Sections that take place in 2018 or earlier are nonfiction.
Sections that take place after 2018 are fiction.
2018
I curled into my window seat. Sleep. I had only slept a few hours the night before. I intended to sleep the entire four-hour flight from Chicago to Phoenix. I closed my eyes to wait until we were airborne and I could pull down the porthole shade. Within seconds, I felt rustling and movement beside me. Out of my partially open right eye, I saw a girl-woman lowering herself into the seat next to me.
“Sorry,” said the girl-woman as she adjusted herself and the bundle she cradled.
The infant clutched in her arms was so small that it seemed lost in the mound of blankets. Oh, no. A baby. No sleep. The sight revived me from my near slumber.I sat up straighter and looked into the folds.
The tiny face was as round and peach-colored as a Baby Aspirin.
“How old?” I asked, as if the right answer could force the infant into maturity and the ability to restrain itself from crying. I smiled, close-lipped, tolerant.
“Ten days.” The girl-woman returned my smile. Her skin glowed translucent, a pale cream over a lavender lattice of faint veins. She wore no make-up and her white-blond hair was tousled. Her thick eyebrows, pointed chin, and her nose (a bit too close to her mouth) gave her a slightly feral look, like a pastel fox, yet she radiated a fragile beauty. She could not have been much older than twenty.
“She just made her first transatlantic trip,” the girl-woman continued. She appeared to be dressed in corduroy coveralls, child-like apparel for a mother. “She didn’t cry the entire time.”
Was she genuinely proud or trying to reassure me, an answer to my unspoken question about not wanting to be disturbed?
“What’s her name?”
“We haven’t named her yet but we’ve been calling her Lola.”
Ten days and no name? An international flight? Weren’t newborns supposed to hold off on flying?
From the aisle, a well-heeled blond woman in a flowing cashmere cape leaned down to talk to the girl-woman, whom I’ll call Lavender. The woman tossed a fold of her cape over her shoulder, whispered something into Lavender’s ear and, then, took the aisle seat. Dressed in soft browns, tan and taupe, she exuded wealth and sophistication. Her shoulder-length hair, sleek and wheat-colored, matched her clothing palette. Her eyebrows were perfectly plucked. Her cheekbones jutted high on her face and tastefully-small bejeweled clusters dangled from her earlobes. I took her to be Lavender’s older sister or mother. I’ll call her Taupe.
The two whispered urgently to one another. I couldn’t discern the words, but Taupe’s voice had the ring of authority. Lavender’s tone was softer, reassuring. The plane taxied down the runway. Taupe’s words grew more distinguishable. It’s my fault, totally my fault. Though she accepted blame, her timbre did not sound like an apology. The plane began its ascent. I made you do it. The plane climbed. My skull was compelled back against the headrest, pressing. I liked the feeling. The whispers grew more insistent.
My fault.
My fault.
Lavender purred something soothing in response.
My fault.
The plane continued to climb. The baby did not cry. I wondered if something was wrong with her. Didn’t she feel the pressure? When I was a young mother, younger even than Lavender, I would have been worried by the silence. I would have gently shook the baby or held a mirror to her lips to gauge the constancy of her breath.
My ears popped. We reached full altitude. I closed my eyes and curled back towards my window well. I drifted into a light slumber, half awake, half asleep so that the women’s voices wormed into and out of my consciousness, almost like people in a dream.
I will take full responsibility. I made you do it.
Look, said Lavender, no one made me do it.
I will tell them I forced you. You were in a diminished and vulnerable state.
Back and forth they went, until I fell into full sleep. I woke to a minor commotion when Taupe rose from her seat to go to the restroom, forcing Lavender to shift the position of the silent baby. I looked at its little pill face.
“Brave of you to do a transatlantic trip with a newborn,” said I, hoping to trigger an explanation.
“Oh, I didn’t want to do it,” said Lavender with a beguiling smile before quickly and unexcitedly spilling her guts to me. “I had to get away from my boyfriend. Everything was fine until after the baby was born but then he turned abusive. I had to get away. He’s famous and comes from a very wealthy family, so my parents are taking me home. He’s been texting me. He says he knows where I am. We had to leave so quickly that my father is following with our luggage. We just found out that as he was boarding the plane in London, he was served with papers. We don’t know what happened after that. We don’t know if he is still on his way or not. I didn’t put my boyfriend’s name on the birth certificate.”
Taupe—undoubtedly Lavender’s mother—returned and Lavender looked down to gaze at her infant’s face as if she and I had never spoken. A few minutes later, they began whispering again; Lavender turned the back of her head to me to face her mother. She had severe bed-head, her yellow-white hair almost matted, exposing dark roots, as if she had been lying in bed for a long time and had not brushed it for days. Now, fully awake, I strained to hear their conversation but only isolated words reached my ears. Lavender’s tone sounded more reasonable. Once I heard her say, look, I love you, but…
Eventually, they stopped talking and took out their phones. How many times could they go back and forth denying and claiming responsibility?
I caught a glimpse of Lavender’s phone wallpaper: a photo of Lavender, wearing deep red lipstick, beside a young man, the two connected in a side hug that allowed them to face the camera. He wore a bright red shirt that matched her lipstick. Her hair was combed. The shot was clearly from a celebrity publication. A cutline underneath revealed both of their names. I did not recognize either one. He did not appear to be famous in my world. But did I even know who was famous in the world of the extremely young anymore? I filed their names away until I could Google them later, closed my eyes and leaned back.
Toward the end of the flight, Taupe made a phone call to an attorney in Phoenix. Her side of the conversation confirmed everything Lavender had told me, as well as the last name I had seen on Lavender’s wallpaper. When she tapped her phone off, Taupe turned to her daughter.
“The lawyer says that [boyfriend] won’t be able to do anything until he establishes paternity since his name isn’t on the birth certificate. At least that’s true in Arizona.”
One of them told the other that “dad had made it.”
Back when I had escaped my own abusive husband with my own young child, I was similar in age to Lavender. My parents hadn’t helped me. They hadn’t even known until days afterward.
Lavender’s pale fingers pulled the blankets away from Lola’s tiny scrunched face. Her fingers made me think of tapered candles, waxy and white. Her nails were bitten. I imagined her fingers against the flesh of her boyfriend’s torso, lightly trailing down it, just skimming.
When we landed, a flight attendant came by to comment on how good the baby had been.
“How old?” she asked.
“Two weeks,” said Taupe. I wondered if she was just rounding it off or if she didn’t want to seem irresponsible flying with such a young baby, exposing her to the possibility of infection before her immune system was fully developed. I remembered at a circus when I was six and someone had asked my age, my mother had responded, seven. I had tugged at her skirt, no, mommy, no, I am six. I looked at the questioner and insisted I am six. I realize now that I was close to seven and my mother was only rounding it off. At the time, I had been stunned by her lie. Now, the memory—that should have long vanished—fills me with inexplicable shame.
Taupe told Lavender to turn her phone off and keep it off. Surely her boyfriend, whom I will call Unnamed, did not have enough power and fame to trace her whereabouts by her phone. But I supposed one couldn’t be too careful.
As the three of us collected our things, I said goodbye. Both Lavender and her mother smiled and wished me a nice time in Phoenix. I looked at Lavender and said, “Good Luck.” At my directive to her daughter, Taupe’s smile faded and she drew back her lips. She must have been wondering what Lavender had told me, how much I had overheard.
Taupe and Lavender ushered me out in front of them, Taupe’s smile now strained.
After disembarking, I sat in a stall in the airport restroom and Googled Lavender and Unnamed’s real names. It turned out Unnamed actually was famous as a star of a show that I had never watched but knew was extremely popular, particularly among those under forty. My students and younger colleagues talked about it. Lavender also laid claim to minor fame as a model. Announcements of their child’s birth were all over the internet. I wondered if that ubiquity would help Unnamed establish paternity.
My sister met me in Baggage Claim. I quickly told her the story and we waited to see the group of three arrive in the claim area. They never did. I guess Lavender’s father was, indeed, bringing all of their luggage.
My sister Googled them. She found another actor whom Lavender had dated. He was famous enough that we both recognized the name. Perhaps Lavender was older than I had assumed. How old did one need to be to have had two famous actor-partners under her belt?
“I’m surprised they sat in economy,” said my sister.
“They were escaping, running away. There probably weren’t any seats left in first class. It was a full flight.”
1975
I left my first husband in a car flying up Route 303, my toddler son standing in the back between the two bucket seats, facing the windshield. That flight has appeared in many essays I have written, been manipulated into fiction in more than one short story. I am growing weary of the telling. My son saw his father only a few times after that frantic escape. I never questioned that I did the right thing, never thought there would be consequences and blame that would surface decades later. That I could be considered at fault.
1994
My seat partner and I were two of the few on the flight to LA. It was right after the biggest quake in years, in time for the aftershocks. He was the announcer for big-time boxing matches, the one who said Readdddy to Rummmmble before matches. I didn’t recognize him but he told me. In fact, he told me many things about his life and what he wanted. He never asked my name.
I’ve speculated that it is entirely possible that I am invisible to people who are famous or near-famous and that both he and Lavender were talking to themselves.
I have been told that aftershocks feel like a huge trucks rumbling past your house. Actually, I learned it is more like a truck rumbling under your house.
2034
Lavender marries a younger associate of her father’s in 2022. Not an unhandsome man, but certainly no movie star. In 2026, they have a son whom they name William. They raise Lola and William in a house in the suburbs of Phoenix with a swimming pool whose interior is lined in Turkish blue tiles. In the front of their house, they have a circular driveway that curves around a fountain that sprays water from 8 am until 8 pm daily. Instead of a desert landscape yard, they have green grass and flowers that require copious amounts of water. Lavender loves flowers, but demurred prior to the landscaping due to the water crisis in the state.
“By the time water runs out in Arizona, they will have invented better ways to ship it in,” says her husband. He voted for Trump in both elections. Both of Lavender’s movie star boyfriends were liberals.
Climate activists dump buckets of sand in their fountain and it takes weeks to get it up and running again. Environmental activism reaches an all-time high. Rich people in Arizona have water brought in by trucks. It is not clear what poor people drink.
Since her initial transatlantic flight, Lola sees her father only three times. On a layover on a trip he takes to LA when she is two, he takes her out to lunch in Phoenix. He sees Lola twice more when her family visits London, once for an overnight. Photos of Lola and her father appear in tabloids. He is even more well-known than he was in 2018. Though his paternity is confirmed, he has long since given up the custody battle and has two other children with two other women. Every year Lola receives an expensive gift from him on her birthday.
“Probably sent by his assistant,” says her stepfather
Lola tapes a tabloid photo of her real father over her bed.
Lola is an anxious and petulant child, made even more so by the angelic calm of her mother, Lavender. Her mother spends her days decorating and shopping with her mother, Taupe. Lola never sees Lavender lose control until at age fifteen Lola blames her for keeping her away from her father, Unnamed. She stamps her right foot and shouts, It’s your fault. Your fault.
Your fault rings in Lavender’s ears. Everything is your fault.
“I did it all for you,” cries Lavender.
“Right,” sneers Lola. “You made it possible for me to never see my father! Thanks.”
All of this time, Lavender has been the heroine in her own narrative: the princess who saved her daughter from the ogre. She has told the tale of her flight many times—to new friends, to groups at parties, even to an occasional acquaintance she meets on a plane or in a restaurant. It is her moment of independence and bravery. How did her daughter, the little tiny baby in her arms, fail to understand their roles in this central drama of her life?
Lola holds onto her rage. Despite long talks with therapists, Lavender is mystified.
Everyone is surprised that Lola, at age 16, boards a flight to New York on her own. No one even notices her missing until she is sitting high above the Atlantic Ocean on her way to London and Taupe discovers a stolen and forged check of $3,000, the loopy handwriting of her granddaughter on the carbon of the paper checks Taupe rarely uses. Who uses paper checks anymore?
2006
In France, I contracted an ailment the rheumatologist diagnosed as “slap face.” At first he thought it was rheumatoid arthritis but I was spared that chronic illness; instead my painful joints lasted about three months, traveling my body from joint to joint, finding an elbow or a knee and colonizing the destination with so much pain that it woke me at night. On the trip home from France, the pain resided in my fingers. Before take-off, I held them out in front of my face as if I was being robbed or as if my fingers were on fire, wondering how I would manage to hold the book that rested in my lap. I slipped my book in the leather envelope attached to the back of the seat in front of me. I knew I would need it later. The pain would not allow me to sleep.
A man, well over 300 pounds, perhaps over 400, walked down the aisle in my direction.
No, I thought, no, please don’t take the empty seat next to me.
Of course he did. He considerately folded the hams of his massive upper arms in front of himself, but they still bulged into my space. What if he fell asleep? How would he rein-in his arms then? I knew I had to do something before the flight took off. I grabbed my purse and said “excuse me” to my new companion. I needed to request a seat change. I could not do this for seven hours.
“The flight is booked solid,” said the flight attendant. “The only possibility is a seat in the middle of a junior high choir. One of the kids didn’t show up. If he still isn’t here in five minutes when we need to close the doors, you can have it.”
”Can I wait here?” I asked.
The kid didn’t make it so I was ushered to his seat. Not perfect. I was seated in the middle of over a dozen junior high students. They gossiped and goofed but it was better than being squeezed for an entire overseas flight.
I listened to their antics until we were in the air and then I remembered. My book. I had left it by my original seat. It was too late; I could not return to retrieve it. I have thought about that book a lot, what became of it. How I could have distracted myself if I had not abandoned it. But I have never speculated about the 300-pound-plus man and his life after that flight.
2039
According to 2018 life-expectancy statistics, I am still alive twenty-one years after the flight to Arizona. With all the new devices, procedures, and medications, I have made it well past middle age, but still not quite elderly by standards of the day. One can no longer even apply for Medicare before age seventy-five. 2039 statistics give the average person my age an additional nineteen years. With luck, I will be here in 2058.
So, why do I feel so ancient?
A series of world-wide pandemics have made travel difficult unless you own or rent a bubble skin. I bought one—not cheap—but too much trouble for me most of the time. Though who needs to travel? Home entertainment has greatly expanded. […]
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Garnett Kilberg Cohen has published four collections of short stories, most recently, Cravings, released in October 2023 from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her fiction has been published widely in journals, and has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council, Crazyhorse, december Magazine, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. She also writes nonfiction; her piece, “My Life in Smoke,” was published in the New Yorker online in 2019. Other published essays appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, Witness, The Rumpus, Memoir Magazine, as well as other journals.