Beware of Flight Attendant

by Cactus Moloney

After Ryan was born everything changed.

  Barberella couldn’t keep the weight off. She stuck mostly with counting calories using the Weight Watchers program; losing the weight, just to have it come back the next year, plus an extra ten pounds. She was seduced by the Paleo fad diet, choosing to cut all carbohydrates from the family meal plan for several years.

  “Let’s eat like cavemen,” she told her husband.

  He agreed to the carnivorous diet, quickly losing twenty pounds and keeping it off. Her weight came back within the year. Leaving her body more engorged and bloated than ever.

  “It wouldn’t have been so hard if I had been a homely girl,” she had cried to her therapist.

  Proliferating her plight was that Barberella had been Miss Texas 1992. Her thick blond hair fell down her back in soft bouncy curls…before falling out in handfuls from her thyroid and hormonal issues. She dreaded brushing her hair, forced to watch the horse bristles yank the loose strands from her head. In front of the mirror, Barberella would focus her attention on the thinning part-line, highlighted by her white scalp, anything to avoid looking too closely at deepening wrinkles on her middle-aged face. Two parallel lines between her eyebrows had indented a permanent scowl.

  Barberella had always dreamed of being a wife and mother. After graduating from high school with high academic scores, and even better, as the captain of the drill team, she set her ambitions on attending Texas A&M for two years. Her purpose was to meet her future husband. She certainly had no intentions of earning a degree, with no plans to work outside the home in her future. Her prayers were answered when she met John during her second year at college, the same year she won Miss Texas 1992. Having bagged the beauty pageant title—her marriage to John was a done deal—mission accomplished.

  His smell was intoxicating. She would inhale the space between his neck and collarbone like a cocaine addict. He had dreamy blue eyes with long dark eyelashes. Barberella wanted her kids to have John’s eyes. She had blue eyes too. With genetics answering her prayers, Mazy came out a gorgeous blue-eyed mix of her parents. Two years later, Ryan was born with those same dazzling blue eyes.

  Two years after that, Barberella still hadn’t lost the last twenty pregnancy pounds remaining on her petite form. Her husband didn’t look at her anymore.

  She remembered watching him grab his sports bag from the top shelf of their overstuffed walk-in closet, aggressively shoving his squash-racket into the canvas.

  “What time will you be home tonight?”

  “I really don’t know, Barb.” He seemed irritated. “I’ll let you know when I know.” Out of nowhere he stopped packing his bag. Pausing for a moment. His blue eyes turned cruel. “I’ve decided I don’t want any more children with you.”

  Barberella wanted three children. Hearing this she jerked her body back; a quasi-whale being hit by an icebreaker ship.

  “You promised me we would have another baby!”

  “Okay, Barb,” John sneered taking a moment to look her up and down. “Two can play that game…you duped me into thinking you were a beauty queen.”

  From that day forward, she desperately pleaded with him whenever he was home.

  “Please love me, John, like you used to…come home for dinner tonight. I’m begging you…think about your family…think about me.”

  “No wonder I don’t want to be home,” he would disparage her groveling at his feet.

  He begrudgingly stayed with her until the day after Mazy’s high school graduation. John had planned it all out. He had packed his clothes and favorite belongings, leaving a note for her to read on the kitchen counter.

  She hadn’t noticed the letter on the marble island countertop when she returned from the grocery store. She had been busy unloading the groceries and then folding and storing the reusable canvas bags in the pantry. Letting her mind wander, she was thinking about the beautiful rack of lamb with mint jelly she was serving for dinner, and the perfect Spanish Rioja wine she had paired with it, when she spotted the letter on the counter. It was written with quick scratchy scrawl on the monogrammed notepaper she had gifted John for Christmas.

  Dear Barberella,

  You knew this was coming, so don’t act surprised. You are as much to blame as me. I will send a moving company to collect my belongings in the next week. Let’s be civil about this. We still have Ryan to think about. If you make this divorce process easy, Ryan can stay with you. If you make trouble, I will make sure you never see him again. It is time to move on.

  Regards,

  John

  After reading the letter, she vomited her Starbucks latte into the island sink. Resting her swollen age-spotted hands on the cool gray marble. Her large solitaire diamond winked at her.

  She heard footsteps upstairs. Ryan was at school. Mazy was in Arizona with her girlfriends attending a graduation party. Barberella realized the possibility that John was still in the house at the same moment he came around the corner and stepped into the kitchen. They locked blue eyes. He looked down at the “Dear John letter” she was holding in her quivering hand. He sniffed the air, smelling her puke.

  “I take it you read the note,” he said. “I didn’t plan on being here, but I forgot something.”

  She began to drown, sputtering for a breath, in the ocean of his deep blue eyes. He had to still love her. They had made a family together. She was infatuated with him.

  “Please don’t go,” she said as tears began running down her face, her forehead wrinkling in disillusion. “I knew you were unhappy, but I didn’t think you would leave me. I’ve tried so hard to be beautiful, to make a perfect home for you. Can we go to counseling? Please John don’t go!”

  Barberella was crying desperately, taking small shallow breaths. She couldn’t grasp the oxygen she needed. She felt her face and hands and heart burning hot. She was begging him. John started to walk around the island to the garage door, heading for his parked car. She followed behind him as he opened the door. Dropping to her knees, she grabbed him by his leg, burying her face into his crotch, taking in the smell of lust for the last time. Holding him to her she pleaded.

  “Just talk to me…give me another chance…look at me John!”

  He answered these imploring demands by looking down at her, his sadistic eyes simmered—two dark festering holes in her universe. Small bits of spittle formed on his lower lip. She watched his nostrils flare with his heavy breaths.

  “Nobody wants you Barberella…I don’t want you…your children don’t want you…and your friends don’t want you. Nobody wants you Barberella. Let go of me.”

  He wiped her off dismissively like an annoying fly. She sunk her fleshy body into the white marble floor. John slammed the car door, making her flinch like a kick to the gut. She listened to the electric motor rolling the garage door closed. Followed by unbearable silence.

  The airplane seatbelt was pulled as large as it would go and barely fit.

  “This is ridiculous…I’m not that fat.”

  She imagined having to ask the flight attendant for the seat belt extension.

  “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Barberella.” She laughed out loud at her own dark humor.

  She was aware that she no longer fit the regular sizes sold in department clothing stores, having surpassed the extra-large size fourteen. She used to be a size four. So, if she did the math and multiplied twenty pounds by five dress sizes, she had put on a whopping hundred pounds on her petite frame.

  “A large bag of dog food weighs thirty-five pounds,” the Weight-Watchers group leader had explained to her at a meeting once. “Imagine carrying all that weight on your back and knees every day.”

  She sat locked in her seat, with her thin stringy blond hair cascading over her ample bosom. She wished the middle seat would remain empty. Barberella hoped she wouldn’t do anything embarrassing during the flight. On a flight she had taken several months ago to visit her son, she took two prescribed Xanax before eating a saltine cracker. Waking upon l
anding, she realized she hadn’t finished the cracker completely before falling asleep; it remained partially chewed in her open mouth. The man and his daughter sitting next to her had tried to ignore Barberella, as she roused herself from her comatose state with the slimy cracker mush caked to her lips and cheeks.

  A brown leather Coach bag sat on her lap. It was the same purse she carried before the divorce, but now the gold buckles had tarnished, and the leather was worn. Unzipping the bag, she reached inside a pocket to pull out a small gold pillbox decorated with roses and then cracked the lid off a newly purchased bottle of Evian water. The pillbox contained the Xanax she required for the flight; the prescription said to take two pills. She would skip the cracker this time, she thought smiling to herself.

  Barberella looked up from her window seat to see an older woman with frizzy white hair limping slowly, with the help of a cane. A massive silver dog sidekick, wearing a red service dog vest, was leading her.

  “Halt, Buster,” the woman’s unsteady voice shook.

  The old lady looked around, squinting her eyes behind thick spectacles, to locate her and Buster’s seats. One row diagonally behind Barberella, the elderly woman motioned for the big dog to jump into the middle seat. The dog looked as wide as its owner.

  “I wonder if HE fits in the seat?” Barberella said to the empty seats surrounding her.

  An exceptionally beautiful flight attendant arrived to assist the dog’s disabled owner with her luggage. The stewardess stretched her thin body to store the woman’s plastic Target bag in the compartment above.

  “I’m Carmen,” she told the woman. “You just push the call button if you need any further assistance.”

  Barberella wished they wouldn’t allow dogs on planes. It seemed like they were shoving the word “companion” in her face. John had been kind enough to leave the family’s mammoth size Great Pyrenees mountain dog, Pumpkin, at the ranch when he moved out.

  John gifted Pumpkin to the children at Christmas seven years prior to leaving her. The white puppy came in a giant box, glittering in silver and red-striped paper, with a jumbo velvet red bow. The kids squealed in delight when a real fluffy white teddy bear popped out.

  John allowed Barberella to stay at the Texas ranch for two years following the divorce, so Ryan could complete high school, the contract stated, after which John would either have the option to purchase Barberella’s half of the property, or they would sell the ranch, splitting the profits. She was unable to afford the million-dollar Texas ranch on a housewife’s, or in her case a jobless person’s salary. She had nothing to lean on, with no job prospects. Zero references. Zero experience. She knew she was screwed. The worst part was that she had signed the divorce agreement in such an absent state of mind that Pumpkin had been part of the bargain. John was to get her best friend when he bought her out.

  Barberella closed her eyes, thinking about her daughter Mazy’s sunset beach wedding tomorrow afternoon in Key West. The invite said not to wear shoes. She would see John and his new thirty-year-old fiancé Callie. Sweet little Mazy, with her big blue eyes had begged her mom not to make a scene. John and the replacement bitch already lived together at the ranch—Barberella’s family ranch. The couple had recently brought home a new puppy; a fluffy white nine-week-old female Great Pyrenees they named Nellie. She saw the pictures on Facebook after Mazy had been tagged.

  Barberella pulled out her noise-canceling headphones and turned the switch on, placing the cushioned earpieces over her thinning blond hair. Aw, total silence. She dug around in her purse and again pulled out the flowered gold pillbox. With the little strength left, she flipped the lid open and popped one more Xanax.

  11 Dee Winn

  Things usually turned out well for Dee. Today, however, she felt abandoned by her good friend, Lady Luck. Serendipity having chosen to stay behind in the Vegas casino—it wasn’t in the cards—with Dee barely making her return flight to Miami.

  Following other passengers, she took baby steps down the aisle, seeking seat 14D, somewhere near the front of coach.

  “Oh, Crap,” she sighed, finally surrendering herself to the resistant day.

  The assigned aisle seat was going to be a problem. Sitting in the row next to hers, was an old woman with frizzy white hair, and a goddamn giant Pitbull. It sat in the middle seat wearing an official looking red vest. Dee was mad dogging the dog, when she noticed it was also watching her, smiling from ear to ear, mimicking its owner’s chirpy disposition in the adjacent seat.

  Dee was allergic. Not to old people, but to dogs. She wouldn’t die from her allergy to animal dander, but by the time she arrived in Miami, she was going to be a snotty mess, unable to breathe through her nose and suffering from a pounding headache. She already had a hangover from the Vegas bachelorette party she had attended the night before. Now she needed to return to Miami for work the next morning. Dee would be covered in large red hives if she didn’t remove herself from the plane immediately. She started to turn around, in order to weave her way back to the front galley and inform the flight attendant of her problem. A line of passengers had already stacked up behind her. She was forced to lower herself temporarily into the assigned spot, cramming her tote in the storage space under the seat in front of her to wait for the remaining passengers to be situated.

  Dee looked to her left, accidentally catching the eye of the old woman who was still smiling at her. She returned a dispirited smirk, looking down at her hands, while trying to avoid eye contact with the woman. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less some sweet old lady, causing her to take a later flight.

  “Hi honey,” the old woman said with a shaky voice. “You look like you’re having a bad day.”

  Dee stared back at the old woman, then peered down at the coffee stains splattered across the breast of her white t-shirt.

  It had been one of those days. Some would call it a bad day. Dee didn’t like to think in such extremes as good or bad—black or white—it always seemed to work out for her either way.

  She had to rush to the airport this morning, almost missing her flight. The alarm had mistakenly been set for 6pm—not 6am. She only woke after hearing one of the other lady’s tiptoeing into the shared hotel suite. As her late night, party animal friend knocked into a dresser, the noise from a lamp crashing roused Dee from her deep sleep. Realizing the time, she quickly ripped on her faded jeans and a white t-shirt. Her slept-on brown hair was a rat’s nest, with bobby pins sticking out from each angle. This messy hairdo was the complete opposite to her usual meticulous clean-cut style.

  Before leaving the hotel, she had noticed her Florida driver’s license wasn’t in the correct clear plastic pocket of her organized wallet. She must have misplaced it celebrating her friend Marne’s bachelorette party on the Vegas Strip the night before, joining with a group of girlfriends from her college days to take ecstasy pills and wash them down with shots of tequila.

  “What happens in Vegas…stays in Vegas!” The ladies slurred while shrieking with laughter.

  Dee wasn’t a prude, although she opted out of the wet t-shirt contest to everyone’s disappointment. She did choose to participate in riding the mechanical bull. Dee stopped drinking alcohol after finishing her fourth vodka-grapefruit Greyhound cocktail, finishing the night hydrating with water, and burning off the liquor by booty grinding with a hot guy from New Jersey. His shaved smooth body had sported a lime-green muscle shirt and a thick gold chain.

  She tore the room apart searching for the missing ID; shaking the contents out of her clutch handbag, then pulling out the pockets of the sequined black pants she had worn the night before. Not having any luck, and with no time to waste, she grabbed her bags and ran down to the lobby and out the front doors of the Aria Casino and Hotel. She dashed across the nearly empty Las Vegas Boulevard, heading into a mall along the Strip, to locate the bar with the mechanical bull.

  She ran past the darkened Victoria’s Secret, American Outfitters, and Sketchers stores, passing numerous c
losed booths advertising cell phone cases or ponytail wigs and hairpieces. When she found the bar with the bull, she noticed everything had been put away; chairs were stacked on the tables and the lights were turned off. She could hear muffled voices coming from in the bar. The quiet was a stark contrast to the thundering bass pumping a few hours earlier. But this was Vegas baby—luckily, she found a few workers still sitting at the bar. Dee remembered one of the men from a few hours earlier.

  “Morning. Any way you guys found an ID last night?”

  The bartender, who she had recognized, stood up and moved slowly to the cash register. He pushed a couple of buttons and the drawer shot out in front of him. He reached in and plucked out her ID.

  “I figured you would be back—just not so soon,” he smiled with a toothpick stuck between his teeth; dark circles had formed under his eyes from the all-night shift. “It was jammed between the vinyl booths in the back. You’re lucky I found it.”

  “Lucky...that’s hard to say,” Dee pinched the ID between her fingers, swiftly replacing it into the correct clear pocket on the outside of her wallet. “I still have to catch my plane.”

  She was able to hail a cab a split-second after exiting the mall. Upon arriving at the airport, she had less than one hour remaining to check her bag and pass through TSA.

  “No time for coffee,” she groaned. “Darn it!”

  Then she saw a mousy barista with a tray full of free sample lattes, cappuccinos, and berry smoothies. She grabbed the baby-sized latte, feeling lucky to have the miniature caffeine dose. Impulse from the night before caused Dee to take the mini latte like a shot of tequila. However, she hesitated for a second at the prospect of the hot liquid burning her pallet. Missing the target. Espresso and milk dripped down her chin covering her white t-shirt with brown coffee splatters.

  “Here honey,” the barista handing her a napkin. “Take another sample drink—not your lucky day.”