Refund (31 page)

They were the first people I had gotten to know since the accident; I was, just then, vulnerable to kindness, and they were generally kind to me. Getting to know them, I lost the need to meet anyone else. Also, each one reminded me of a member of my family. Lester had dark, spongy, lichen-like hair, the same texture as my father's. Deanne walked briskly, like my sister did when she was planning some sort of coup. Joanne sometimes squeezed my shoulder the way my mother once did. It was as though my family had, like spies, slipped under their skin. We spent our days standing in the bluish airport security area, but between flight times, we became friends.

Each month brought some new announcement. Lester was engaged. Deanne was pregnant. Joanne's son was graduating from college. There were showers, for brides, babies, there were cards circulated and donations taken for gifts. There were consultations about renovations; there were suggestions for mechanics and schools and what sort of covered dish to bring to church. Someone would drop
some groceries by when I was sick, or lend me gardening tools, or help me fix my TV. There was a general sense of accumulation that was dumbfounding and strange and sweet.

M
Y APARTMENT HAD A BALCONY WITH A FEW POTS OF ROSES ON IT
. I tended them; I bought frozen food and defrosted it for dinner; I watched comedies at night on TV. I had tried, a few times, to make inroads into the world of love, gone out with men whom I chatted with on the Internet. I had met a few of them, sat across from them in restaurants; they were desperate to be liked, the ones I met, and their chattiness about their virtues was depleting. Maybe that was why I didn't want to go out with any of them more than once.

My fellow crew members were the ones I knew. They had staggered into the airport terminal from their own disasters, of various ilk: bad marriages, drug-addled kids, tumors, depressions, embezzling relatives, early deaths, the rest. We all said I'm sorry to each other; everyone had an individual mountain to scale. That was it. We were here to guard others. I felt useful when I stood with my crew at the security gate—that was what pulled me through my day, that sense of usefulness. I was grateful for it.

We all took our work seriously. Lester assumed a dignified, alert expression when he gazed at the X-ray machine, always locating the object that needed to be removed. Joanne was efficient, precise at patdowns. Estelle was good at helping people organize their possessions in the plastic bins. When I worked with them, I secretly tried to find the parts that seemed to have been sent to me. Lester's hair. I watched the way he smoothed his hand over it, the way my father had done when he thought about his clients. Deanne's walk. I waved her over, sometimes, when I did not need her, so I could watch her heels hit the floor, hard, the way my sister's did when she needed to tell me something. And Harvey and Fernando and Joanne, each harboring
their own treasures—Harvey pointed the way my father did when he was excited; Fernando's mouth resembled my sister's; Joanne let out a cackling laugh that my mother sometimes had. I didn't love them, but I sort of did, if love is being mesmerized by the mere fact of others, and the way they trick you into believing that they contain the other people you have known. It was the sort of love I owned now, and I just lived with it, though I tried to remember what it was to have the love others did. I had those moments of jealousy, looking over the passengers streaming through the gateways—those passengers, strapped into their seats with the luxury of boredom and desire, waiting for their beverage service, believing that they would walk down the Jetway into the rest of their lives.

I went to work, balanced on my life, this tiny platform. Sometimes, heading to work, I felt like I was going to slide off of it, sparked by a small sight—a gardenia bush like the one that bloomed outside of our house, a blue Mercury driving by. But this usually faded when I entered the terminal, when I took my place at the podium, when my gaze was supposed to locate any hint of mishap in the world.

O
NE DAY
, J
OANNE READ US ALL A MEMO; BUDGET CUTS WOULD NOW
go into effect. We were not all necessary to preserving national security. One of us would be let go.

Joanne read this to us; it just had been emailed to
ALL STAFF LOWER ATLANTIC REGION
.

“What did they mean, go? To another airport?”

“No, go. They don't need us. One of us.”

I looked at them. Joanne cleared her throat. Fernando tapped his foot. A harsh deodorant smell came off Deanne.

“How are they going to decide?”

“I don't know.”

“Then what?”

“One of us is let go.”

While she was reading this, the second email came: Lester would decide. He had started here a year before the rest of us, and he had, as we all knew, stopped that guy with the steak knife in his sneakers the month before. He had six weeks, and Regional would abide by what he said.

I found it difficult to breathe. Would someone protest? No one did. We were weirdly passive in the face of this announcement. Our dark blue uniforms, so official, so comforting in their way, suddenly seemed nostalgic, with the flimsiness of Halloween costumes; Joanne fingered her collar with a tender gesture that I had never seen before.

“Everyone, stations!” said Joanne, and we took our posts.

W
E WENT OUT TO
R
UBY
T
UESDAY A COUPLE TIMES, BUT NOW IT WAS
different. Lester sat in the middle of the red booth, and everyone observed what he ordered. A crab-dip appetizer. Some mozzarella sticks. We all looked at one another. Joanne complimented him on his appetizer choice. She leaned toward him, asparkle with admiration.

“Crab dip. Good choice. I always loved its creamy texture.”

“Thanks, hon,” Lester said, dipping in a piece of garlic bread.

Suddenly, everyone was ordering crab dip, even those who, I knew, hated it. Several bowls of crab dip sat there, mostly untouched. I ordered one too, immediately. Everyone seemed both tender and monstrous. All anyone wanted was to stay, to be viewed as worthy of inclusion. It seemed the deepest desire, to be acknowledged, to be deemed worthy of remaining here, with the rest of us, and we sat around the table, eyeing the crab dip, hoping.

I noticed that the crew was acting a little differently now. The fact of our potential vanishing from this group freed everyone to
reveal other elements of themselves. Now I noticed the things I didn't want to remember about my family. Joanne suddenly switched from a brisk, efficient worker to a compulsive flatterer, something my sister tended to do. Deanne became a flirt, which my mother did with cashiers at the market when she was bored, and Fernando sat up taller and claimed the mozzarella sticks in a bossy way, the way my father made grand, bullish gestures when he was annoyed with all of us. My heart thrummed with panic. The ground felt like sky.

Perhaps I should be more flexible. I knew this was just a job that gave us money, and we could walk out of the terminal to become something else—a waitress, a manager at Subway, a security guard at a bank. But this was where I had wanted to be. It seemed absurdly arbitrary. Why did anyone decide to hitch his or her feelings to anything? Why one place more than another? All of the crew members wore amiable expressions, smiled at one another, dipped garlic bread into their crab dip, and looked away.

I imagined my coworkers taking my arms and escorting me out of the airport; I could feel their grip on my skin. I sat with them around the table and wondered—
What would happen if I were escorted out of the airport? What would happen to me?

A
PASSENGER
I
HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE CAME THROUGH THE SECURITY
line. He handed me his driver's license. He was handsome in a bland way. “John Comet,” I said, and then I looked at the name again.

He laughed. “That is my name,” he said. He was a slight, wiry man, and he was wearing a dark blue suit. It was a little limp around the collar, like an old flower petal. He had very white teeth. He had lush, uncombed brown hair, as though his normal mode of transport was running through wind. I noticed him first because he looked me in the eye. Not like a passenger, but a person. Just looking at who I was.

“Where are you going today?”

“Cincinnati.”

“For what purpose?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

This was not a necessary question; I did not know why I was asking it. But he glanced at my badge, absorbed it, and answered.

“I am involved in the marketing of custom luggage.”

“Oh,” I said. He paused. I handed him back his ID.

The others usually picked up their boarding passes and hustled on, removing their shoes, lunging for the plastic bins. He did not move. He stood there, waiting.

“Sir?”

“What do people say when you ask them, for what purpose?”

A question. I regarded him.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “Where do people say they're going to go?”

“People like to visit other people. Or vacations,” I said. “They like to get away from their home. And conventions. There are conventions for everything.”

He stood, his foot softly tapping as I spoke.

“Don't be scared,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Why do you think I am?” I asked.

He smiled. It was normally the sort of comment that should have gotten him hauled over for questioning.

“I don't know,” he said. “I'm just a sales guy. I know things sometimes.”

He was right. I was scared. But somehow his asking made it fade for a moment.

“Are
you
scared, Mr. Comet?” I asked.

He shoulder twitched, just slightly. He was.

“No,” he said. “Just travelling.”

There was a sorrow in his voice that sounded exactly like I felt. I was surrounded by liars. He had nothing to gain by my fear. We were two planets floating, separate, in the blue air. Oddly, that stirred me.

He smiled at me, those bright teeth, and then he walked on to his destination.

H
E SHOWED UP AT THE AIRPORT THREE DAYS LATER, AND THEN
three days after that. I could see him from far away, his gait quick and clipped as he went through the airport; he slowed down when he began to approach me. Each time, he handed me his ID and asked me a question. The second time, he asked me, “Why do you think people like those conventions?” The third time I yawned when he approached me, and he asked, “Ms. Orson. Did you miss your coffee this morning?” Passengers had to be careful when asking questions, so as not to seem too interested in how this place operated. He seemed merely to believe I had something he wanted to hear. When I answered him the third time (yes, I had missed coffee, in fact), he nodded, his eyelids flickering, and I was startled, for I thought I detected something else about him: he wanted to know who I was.

T
HERE WERE TWO WEEKS LEFT BEFORE
L
ESTER MADE HIS DECISION
. I walked into the airport in the morning, past Deanne, past Joanne, past Fernando, past Harvey, past Lester. I wanted to talk to them but did not know about what. Our conversations had become oddly cheerful and stilted, so that no actual information was being conveyed. Today they were extremely fascinated by their various procedures and for some reason were having trouble looking at me. Joanne leaned forward and brushed my shoulder with her hand. Tenderly.

“How are your roses?” she asked.

It seemed strange to even ask a question; the roses weren't the point at all. Civility was a form of distraction.

“Great,” I said.

She nodded. Then she got to the point.

“You notice how Lester's been walking around us?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“He's been spending more time near you,” she said. “We've discussed it.”

My throat felt cold.

“What did you discuss?”

I could see a smile in the crease of her eye; it crushed me to see it.

“I can't say. There was consensus.”

Joanne stood, arms crossed, sheathed in the armor of this alleged consensus.

“Why were you talking about me?” I asked. Softly.

“We're trying to help you,” she said. “We're trying to give you a heads-up—”

“How nice. A heads-up,” I said.

She stepped back, her face reddening. Joanne! I stared at her, noticing the mole on her left cheek, the patch of grayish hair above her forehead, parts of her I had never quite seen before. When had they become part of her? Then I glanced at Fernando, and I saw a birthmark on his ear, and I saw Harvey limp in a way I had never noticed as well. I shuddered. What else had I missed? In them, in my family? Had I missed some flaw in my father's driving, so that I had let them go to the opera when they should not have gone? Had I made a mistake in telling my mother to get ice cream? Who had we been, truly? I worried that I was having difficulty remembering them. My parents had fought, on and off, during my childhood, trading off in their bossiness; my father's realm concerned time, his need to be punctual. My mother wanted mostly to treat herself, with
pretty shoes and desserts with clouds of whipped cream—those were the ways each one disappointed the other. Sometimes they walked through the house and their words sounded like metal lids pressing down on steam. That's when my sister liked my voice, when we went into the yard and came up with names for the roses that grew there: the Orange Queen, the Tropicana, the Snowburst; the roses seemed parental in their way, watching us.