a drink of water.

“You were sleeping,” she says.

I nod.

She offers me water again. I say, “Okay.”

I remember the dream I was having. I was me, the teenager. I was in the backyard of our summer house by the lake, lying on an old quilt my mother used as a beach blanket. I was watching an airplane up so high, and wondered where it was going. I did that a lot. Until I moved closer to the city, I only ever saw airplanes up high.

In the dream I was lonely. And I was ashamed—probably about what happened to me and Jenny that night at Mike’s party. We should have never gone. Those boys only invited us to take advantage of us, and so we arrived innocent and we left broken.

Even though it wasn’t my fault, I’ve never told anyone about it. Not even my own husband. Not even my therapist when I had a therapist. It’s old. I should be over it by now, right? It was just past the free love of the early seventies. It was just boys being boys.

But I don’t think I’ll ever shake that night. It’s been almost forty years, and I haven’t come close to shaking it yet.

I wonder if Jenny has.

I lean up against the window and close my eyes. I have a daydream. It’s a warm day and I’m a teenager and I’m happy and I’m wearing that great pair of red corduroys I had in eleventh grade. As I sit on my back porch the way I did the day after, I know in my heart that I did everything I could. I know in my heart that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, no matter what those boys said.

That’s the way it has to be, so that’s the way I see it.

And the warmth I feel is real. For the first time since it happened forty years ago, I feel okay about it.

I finally feel okay about it.

CLAIRE MAKES SHADOWS.

MOM STANDS INSIDE MY ROOM and annoyingly knocks on my door until I drag myself from REM dreams.

“You missed work!” she screeches. She’s a pterodactyl.

I look at my clock and I do the math. Eight AM minus five AM equals three. I’ve had about three hours of sleep. “I have off today,” I say. “Did that long shift yesterday, remember?”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I did. Yesterday when I got home.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Well… I have off,” I say.

She clip-clops down the upstairs hall and slams the door to her office. After a few minutes, she turns on her stereo and I can’t sleep.

I get that ringing in my ears, the kind you get when all the blood rushes to the anger center in your brain. If this was reversed, she’d insist I have respect for the rest of the people in the house. It would rate at least an hour on the lecture scale.

cracks up.