Clouds (4 page)

The woman took the paper from Shelly and looked it over. Slowly taking off her glasses she looked up at Shelly, scrunching her nose as she did. “This is right. They didn’t tell you in L.A., did they?”

“Tell me what?”

“About the downsizing.”

“Yes, they did. That’s why I transferred up here. They were cutting back twenty percent of their flights out of LAX.”

“Right,” the woman said, “twenty percent out of L.A., twenty-two percent out of Phoenix, and thirty-one percent out of SeaTac.”

“You’re kidding,” Shelly said. She leaned against the divider, feeling as if her sails had just been deprived of their
wind. “This isn’t right. I transferred here to get a better schedule. This is a junior schedule.”

The woman checked the paper again. “You’re listed as junior status.”

Shelly looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “Why didn’t they tell me this before I accepted the transfer?”

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “I suppose they assumed most flight attendants understood the system.”

Shelly couldn’t tell if the woman’s comment was a subtle criticism of her ability to understand the complicated hierarchy of this particular airline’s ever-changing flight attendant status, or if the supervisor was trying to express sympathy for her situation.

“You’re not the only one,” the woman said. “We had a transfer from Phoenix yesterday who was on the reserve list, too. She was so upset she quit.”

Shelly looked at the schedule. She wasn’t mad enough to quit. She needed the job. No other alternatives seemed open to her.

“So what’s going to happen?” Shelly asked. “Do they anticipate flights picking up once we hit the holiday season?”

“It’s anyone’s guess at this point. Your years with the airline are in your favor. Although I should tell you that in Seattle, five years isn’t much toward seniority.”

“So I’ve heard.” Shelly remembered jokes they used to make in L.A. about the flight attendants in Seattle going to work in wheelchairs because so many of them had twenty or more years’ seniority. Seattle was where most of the West Coast flight attendants planned to retire. Therefore it had become the base of choice several decades ago. Apparently the tradition lived on.

“This is really awful news. I just moved here yesterday. If I’d known, I would have stayed in L.A. This is completely unfair.”

The woman nodded. “They should have told you.”

Shelly let out a huff. “Well …” She forced a smile. “I guess I have a few phone calls to make.” She held up the schedule and shook her head. “This is incredible.”

The woman nodded in sympathy. “Welcome to SeaTac,” she said as Shelly walked away.

Chapter Three
 

S
helly fumed all the way home in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. “This is so unfair! I can’t believe it. Maybe I can still get back on in L.A. or at another airport. I can’t stay here. I’ll go crazy sitting around Mom and Dad’s just waiting for the phone to ring. I came here for some stability in my schedule, not to live on-call all over again. Something has to change.”

She kept her flight schedule crisis to herself that night and phoned an old friend to see if she wanted to go to the movies. Wendy wasn’t home, so Shelly left a message on her voice mail and tried Meredith. Her sister’s lyrical voice answered on her machine. “Hi there! I’m so glad you called. I’ll buzz you back as soon as I can.”

Shelly didn’t wait for the beep to end before she hung up. She had no message to leave. Obviously Meredith’s life was too full to fit in more. Shelly didn’t try to call anyone else until the next morning when Mom and Dad were out of the house.

After three hours of calls to Sunlit Airline’s Los Angeles
office and four of their other destinations, she gave up. She was stuck. No transfers were being considered, and rumor had it the San Jose Airport would discontinue all Sunlit flights by the end of the year.

Shelly, a woman who had never known depression, now came face-to-face with the monster and felt its fiery breath searing her soul. Everything had always gone her way. School work had come easily, and she had had an abundance of friends. Then she had been accepted into flight attendant school when she moved to Los Angeles and had quickly found a position with a small airline that was bought out a year later by Sunlit. For five years she had been on the go with flights full of interesting passengers and a social life full of friends.

In one short week the usually full flow of her life had been choked down to a pitiful trickle. She thought she was going to curl up and die.

Baking was Shelly’s comfort. If she ever felt that things were out of control, she could whip up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or her favorite cinnamon sweet snickerdoodles, and everything would be fine again. So, with determination, she now headed for her mom’s kitchen and began her emotionally renewing exercise of baking.

Four hours and twelve dozen cookies later, Shelly snapped the switch on the dishwasher, leaving the kitchen cleaner than she had found it. The pantry was filled with her cookie creations. She felt only a little better. And she had very little appetite for the cookies once they were baked.

Evening was coming. Another warm, gorgeous, Seattle summer evening. Mom and Dad would be home soon, but Shelly didn’t want to be there when they arrived. It would be too easy to break down and tell them how her life was being slowly strangled to death.

Shelly slipped out the front door, locked it, and walked down the front steps to her Firebird parked along the curb. She was already thinking about selling her car to get out of its high monthly payments. She could buy a used car to bring down her expenses.

What really irked Shelly as she started the car and pulled away from the curb was that, after working for five years, she had little to show for it. She didn’t even own this car. All of her salary had been swallowed up by high rent in Pasadena and living expenses. She had some money in an IRA and a little bit in a savings account, but that was it. She owned nothing and had very little to fall back on.

All the way to the mall she thought about how she shouldn’t go shopping when she was depressed. Why put herself through that kind of temptation when she didn’t have the money and didn’t need anything? But she convinced herself that no harm could come from just looking. Besides, it wasn’t the lure of buying something that led her to the mall. It was her need to be out doing something. She needed to be around people and to hear the noise. It had been far too quiet at the house all day.

Parking close to J. C. Penney’s entrance, Shelly locked her car and headed into the mall with a sudden desire for Chinese food. The first place she went was the food court to buy some mandarin orange chicken at the Chinese fast-food bar. Settling down at a table in the middle of the food court, Shelly drank in the sights and sounds of all the people. This was the tonic she needed. She realized she needed people and activity to feel balanced.

Enjoying every bite of the chicken, Shelly forced herself to think about looking for another job. She had avoided that idea all afternoon during her baking fest, but the obvious had
pushed so far to the front of her mind that she couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Perhaps she could hire on with another airline. The question was how much of her seniority would transfer over. Possibly none. Would she have to start at the bottom again and be right where she was now, taking any and all flights offered to her? What was it she loved about flying anyhow? She certainly hadn’t traveled on her own as much as she had thought she would. It had to be the people. She loved people.

Now, what job would allow her to get her daily fill of being around people? As she examined the list in her mind, only a few possibilities rose to the top. A job at the mall was one option. Or she could sign on with a temporary agency and do secretarial work. There was always the day-care center at church, or sales of some kind. She dismissed all the ideas and consoled herself with the possibility that things might change at the airline.

The next morning she felt even more hopeful when the airline called and needed her for the day. She flew to Portland and back and then was let go because the next two flights were canceled. That’s when something inside her snapped. She left the airport certain she couldn’t endure this kind of limbo living. Instead of driving home, she went to Meredith’s apartment.

Meredith looked surprised to see Shelly.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Shelly asked, walking past her sister and heading for the kitchen. “Whoa! What a mess!”

“I’m packing,” Meredith said defensively, closing the door and picking her way through the maze of boxes. She followed Shelly into the kitchen. “Help yourself. There’s not much to choose from.”

“Mind if I have this?” Shelly pulled a frozen microwave dinner from the freezer and tore open the box.

“Go ahead.” Meredith cleared a space on the counter and
pulled herself up. “So, what’s going on?”

Shelly read the back of the box, then tossed the frozen beef and noodles into the microwave and pushed the buttons. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She returned to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of some kind of pink beverage. “What is this?”

“Pink lemonade.”

Taking a cautious sip, Shelly leaned against the counter and swallowed hard. It wasn’t the lemonade that made her face begin to pucker. It was the tears she was trying so hard to swallow.

“Too strong?” Meredith guessed. “Try adding some water.”

Shelly added the water even though she knew the lemonade was fine.

“Why did you say nothing was happening? Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Meredith asked. “Or don’t you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” Shelly answered flatly.

Meredith paused. She tucked her blond hair behind her ears and made another attempt at conversation. “You don’t know what’s going on, or you don’t know if you want to talk about it?”

“Both.”

“Then do you want to help me pack?” Meredith hopped down and pointed to the open boxes and stacks of packing paper that filled the living room. “I could use some help.”

Shelly followed her sister into the jungle of disorganization and silently went about taking the pictures off the walls and wrapping them. They worked without a word until the timer went off on the microwave. Then, as if that were the starting bell for Shelly to spill her guts, she took off running with her words.

“I’m totally lost, Meredith. I’ve never felt like this before. I
don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t think I want to be a flight attendant anymore. They put me on reserve. Can you believe that? I have no schedule. I’m at the mercy of sick people and people who want to go on vacation. It’s crazy! I refuse to sit around Mom and Dad’s all day. I’m so depressed. What am I going to do?”

Meredith sat down on the arm of the couch. She looked shocked, and Shelly could imagine why. Meredith had never seen Shelly like this before. She had never seen herself like this.

“I’d start crying now,” Shelly said, leaning against the wall that had just been emptied of all its pictures, “except my tears are so deep inside me they won’t come up.”

“You’ve been through a lot of changes,” Meredith offered. “Maybe you’re in some kind of shock. I didn’t know about the airline schedule. Do Mom and Dad know?”

“Not yet.”

“Here,” Meredith moved some boxes off her couch. “Sit down. We can figure this out. It’s just a big change in your life, that’s all. You can handle this. You’ll get a regular schedule soon.”

Shelly numbly sat on the couch and shook her head. “I think the airline is going under.” She had always been the confident big sister with Meredith. Never had she fallen apart like this and let her sister be the ministering angel of mercy.

“Are they going to be bought out?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling I have. I really don’t know what will happen, and I sure don’t know what I should do.”

“What’s God telling you in your heart?” Meredith asked softly.

Shelly’s mind went blank. “I don’t know.”

Shelly had always felt close to God the way she felt close to her dad. He was there, and she could access him if she needed
him, but if she could figure things out herself, why bother either her father or God? She had prayed about this, of course, asking God to fix everything, and it had felt strange. She had never been at such a loss before.

“This is probably a dumb question,” Meredith said, “but did you check with other airlines or see about being transferred?”

Shelly explained all her efforts.

Meredith crossed and uncrossed her bare legs. “I can see how you would feel stuck.”

“Stuck,” Shelly repeated. “That’s what I am. Stuck. I’ve never been stuck before.”

“Except in the mud,” Meredith said, releasing her tinkling laughter over the memory. “Remember when you and I went out to the tree house that one Sunday after church? We got our good shoes stuck in the mud, and then Jonathan came and pulled them out with that big stick. We had to walk home in our stocking feet. It started to rain, and our best dresses were soaked. Do you remember?”