Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories

by Nancy Christie

  “Well, I have a little bit of news for you children,” she began slowly, seeing out of the corner of her eye the supervisor, ready to intervene. “There was a call from my son—you remember, he lives down south—”

  “With little Joey and Sally and Sally’s kitten,” Jesse said, and Connie smiled.

  “That’s right, with Joey and Sally and Sally’s kitten. Remember how I told you Joey played baseball?” and the children nodded. “Well, Joey was running to catch the ball and he tripped right over his own feet and fell smack on the ground. And he hurt his arm—”

  “Did he break it? Will they have to cut it off?” Of course, it was Carla who asked. All that Carla knew was that if something hurt, the doctors cut it off. Sometimes, Connie would find her peering up her empty sleeve, as if she was waiting for the arm to grow back, as if she was a starfish who could make the missing part regenerate.

  “No,” said Connie, “but he will have to wear a cast for a long time and my son would like me to come tell him stories to help pass the time. So I will have to leave all of you for a bit and take care of my grandson because there is no one down there to tell him tales.”

  “Will you come back?” Jesse kept his face perfectly still but Connie could see the tears trembling at the corners of his eyes. Jesse knew about going away and never coming back.

  “Yes, but it won’t be for a long while,” she said, and looked up for a moment at the supervisor, who looked away. “But let’s have one more story before I have to leave. What would you like to hear?”

  “I want to hear about your horse, Lightning. Did you ever go riding on him?” Jason asked, and Connie reached out to pull his wheelchair closer.

  “Lightning and I would go riding every morning, when the dew was still on the grass. I would throw an old blanket on his strong back, and slip the bit between his white teeth and off we would go, to where the birds were hunting for their breakfast. I would grip his sides very tightly with my legs and he would run very fast. Sometimes, I would close my eyes and let the wind blow my hair back from my face and think I was flying.”

  Jason closed his eyes and Connie could see he was pretending to feel the wind and the movement, his fingers curled around the imaginary brown leather reins.

  “We would ride all morning,” she continued, her voice growing softer, “while the sun would melt away the dew and warm the grass. I would find the place where the strawberries were ripening, and pick a handful for my breakfast. And at a nearby stream Lightning would drink the water, scaring away the tadpoles swimming just below the surface.”

  The children grew very still, their eyes closed as they imagined the water sparkling in the sunlight, and the snorting sound Lightning made when a tadpole tickled his nose.

  Connie looked at their pale faces, and then closed her eyes, willing herself to join them.

  “And sometimes,” she said softly, “I would see the eagles, riding on the breeze,” and for a moment, Connie too could feel the summer sun and see those wings outlined against the summer sky.

  Exit Row

  “Are you sure this is our row?”

  Damn it! Why is she stopping now? We’ve already covered this!

  Even though while waiting to board he had already explained numerous times which row and seat was hers—19C—she still seemed unable to remember the simple letter/number combination. And now his wife was effectively bottlenecking the already slow-moving line of passengers by first stopping to peer at the small metal label above the seats and then waiting as though it would light up in response to her question: green for yes or red for no.

  “Yes,” tightly. “Just look at your boarding pass.”

  “What?”

  “Look. At. Your. Boarding. Pass,” each word given its own weight. Was she deaf? Stupid? Or just pretending to be either one?

  “My glasses . . . Where did I put my glasses? You know I can’t see without them.” She dropped her overloaded knitting bag onto an empty seat and then rummaged in her handbag, sending half-eaten rolls of mints and scraps of shopping lists cascading out of its gaping mouth to land on the aisle floor.

  He looked anywhere but at what she was doing because he just couldn’t bear to watch, to be a witness to her consummate stupidity. But when someone behind him pushed none too gently at his back, he knew he had to act.

  “Give it to me.” He grabbed for her other hand—the one clutching the now slightly damp slip—but she kept it just beyond his grasp.

  Then, “There they are!” and she held her bifocals aloft in triumph. Slipping them on, she scanned the writing. “19C. Now, what seat is this?” And once again, looked at the identifying marker as though it might have changed in the last 30 seconds. “19C! Imagine that! I stopped right at my row without even trying!” and she smiled at him, inviting him to acknowledge her success. But he looked away.

  “If everyone will please move out of the aisle and into their seat, we can finish boarding.”

  He heard the flight attendant’s command (couched as a request, to be sure, but he knew it was still an order and one solely directed at the pair of them) and tried to push past her to gain his window seat. But she sat down, piling her cracked leather purse and quilted satchel on her lap before outstretching her legs (how he hated the look of her orthopedic shoes!) under the seat in front of her.

  “It feels good to sit down,” and she smiled again. And kept on smiling as he tripped over her varicose-veined extremities to fall into the window seat, the armrest bruising his hip.

  “You could have waited. You could have let me go in ahead of you.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, she wanted us to sit down as quickly as possible. If I would have waited, all those people” gesturing to the passengers filing past them “would still be standing there. And that would have been so rude.”

  Or you could have paid attention, remembered which row was yours, let me sit down first and then taken your seat like a normal person, he wanted to answer, but what was the point? She would have an answer—an irritatingly stupid one, to be sure, but an answer nonetheless—that would lead to an interminably long and circuitous conversation by the end of which all he would want to do is wrap his fingers around her fat, wrinkled throat and strangle her.

  Sometimes, the prospect was almost more attractive than he could withstand. A narrow prison cell—hell, death itself!—seemed a small price to pay just to be able to shut her up.

  But once again, self-control won out. He blocked out her voice, her presence, her very existence, as well as he could, and opened The Times, determined to lose himself in the business section and its latest round of stories about financial institutions brought down by investors filing class action suits.

  There should be a class action suit that husbands could file against their wives, he thought, snapping the paper open before halving it neatly along its vertical fold, when the women fail to perform as expected.

  For a moment, he lost himself in the fantasy: his wife on trial for all her misdeeds: years of charred pot roasts, favorite shirts marred with bleach stains, beloved books that unaccountably could not be found right after she cleaned the house.

  “I don’t understand how it could have happened,” she would answer when he pointed out the issues, as though someone else might have done the damage.

  At first, he would remind her that she was the one doing the cooking, the washing, the cleaning, but the same bewildered, uncomprehending expression remained on her face. Gradually, he had come to suspect that she had known the answer all along, and simply engaged him in this familiar frustrating conversation just to push him closer to the edge. But try as she might, he wouldn’t go over.

  No. He had no intention of letting her win. Even if it killed him.

  Instead, he gave up trying to reason with her, to prove that she was at fault or get her to admit to the responsibility. Eventually it would all be over, he told himself. She would die and he could live what was left of his life without losing his mind. Although there we
re times when he wondered if years of close proximity had already damaged it beyond repair.

  “All carry-on items must be stowed under the seat in front of you or in the overhead bin.” The familiar singsong refrain was louder because the flight attendant was standing right next to them.

  “Your bags,” teeth gritted as he elbowed her. “Take care of your bags.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Now, before I put them away, what will I need?”

  Once again, she delved into the cavernous mouth of her handbag—an act that resembled not so much an investigation of its contents as an exercise in dumpster-diving. She pulled out a small but solid hardbound book, her over-sized cosmetic case (the cause of an earlier delay—this one in the security line because her wrinkle cream was in a six-ounce jar, two ounces larger than was allowed) and a slightly brown banana whose flesh was oozing out between the slits in the peel. Then she zipped the bag closed.

  “There. That should be enough for the flight,” dumping the loose items and her other bag onto his lap before leaning over and shoving her purse under the seat in front of her.

  The spine of the book dug into his thighs, and he tried to shift it to no avail. Then “Sir, I am going to have to ask you to place the other bag in the overhead bin, please.”

  The “please” was a mere formality, the frown on the flight attendant’s face making it quite clear that it was an order, not a request, and one made with what was left of her patience.

  “Sit back,” he muttered, and when his wife finally heard him and stopped fiddling with her purse (Just leave it alone! he wanted to shout but didn’t, mindful of the passenger behavior rules), he threw her items and quilted sack back onto her lap.

  “But I can’t put it up there!” She looked at him in surprise. “You know that I can’t lift my arms that high! I have arthritis,” in a confiding tone to the flight attendant who was still standing there, her black-heeled shoe tapping an impatient refrain. “And besides,” in triumph, turning back to him, “I’m too short.”

  “Sir” but he didn’t even wait for the rest of the sentence. Instead, he got to his feet and tried to step over his wife. But just as his right leg crossed hers, she moved just enough to trip him, sending him half falling into the aisle.

  “Stay still!” He regained his balance and then, grabbing the knitting bag full of skeins of yarn and crumpled patterns, started to open the overhead compartment door above them but the flight attendant stopped him.

  “That one is full. These are all full.”

  Was it his imagination or did the attendant seem to take a perverse pleasure in denying him use of those bins that were in closest proximity to his seat?

  “You will have to go further back and see if you can find one that still has space.”

  While you do exactly what, bitch? he wanted to answer, but there was no point in arguing with her, insulting her, telling her that it was supposed to be her job to take care of passengers, not make their lives harder. Instead, he took a firmer grip on the cloth handles, trying to keep the contents from spilling out into the aisle, and hauled it down the aisle, past the rows of passengers who were already seated and waiting for take-off, which was now being delayed because he had to deal with this damned thing.

  “We will be closing the cabin doors and taking off as soon as everyone has taken their seats,” as though there were other passengers besides him still standing, still walking, still trying to find somewhere—anywhere!—to shove their damned belongings.

  Finally, he found an open space, all the way in the back into which he managed to wedge the bag before making the long walk back to row 19.

  What would happen if I kept on walking? What if I walked right past our row, past the flight attendant, past everyone else who had the misfortune to be on this damned plane and went right out of the door, up the jetway and into the terminal? If I walked really quickly, she would never be able to find me.

  For a moment, he lost himself in the fantasy: leaving the building, getting into his car, turning the key in the ignition and then driving away somewhere, anywhere, as fast as he could until it all disappeared behind him.

  “Sir. Please take your seat.”

  And he realized that he was at his row—the row where he was doomed to stay for the next four hours—and sighing, began the process of regaining his window seat. This time, however, he was ready for her. And when she shifted her leg again, his grip on the seat back in front of him stopped him from falling forward and banging his head against the window.

  A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

  “Now if you will all please pay attention . . .” and the familiar litany began: how to fasten the seat belt, what to do in the event of a water landing or loss of cabin pressure—all those instructions and warnings that were intended to prevent disaster or, if it should occur, to lessen its impact.

  Too bad the wedding ceremony didn’t come with that information. He tried to recall the day they were married, but it had taken place more than five decades ago and the exact details were lost to time. Had he even wanted to marry her? Or was it just what one did back then: get married, raise a family and live happily ever after?

  He had done the first item but after that, it was a downhill slide. No kids (not that, in retrospect, he would have wanted any tangible reminder of those far-from-pleasurable twice-monthly couplings) and a job he hated in her father’s company (“But Daddy has already planned it!” she had told him and, even in those early days, he recognized when he was up against an immovable force and so acquiesced). And year after year of steadily increasing aggravations that wore him down like water dripping on a rock.

  A bump—he hadn’t realized that the plane had starting down the runway in preparation for take-off.

  “Sir. Your seat belt.”

  He flushed and fastened himself in, not meeting the flight attendant’s eyes. Then, “Mine is fastened,” his wife pointed out happily, like a little kid waiting for praise, and she got what she wanted.

  “Yes, I can see that. Thank you for following our rules. If everyone did that,” pointedly, “flights would be so much smoother.”

  He turned his head away to look out the window. But the darkness outside combined with the lit interior of the plane turned the glass into a mirror and he saw (or did he just imagine it?) the two exchanging conspiratorial smiles.

  Damn them. Damn all women, the tightness in his chest constricting his breathing. He took some deep breaths, trying to calm down, hoping stress would release its iron grip. And that was all it was. He was sure of it, regardless of what the doctor said.

  “And if you feel pain, just put one of these” the cardiologist had said at the last appointment, holding the tiny bottle aloft “under your tongue. And of course, seek immediate medical attention.”

  “I’ll make sure he does” his wife had said, and the doctor had first smiled at her and then gave him a look that said how lucky he was to have someone watching out for him.

  A few more breaths, and now he was calmer, less in pain. Maybe if he read the paper page by page, article by article, line by line, it might last until they touched down in Phoenix.

  The trip was her idea. She said she had always wanted to go to Phoenix. Why, he didn’t know and didn’t even bother to ask since her answer was bound to make little sense. He had long since given up trying to understand the inner workings of her mind. All he knew is that he had come home from the barbershop to find the itinerary on the table and her bag half-packed.

  “It will be a lovely trip. The weather is so much nicer there than here,” and she gestured to the window, where the sleet was needling the windows unmercifully.

  But all that meant was that for a solid week he would be chained to her side, either stuck in the small hotel room or trapped in a tour bus. Each year since he retired, they took a trip and each year she picked the destination, bought the tickets and then gave him the itinerary: a fait accompli.

  And each year, he suffered through those sev
en days, hating not so much the scenery or sites as her proximity. At least at home he could escape—play golf once a week, mow the lawn, or even, when the snow piled up, shovel the drive. It didn’t matter what he did as long as she wasn’t part of it. And it worked—for 51 weeks. But the 52nd was when he lost his freedom and instead became part of a two-man chain gang.

  He turned the page of the newspaper, hoping to find something that would capture his attention, and then realized that some pages were missing.

  “What happened to the paper?” he asked aloud, not expecting an answer, but she replied.

  “Oh, I needed something to wrap the fish bones in before I threw them away. I didn’t think you’d mind” although she knew damned well he would mind, that the paper had been neatly folded and slipped inside the outside pocket of his carry-on so it would be ready for the trip. She knew it and took it anyway—and then folded the sheets back up so he wouldn’t notice until it was too late to buy another.

  He wanted to explode at her, beat her over the head with what was left of the paper, but instead he breathed in and out as slowly as possible, trying to get his anger under control. He wouldn’t give in. Not yet. Not when there were so many witnesses. Not when they were in this sardine can 35,000 feet above the surface of the earth. Not when he couldn’t escape, cleanly, quickly, permanently.

  He shoved the paper into the seat pocket and then looked out the window. But the white clouds obscured any view of the world below. Not that, at this hour, there would be much to see. She always chose the latest possible flight, and this one was no different, not departing until 10 PM.

  “But when we land, it will be two hours earlier,” she explained, “and the flight was so much cheaper.”

  Although it would still be late at night, he thought, and by the time they got to the hotel room, he would be so tired he wouldn’t be able to sleep. She, on the other hand, would immediately start snoring as soon as her head hit the pillow and then wake up bright and early the next morning, fully refreshed and ready to go.