‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘I heard of worse ideas.’
Gael laughs, slips out of her shoes and into the slippers.
‘Alexi?’ the man says to the steward who has arrived to take his lunch order. ‘Pamela?’ he calls. ‘Get over here, will you?’ The stewardess comes with the champagne bucket that was removed for takeoff. Holding Alexi’s hand, the man addresses Pamela. ‘If I were to get into my PJs, I’m talking before lunch and everything, would you consider it an act of terror?’ No, sir, says Alexi. Certainly not, says Pamela. ‘And if this young lady were to join me, you wouldn’t spread rumours down through the plane, would you, that anything’ – he purses his lips and whispers – ‘untoward … is going on up the ranks.’ Nothing of the sort, sir. We’ll keep mum. Now he slips something into Alexi’s hand and mutters, ‘But if a few of those momma’s boys in business hear word, I won’t press charges.’ He winks at Gael, who says:
‘The pensioner and the princess is an original fairy tale.’
‘Ha! The gall!’ he says. ‘The pensioner and the princess. Last time I sat in this cabin, the princess of Saudi Arabia sat where you are, sweetheart. Do you think she knows who I am, Pamela?’ Pamela places his slippers on the floor and opens the Velcro of his leather sneakers. ‘The cat’s pyjamas is who. Now, everyone knows cats eat fish. So I’ll take the caviar, the whitebait, the wild salmon and, for supper, close as you got to cardiac arrest, you hear me, Alexi?’ Would he like wine matching? ‘I certainly oughta suit up for wine matching.’ He hoists himself up using the upholstery and wheezily addresses Gael. ‘I’d say ladies first, but, what can I tell you? I’m incontinent.’
He returns before long, sighing. ‘Who knew happiness came in extra large.’ He places his clothes on the ottoman. ‘She’s all yours.’ Flapping a hand towards the bathroom.
‘Oh thanks, but I’m fine. I changed my mind.’ Legs crossed, Gael flips through a lifestyle magazine from the demographic-specific medley.
The man stands in the aisle, staring down at his pyjamas in wonderment. He’s swimming in them. Still wearing the baseball cap. ‘That’s a cute trick,’ he says to himself, in his slightly nasal, gravelly voice, whistling his T’s and S’s.
Gael looks up, straight-faced.
‘That’s some stunt she pulled on me.’
Gael mimics the wink he gave her earlier.
‘I see how it is. I been duped. But are you really gonna let a senior citizen have a pyjama party all alone?’ He tilts his puppy-dog head. ‘My wife died. My kids hate my guts. I never met my grandkids. I’m an orphan …’
‘Fine!’ Gael gets up. ‘Alright. Annie. Daddy Warbucks. Whichever it is.’
‘It’s Wally, as a matter of fact.’
‘Just know, Wally, that adorable only works once on me. Next time you won’t get off so easily.’
He shrugs. ‘That’s what my wife said.’ His shoulders in the grey cotton are like the knobs of two walking sticks.
Gael gasps. ‘TMI, Wally.’
‘What’s TMI. I know FML? My granddaughter sends me that every week via text message. My phone beeps. FML. I make a deposit. She’s good till Tuesday.’ Gael throws her head back in a non-vocal laugh. She passes Alexi in the aisle, returning her package to the wall in front of and in between Gael and Wally. ‘Tilt that down a notch, will you?’ Wally says. ‘So’s me and the lady can talk.’
In the jacks, Gael notes the sprinkling of freckles the Irish summer goaded out of her pale skin, only visible since the facialist cleaned off her makeup. Her eyes, the whitish-bluish-grey colour of meltwater, are sleepy-looking, pupils dilated from the early-afternoon alcohol. She’d look too young free of make-up had Guthrie not cut her hair so decisively and had she not dyed silver a pinchful of strands from her window’s peak and temples. Subtle enough that it looks like threaded early greying. Three flutes of fizz have compromised the hold she has on herself and the hold she’ll need to have on her cards for the all-in moment. She folds her clothes, splashes cold water on her face and considers switching to coffee for the next few thousand miles.
‘I took the liberty of ordering you a glass. It’s delicious!’ Wally brandishes his wine for a clink. ‘Slanty. Oh wait, that’s Chinese, not Irish.’
Gael takes a big gulp of the honeyish wine, despite preferring brisker whites. It treacles down her throat, helping to forestall what she would say. Nothing would be gained by calling him out on this. Nothing profitable. A cloth-covered table has appeared meanwhile, set with heavy cutlery, glasses made of glass, napkins folded into aeroplanes, one china plate atop another, mini salt and pepper grinders and a basket of fresh granary bread with coils of butter in a little dish. ‘Sláinte,’ she says, clinking his glass. ‘What is it?’
‘No clue. Called something like chameleon. Don’t like it, spit it out. Life’s short.’
In the nick of time, Gael stops herself from saying, ‘That’s what your wife said.’
‘Sémillon,’ Pamela corrects him, delivering Gael her starter. ‘It’s somewhat of a sweet New World wine.’ The way she says this, it clearly wasn’t her recommendation. It’s only dawning on Gael that the courses won’t come together. Of course they won’t! But she has only ever had all her courses come together on flights, on a sad overloaded plastic tray. Gelatinous potato side salads packed in finicky containers. Pamela describes Gael’s starter – Gressingham duck breast, shiitake mushroom, ginger consommé – and quietly conveys that the wine was matched for Wally’s foie gras (he changed his mind about the caviar), so if she’d like something better suited to duck, just nod.
‘What’s the conference topic, ladies?’
‘It’s fine.’ Gael smiles.
‘I don’t like to know brands is all,’ Wally says. ‘I don’t eat food that’s been advertised. Anything on a billboard, I don’t eat. Period. They make a commercial for the granola I been buying all my life, I switch granola. I’m eighty-two. I don’t give a damn. I’m switching granola.’
‘Wally,’ Gael says, ‘you don’t look a day over eighty-one. Don’t switch granola.’
They banter their way through bread and butter, starters and entrées. Salmon with fennel and Pernod sauce for the gentleman. For the lady, seared sea bass with samphire, red pepper pearls and bouillabaisse sauce. Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc to wash it all down. Though Gael sadly knows she’ll have to chuck it all up in a half bottle’s time if she’s to have any wits left about her when they’re needed. That in mind, she takes the opportunity of a lull in conversation to change its direction: ‘‘Boot and rally.’’ She sips her wine. ‘Is that what it stands for?’ Wally looks a bit confounded for a moment. He squints, as if not seeing what she means is a physical condition. Then it comes into focus. The gold pin glinting at them from his sweater on the ottoman. Gael had only just made it out for a delicately crafted boot. ‘It doesn’t look like an army boot,’ she says.
‘My pin.’ The tide goes out on his expression.
The crew arrive to clear their dinner plates and Wally loses the thread of his thought, or the energy of it. Gael sees this and makes it clear they’d like some space, not to fuss over wine and water. ‘We need half an hour before dessert.’ She waits until it’s quiet again and their glasses are full and says, ‘Your pin?’
‘I had it made special,’ Wally says, distantly. ‘I got the right boot. My brother got the left. But I just visited and he wasn’t wearing it. Says men don’t wear jewellery in Ireland. I guess it’s a long story.’ He takes a few wheezy breaths.
‘Give me the gist of it,’ Gael says.
‘The gist?’
Gael shrugs softly.
He takes some wine into his mouth and swills it through his teeth as if to clean them. He holds it in his cheeks, then swallows noisily. ‘Put it this way. Wherever you get to … on this rock in orbit … you gotta remember where you come from. I don’t wanna forget how I started, you understand? Heck no, course you don’t! You’re a kid flying first class. We had different paths, you and me.’
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‘Don’t assume I didn’t earn my way here,’ Gael says.
‘Well, if you did, I’m certainly interested. But I bet you ten thousand bucks right now, I’ll write a cheque, shake my hand on it kid if you’re for real, I bet you didn’t have to take turns going to school with your brother ’cause you only had the one pair of boots between you. I bet you had more than half an education to work your way up from.’
Gael watches the tilt of his mouth, like a picture hung with neither love nor leveller.
‘It’s smart to be cautious,’ he says. ‘Caution keeps you in the black. Not very far into it, it oughta be said, but in the black all the same. Our pop had a heart attack on a boat out fishing for mackerel. He was alone so he drowned. Fell into the water, got caught on his own line, so his heart kicked it, he drowned and he hung for a bargain. Tell that to your kids at bedtime. Don’t feel bad about it ’cause I barely knew the guy, just knew he drank like a fish and beat on Mom. She had me and Seymour and she was pregnant with Bernice. For me, she parked cars, for Seymour, she tended tables, for Bernice, she baked breakfast muffins. We’d wake up to the smell of her determination. Bernice was easy to look after most of the time. She wasn’t right, see.’ He taps his middle finger to his head. It thuds against the fabric of his cap. ‘She was gentle and still like a lake with no fish in it. Far away. You could sit her in front of a toy car and she’d be pushing it forward and back an hour later. She never got diagnosed ’cause she wasn’t registered or anything. No birth certificate. Born in the tub with the help of a co-worker and a fillet knife. Mom was in her early forties. Clocked up so many miscarriages it got to the point she never expected a live one, and it was premature, and we was all mourning, so that’s how Bernice turned up. With death on her tail. One day I’m at school, sixth grade, Seymour’s kidsitting, this is Providence where we grew up and he was working real hard. He was ahead of me, on paper at least. Something Pop had said to him stuck, but I never got told it. We shared everything, except that. Like it was meant for his ears only. To give him a leg up. He changed, one day to the next. I slept on a hammock on top of his mattress on the floor. “The bunk.” Whatever that thing was, it got between us like … moisture in cement. Swole up. Started growing mildew. He got studious, I got good with girls. It was instinct, for me. Knowing where the value was. In people. With people a’ course. We fought for Mom’s love. And so it happened like that. Seymour’s chewing on the end of his pencil, Bernice is in her playpen, choking on a colouring crayon. You’ll never guess. Sky blue. She was dead a half hour fore Seymour knew about it. You couldn’t even tell what’s wrong … just a blue stain. Anyways I wasn’t there.’
The side of his mouth that’s tilted down is closest to Gael. It’s as if he’s trying to lift it with a very weak muscle. It quivers and tightens, quivers and tightens. His eyes are black and the peak of the cap casts an inverse shadow of pallor around them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gael says.
‘Yeah.’ He stretches his chin upward, so the sinews of his neck become harp strings. ‘Bunch of legal hoo-ha like you wouldn’t believe. Reporters loitering, photo-ing me and Seymour. The government people put us into foster care. We threatened to wring each other’s necks till they split us into separate houses. Nearly got sent to juvie for that. That’s a fast way to go, after Bernice. Our mother was not a fit parent, they said. She was distraught. She aged like fruit in direct sunlight. Certainly didn’t look fit after all that. Which alone was a tragedy. This beautiful woman.’ Wally holds his palm out and dips it a few times, as if weighing bullion. ‘Then, outta nowhere – get this: something crawls from the woodwork of our father’s coffin. His old boss had been watching from the sideline. He’d always had a soft spot for Mom. Transpires, this guy’d taken life insurance out on Pop. Smart fella, way ahead of the game. It had took its time, but it paid out at long last. Eighteen grand.’ Wally coughs. ‘He didn’t know it would for sure, pay out. This is 1935. The goddamned Depression. I’m not a historian. I’m no economist. But that was a lot of money. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why. All’s I know is he kept a couple grand for himself and cut the rest into three parts, for Mom, me and my brother when we turned legal. Alright, sunshine. You tell me what you’d’a done with a small fortune, no schooling, short pants and shorter teeth? World War Two bucking up. Franklin Roosevelt in office telling us: far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even chequered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.’ He catches his breath. ‘See? Victory, defeat. Triumphs, failures. Grand stuff. Defeat gets to be more powerful than survival. Having gone after something. There was FDR telling us, the most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. Oh boy. I heard that. That, I heard. But Seymour, he heard other things. It’s only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. Seymour heard, “A man who’s never gone to school can steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he can steal the whole railroad.” He wanted to be among the six per cent of men with a college degree, so he finished high school, enrolled in medical school in ’39. Blew half his brass on the degree and upkeep, the other half on a deposit for a two-bedroom near campus. A medical degree sure as hell looked like bootstraps to us back then. All he’d need was a wife for the house and, wouldya look at that: upward mobility. But not so fast, not so fast, cupcake. In the interest of protecting his new home from being powdered like Jean Harlow’s nose, Seymour signed up. As a combat medic. Served in the navy. Late ’43. Way to go for timing, buddy. Top marks for survival. When the boys come back, little over a year later – well, the ones that did come back – there’s no jobs. The government’s scratching its head what to do with them all. So what did they decide, those yahoos in Congress? To pay for education! Any GI Joe who wanted to be Joe MD could be.’ Wally shakes his head and lets out a big crackling sigh. ‘He earned plenty in the way of stripes, Seymour. But he never got to owning no railroad.’ He lets that comment sit in the air conditioning, neither cold nor warm. Not new. Not right, necessarily.
Gael takes the bottle from the bucket, refills Wally’s glass and empties the remainder into her own, directing herself to have patience. She’s getting there. ‘I hated this wine at the start of the bottle.’
‘Oh.’ Wally looks at her. ‘Has it grown on you?’
‘I’ve grown on it. That’s how it goes. Tell me, Wally, were you among the six per cent, with a degree?’
‘No, I never was. I never went to Harvard or Yale. I got that cheque, came of age and you know where I headed?’
‘For the drafting station?’
‘For the one per cent. The zero point six per cent. Don’t need no algebra to know how that works out.’
‘Didn’t you have to enlist?’
‘This was only after Pearl Harbor. Look, none of us knew our president couldn’t walk. You couldn’t hear that sort of thing on the radio.’ Wally stops talking for a minute and makes some private connection. He chuckles. ‘I became quite intent alright.’
‘Intent on what?’ Gael says.
‘What?’ He cups his ear and leans into her, suddenly almost shouting. ‘What’s that? Problem?’ He turns and smacks his ear like he’s swatting a fly. ‘Problem solved.’ Delighted with his own schtick, he wheezes and rubs the side of his head. ‘Stand in what line? Sign where? Can’t hear you, kid. I bust my eardrum.’
Alexi and Pamela arrive to reset their tables for dessert. They refrain from irritating nicety chatter. Just do their jobs, removing the signs of what’s been consumed and what’s been wasted, letting Wally run the Wally Show, letting the girl heed his story, as she seems to want to do. The afternoon has worn on, but the sky outside lingers over lunch as they coast into an earlier time zone. (Pamela tried to catch Gael’s eye to see if she needed saving, but no. You’ve read it all wrong, Pamela
.) Who wouldn’t want to live like this, evading nightfall? A thrill runs along Gael’s chest when she thinks how unlikely it is to be pyjamaed, thirty-five thousand feet above homelessness. She hasn’t anywhere to sleep and there’s only seven hundred pounds on her credit card. She has cash, too, but she won’t count it up, nor is she wont to count it down. There’s so much daylight still for options to open up like thighs. She tries to imagine Wally’s house, but she only knows the Manhattan homes of the screen and he hasn’t even said if he lives in the city. If he has a guest room. Some gesticulations are going on and the crew serve desserts of fresh fruit salad with cappuccino and Scottish shortbread for Gael and a treacle and lemon tart with vanilla crème Anglaise for Wally, who asks if they ran out of Doritos. ‘So.’ Gael prongs a cube of pip-free watermelon. ‘You got by?’
‘Good God this pie is appetizing. Gimme your fork.’ He lops off a chunk of the lemon-treacle tart and passes the loaded fork back to her. ‘Get that in you.’ Crumbs in the corners of his mouth fall down to his lap as he talks. ‘So. Here’s me. Biding my time. Had to wait the war out. I just knew it. The only use for those years was finding unassuming, farsighted men to get in your corner, on your books. My pop’s boss was a man like that. It was hard to stay patient, but was I right to wait? Yessiree. Yes I was. Oh me oh my. The 1950s consumer! What a business. It’s not even impressive, really, to have skipped a few rungs during all that. Anyway, my philosophy’s simple. First, find out what needs to be done, however long it takes, then go at it with everything you have. Whatever you got in you.’
How very American. Gael licks the cappuccino foam from her upper lip and reaches into the storage area in the sill where she spotted a writing set earlier. She takes it out and immortalizes Wally’s wisdom, which makes him chuckle. It makes him sit up a little, even though he’s clearly getting dozy. ‘What was the question?’ he says, realizing that he’s spent an hour going off on one. He swallows a yawn, resting his eyes, hung-lidded, on her luggage. ‘Sorry for the sermon, kid. It’s not often I get to converse with such a …’ Gael smiles politely as Pamela clears the plates and tables. (‘… tolerant …’) More beverages are offered (‘… young lady’) – they might like to switch to red – and Wally looks to Gael for her inclination. No. She wants him alert and keen and he, unlike her, refrained from coffee, so she asks Pamela for blankets and suggests to Wally – reaching across the aisle to rest her hand on his forearm – that they put their eye covers on and recline their chairs for an hour or two. Try out the massage function. The noise-cancelling headphones. Because of the time difference, the day will be five hours longer. So the farsighted thing to do is log some sleep now so they’ll feel like dancing their dinner off later.
Orchid & the Wasp Page 19
