Sisterchicks on the Loose (7 page)

Penny sneezed twice. “What is that stuff?”

“I’m not sure.” I tried to read the rubbed-off letters from the small tube. “Eau de something.”

“Eau de phew!” Penny sneezed again. “Seriously, Sharon, I can’t handle that, whatever it is.” She twisted all three of the overhead airflow nozzles so that they blew on me in an effort to diffuse the fragrance.

Penny and I had an empty seat between us that apparently was assigned to a tall gentleman wearing a gray suit and carrying a briefcase. He stood in the aisle, holding his boarding pass and looking at Penny, who was settled in the aisle seat.

“Would you like to sit here?” Penny offered, as if his silent glare had charmed the words out of her. “I can take your seat in the middle.” She slid over and tilted the center air directly on her. The gentleman gave an appreciative nod and without a word folded himself into the aisle seat.

The seat space allowed each traveler was definitely not as wide as it had been in business class. I knew Penny had to be miserable, squashed there in the middle and suffocating from
my perfume. I barely could smell it, but I tried to wipe any hint of the fragrance off with a tissue. Would Penny have preferred my body odor? I noticed that Penny and I were pressed against each other, hip to hip.

She sneezed again.

I’d forgotten about Penny’s bionic nose. We used to tease her when the kids were little because it would about kill her to change a diaper. She could smell a cat at fifty yards and our old dog, Bosco, even when he was outside. The windows at Penny’s house were open nine months out of the year.

I tried to make myself small. It was impossible. We had to endure the bumpy flight with all its inconveniences and did so by both pretending we were sleeping.

My thoughts wandered to small luxuries like snack food, pillows, and a hot bath. I was glad that none of Penny’s relatives were meeting our plane and taking us to a private home where it was likely we would stay up all night talking. A quiet hotel room sounded wonderful. Room service sounded like a dream.

All my private little dreams scattered when the pilot announced our plane couldn’t land in Helsinki due to icy high winds. We circled for almost an hour before an announcement came that we would land at a different airport.

“This can’t be good,” Penny muttered under her breath.

I reached for the guidebook and found a map. “Do you suppose we’re going to Stockholm? It looks pretty far away.”

Penny studied the map. “Russia looks closer, doesn’t it? They wouldn’t fly us into Russia, would they?” It had only been a short year or two since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and Russia wasn’t a travel destination for the average American.

Our landing was rough. The plane came down with a thud on the tires and then bounced up again for three seconds before reconnecting with the runway. Inside our cramped quarters, the passengers responded with a group gasp.

Outside, the sleet came toward us at an angle. As the plane rolled forward, I could barely make out the small terminal’s outline.

From all around us came the click of seat belts being unfastened.

The flight attendant spoke over the intercom in three languages. English was the last. By the way people around us were groaning while the message was delivered in the first two languages, we surmised the news wasn’t good.

“We ask that you remain in your seats,” the voice finally said in English. “We will not be deplaning at this airport. The latest weather reports predict a clearing in the storm. Our pilot has requested clearance to return to Helsinki.”

I stared quietly at my hands. The large hook-shaped scar on the back of my right hand looked larger than usual. It had turned a pale, oyster gray color.

I got the scar when I was fifteen and fell against the side of a tractor at my summer job, picking raspberries at Gelson’s farm. It took twenty-five minutes to reach the hospital, and I gushed blood all over the front seat of Mrs. Gelson’s new powder blue Ford station wagon, even though I was holding the dish towel and pressing hard like she told me to.

Sitting on this icy runway felt a lot like sitting next to Mrs. Gelson in the emergency room. Whatever happened next couldn’t possibly be pleasant.

W
e sat on the runway
of the small mystery airport for more than an hour. The flight attendants came by offering coffee.

“Is it okay if we use the rest room?” Penny asked.

“Of course. Please return to your seat, though, as soon as possible. We expect to receive clearance for takeoff soon.”

I decided I better go to the rest room with Penny while I had the chance. The gentleman on the aisle stood silently to let us out. All the stalls were occupied. Penny and I stretched without speaking to each other or making eye contact.

“Penny” I touched her shoulder. We barely had spoken to each other during the past hour. “When we return to our seats, why don’t you take the window seat? I know you said you don’t like the window because it gets so cold, but you’re welcome to use my coat as a buffer.”

Her expression softened. “Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Sure, I wouldn’t mind. You need a few more inches of breathing space.”

“Thanks, Sharon.”

The bathroom stall door opened, and I motioned to Penny. “After you.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

That was a crazy thing for Penny to say. She didn’t owe me anything. I was the one who was in debt to her for this whole trip.

I tried to lean against the wall to let a young blond woman with a crying baby join me in the crowded space. “He’s not very happy, is he?” I asked.

She answered in a language I didn’t understand, but when she slid the knuckle of her first finger into his mouth, I asked, “Teething?”

She gave me a weary look and said, “
Ja
,” before shifting the sobbing baby to her other hip. We were communicating in the universal language of all mothers: baby sympathy. My heart went out to her.

I reached over and gently stroked his damp cheek. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “It’s okay.” The tyke turned his round moist eyes toward me and stopped crying.

“That’s better. You want me to hold you for a little bit so your mommy can have a break?”

I opened my hands, and the mommy gladly let her chunky bundle climb into my arms.

“How old is he?”

The mother shook her head. She didn’t seem to understand my question.

“Is he about nine months old?” I shifted the curious fellow to my left hip and held up my fingers as if I were counting.

“Ah!
Ja, nio
.” She held up nine fingers.

“That’s what I thought. My first two boys were solid like
this, too.” I patted his back, and he released a tiny burp.

Penny stepped out of the stall. She looked surprised. “How did you manage to accumulate a baby in the last three minutes?”

“He likes me,” I told Penny “He stopped crying.”

The mom spoke again and motioned toward the available toilet stall.

“You go ahead,” I said confidently, as if I understood every word she had said. “I’ll hold him for you.”

Penny stood next to me, staring for a moment. “I’m going back to our seats.”

“I’ll be—” My response was cut short by a raging wail from baby boy.

Penny gave me a “he’s all yours” look and left quickly.

I jostled the little one, touching his cheek and trying to comfort him by saying, “It’s okay. Your mommy will be back in a minute.”

He tucked his chin and leaned into my shoulder. I patted his back. “There, there. It’s okay.”

With a stifled sob, his head came straight up, knocking me hard on the chin and causing me to bite my tongue. Then, without warning, the little prince reared back and spewed partially digested airline pretzels and sour milk all down the front of me.

The stall door opened. I held out the baby and motioned with my head so his mom would see the disaster. With profuse apologies in whatever language she spoke, she took her son into the stall and closed the door, and there I stood, aware that a trail of baby barf had found its way under my shirt and was pooling in my bra.

Somehow, when your child throws up on you, it’s never as
bad as when it’s someone else’s child.

The second stall door opened, and I rushed in, locked the door, and thought I might be sick from the overpowering smells in the small space. First I tried paper towels to clean up and flushed them before realizing I might clog the whole system. Oh, what a sorry sight I was, trying the dabbing method on my shirt but only making matters worse. I wet more paper towels and then gave up and stripped to the waist.

I had just wrung out my bra when a bright red light flashed. I stared at the light and then looked at my reflection in the mirror.

“What are you doing here?” I asked the woman who was standing topless in front of me in this suffocating, sour bathroom stall, trapped on the runway of some undisclosed airport, which was possibly inside the border of the former Soviet Union, in the middle of an ice storm.

The absurd looking woman in the mirror didn’t answer. However, an invisible flight attendant did. In three languages, no less. “Please return to your seat,” the voice said over the intercom.

“I would love to return to my seat,” I answered politely. “But Houston, we have a problem here.”

No one could hear me, of course, but my banter helped me to stay focused. “My shirt is ruined,” I went on. “My bra is soaking wet. Can you smell me? I can smell me. If I can smell me, then Penny … well, Penny is …”

I tried to dry my bra by pressing it between two paper towels.

Someone knocked on the bathroom stall door.

“Yes! I’ll be out in just a minute.”

“You must return to your seat,” the heartless voice said.

“Okay. I’m coming right now.”

I still can’t believe I did this, but I had no choice. I put on my wet bra and slipped the rancid, damp shirt over my head. Unlocking the door, I made my way back to the center seat with my head down, certain that every eye in that part of the plane was fixed on me. Every nose was probably fixed on me as well.

Poor Penny! The look on her face! She turned away from me, staring out the window as I gave an abbreviated explanation.

I swallowed hard and tried to take tiny breaths. My tongue had swollen from when I bit it right before Junior was sick all over me. I could feel a cold, wet stream zigzagging across my middle and soaking the waistband of my jeans.

The man in the seat directly in front of me stretched to glare at me over the top of his seat.

“I know,” I murmured in a tiny voice. “I’m sorry. This isn’t exactly pleasant for me either.”

Our takeoff was terrifying. The plane seemed to be flapping oversize, weary wings as we rose into the air. We bucked a dozen air pockets, rising and falling like a ship at sea.

Penny grabbed for the bag in her seat pocket and held it up to her mouth and nose. She didn’t get sick, but I’m sure she felt she was about to.

We landed in Helsinki at 7:20
P.M
. Without a word, Penny and I walked into the terminal and went directly to the rest room.

“Here.” Penny wheeled her suitcase into the first open stall before I could grab some wet paper towels. “Anything you want to wear is yours.”

I found a new sympathy for my daughter.
So this is how Kaylee felt when I told her she could wear one of my blouses to the school choir performance
.

Penny’s underwear was large on me. Not too large. Just loose and funny feeling. The bra and panties were, however, silky black and a far superior quality to anything I ever owned.

The larger size of her clothes didn’t matter because I opted for a baggy pair of sweatpants and a yellow sweater that were easy to pull out of the suitcase.

With my soiled clothes in a wad, I exited the stall to see a line of women waiting. Penny stood near the sinks. “You are going to throw those away, aren’t you?”

I hadn’t planned on it. I was going to ask if she had a plastic bag. Surely they sold good strong laundry detergent in Finland. I could soak these clothes back to life, if I had the right laundry soap.

Penny moved closer when she saw me stalling. “If I’m right,” she said in a low voice, “your bra is at least eight years old, and it’s about half an inch from self-disintegrating.”

Penny knew all too well the areas in my budget where I’d scrimped over the years to keep four growing children clothed.

“And if I’m guessing correctly, that shirt found its way into your life in the mideighties. Its shelf life has expired, Sharon. You need to set the poor thing free.”

Part of me was glad that Penny felt well enough to be flippant. That was a good sign. But I wasn’t too happy about her painfully accurate comments about my wardrobe.

“I’m not trying to be mean,” Penny said quickly. “Look, you said you packed plenty of clothes. And I packed way more than I need. We should be fine with what we have until your luggage arrives. If not, we’ll go shopping and buy new clothes. Now wouldn’t that be tragic?”

I opened the top of the trash bin, and against all my frugal
instincts, I threw away a perfectly usable set of clothes.