Airplane Rides Read online

  The news didn’t go over well with my father, who immediately established that I deserved more than a few swats from an old lady with an oversized ruler. Always the intermediary, my mother (equipped with verbal confirmation of my regret and, I suspect, a few doctored Polaroids) negotiated my way back into class two days before Confirmation. In my best and only suit, I walked the center aisle with my Catechism classmates into our bible-given right to forgiveness for the bargain rate of a full confession and ten Our Fathers. It was official. I was a Catholic.

  I never thought much about religion again, except for the occasional news blurb reminding me that the Catholic Church was an organization of misguided priorities designed primarily to perpetuate membership (the Pope encouraging teenagers not to use condoms readily comes to mind). Instead I quickly became a non-practicing half believer of God, not giving a second thought to any of the minor league sins, and rationalizing that a quick stop to a confessional booth somewhere near the end of my run would surely clean enough of my slate to get me a spot on the elevator going up.

  And so it was until one early afternoon in Chicago following an airport interview with a young lawyer who aspired to “benefit from my mentorship.” One had to laugh at the sound of it, as it was like asking Robert Downey Jr. for career counseling. We met for coffee at an airport bar prior to my flight back to New York following a day that was otherwise filled with the typical bullshit of selling people on doing what was generally in my favor. By 4:30 that afternoon, between the meetings and the interview, I was all sold out. There was not a scrap of dignity left.

  With time to kill, I went from the interview bar to a smaller drinking establishment closer to my gate and hid behind a pair of dark oversized Ray-Ban glasses that I had pulled from my suit breast pocket. I mumbled something about a glass of vodka to the bartender and laid a ten-dollar bill on the black Formica bar top. The cold liquid ran down my throat, soothing the panic that was quietly overwhelming me. I could feel my eyes relax a tick and I felt a bit more in control, at least to the extent that I had the glass to hang onto. I dared a look at the eyes of the bartender through the dark glasses, an older man with a bright-balled nose, bushy eyebrows and bushy ears to match. He returned my glance with a crooked smile that suggested we had already met and that he was waiting for me to recognize him as if we were partners of sorts – the seller and the buyer, the server and the served, the tempter and the tempted.

  Feeling uncomfortably transparent, I turned away, leaning with my back against the bar and my drink in my hands. O’Hare was one of the newer of the mall airports back then, an assembly of familiar retailers, clustered between airline gates, helping travelers feel comfortable while in strange cities by filling their waiting time between destinations the same way that they fill their waiting time at home – consuming. I eyed the other travelers as they hurried to their airplanes, some dragging their luggage, a few dragging small children who in turned carried their own brightly colored little suitcases with pictures of their favorite cartoon characters. Easier to face the bartender, I turned back around away from the children and took a long draw on the drink, closing my eyes as I did so and washing the children’s innocence from my mind. I knew their destination, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  When I opened my eyes, the bartender was in front of me, smiling his rotten-toothed smile and stinking like the desk clerk at a seedy peepshow joint.

  “Another?” he asked, ready to pour the bottle he held forward as if he knew I needed it.

  “Not today.”

  My response was laced with the assertion that I might still be in charge of the partnership I didn’t belong to. I picked up my case off the adjoining barstool and walked toward the gate, leaving the change on the bar and sure that I could hear the bartender laughing at me from behind.

  A groan in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything that day. I could feel myself squinting to compensate for a throbbing that was slowly building in my temples and stretching around to the back of my eye sockets. I backtracked a hundred or so feet to a gift store and bought a bottle of aspirin, a role of antacids and a large bottle of water, sampling each of them before actually paying the nineteen-year-old overweight, underpaid child whose lifeless eyes never noticed me but indicated beyond any reasonable doubt that her fate had already been sealed by a fatherless child, an abusive parent, an absent education or maybe all of the above.

  By the time I finally reached the gate, first and business class passengers were boarding. I made my way up, water bottle under my arm, briefcase in one hand and boarding pass in the other. The gate attendant smiled at me, ripping my boarding pass perfectly across the perforated line without taking her eyes off my sunglass armor. In the moment, I took her in. Her eyes were deep pools of brown, probably darker because of my glasses, as was her hair, tied back behind her head with a dark blue ribbon in a loose ponytail. She reminded me of another woman, causing the echo of a faint memory in my heart. I felt an urgency to say something redeeming to her, but I knew she wouldn’t understand. The opportunity was lost, and our connection limited to the touch of our fingers on the passing of my boarding stub.

  The cocktail was stirring my libido and blurring my sense of reason enough to contemplate turning around and suggesting to her I stay the night in town where we could navigate the intricacies of our respective charades over dinner. While my mind stopped to consider the possibilities, my shoes didn’t and instead carried me further into the cavernous jetway, similar in feel to the Saint Mary’s corridor. I pushed through the more patient types to find my seat in an empty row in the far aisle of the business class section. I settled in next to the window, stowed my case under the seat in front of me and immediately waved to get the attention of the flight attendant who was doing aisle laps with a tray of water and champagne. I talked my way into a second vodka rocks that I used to wash down another three aspirin.

  Using my finger, I extracted the largest of the ice cubes from the glass and held it to my temples, first the right and then the left. The ice cube melted and tiny drops of water ran down my cheeks, which I casually brushed away with the pinky finger on my same hand. I closed my eyes tight in an attempt to squeeze the headache and the image of the gate attendant from my head, all along working the ice cube until it had completely dissolved. Exhausted, eyes still closed, my wet fingered hand dropped to my lap and my mind was free to ask the question I kept avoiding.

  My solitude was disrupted by the feeling of a large presence to my left and confirmed by a weighted descent on the seat next to me, far too large to be an acceptable distraction. I pretended to sleep behind my sunglasses, avoiding any possibility of having to endure pleasantries. When I did finally open my eyes, I met the stare of a large Orthodox Jewish man whose eyes were as black as the unruly hair that continued down his sideburns into a full beard. The man’s stare shifted disapprovingly between my face and the half-finished cocktail balancing on the armrest that separated us. I realized he was looking at the watermarks on my face and had assumed they were tears. I further presumed that his glance at the glass was his judgmental way of letting me know that the remedy for my sorrow could not be found at the bottom. I wanted to tell him to fuck off and take his act to a different row, but instead I picked up the glass and defiantly gulped down the remaining liquid. The man smiled to let me know that he was not intimidated by the performance, exhaled a sigh of what sounded like pity and turned his attention to a copy of the Talmud that he pulled from a black oversized leather accountant’s case.

  I shifted slightly and from behind my glasses I inconspicuously eyed him. He too wore black, but his suit was three-pieced and he wore no tie under his wrinkled white collar. His hands were thick like the rest of him, and I noticed they were chapped and darkened with newspaper ink. I guessed him in his mid-fifties, as everything about him looked that age with the exception of his youthfully bright and full red lips that I suspected had been shielded through the years by his overgrown mustache.
/>   The flight attendant passed for a final check, taking with her my empty glass as the last of the stragglers buckled in for takeoff.

  As the airplane ascended I looked out the window and breathed my own sigh of relief, the distance between me and the earth growing to several hundred feet, then several thousand, until finally I was once again lost above the great white expanse of the clouds. As the direct rays of the sun warmed me, I began to feel that somewhere in that peaceful and timeless space I might remember who I was. I thought I might be forgiven for the lies I’d told, forgiven by the innocents I had seduced, forgiven for having left the gate attendant’s smile unanswered as I did the woman with whose heart I was careless with years before. Once forgiven, I could forgive those who had taught me life’s harder lessons. This high in the sky, temporarily absolved, I could forgive them all, even the judgmental man who was sharing my ride.

  “You don’t mind if I eat, do you?”

  His question breaking the silence while untying a knot in a light blue plastic shopping bag that he had pulled out from his case.

  I responded with a silent thumbs up at which he pulled from the bag a few paper napkins, a white plastic fork and an rectangular Tupperware container full to the brim with what looked like leftover shredded roast chicken, carrots, potatoes and peas.

  “They always forget my meal,” he informed me in between bites and waving a hand in the air to get the attention of the flight attendant.

  Upon her arrival he requested a glass of water and continued, compelled to explain. “So after not eating a few times, I started bringing my own,” completing the thought while carefully selecting a small morsel of chicken.

  Technically there was no question, so I offered no response, my earlier thumbs up the only indication that I was conscious behind my Ray-Bans.

  The man was unshaken at my mildly rude election for silence, and continued undeterred.

  He told me his name was Max Singer as he wiped his right hand with the paper napkin and jutted it forward to shake mine.

  Realizing the inevitable I gave his hand a quick shake and shared with him my first name.

  “Tough day?”

  He motioned to the plastic fork to the empty space where my vodka glass had been.

  “Not at all,” I responded, trying to work the hoarseness out of my voice.

  Max smiled at me a smile that suggested he knew better, but he did not prod further. For a few moments he ate, his mannerisms as graceful and flawless as if he were dining in a three-star restaurant rather than a crowded airplane.

  “Where are you from?”

  Wondering if there was still any chance of avoiding conversation, I was half inclined to point my thumb east out the window but refrained, admitting to myself that his relentless nature was a pleasant distraction.

  “New York,” I replied and dared to ask the same.

  Max told me that he was also from New York and, as expected, it didn’t end there. He proudly told me he was a printer, that he was married and had three children, two boys and a girl. Both boys worked with him, and the girl was still in school. I didn’t ask, but I assumed that meant high school. He talked as though we were old friends, filling me in on how his life had turned out, but without any common memories to share. Out of what seemed like sincere interest rather than conversational etiquette, he began to ask about my life. In response, I did what I always had in such instances, and told a story about someone else.

  “Here’s one for you Max,” I began, sounding as though I were about to pose a riddle, not realizing at the time I cared about the answer.

  “A while back, I was coming in from Kennedy in one of those sedan limos. The driver was a man named Jonas who, like you, was an Orthodox Jew. I noticed Jonas was very upset and I asked him why. He told me that his entire family was distraught because Jonas’s sister Jordana had fallen in love, was living with and planned on marrying a man who wasn’t Jewish.”

  Max listened intently, pursing his red lips and nodding as I spoke, conveying empathy for Jonas’s dilemma. I continued with the story, telling him that Jordana had been banished from the family and that no one was talking to her with the exception of Jonas, who was trying desperately to convince her to break off the relationship and return home.

  “Almost nine months later,” I continued, “fate would have it that I was on my way back to Kennedy, and once again Jonas was my driver. I remembered his face in the rear view mirror and inquired if Jordana had gone forward with the marriage. Jonas was surprised and appreciative that I had remembered him, but sadly told me that Jordana had married the man and that he too had broken communications.”

  Finished with the story, I waited for Max’s reaction, which he did not immediately offer. His expression was troubled and pensive.

  “Very sad,” said Max.

  “Well, do you think it wrong that the family excommunicated her?”

  “It’s not wrong at all,” stated Max without hesitation. “She betrayed her family.”

  “Betrayed? How so?”

  “She married outside her faith.”

  “Ok, but don’t you think it a little harsh that they disown her?”

  “Not at all.”

  Perhaps my story had caused him to lose his appetite, or perhaps he believed the subject warranted his full attention. Whatever the case, Max pulled the Tupperware lid from the plastic bag and fit it carefully back on the container like someone might remove their eyeglasses before a fistfight.

  “What is your religion?” he asked.

  “I’m not very religious.”

  “You were raised an atheist?”

  “No. Catholic.”

  “So you are a Catholic.”

  “My name is on the guest list but I’m not sure I am still invited.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “It’s probably a good hedge, but that’s not what we’re talking about.”

  “My apologies.”

  “So you have a daughter,” I asked rhetorically. “If she married someone who wasn’t Jewish...”

  “An Orthodox Jew,” he corrected me.

  “Fine, if she married someone who was not an Orthodox Jew, you wouldn’t talk to her ever again?”

  “Yes, and I would do all in my power to stop the marriage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I would cut her off financially as well. She would take nothing forward from her life as my child.”

  “How could you really do that? ” I asked, without giving him a chance to answer before firing off another question. “How could you not break down and talk to her?”

  “There would be no one to talk to because she would be dead to me.”

  I sat for a moment, studying Max’s face for a bluff. His dark eyes were fixed on my glasses, and his bright red lips held together, giving no indication of an explanation to come.

  “How could you really do that to your child?”

  “She will have done it to herself.”

  “I have known people who have lost children Max, and my bet is that they would tell you that that’s not dead.”

  “No, she would be dead to me, dead to her family.”

  I continued to stare, past his eyes and into his mind. Max stared back ready to defend the teachings of his faith and the words that he spoke. The aspirin and vodka were tearing me up from the inside out. I took off my sunglasses, tucked them into the pocket of my jacket and rubbed hard at the inner corners of my eyes with my fingers.

  Inside my mind I laughed at my own incorrigible tendencies. I was probably an inch away from vomiting blood, and here I was taking on a religious argument with an Orthodox Jew.

  My mind shuffled through the Tuesday sessions for the applicable lesson, the one that handled the question of what comes first: the family or the church. There had to be some military “God, Country, Corps” type hierarchy to resolve it, but nothing came to mind. Turning back to face him, I continued.

  “But Max, isn’t the whole point
of religion to bring family together?”

  “The point is to be closer to God.”

  “And tearing apart your family brings you closer to God?”

  “I am not tearing apart the family. Jordana tore herself away from her family, and in marrying outside her faith tore herself away from God.”

  “But what she did was fall in love.”

  “Her choice.”

  “A person decides who they fall in love with?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said it was her choice,” I shot back.

  “She has the choice of who not to fall in love with. She should not have allowed herself to progress into love with someone not of her faith.”

  “Progress romantically?”

  Max nodded his head in solid affirmation.

  “Hold on.”

  I held up my hand thinking I had him but at that same moment I experienced a wave of dizziness that caused me to loose focus.

  “Are you alright?”

  Max eyed me with concern.

  “Must be a blood sugar thing.”

  I tried to sound causal and brushed the air between us with the back of my hand – the universal signal for no big deal.

  Max hailed the flight attendant and asked for an orange juice.

  “Thank you Max,” I said trying to get past the distraction. “Let’s suppose you are a young unmarried man working in an office somewhere, and next to you sits a beautiful unmarried woman.”

  Max smiled at my determination as the flight attendant arrived with the orange juice. I emptied the plastic cup in a single tilt and wiped my lip with the paper napkin that was stuck to the bottom.

  “Perfect,” I said, feeling better almost instantly. “So you work next to her each and every day for a few years, and naturally learn about each other’s lives. You become great friends, sharing lunch, talking about life, the whole meshugass.”