stranger How will you manage an eleven hour flight?
me I have no idea. I’m trying not to worry about it.
Dear Jana,
You are my very own ‘deus ex machina’! You have rescued me from despair. Thanks so much for your lovely card and offer to pay my fare over! I would love to come and visit you. How about October? That gives me about six weeks to rest, I’m still recovering from London. I would probably come for three weeks to make it worth it.
Your stories of the men you are dating make me howl, especially the herring party with the morose Finnish software engineer with his arm in a cast! My sex life is nonexistent. Sexual experiences of last eighteen months: feeling my stepbrother’s penis through his jeans; having Callum’s not so fragrant penis in my mouth; being asked out by Mo, a divorced guy in my class, who hates woman and is often aggressive, I think he’s an alcoholic. I invited him for dinner one night and he was surly to Ivan because he said he likes Woody Allen – Mo said his films are one big middle class wank.
Yesterday, I went to see a French film, it’s cheap on Wednesdays – thank God, I have my student ID ‘til October, I hate using that fucking pension book for concessions. Anyway, I felt self-conscious being at the film on my own and the guy selling tickets was really good-looking which made it worse. I bought Opal Fruits from the machine and they got stuck, just dangled, wouldn’t drop down, and I had to ask him for help. You can imagine my humiliation.
On the way back from the film, the polkadot boy doctor who took my blood years ago was sitting opposite me on the Underground. It took me a while to realise who he was. He looked away, I think he was shy. If we’d been in a film, I would’ve told him he’d taken my blood when he was a junior doctor, and he would’ve stayed on ‘til my stop and fallen in love with me.
I’ve had to apply for housing benefit as I can’t keep staying here for nothing. Rez had to write a letter saying he was my landlord, and I had to go for an interview. A woman with whiskers asked me why I hadn’t needed rent before and I had to explain that Rez hadn’t charged me before. A guy in a grey anorak came to look at the flat. Both Rez and Ivan have double beds and I know he thought I was sleeping with one of them. I was expecting a long battle but amazingly my claim was processed, and I got the first cheque yesterday. I feel much better paying my way. There are very few people like Rez who would have let me stay a whole year for nothing. I rely so much on the goodwill of my friends and family. I’d be fucked without them, I’d be living on the breadline. I don’t know how other ill people who don’t have family to help them manage. I’ve applied for a Visa card, they hand them out to graduates these days, though if they knew I was a rag doll they would never give me one!
Glad your job is going well and that your insane psychiatrist flatmate has left. Hope the gay banker is better. I will get to meet him and can judge for myself.
Cannot wait to see you! What can I bring you – Pan Drops, cheese and onion crisps, a few sheep? Rez has a fax machine now, he loves gadgets, so you can fax me confirmation of flights if you want.
Lots of love,
Helen xxx
PS. I will never go to Bulgaria, they have chained dancing bears. It’s obscene.
Worried sick. How can I possibly travel anywhere, never mind California, with legs with no power in them? They’ve been awful the last two weeks. I don’t want to let Jana down by cancelling, she is so excited about me going, and the ticket is non-refundable. I have three weeks to go. I’ve practised packing to see how heavy my case is. I won’t be able to bear the disappointment if I can’t go. I’m thinking of having a one-off vitamin C drip if Helga will do it.
A week later, a fax came from Jana: Great news, my new room-mate has moved in, but he will be away for the time you are here and is fine about you using his room! He’s going to Europe to get over his ex. His dog died the week he moved in with me, it ate extra strength Tylenol. I can’t say I felt too sad as I wasn’t crazy about having a dog in the apartment. Hope you are feeling stronger, just get your skinny ass over here! Love you, Jana.
I faxed her back that I was going for a vitamin C boost.
The week before travelling I went home to Balloch to rest properly. One afternoon I got a taxi to Marion’s on impulse, she’d fitted me in at the last minute. I asked her to cut my hair really short, I couldn’t be bothered with it anymore.
She wanted to re-do my highlights but it was too expensive, and I didn’t care that they’d grown out.
23
San Francisco
I SAT IN the pen at the airport with Jean, the other passenger who needed special assistance, a breathless woman in her sixties with dyed red hair and bald patches. I was in a 2.5 mg Valium haze – I was scared to take more and halved the bitter yellow 5 mg tablets with my thumbnail. Myra had prescribed them, I’d been in such a state about feeling ill and travelling.
Rita had kept my place in the queue ‘til it was my turn to check in. She’d lifted my case onto the luggage belt. It weighed 25 kilos. Watch you don’t wreck your back, Mum, I’d said. I was horrified to see that my boarding pass had a wheelchair symbol on it. I’d asked if I could just have the assistance at Heathrow, where there would be tons of walking, but it was in their regulations that I had to take the wheelchair for the whole journey. It’ll be great, said Rita, you won’t have to queue, and you’ll get on the plane first. There’s no way I’m letting Jana see me like this, I said, shaking my head.
My mother hugged me goodbye and I was wheeled off with my pink Head bag on my lap. Phone me when you get there, even if it’s late! she said. Her eyes had filled up. Bye, Mum, thanks for everything, I said, waving and struggling not to weep with exhaustion and gratitude (and excitement).
Jean smiled after me with complicity.
The chair was great, I had to admit, it was luxury not having to waste weak legs on queuing and walking, but I kept moving my feet so no one would think I was paralysed. The guy took me to the domestic departures lounge. I got out and sat with the other passengers, most of them commuters in business suits. I crossed my legs and uncrossed them to highlight my able-bodiedness.
I hadn’t slept properly for days – I felt like one of those cats they’d done sleep deprivation experiments on: they knocked out their serotonin with a drug so that they staggered around, unable to fall asleep, eventually dying of exhaustion after a couple of weeks.
When they called the flight, I was allowed to board first. I was too tired to worry properly about the plane crashing, but when we took off I still expected to plummet seconds later.
At Heathrow, an Asian man with a wheelchair met me. He smiled and said, In you get, duckie. He pushed me through a maze of carpeted grey corridors. We had to get a lift to a different level (doubling the mortification, being wheeled into a lift); he dropped me at the shuttle bus for Terminal Four.
The shuttle took about twenty minutes. I waited ‘til last to get off and this time was met by a thin African man. I was beginning to feel guilty about being chauffeured around by immigrant workers.
We got straight through security and passport control without having to queue. My plane didn’t leave for another two hours. I told the man I could walk a bit and he tipped me out of the wheelchair and told me to be back at the pen at least an hour before the flight. I went to the toilets. I smelled faintly of sweat so I washed under my arms. A beautiful S-shaped pregnant woman was putting her hair in a ponytail. She looked Italian. I wanted to be her, so glowing and functioning. I cleansed my face, brushed my teeth and put on some lipstick.
My legs were weak and my skull was tight, I would’ve loved some tea but the queues were too long. I went to the newsagents and bought a can of Coke and Vogue – which added another kilo to my hand luggage – and some barley sugar sweets for my ears.
I passed Tie Rack and went in and caressed some boxers. They made me want to phone Ivan. I got Ystasis for Jana in Duty Free. I was lucky to get a till without a queue.
I made my way back, I had tons of tim
e but I was scared I’d miss my pick up slot. I sat down in the wheelchair zone and took another half Valium. There was a young man with cerebral palsy, he must have wondered what the fuck I was doing there. I shuffled through my travel documents and checked them for the hundredth time. I had a wad of dollars rolled up in a bumbag which I had refused to wear. Rita had got it for me. It’s leather, she’d said. They’re bang in fashion.
I wanted to have a shower and lie down in the Club Class lounge. I curled up on the seats and used my Head bag as a pillow. I smelled of antiperspirant.
I was taken to the San Francisco flight on a buggy like the ones they use on golf courses. It was much less embarrassing than a wheelchair – I felt like a celebrity who was late for her flight. I could see the planes lined up at the gates with their pointy black and white cockpit heads; they looked like a row of cats drinking milk.
I felt that everyone was looking at me when the buggy dropped me off. I sat down and closed my eyes. All around me I could hear the elastic vowels of Americans.
They called the toddlers and frail people to board first. I walked slowly behind an old woman with a walking stick and pearls and too much rouge. An S-shaped woman was also boarding early. I felt relieved, the plane couldn’t possibly crash with a pregnant woman on board, it would be too cruel.
I had asked for an aisle seat, I knew I would need to pee lots and didn’t want to be clambering over other passengers. I put my bag in the locker and got settled in. I put my Vogue and Oscar and Lucinda in the seat pocket in front. They bulged out and left me hardly any room.
I hoped a handsome man would sit beside me but I got a very small Indian woman. Her bones looked like they would break if you touched her. I got up to let her in and she beamed gratefully. She had a bag she wanted put up in the locker and signalled to me to do it for her. It was heavy so I got one of the stewardesses to do it, I didn’t know how the old woman had carried it herself. She gestured for help with her seatbelt. I clicked her in and she rubbed my hands to thank me. Her fingers were like brown velvet claws. I thought she must be cold, wearing just her sari with a cardigan on top. I hoped she had a coat with her.
A woman with an arse like a shelf was wedging herself into the seat in front. She hated me from the start. I accidentally dunted her seat and she turned round and glared with shark eyes.
The plane was huge – it took an age for everyone to be boarded and strapped in. When we finally lumbered along the runway, I had the thought that when we plummeted I would die between a small-boned brown woman and a pale pink fat woman. The old woman had slipped her hand into mine when the plane lifted off. It was nice to feel needed even though I was probably more afraid than her. Her palms weren’t even sweating.
The fat woman put her seat back immediately and fell asleep and snored. I dropped my toilet bag, looking for my lip balm, and a lipstick rolled under her seat. I almost sprained my neck retrieving it.
Somehow, the hours passed, with meals and drinks being placed in front of you by beautifully manicured hands, and films and cartoons, if you didn’t mind constantly having to rearrange your headphones to get rid of the crackling. I’d never liked Mr Bean much but it passed the time, and I’d seen Tom and Jerry a thousand times, but I’d never noticed the beauty of the drawings before – the sharp, bold outlines made me feel optimistic.
The old woman and I held hands again when there was bad turbulence over Greenland. Both our palms were sweating. I told myself I was flying over Nab’s birthplace so nothing bad could happen. I’d kept two flight-size bottles of Merlot for Jana, but I opened one after the turbulence.
The Valium and wine made me feel benevolent, I wanted to smile at everyone, except the fat woman – she licked the foil lid of her trifle and I wanted to kill her.
I was constantly getting up to pee and slap out pins and needles. The old woman slept most of the time and got up twice during the whole flight. Both times she asked me to keep her seat.
Towards the end of the flight, they handed out immigration cards for non-Americans. A steward came round and checked if I needed assistance when we landed. He ticked me off on his list.
Everyone was queuing to freshen their sour breaths and underarms before landing. The toilets were choked with paper and stank, and there was only a dribble of water to wash in. The light made you green with enlarged pores. It was better not to look. When I got back to my seat, the fat woman was cleaning her ears with cotton buds and looking at the wax.
The pilot, unbelievably crisp and awake, pointed out Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. I could see brown crinkled velvet hills as we came into land. The plane dipped steeply several times – at this rate we’d end up in the fucking bay. When the stewardess announced, Welcome to San Francisco International Airport, I had tears of relief.
The Indian woman couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting off with her. I have to wait ‘til last, I explained, but she was confused and looked sad when I stayed in my seat. She looked so fragile, I felt I should take her with me, put her on my lap. I wondered if the wheelchair guy would be blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but, of course, he was Mexican. There were about six wheelchair passengers, it was like a parade.
The luggage carousels were mobbed. People with bloodshot, jet-lagged eyes, crowding and pushing, dragging their cases off the moving belts. I kept thinking I’d spotted mine, but there were a lot of black Samsonites. When it finally came, I got out of the chair and pointed to it. The guy grabbed it and put it on a trolley. I got back into the wheelchair and he pushed me with one hand and pulled the trolley behind him with the other. I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t have managed without him.
Immigration was next. You heard so many stories of how ruthless they were, always deporting people. I dreaded being turned back, I couldn’t go through another eleven hour flight, I’d die of exhaustion. We bypassed the zoo of queues, and the guy wheeled me straight to a booth. I stood up to give the immigration officer my passport. My hands and legs were shaking. He asked me how long I was staying and asked to see my return ticket. I was sure he’d think I was here to work, pretending to be disabled. He scrutinised my ticket and handed it back without a word. He stapled something to my passport and told me to have a nice stay. We continued through customs without being stopped.
I turned round and told the Mexican guy I could manage on my own now and thanked him. I didn’t want Jana to see me in a wheelchair. He looked perplexed. I would’ve liked him to keep pushing the trolley for me, but I didn’t like to ask. I wondered if I should tip him, but I had no money, it was all rolled up in the bumbag at the bottom of my other bag. I’m okay now, I said, standing up. Really. Thank you.
I was totally disorientated and sick with excitement. I pointed the trolley through some sliding doors and saw a wall of people. At first I couldn’t see Jana, then she hurled herself towards me, screaming, Helen! We were both crying. I can’t fucking believe you’re here, she said.
Me neither, I said. Don’t hug me too tightly, I think I smell.
I thought you were getting a wheelchair! she said.
I did, but I shooed the wee man away after customs, he must’ve thought I was crazy. I just didn’t want you to see me.
She lifted the case from the trolley, it was almost the same size as her.
It’s on wheels, I said, but it’s heavy. She manoeuvred it behind her. I’ll need to take your arm, I said. My legs are like jelly.
The car’s not far, can you last?
Just about, I said.
Your car’s like a wagon, I said, when we reached it.
It’s an Oldsmobile, I love it, don’t want to part with it. Everyone gives me shit about it, it’s not very Silicon Valley.
I love it, I said. It’s like a sofa at the front.
We got into the car and grinned at each other. You look amazing, I said. Tanned and lovely.
Thanks, she said. You look exhausted but gorgeous as ever. Your hair’s so short!
I don’t feel very gorgeous, I said. I
had a huge spot on my chin last week and dabbed it with Dettol and all my skin peeled off. It still feels tight.
Is Dettol not for cleaning toilets?
Yeah, but you can use it as antiseptic, but I didn’t dilute it.
Crazy girl, she said.
We turned out of the airport and passed a billboard that said: BE HERE FOR THE CURE.
Rush-hour traffic had started. I marvelled at the way Jana changed lanes and zoomed in and out of the other cars, cursing other drivers.
By the way, my dad’s invited us for dinner next weekend if you feel up to it. He’s got a new girlfriend, Kim, she’s a holistic healer. She’s cool.
You sound so American, I said, laughing.
I am American, she said. I’m a dumb American. I faked it all those years in Scotland. God, I’ve missed you. How the he’ll are you?
When we got to her flat, it was getting dark. The view was stunning. You could see the Bay Bridge and its blinking red lights. I got out of the car and took a deep breath, I felt like I was inhaling the whole San Francisco skyline.
I think I’m dreaming this, I said. I’m not really here.
You surely are, she said. View’s great isn’t it?
It’s breathtaking, I said.
I shouldn’t tell you this, but a guy killed himself last week in my neighbour’s garden, shot himself in the chest with a .38 pearl-handled revolver. We think he chose this street ‘cos of the view. I missed it all, I was in Seattle.
That’s grim, I said.
Jana’d said .38 revolver as if everyone knew what it meant. I was too tired to ask.
What the hell have you got in here? she said, lugging my case up the flight of stairs to her apartment.
It’s all presents for you, I said.
It’s a good thing I’ve been working out.
Her flat was huge with hardwood floors. This is amazing! I said. Very Armistead Maupin.
The State of Me Page 22
