Authors: Matthew Quick
Next thing I know, I’m on a plane.
I stumble my way to the last row.
A tiny wrinkly woman is already seated in the window seat. She’s dressed in a nun’s habit. She even has her head covered, which makes her look absolutely adorable.
Present-day Sally Field reprising her
Flying Nun
role—only this time she’s old and wrinkly (and cute!) as a shar-pei.
Her spine is curved so that the middle of her back is touching the cushion, but there is a good five inches between the headrest and her shoulders.
She resembles the letter C.
When I sit down, the old woman says, “Hello, I’m Maeve. How are you doing tonight?”
It’s almost like she’s the hostess of our row.
I sit.
I buckle myself in, which proves a bit hard after the two blue martinis—which looked like Windex but tasted like Kool-Aid—I had at the airport bar.
I turn, look into her old eyes, and say, “Sister, I’m glad you asked, because I’m not doing all that well, honestly. And I could talk. Yes, I can. Talk all the way to Philadelphia. Because I’m in trouble. Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for Portia. My name. My curse-id stupid name.”
I offer my hand, and she shakes it with her eyebrows lifted.
Her hand feels like a branch ripped from a small tree, left to dry for many years, and then stuck inside a surgical glove.
If I squeeze hard, everything will snap.
Even though I’m drunk, I handle with care.
And then I start to cry again, because I have enough alcohol in me to fuel a small dump truck.
“Oh, dear,” she says, pulling endless tissues from her bag like she’s David Copperfield. “What’s the matter?”
“Seriously?” I take a wad of tissues and dab my eyes.
“Of course.”
“You really wanna know? Be sure before you answer, because I could just pass out here and let you be. I’m appropriately medicated. You don’t have to hear my depressing pathetic story.” The businessman seated across the aisle from us is staring at me, so I point my finger at his nose and say, “You, sir, can mind your own business!”
His eyes snap down to the magazine in his hands, and I feel like a powerful woman capable of making men in suits do whatever I say.
When I spin my face back toward the old nun, she says, “I’m happy to listen. What else is there to do on a flight? Half the fun of flying is learning the stories of fellow passengers. I collect them!”
I notice the wooden rosary beads wrapped around her hand and catch a glimpse of Jesus’s naked and well-toned body, which is meticulously carved.
All of the good men are either gay or the sons of gods with martyr complexes. I swear, we heterosexual women are a doomed lot.
“You collect the stories of strangers?” I say.
“Why, certainly. Everyone’s story is precious.”
I can tell this woman is a little nuts, but she seems kind, and kindness goes a long way at a time like this. “Okay, then. But remember. You asked for it.”
As we taxi, I tell her everything, slurring away.
I say the word
wang
several times and describe Ken’s tiny penis at great length before I think better of using such vivid sexual imagery while conversing with a nun, but she seems fascinated—riveted.
She squints and smiles when I say the word, maybe in spite of herself and her religious convictions.
Wang.
Hilarious!
Like I’m tickling the old woman with dirty words.
“Do you remember that song ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’? No, of course not,” I say. “
Everybody Wang Chung tonight
,” I sing. “You really don’t know it?”
“Oh, my,” she keeps saying, and then she suddenly pushes the button above us.
I have a paranoid thought: What if this nun is going to report my drunkenness and try to have me removed from the plane?
My fists clench.
The flight attendant appears in the aisle.
Maeve holds up two pink wrinkly fingers and says, “My friend here has had an awful day. Simply awful. We need vodka and some rocks immediately. If you have any of the citrus flavors, we’ll take those. Any citrus flavor will do.”
“Beverage service hasn’t begun yet, Sister,” the flight attendant says.
“Oh, I’m very sorry to ask, but this is a bit of an emergency,” Maeve says. “I can hold you up in my prayers if you oblige us. The whole sister house will pray for you”—she squints at the flight attendant’s name tag—“Stephanie.”
“Okay, Sister,” the flight attendant says, smiling now. “I’ll take that deal.”
“People will do anything for nun prayers. Even atheists!” Sister Maeve whispers to me as Stephanie walks away. “Between us girls only. One of the perks of sisterhood.”
“Are you the type of nun who goes around saying you’re married to Jesus?” I ask.
“I don’t know if I ‘go around saying’ that. But, yes. I am married to Jesus.”
“If all nuns are married to Jesus, that would mean he currently has thousands of wives and has had maybe millions over the past two thousand years, right?”
“Well, I guess so.”
“You’re okay with Jesus having multiple wives? Jesus the polygamist.”
“You can’t think of it that way—it’s not sexual, or anything like that. He’s not your Ken, after all.”
Ha! Funny old nun. Still sharp as a razor blade in a Halloween apple.
“You would totally have sex with Jesus. Admit it,” I say. “He has an amazing body.”
Maeve shakes her head, laughs, and looks up. “Oh, Lord, what have you sent me this time?”
“You talk to Jesus?”
“Every waking hour of every day.”
“Right now. You can talk to him here?”
“Certainly.”
“What does Jesus say about me? Ask him.”
“He says you need more vodka,” Maeve says.
The flight attendant returns on cue with glasses of ice, which she
hands us before bending down and pulling the mini bottles out of her pocket and slipping them to my nun friend with a wink.
“Enjoy your flight, Sister,” she says and then proudly strides away down the aisle like she’s just done a good deed.
As if Sister Maeve makes such sneaky deals every day, she simply pours two glasses. “To new beginnings.” She hands me mine. We tap plastic and begin sipping citrus-flavored alcohol.
“So you’ve never had sex?” I wonder if that would have been a good decision for me—complete and utter abstinence.
“Do you always handle pain like this?” she says. “By trying to make others uncomfortable?”
“Pfft.” I wave her words away with my hand.
We sit in silence for a time.
“I just want to be a good feminist,” I say out of the blue as the plane takes off and we begin to fly. “I really do. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Nuns are the opposite of good feminists, wouldn’t you say? Submitting to men is sort of your thing, right?”
Sister Maeve smiles and nods, and then she even chuckles.
“Have you read Gloria Steinem?” I ask.
“No, I have not.”
“‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,’ she said—Gloria Steinem. I wonder if she’d include Jesus as a man.”
“Wouldn’t know.” Sister Maeve’s voice seems tired and distant now.
I’ve already worn her down with my flippant and obnoxious comments—I’m very good at wearing people down whenever I’m upset, although I’m not proud of this.
I wish I had been nicer to Sister Maeve, but what can I do about that now? I can’t go back in time and start over. And I’m having a
bad day. When you catch your husband screwing a girl half your age, you are permitted to be bitchy, even when talking to adorable nuns on airplanes—nuns who buy you vodka, even.
Right?
No.
I’m a terrible person.
I’m sorry
, I think I say, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually moved my mouth and tongue, which is when I realize I’m fantastically drunk.
Maybe I should have used Ken’s Colt .45 on myself.
Suddenly nothing seems funny anymore.
I stare at the seatback in front of me for a minute or so before I pass out.
When I wake up, I’m disoriented and my head’s throbbing.
My shoulder is wet from my own drool.
“Where am I?” I say.
The nun to my left says, “Welcome to Philadelphia. I drank your vodka for you, Ms. Lightweight. Time to exit.”
I look up. The plane is empty.
“We’ve been shaking you. I think they might have gone to find a doctor,” the nun says.
“I’m okay,” I say, but when I try to stand, I feel sick.
I make it to the bathroom just in time to empty my stomach.
Someone is knocking now, aggressively.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
I wash out my mouth in the sink. “Coming.”
I look in the mirror and see a monster.
An old-looking mythical creature.
Red eyes.
Makeup running.
I might as well have snakes for hair.
“
Great
.” I open the door, trying to avoid eye contact. “I’m okay. Nothing to see here.”
I push past the flight attendants.
“Ma’am, your friend left this for you.”
I turn around, and the flight attendant extends a folded piece of paper.
I snatch it from her, say, “Thanks,” and then head for baggage claim, each step echoing in my skull like land mines exploding on impact, trying my best not to throw up again.
My nun friend is nowhere to be seen, so I read the note while I wait for the machine to cough up my suitcase.
Dear Portia,
It was very nice meeting you on the plane. Sorry we didn’t get to talk more. I will pray for you. Very hard! Daily! And I will ask “my husband” to intervene in a special way for you. He says he’s not mad at you for making sexual jokes, so if you are worried about that now that you’re sober—don’t be.
Galatians 3:28—There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, THERE IS NEITHER MALE NOR FEMALE; for you are all one in Jesus Christ.
Good luck with your quest.
Love,
Sister Maeve
PS—Here’s my address, should you ever want to write me. I love letters!
Sisters of St. Therese
Sister Maeve Smith
(Wife of Jesus Christ Number 2,917,299)
16 Waverly Park
Rocksford, PA 19428
Weird, I think, and then stuff the note into my pocket.
Am I on a quest?
Maybe the quest to become a novelist?
But why would she write that? Did I mention something I don’t remember now? I don’t think I ever used the word
quest
.
I’m too hung over to care all that much, so I drop it.
I try to remember if I really said “wang” to a nun, repetitively.
Did I actually describe Ken’s horrible inadequate stubby penis in excessive detail to Sister Maeve?
It’s impossible to know for sure, and so when my bag finally slides down the conveyor belt, I grab it and catch a cab.
“Take me home,” I tell the dark-skinned man in the driver’s seat.
“Where is your home, please?” he says as he turns on the meter. His accent is sort of sexy. Seal without the scars on his face, I think, but then I quickly remind myself not to say that aloud, because it seems racist, even though I compare white strangers to famous Caucasians all the time, and without guilt.
“Across the Walt Whitman Bridge,” I say. “Westmont. You?”
“Me what?” he says.
“Where’s your home?”
He pulls away from the curb and says, “Philadelphia.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t born here, I can tell by your accent. So where are you really from?”
Silence.
There are mounds of exhaust-smoke-gray snow on the ground outside. I’m no longer in Florida, that’s for sure.
“Are you afraid to tell me where you were born?” I say.
Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror. “Nigeria.”
“Is it nice in Nigeria?”
“No,” he says. “There is too much violence. Please. Never go.”
“Westmont is pretty fucked too.”
“It is better than Nigeria.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But it ain’t like I have a choice tonight.”
“You always have a choice. Look at me. Here in America.
A choice
.”
“Do you like it here in America?”
“Yes,” he says. “Very much. I will bring my family here one day. Soon, I hope.”
“You have a wife?”
“In Nigeria. And five children. Three strong sons.”
I ignore his sexist favoritism. “You love her—your wife?”
“Yes.”
“She’s lucky.” I hate myself for envying this woman in Nigeria whose husband drives a cab halfway around the world, saving money to rescue her from whatever hell Nigeria currently offers. It sounds like a fairy tale. She might as well be in an ivory tower. So romantic—beautiful even. Their struggle.
Portia, you are a terrible person, I think. Terrible.
“I am lucky. Very lucky. My wife is a strong woman. Very beautiful. Good mother. She will make me more sons here in America. I am the lucky one.”
I look at my ruined reflection hovering in the window as we pass the Philadelphia professional sports complexes on the left.
What is this guy smoking? Because I want some.
He takes me across the Walt Whitman Bridge.
“I do not know this area. Will you please advise me?” he says.
I advise him.
We navigate away from Camden and toward safer suburbia, with me yelling out rights and lefts. Finally I say, “Over there. The one with the highly embarrassing metal awning.”
He pulls up to the row home in which I grew up, across the street from the Acme grocery store.
His index finger taps the glowing red numbers hovering over his dash, and he quotes the price.
Instead of paying, I say, “Have you ever cheated on your wife here in America?”
“What?”
“Have you had sex with a woman since you left Nigeria?”
“No!” he yells in a way that lets me know he is highly offended.
“Do you consider your wife to be your equal? Do you encourage her to have ambitions and dreams?”
“Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Tell me you love your wife.”