As I watch the chock-full, no-seats-for-standby-customers plane I was supposed to be on take off from the window of gate B9, sickness weighs me down like an x-ray apron. My throbbing head dreams of resting on a cozy pillow, my momma quietly stroking my hair, making me chicken soup, telling me I will be ok, and because I am so wrecked with the flu, all I can think now in this moment, is my childhood bed. I long for my momma, especially now, in times of sickness. I want her to make my sickness stop. To make my world right. To get me a seat on this already-closed-door overfull airplane, even though I am not a full-paying customer. Because I am only stand-by, I know the rules of this game all-too-well: a stand-by ticket during the busiest travel time of the year is often impossible.
* * *
During my childhood, my mother, a Delta Airlines ticket agent at The Indianapolis Airport, was a dutiful employee and we were blessed with free airfare. She didn’t make a lot of money but we lived a rich life. Our benefits included health care and free travel. The gift of a lifetime continues today as seventy-five per cent -off full-fare Delta Airlines tickets is super if a person has the time to wait at the airport, accepting the fact that there is one caveat: an empty seat.
However, flying standby anywhere two days before Christmas means the flights are usually jam-packed, though there is always a chance that some paying customer’s car won’t start or baby gets sick. But it’s always a gamble. And free travel requires patience to wait for a seat on perhaps many different flights before one becomes available. It means the slow slaughter of time. Since I had grown up flying standby, I know the risks. And I am always game.
* * *
Living 3000 miles away from my mother has benefits and drawbacks, and I certainly miss her most during difficult times. After my airplane leaves the gate, I try to take a few steps, but my whirling head won’t let me. So I lay my body down on the airport floor just outside the gate wishing quietly for a quick death to stop the spins and the headache and the longing for home.
After the world stops rocking, I call my mom to ask her what I should do. Plan A has sailed and I need a new one. She suggests I fly instead into Cincinnati, a one and a half hour drive from Indianapolis. Since she spent twenty-eight years of her life working as a Ticket Agent, she has a gift for rerouting people. Back in her glory days, when it came to navigating the stand-by travel game, she always had the answer. As a result of many overpacked flights, our family knew how to change plans on the spot.
* * *
In 1997, at twenty-eight years old, I left my midwestern roots in search of a different way of life. I moved to Big-City Liberal Left Coast San Francisco, secured a job and enrolled in graduate school. Even though I loved West Coast Everything, I still felt compelled every year to “go home for the holidays.” I missed my lovingly-dysfunctional family terribly come the end of the year and the beginning of holiday season. My three aunts, four uncles and forty-something cousins all gathered around December to catch up. Even though it was the only time of the year that I talked to them, I still respect the idea of a big family. I am attached to the idea of belonging, even if the sentiment wears off after a few days of fighting and tension. After a few too many Screwdrivers and hangovers. After too much second-hand smoke. Even though I have spent long hours debating with aunts and uncles and cousins the nature of alcoholism as an extra gene, it was certainly easy enough to socially drink with them because they are all such fun-loving, loose-talking warm-hearted boozers. And none of my extended family know the definition of the word “stranger.” I missed all of my mom’s brothers and sisters, and my cousins, around the holidays. And I especially missed my mother, extra gene and all.
My aunts and uncles each have gifts, and my mother’s gift is people. Her empathy, especially for the downtrodden and befuddled, still astounds me. It makes me want to be a kinder, more accepting, more loving person. Our family Christmases always include a random group of strays she has collected throughout the year.
This year, she has informed me that Bob, her 72-year-old friend, a clerk from the Speedway Gas Station by her house, has no family in Indy and will be coming to Christmas dinner as well, bringing his new girlfriend that my mom has met one time. One of Bob’s girlfriend’s stepsons might also join us, and he is about my age. My mom asked if I would be sure to entertain him. I agree, but the truth of the matter is that I am never as entertaining as my mother.
* * *
The next flight to Cincinnati leaves in 45 minutes–and is wide open, my mother excitedly exclaims through the payphone I am calling from. She assures me that the hour and a half drive from her home in Indy to Cincinnati won’t be too taxing for her and my stepdad, Jim. Besides, she says, the 1997 Chevrolet Express Passenger Van she and Jim had purchased a year earlier likes road trips. And she really can’t wait to see me, she declares, even more excitedly than her usually effervescent self. She announces that she will leave Indy shortly to pick me up.
Little do I know that the flight to Cincinnati would wreak havoc on my already-raging flu symptoms. Mom and Jim didn’t know that I was sick, that I held a barf bag under my blanket on the plane the entire trip, that no one on the plane wanted to sit next to me. Even though I was sick, I was happy to get a seat on a flight to be on my way to see my momma.
As I get off the plane, dragging my Carry-on duffle bag with what feels like a dead body inside, I limp through three terminals to baggage claim, stopping every two minutes to rest the demons in my stomach. My hair clings to my sweaty, florid face, and I can barely stand up straight. When I finally make it down to baggage claim, the usual family-designated pick-up spot for all our frequent trips, all I want to do is give my bag to burley step dad and curl up in the van in fetal position with my head in my momma’s lap.
However, I am not prepared for what greets me. “Sher-bear!” they sing my name, faces beaming with love! My feet feel like cement blocks and they zip around me with wings on their feet. They are in PARTY-MODE. Although I know they are happy to see me, the song-and-dance routine is not something I get to take credit for alone. The real motive behind their willingness to travel one hundred twenty miles by van at eleven pm on a Tuesday night has little to do with me.
Their plan includes gambling at the Argosy Riverboat Casino that happens to be conveniently located near the Cincinnati Airport, and sick daughter or not, they are hellbound for a party tonight.
* * *
Argosy Riverboat Casino opened in 1996 and provides an unending supply of fun for addiction-driven personalities: drinking, smoking and gambling all readily available in one location. My step dad thinks he is Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid, never blinking an eye at losing five thousand dollars in a four-hour period. He has perfected his poker face after long and arduous hours of practice. He holds a Preferred Players’ Club Gold Membership to several gambling establishments. Frequent jaunts to Las Vegas are often disguised by “We’re going to see Kenny Rogers” or “The Legacy has invited us to a special party—free rooms!” Jim knows the first names of the blackjack dealers at The Luxor and walks like an Egyptian at The King Tut Museum. The Tuscany at the Tropicana makes special meals for him. He likes to say ‘Die rich or die tryin’.
My mom’s love of the darker forces doesn’t help their situation, and from my understanding of alcoholism, I know I can’t help. My Alcoholic’s Anonymous training has taught me how to clean my side of the street, how to take care of myself, how to draw boundaries. Easy to do when our relationship happens on my side of the country and I have some ability to control the situation, but not so easy when I am at their whim in theirs.
* * *
In the van, which reeks of whiskey, Aquanet, and stale Now 100’s, I lean over to reach for the blue plastic half-moon shaped trash can that lives there to expel the rot. The smell of Obsession and Red Door clog my throat.
My mom negotiates: Couldn’t you just eat a little something and then go on with us for an hour, my lucky charm? I’ll give you $200 to spend any way you like–quarter slots, roulette, blackjack? Surely you aren’t too sick for that, little sher?
I vomit into the moon and then look up, drool dripping from my lips.
You have GOT to be kidding, right?
As she crawls over the console in the front seat to hold me, I start to cry, even though I know she isn’t joking.
She kisses me on the cheek and a wave of nausea washes over me. If I light a match in front of her mouth, there is no doubt that she could throw flames. I see the flask (a Crystal Geyser water bottle full of rust-colored liquid—whiskey, no doubt) on the floor of the passenger side of the front seat. Their cocktails are camouflaged in the red plastic cup holders in between the driver and the passenger seat, slivers of ice still floating on the top of the blue plastic cups. Their party had begun when they left Indy two hours ago.
I counter her. Momma, I am really sick—look at me! Are my eyes their usual sparkling selves? I am green behind the gills—feel my forehead. I need to go home and get in bed!
We have a bed for you– in the van! There’s a blanket and a pillow back there—just let me pull the seat down and make it real comfy for you back there, ok?
Momma, I am not kidding. Please just take me home! I can’t believe I even have to ask.
As I look at her, the stupor of liquor coating her smiling brown eyes shatters me. I know she has a bluebird in her heart, but I can’t hear it sing right now. I don’t hear it at all when she drinks. She leans in between the seats and takes another swig of her cocktail, then moves to the back to prepare my bed.
There is no arguing left to do.
Will you at least stop at the store and get me some 7-up and water? Just for an hour, ok? I really am sick…
Of course! Really, you don’t mind? Just for an hour? There are plenty of cozy blankets back there for you, I promise! She claps her red-fingernailed hands together.
They both let out an obnoxious YA-HOO and high-five each other like little kids at a party.
For a second time today, I wish for a quick death. At least if I die in the back of that van at the young age of thirty, they might feel guilty for not taking me home and putting me to bed.
And just when I think that this welcome-home party could not possibly get any worse. As my step dad steers the van into the Argosy Casino parking lot, the boat-like creation looks like a movie set rather than an actual gambling establishment. The structure tries hard to imitate a gaudy Hollywood B-movie pirate ship, flags and all, anchored and resting on a manmade pond. It reminds me of an old lady trying too hard to be pretty: gold-varnished earrings, a string of cheap pearls and lips aglow with old-lady pink lipstick smeared on her teeth. My stepdad heads straight for the circular mouth-opened-wide drive-up entrance that seems in position to swallow up its victims. The Argosy Casino has a first-class service option not to be missed–valet parking.
I am sprawled out in the back of the van like a flat tire, my head stuck in the blue moon-shaped trash can. I moan my protest to my mom and stepdad, but they just moan back and laugh like I have just told a joke. They act like they have finally arrived at the most exclusive party of their lives. I laugh, too, but for different reasons. I laugh at the metaphor of this evening as a representation of my whole absurd childhood. The profound absurdity of this whole evening provides comedic relief. But, in that moment, perhaps hopelessness is the very soul that nourishes hope the most.
Shit–I think. Jim, don’t you dare valet park, damn it!
— too late. The whiskey has shrunk their inhibitions to the size of a cherry pit.
This is ridiculous. You two are really really twisted, you know.
They are giggling like two high schoolers who have just toilet-papered a house. As they jump out of the van and toss the keys to the valet, I can hear them singing Kenny Rogers as they shimmy up to the welcome mat at The Argosy Casino.
You gotta know when to hold’em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away, know when to run…
They skip a few more steps before looking back at me in the van.
Sher-bear, we will be back in no longer than an hour, I promise. Love you. Just go to sleep, ok?
As the valet driver gets in the Red Van of Death, I feel sorry for him. I wonder, as he looks at me sprawled out in the back of this van, all but passed out, if he feels are trapped as I do. He is exposed to my sickness, my mother’s sickness, but I don’t say a word. I can’t. I feel like apologizing to the poor guy but can’t muster the energy. As the van heads down deeper into the belly of the beast and stops in its resting place, I submit my head to the pillow, and all I can see is the frost starting to form on the edges of the winter-kissed windows and the eery lights of the underground parking structure against the backdrop of the gray concrete walls.
The valet guy scurries away safely. What did he think of this situation, of me moaning and puking, moaning and puking. What did he think of my people, dancing off into the night. I know he can’t save me from my momma. But I have developed a rich understanding of my finest defenses. As I ponder the whole situation, I get madder by the second, and I can’t relax, despite all my Al-Anon rhetoric in my head: detach and love. I try every trick I know to sleep: I count sheep, I relax my toes and work up through my body parts, but I’m tense and sore. My shoulders hurt from ralphing all night and I haven’t brushed my teeth in the last twenty-four hours. I gave up praying to GOD in third grade but still I try.
“Goddess grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change,”
Nothing nothing not one fuckingthingrightnow–shutupandgotosleep–this will make a good story someday someway somehow–I will look back on this a laugh laugh shut it shut it who can I call –who will come pick me up at four in the fucking morning in Cincinnati??
“the courage to change the things I can,”
My mind races…worry anger disbelief love always love How much longer can she continue to throw down the drinks, and I am not just thinking of this night alone. I can’t stop her, can’t help her can’t fix her. She doesn’t think she is broken…is she?
“and the wisdom to know the difference”.
Five desperate and tumultuous hours later, I hear them coming. Their belly-whooping bounces off the concrete and hits me in my stomach. I peek out and then I see them–sallying along in the eerie iridescent parking garage lighting, pickled, proud and puffy, which means they won (at least this time, and I can only imagine what it has cost them). As I ask them what they did with the valet guy, they pull out a wad of cash. They tell me they wanted to dance back to the van.
I think to myself: I’ve got a three-card hand in a high-stakes game of War:
Option # 1–the two of spades– says “get out of the van right now and worry about finding a ride home later”
Option #2–the queen of hearts–says “feign sleep and roll with it” which is a skill I have spent a lifetime perfecting.
And Option #3–the ace of clubs–is the one that I know I am going to throw.
It says “Sher, you gotta drive.”
I muster the energy to sit up, wrap the faux fur blanket around my shivering shoulders and force myself into the driver’s seat, buckling my seatbelt around the whole package.
# # #
Sherri Harvey teaches English in California’s Silicon Valley, holds an MA in Modern Fiction and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She spends her days trying to balance thinking with doing by pouring over words, taking pictures, galloping her horses, hiking with her dog, scaring her husband and drinking vodka. She believes that the childhood force that gave shape to her thinking was the opportunity to travel extensively. When in doubt, go somewhere. She has published in Animal Literary Magazine, daCunha Global Storytelling, TaxiCab Mag, Sunday Night Stories, and daCunha. She blogs for Women Who Explore. Check her out at sherriharvey.com.
Photo: Sherri Harvey
