Jason; York, PA; Present Day

The next day he was kicking himself for not coming with me.  I was on the train.  The Wi-Fi wasn't free, but I sprang for the 7-hour deal.

"I don't know what else to say," he said in the first email.  "I’m sorry," he said in the second.  It would be another hour and a half before I arrived in York, PA for our father's wedding at 2.

I’d received my invitation only a week ago.  And apparently so did my kid brother Ricky, because when I retrieved my phone after having left it at the apartment all day by accident, I had twelve texts and eight missed calls from Long Island.

Voicemail 1 said, “Jason, I know you’re at work, but pick up.  Did you just get what I just got in the mail?  This is so fucked up.  I’m really freaking out.  Please call me back.”

Text 1 said, “CHECK MESSAGES NOW.”

Voicemail 2 said, “Dude, I need to talk to you.  Are you in a meeting or something?  Just text me that you’re in a meeting.  I mean, Jesus Christ.  I haven’t told Mom yet and she’ll be home any minute, so CALL ME BACK.  Soon.  Okay, thanks.  Bye.”

The remaining texts and voicemails were of similar panic levels until they finally gave up at around 4PM.  To be fair, I was equally shocked when I opened my own invitation.  The magenta piece of stationary drowned in sparkles and fake roses was blinding and left me disoriented for about a minute until my sight returned and I was even able to read the thing.  Of anything it could have said, I was least expecting to see that the “honour of my presence” was “requested at the marriage of Stephen Sparks and Ashley Rachel Wright on Saturday, June 18^th.”  At first, I thought it was a prank that Ricky himself was playing on me.  But then I realized how unlikely that was; he was hit pretty hard by our parents’ surprise divorce three months before.  As a second-semester senior in high school, he just couldn’t accept the fact that the happy, perfect family he’d known for eighteen years was suddenly splitting up.  The divorce seemed out of nowhere to me too; but I was an independent twenty-four year old with a full time job at a Manhattan Commercial Production company, so I was much more removed from it.  I figured they had just fallen out of love and weren’t getting along.   Like what happens for most middle-aged couples.  Ricky just couldn’t understand that.  But apparently, I was wrong as can be, because out of thin air, here was an invitation for what appeared to be the extravagant Pennsylvania wedding between my recently divorced father and a girl named Ashley Wright.  My parents, Ricky and I had lived in York, PA until my Dad got a job on Long Island when Ricky was twelve and I was about to enter college.  After my parents divorced, my Dad left his job and returned to York, which really confused us at the time, but now made a touch more sense. 

I had known Ashley Wright through some friends before the move.  She was classic York: pretty blond girl from an upper middle-class family of businessmen who all lived in big brick houses with a few acres of land and never planned to leave.  She was nice enough, as I remembered, not funny or crazy or remarkable in any way.  Ashley and I had seen each other at a few parties in York.  Pool parties, Christmas parties, barbecues, Church gatherings.  And insane house parties our friends used to throw in high school when I was a junior and she was a senior.  Yes, my father’s bride-to-be and I were classmates.  In high school.  So, that made her twenty-five now.  And how old was Dad again?  Oh that’s right, just turned fifty-two.  How did they even know each other?  Did he chaperone a field trip once and meet her?  Did he spot her in the chorus of the school play and think, “Oh, I gotta make her my future bride?”  I checked one more time that I’d read the names correctly on that sparkly pink piece of garbage, and grabbed my phone.  I texted Ricky.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I said.  “This looks really bad.  But I’m sure it’s not what we think.  I mean, it’s York.  Something this scandalous would never fly.  There has to be a whole story, explanation, something.  I’ll call Dad tonight.”

“Whatever,” Ricky responded.  “There’s no way I’m going to that shit show.”

I couldn’t help but feel tempted to get angry and jump to the same conclusions as Ricky.  But the adult in me decided just to call my dad.

“Hello?”  His voice sounded oddly chipper.  At first I thought I’d called the wrong number.

“Oh, uh, hey Dad, it’s Jason.  I just got your invite in the mail.”  I was hoping the lingering tone in my voice would be enough of a cue for him to immediately start explaining.

“Oh, great.  Sorry it was on such short notice.  There was a whole pile of invitations that somehow didn’t get sent on time.  I hope you can still make it!”  Not the reaction I was hoping for.  He sounded so casual.  Cheery even.  My dad was not a cheery man.  He was quiet and private and only liked to discuss sports and dinner and work.  But all the sudden he was cheery and totally oblivious.  It all seemed suspect.  He had to understand; none of us had ever heard a word about Ashley or this wedding in our lives.

“Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure I can,” I answered, feeling the frustration mount in my voice.  “But that’s really not the issue, Dad.  I mean, can you like, explain at all what is going on?”

“Between me and Ash?” he asked innocently.  He was acting bizarre.  Ash?  How wasn’t he admitting that this relationship, that this frilly pink invitation came out of absolute nowhere?

“Yes, Dad.  How did you two even get together?  We’re all pretty confused up here.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t want to have a big dramatic sit-down to tell you kids about it,” he replied.  Finally, an acknowledgement that he had pretty much lied by omission to his family.  “But I guess I should probably tell you now.”  I braced myself.  It made me a little nervous that I was about to hear my father talk about falling in love with another woman.  Especially one that I knew from partying in high school.  Then I remembered, he was, in fact, a person outside of being my Dad.  “See, it all happened sort of suddenly, as I’m sure you can tell,” he began.  “When your Mom and I were going downhill last year, I went on a business trip to York.  And Jim Pratt, you remember my golfing buddy, Mr. Pratt… Well, Jim invited me over for a little get together.  Ash was there, and we got to talking.  I thought she was a great girl, but of course I was still married to your mother then, so nothing happened.  Anyway, after the split, I kind of remembered her, and asked her if she might want to have dinner with me some time.  And I guess the rest is history.  It’ll make so much more sense when you see us together, Jase, really.  I hope you and Ricky can both come.”  Sounded plausible enough.  Get-togethers full of random Yorkies do happen all the time.  And I guess Ashley Wright, being a townie and all, could very well have been bored enough to accept that first free dinner with Mr. Sparks.  Beyond that, things still didn’t click for me.  But this is what the man was doing, and that was that.

“All right, Dad,” I responded, warming up to his story and whole idea of the wedding itself.  “As long as you’re happy, I guess.  Yeah, I’m free this weekend, so I’ll be there.  I’ll see what I can do about Ricky.  He’s pretty upset, you know.”

“Yeah.  Yeah.  I don’t doubt it,” he half-whispered in a way that wasn’t so chipper and much more like my Dad.  “Well, I guess I’ll see you soon.”

“Right.  Well.  Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, Jason.” 

I hung up the phone and shot Ricky a text that read, “It seems like they just met at a get-together in York.  He seems happy.  I don’t know.” 

Ricky responded with a, “Whatever, dude.”

I chose to sort of forget about the whole ordeal for the next couple of days leading up to the wedding.  Again, I just felt so removed.  Part of me almost didn’t care and another part of me didn’t believe any of it was actually true.  And anyway, we were being inundated with projects and agency boards at work, so I didn’t even have the time to concern myself with all of that even if I wanted to. 

On the Thursday before the wedding, I got a text from Ricky saying, “Mom wasn’t even invited.  You can’t possibly still be going.”  Like most texts I receive that aren’t work-related, I put it on the back burner and ignored it.  Family drama was not something I indulged in dealing with.  As long as my family members weren’t killing innocent people or each other, I was pretty much fine with whatever they decided to do with their lives.  I had my own shit to worry about, and didn’t find it necessary to get too involved with theirs.  Plus, I already bought my train ticket to York for the wedding.  I figured I would just go, because I told my Dad I would, and it seemed weird not to, and it’d be done with soon enough.  So, I ignored Ricky’s text.  At the time, I didn’t think it was that big a deal.

The next day, I was walking from the subway back to my apartment after work, when I got a call from Ricky.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” I said.

Out of nowhere, he goes, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” 

Out of nowhere.

“Woah, calm down, dude,” I said, still unsure if he was totally serious or not.  “What are you talking about?”

“Yesterday, I texted you that Mom wasn’t even invited to that traitor’s wedding,” he fired. 

Oh here we go, I thought. 

 “And you didn’t have the decency to text me back?  What kind of brother are you?  What kind of son are you?  I can’t believe you are seriously going to that creepfest, screwed up wedding tomorrow.  I mean, Ashley Wright?  We had friends who banged Ashley Wright!  And now our fifty-two year old father is marrying her.  In what way is that not totally wrong?  I don’t care if he loves her.  You can’t possibly think that Mom and Dad split up for their own reasons and then he miraculously forms this relationship with Ashley Wright and moves back to York.  He was cheating on Mom, Jason.  Dad had to have been cheating on Mom.  He betrayed us.  And you’re supporting it.  Like, who the fuck do you think you are?”  I could hear the quivering in his voice like he was about to cry, but that only made me more and more pissed off.  I shouldn’t have let Ricky go on screaming at me like that over the phone even as long as I did.

“Okay, you can just shut up for one second,” I started.  I really didn’t want to get into this at all.  I was tired from my workday, and hungry, and had to get up early tomorrow to catch a train.  But once I go off, it’s over.  And I was about to go off.  “You think everything is so simple?” I snapped.  “You think Mommy and Daddy are supposed to stay together forever because they love you and everything is perfect?  No, you idiot.  These are people.  And people fall out of love.  It’s a fact.  Not everything is about you.  I mean, how naive and immature can you possibly be to think this is a matter of what, betrayal?  Dad made a choice, because he wasn’t happy anymore.  Simple as that.  Of course he didn’t invite Mom.  Do you even understand how painful that would be for her?  He’s getting married to someone else tomorrow.  And you may not like it, but he is a grown man who is allowed to make decisions for himself, even though he has a bratty kid to think about.  So either you can be a man and not be so selfish and go tomorrow, because it’s our father’s wedding, or you can sit in your room and cry like a baby.  I don’t care.”  And with that, I heard a faint “I’m not going…” as I quickly hung up the phone.

I arrived in York alone, in my suit, at 1:30PM the next day.  A cab transported me from the train station to Heritage Hills Golf Resort, where the wedding was to take place.  I stepped out of the cab to head to the outdoor ceremony area; and as I was walking, my eye immediately shot to a girl with wavy auburn hair in a short yellow sundress.  She was holding onto the arm of a muscular guy with a crew cut and gold anchor pin on his suit.  When she turned in my direction to find a seat amongst the 200 magenta-colored foldout chairs, I saw that it was the freckled face of Jenny Foster.  Jenny was surely a guest of Ashley’s, and also the girl, who out of nowhere, broke my heart at the end of high school, because she fell in love with a Marine.  And married him.  Jenny Foster and I had lived on the same block since we were born.  We built my tree house together and played knights and princesses.  Even in overalls, Jenny was the most convincing princess.  She was the minister’s daughter, but didn’t exhibit an ounce of the high-and-mighty attitude you might expect from her.  She was unknowingly beautiful and had the most infectious laugh.  Everyone loved Jenny Foster.  But she was mine; because in 10^th grade, Jenny and I started dating.  It might have been due to my provincial mindset, but I planned on marrying that girl.  However, that plan came to a screeching halt senior year, when she all the sudden told me she’d fallen for someone else while she was in Mexico for Spring Break.  I missed her so much that week she was away, and couldn’t wait to get her back.  But I never did.  I moved to Manhattan immediately after graduating, and that November, Jenny was married to her Marine.

Not a second after confirming that this yellow-dressed girl was indeed Jenny, I held my breath and redirected my path to find a seat in the very last row.  For some reason, I hadn’t carefully considered the prospect of seeing people from high school at my father’s wedding.  My hectic work week, or denial, perhaps.

I tried to ignore my blast from the past and looked up at the lavish flowered gazebo that made up the altar, where I saw my Dad, but no groomsmen, standing firmly and quietly.  As I looked around at the rest of the guests, I was surprised to see that, other than some old York golfing buddies, no one was there for my Dad besides me.

But it didn’t seem like there would have been room for people from our family anyway, because within minutes, every single seat was filled by a person here to see Ashley Wright become the second Mrs. Stephen Sparks.  And before I knew it, there she was: Ms. Ashley Rachel Wright processing down the aisle, arm and arm with her teary-eyed father, as if this was the man and the wedding of her dreams.  Ashley was the same as always, only blonder, slightly thinner, and in a way, even more unremarkable than ever, despite her being decorated in what seemed to be a very expensive white lace gown.

After the ceremony, I came up to emptily congratulate my father.  I couldn’t stay for the reception, because I was catching a train back to Manhattan at 4:30.  He looked sort of flummoxed and nervous amidst the crowd of mostly strangers, and I could tell he was relieved when he saw me.  I didn’t quite know what to say to be honest, but thankfully, he spoke up first. 

“Thanks a lot for coming, Jase.  I know you’re busy,” he offered.

I nodded in the way I would nod to a stranger who had just thanked me for holding the door.  Ashley was frolicking giddily from guest to guest, so I didn’t have a chance to interact with her at all, which I was actually sort of grateful for.  Although I never did get to see Ashley and my Dad together, as he had insisted I should.  So, the “not making sense” factor didn’t really change much.

As I was walking back toward the parking lot and whipping out my cell phone to get a cab, I heard a familiar voice call in my direction.

“Jason!”  I turned.  Jenny Foster and her arm candy were walking towards me.  “Jason, my god, how are you?” she said in the most genuine voice I’d heard all day.

“Oh, Jenny, wow,” I exclaimed, feigning surprise.  “I’m doing great.  I’m actually heading back to New York just now.  Work tomorrow.”

“On a Sunday?” she asked, with both shock and sweetness in her question.  “You big city boy, you work too hard.”  I shied my head away and shrugged.  “Oh, I’m sorry, this is Kurt,” she motioned to the crew-cut statue to her right.  “He’s my…”

“Marine,” I interjected, outstretching my hand.

“Yes, sir,” he responded, militantly.  I would have loved to snicker at this joker.  But he wasn’t just any brainless meathead.  As he solidly shook my hand, I caught a glimpse of the gold band wrapped around his thick and leathery left ring finger.

“Well, it really is wonderful to see you,” Jenny promised.  “Come get a drink with us!  It’s cocktail hour.  I hear Ash has put together an amazing spread.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” I replied.  “But my train leaves in a little bit.  I actually have to jump in a cab.”

“Oh, what a shame.  Well, I guess I’ll catch you in another six years!”  I smiled, apologetically.  Jenny’s voice got quiet in an all too familiar way as she told me, “Good to see you after all this time, Jason.” 

“Yes, nice to meet you,” bellowed Kurt, obligingly.

I looked for any hint of unhappiness or regret in Jenny’s demeanor, as she reclaimed the arm of her Marine and headed back to the party.  But I couldn’t find any.

At 4:30, I was on the train back to Manhattan.  Luckily, my 7-hour WiFi was still good.  I checked my personal email and saw Ricky’s first and second messages sitting in the inbox. 

“I’m sorry,” he said in the second. 

Yeah, I thought.  Aren’t we fuckin’ all.

I closed my laptop and looked out the window.  It would be another two and half hours before I arrived in New York for work the next day at 9AM sharp.

April; Milwaukee, WI; Mid 80s

I live in Brookfield, Wisconsin, which is already shitty.  My dad is an anesthesiologist, so he kills people and makes a lot of money.  And my mom doesn’t work, so that gives her plenty of time to get really anal about keeping our 8,000 square-foot brick house perfect.  We used to live in Chicago, which was awesome.  My best friend was Lindsay, and she introduced me to Def Leppard when their Pyromania album came out when we were 10.  She had a cool older brother who taught us all about music and how to live the life of a rebel.  Lindsay had holes in her jeans and a tee shirt with the union jack on it.  And she bleached her hair to look like Joe Elliott, Def Leppard’s lead guitarist.  My mom would never let me bleach my hair, even though it’s a hideous poop-color brown.  But she had a job as a secretary back in Chicago and wasn’t as freakishly nosy and stalker-ish then.  So, behind her back, I’d dye a streak of my hair white with hydrogen peroxide and use food coloring to make it blue.  And I’d tuck the strand into a pony tail when I went to school so she wouldn’t see, but when I met up with Lindsay in first period Social Studies, I’d let it loose.  She and I were so punk.  But then at the end of sixth grade, my family had to move to Brookfield, Wisconsin, because my dad finally finished all his training and got his first job as an anesthesiologist in Milkwaukee.  My parents were so amped.

            “We’re going to move into a beautiful brand new house,” my mom would squeal.  “It’s going to be much, much bigger than the one we have now, because Daddy’s going to be making a lot more money.”  I swear she would drool as she described it to me.  “So don’t be sad about leaving, sweetheart.  This is going to be a very good thing.  I won’t have to work all day anymore.  And we’ll be able to buy you anything you could ever want.  New clothes, pretty things for your room, anything.”  I was pissed about having to leave my friends and my life in Chicago, because I had a cool thing going and because my parents were so busy that they pretty much left me alone all the time to do whatever I wanted.  But a big house sounded cool.  And money sounded cool too, because AC/DC was coming out with their Fly on the Wall album, and I figured if we had all this money, they would buy it for me.

            Well, things weren’t that simple.  We moved into this huge house in the Milwaukee suburbs that at first I thought could be totally radical if we put in a movie theatre or an indoor pool or something; but since my mom stopped working, she basically dedicated her whole life to turning the place into a Barbie mansion.  And all the sudden, the stuff that had always been in my room, like my Joan Jett and Def Leppard posters, my collection of 8-tracks, my childhood Scooby-Doo sheets, all this stuff was now “inappropriate for the new house.”  So, she made me get rid of my posters and sheets and put my 8-tracks in the closet; and then she decorated my bedroom in “the new house” with girly barf bag furniture from “Fairy Tale Furnishings” in Milwaukee.  She bought me a queen size bed with a canopy that was basically the least punk rock thing you’ve ever seen.  It was like, the minute my mom got to quit her job and move into the new house, she totally spazzed.  The whole summer in Brookfield before I had to go to my new school, I had no friends; but I wanted desperately to get out of the house to avoid my crazy mother, who now spent every second either trying to makeover our new house or trying to makeover me. 

Well, getting out of the house was easy enough; and if this whole new Monster Mom issue had come up in Chicago, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal, because I just would have hung out with Lindsay all the time.  But Brookfield sucks.  All the kids in the neighborhood are complete yuppies with their rich kid bikes and preppy clothes.  You can’t really walk anywhere, because it’s the ’burbs and everything is so for away from everything else.  So, it’s not like there was a record store or even a mall very close by.  I either had to friendlessly trudge around the neighborhood, or lock myself in my gross room, praying my mother would not come in.  And since it was so hot and hopeless outside, I typically opted for choice number 2. 

Life was already boring as crap.  But at least if I were truly alone in my room, I could read a book or look through Rolling Stone and listen to music.  But my mother was always on my back, and this made me increasingly enraged.  Moving was bad to begin with, and then my awful new room made it worse, and soon, for some reason, I was this little ball of fury and everything my mother did made me lash out. 

It started with stuff that was actually out of line.  For example, at 8am on one Saturday, my mom flung the door open to my room and cried, “April!  I’ve set you up on a play date.  You’re being intensely anti-social with the neighborhood kids, and I’m worried about you.  Your new friend is downstairs and her name is Lillian.  Get dressed!” 

Worst possible way to wake up any 12-year-old girl.  Espcially this one. 

As she scuttled back down the stairs, I whipped the floral-patterned comforter off my head so my voice wouldn’t be muffled; and still lying there, I screamed, “MOTHER!!!  Tell that rich bitch GO HOME.  And don’t you EVER come in my room without knocking EVER again.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!??!”  It was actually pretty punk rock, how loud I screamed.  A few minutes passed, during which I’m assuming my mother apologized to Lillian and told her to go home, before that crazy woman re-entered my room and instigated a huge screaming match with me about how I was an ingrate and blah blah blah.  The whole time, I gripped my comforter and did not move a muscle from my sleeping position.  Like those tree-hugging hippies who used to camp out on protest for days without moving, just to prove a point.

The fights with my mom then escalated to even the simplest situations.  My mother came home from food shopping one day and called me down to help her put away the groceries.  I can’t explain it, but this rage at being told to help her overcame me, and I sped down the stairs only to pick up a gallon of milk and hurl it with all my might at the ground, where it exploded all over both of us.

I guess my behavior was bad.  I know it was bad.  But I was having a difficult transition to Wisconsin.  I needed space.

Well, my mom didn’t think I needed space.  She thought I needed an intervention.  I came down to the dinner table one night at the beginning of July and found my parents standing next to one another looking weirdly calm and serious.

“Sweetheart,” my mother began.  “Your father and I have made an appointment for you to see a child therapist in Milwaukee.  His name is Ken.  He has a PhD from Harvard.  Amazing credentials in psychiatry.  He’s supposed to be really smart, a genius with kids.  We see you’ve been having a hard time here, and we think therapy will help us all get along better.  The appointment is tomorrow at 11:00am.  Dad will drive you, okay?” 

Although the idea of me going to a therapist like some whack job made me want to barf, my parents had these pleading looks in their eyes, so I kind of just said, “Yeah whatever, what’s for dinner?”  They took that as a yes, and we sat down to this nasty French anchovy thing my mom made.  I wanted deep-dish pizza.

Downtown Milwaukee is only a twenty-minute drive from Brookfield.  Ken’s office was in a small-ish, random building down there.  The downtown area of Milwaukee actually looked decently fun, I noticed.  It was big enough.  I wondered what the concert venues were like and how easily I could sneak into rock shows if I ever made friends as cool as Lindsay to come with me.  My dad and I entered the office building and passed the front desk.  We walked down a fairly long hallway, where there was a not-so-official looking waiting area with only one chair.  Neither of us sat.

We were kept waiting for a few minutes, which made me want to be there even less.  Although, I was curious to see what it’d be like to interact with someone who’d been deemed a genius at analyzing the minds of kids.  My dad finally decided to knock on the door that had Ken’s name printed on it.  A few seconds later, a dude I immediately classified as Major Creeper opened the door to reveal his yuppie business suit, Rolex watch, and disturbingly happy sneer.

“Hi, Mr. Fowler, I’m Ken Connelly,” he said to my dad, clearly trying to make his voice sound deeper than it is.  It seemed weird to me that someone who was supposed to be really smart would care so much about how deep his voice sounded.  They shook hands.  “And you must be April.”  Ken directed his focus towards me.  “Step into my office,” he said, attempting to make a joke and sound like someone who’d say that line in a movie.  He certainly was cheesy like someone of normal intelligence.  I rolled my eyes and walked in.

Well, I can tell you right now, I called bullshit on Ken within five minutes.  I sat down on the couch and immediately scanned the framed photos on his desk, all of which were corny professional portraits of him in a turtle neck, posing uncomfortably with this fat lady I assumed was his wife.  After he shut the door, I thought he’d start asking me about my relationship with my mom; but instead, Ken instantly started trying to make me his friend, saying that he “could tell I was cool,” and talking about his awesome cars that “I could see sometime if I wanted.”  I was like, hello, it doesn’t take anything close to a genius to realize that kids can’t drive, so why would any of us, especially a girl, give a damn about his expensive cars?  I was pretty unresponsive to Ken. 

Recognizing that I wasn’t quick to warm up to his Major Creeper social tactics, he said, “Alright, what we’re going to do now is a simple drawing exercise.”  He took out some markers and construction paper on a clipboard from his desk drawer.  “I want you to take these markers and draw yourself in your dream house, the most perfect house you could imagine.  Anything in the world could be in it.  Can you do that?”  Easy enough, I thought.  So, I drew myself wearing a Van Halen tee shirt and holding a Fender guitar, standing in a radical tree house filled with amps and big screen TVs and an endless wardrobe of rocker outfits.  There were binoculars to spy intruders and a Jacuzzi on the deck.  It was in a massive oak tree with purple leaves, had an escalator leading up to the front door, and a mote surrounding the trunk.  Let’s see what Ken had to say about this masterpiece.  I handed it to him.

“Hmmm,” he said, squinting his puny eyes at my masterwork.  “I notice that you didn’t draw your family with you in the house.  Do you have any idea why that is, April?”

Uhhhhh, because he didn’t tell me to?

“I thought you said only to draw me and the house,” I responded, flatly.  Ken just clicked his pen and started taking notes.

The rest of the “exercises” that day were equally stupid.  We did that inkblot test, where you’re supposed to look at a big black blotch on a card and say what you think it looks like.  I thought everything looked like a rhinoceros, so I’m sure Ken had a field day with that.  And then we did a similar test, where Ken showed me a series of pictures of people doing stuff and I had to come up with a story about them.  None of it seemed genius.  None of it seemed like it had anything to do with me or with why my parents had put me there.  In fact, as I was sitting there, across from this phony, pretentious dude with his fancy watch and creepy fat wife photos, all I could think was that he was just a regular guy.  Yeah, he went to school for a long time and had a million degrees, but there was no hiding that he was just probably as screwed up with just as many issues as me, and definitely wasn’t some genius who could analyze me or help me stop fighting with my mom.

The second therapy session, a week later, involved my parents.  Ken invited my mom and dad to join us so he could get “both sides of the story,” even though he didn’t ask me a single question about my problems the week before.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Fowler—”

“Oh please, call me Jim,”

“And I’m Margret.”

“Great.”

The pleasantries alone were making me nauseous.

“Now, I’ve been noticing already some underlying aggression and hostility in your daughter based on a few of the simple diagnostic exercises we did last week, so I’m wondering if you both could please tell me in what ways she’s been acting out.”

I couldn’t believe this.  He noticed “aggression and hostility” from the tests?  Oh please, this dickhead was just bitter that I didn’t jump for joy at the offer of taking a drive in his mid-life crisis Corvette.  I was sitting there, without being able to get in a word to defend myself, about to witness an ambush, an attack, of three adults against one kid.

“Well, she’s become physically violent,” my mom began.  “She throws household objects and it’s terrifying!”

“And she’s got a terrible mouth on her,” my dad chimed in. 

One after another, the grievances were listed; and instead of trying to get “both sides of the story” and create some sort of dialogue or whatever those shrinks call it, Ken just agreed with every complaint my parents had!  It was so unfair.  I had to completely shut down just so I wouldn’t burst into tears.  And I never cry.  But this was just insane.  From then on, Ken wasn’t just some clown to me; he was my enemy.  And I was not going to let him win.

I don’t think I necessarily premeditated an escape before the next session.  A week later, my dad dropped me off in front of Ken’s building, and I begrudgingly walked through the front door.  I slugged down the hallway to the one-chair waiting room.  I think I was sitting in that chair, waiting for Ken to come out and get me, for no more than a minute before I casually stood up.  I sauntered right back up the hallway where I came from and exited the front doors.  I backtracked the route my dad had taken for the past three weeks until I got to Wisconsin Avenue, a major street.  I followed Wisconsin Ave right back towards Brookfield.  I walked over the river and passed the Grande Avenue mall, passed the Milwaukee Public Library, and over the freeway.  I walked my way all the way up to 29^th Street (I guess it had been about an hour since I left), when I saw my dad’s white Mazda pull up beside me.

“Come on, April, get in the car,” he said, as he drove at exactly my pace alongside me.  Cars all around us honked for him to move it.  I simply didn’t respond.  “April, honey, please,” he begged.  Nope.  I said nothing.  I didn’t even look at him; I just kept on walking.  He continued to drive for a few more blocks.  Finally he raised his voice.  “April, I’m not kidding.  Get in this car right now!” 

I came to a sudden halt and so did he.  I slowly turned my head to the left, and with a cold stare in my eyes, looked at my dad and said very calmly, “No.  Now, leave.  Me.  Alone.”  I immediately snapped my head forward again, but in the corner of my eye, I caught my dad heave a heavy sigh, before he regretfully stepped on the gas and drove home.

I couldn’t believe I had actually succeeded in making him give up.  But in all honesty, I didn’t want to have to walk eight more miles back to Brookfield, even though that would have proven a righteous point.  So, I found a bus stop for the 10 Route a little further up Wisconsin Ave, and when the next bus showed up, I boarded.  Almost an hour later, I got off at the Brookfield Square shopping center, and after forty-five more minutes of walking, I was home.

I went straight up to my room, but left the door open wide enough to hear my parents discussing how they had just gotten off the phone with Ken, who said that based on my behavior, he thought I was going to grow up to be a good-for-nothing indigent with nothing to offer but pain and anger to this world.

Yet despite all that, my parents didn’t get mad at me at all after the escape.  In fact, they started being really nice.  I guess they realized I meant business.  My mom stopped harping on me so much, and didn’t try to control what I did or wore or put in my room.  We actually started getting along.  And my parents didn’t even try to send me back to Ken.  I guess they figured he must not be such a genius after all.

Two months later, I started Junior High at my new school, and it’s actually not that bad.  I met a cool girl named Paula, who wears weird makeup and says David Bowie is her hero.  I decided I could get down with Bowie.  So, Paula and I became friends. 

            The other day, she came over to my house.  We were sitting at the kitchen counter, while my mom was making us grilled cheese sandwiches, when the phone rang.  My mom picked up and then handed the phone to me.

            “April, it’s Ken,” she half-whispered.  At first, I didn’t know who the heck she meant, because I had already erased that dipstick out of my brain.  But, just as I opened my mouth to say hello, I remembered.

            “Hello?” I answered, making sure he could tell by my tone that I was giving him about two minutes before hanging up.

            “April!  How are you?” his Major Creep voice cooed, faking more friendliness than ever.

            “Why are you calling me?” I asked, getting straight to the point.

            “Well, April.  I was thinking about ya, and I decided I really had to call, because I don’t think our time together is finished.  I really believe it would be helpful for you to come back to therapy with me.”

            “Uh, why on earth would I do that?” I said.  “I hate you.”

            “You what?” he gasped.

            “I hate you,” I stated again, slowly.

            “Oh, oh my gosh.”  I could tell he wasn’t expecting that, and it was pretty funny.  “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone hate me before.”  I scoffed, and hoped he heard it loud and clear over the phone.

            “Well, Ken, I guess I must be the very first one.”  And with that, I just handed the phone right back to my mom.

            “Yeah, I don’t think she’s going to be coming back,” I heard my mom say to Ken, right before hanging up.

            Paula and I grabbed our grilled cheeses and headed up to my room, as I started telling her the story of Ken, the Major Creeper/“genius” kid shrink.  Now whenever we think someone in school is being a real dickhead, we call him a “Ken.”  It’s like a code word. 

We think it’s pretty hilarious.

Tom; Jonesborough, TN; Late 90’s

Tom Colley was sitting in the living room when he got the call.  When Tom is home, he likes to work in the living room instead of in the study, because there is a big picture window and consequently more light.  He was actually taking a quick break from writing his research grant, and was sort of in a trance, his gaze floating blankly over the family’s seldom-touched Baldwin Baby Grand, when he heard the phone ring.  His wife was in DC on business, and he knew his teenage daughter wouldn’t answer, so he got up to check the caller ID.  It was a Tennessee area code.  He picked up.

Tom was out on the deck when he received the news.  The doctor thought he was the nephew.

            “Oh, no, I’m actually her son.” Tom corrected.  “She has no nephew, just me.”  The doctor was very apologetic.  He told Tom that she’d passed away quietly at the hospice in Johnson City when her heart stopped at about eleven o’clock last night.  Tom thanked the doctor for the information.  He was then silent for just a minute before he cleared his throat and explained that he’d be coming down within the next couple of days.

            There were no nonstop flights from Durham, NC where Tom was Department Chair of Biochemistry at Duke, to the airport near his hometown of Jonesborough, Tennessee.  He booked a flight that would leave tomorrow and return the next day.  There were around 4,000 inhabitants of Jonesborough that day Tom’s mother died in 1999, and even fewer when he lived there as a boy.  Tom had gone down to the hospice about a month before when his Momma got real sick.  But before then, he hadn’t been anywhere in Tennessee for close to twenty-five years.

            The next morning, Tom left for the airport before his daughter was even up for breakfast.  He’d said a quick goodnight to her the evening before and told her where he was headed to.  But Tom wasn’t one for sympathetic looks and goodbyes.  Plus, he figured she didn’t know her MeeMaw too well, so it’d be hard for her to be truly sympathetic anyway.

            Tom took his overnight bag and quietly slipped out the sliding glass door of the family’s newly built cedar and stone house.  He pulled their 1998 Chevy Tahoe out of the garage, and drove it the twenty minutes to Raleigh/Durham International Airport. 

Three hours and fifty minutes later, he was in a taxi on the way to his momma’s house in small-town Tennessee.

            Even from moving 30 miles per hour inside a modern taxicab, downtown Jonesborough looked exactly the same.  It was a historic town, the oldest in all of Tennessee, so it figured that not much had changed.  At 10AM, Main Street was bustling; that is, as bustling as a half-mile stretch of road in the Jonesboro Historic District could possibly be.  Tom recognized lots of people moseying about— pretty Ms. Dougherty, who used to teach Sunday school and seemed to have aged like a fine Virginia wine, heading out of the Antique Mart; Richard Hornsby and Caroline Walker, who went to high school with Tom and seemed to be married now, shuffling a collection of offspring out of Ms. Brady’s Book store; and old Willie Wylie, who sometimes dropped groceries off at Momma’s house when she refused to get out of bed, fixin’ to go into Sammons Wood Supplies. 

            Tom was glad the taxicab driver had chosen to take the tourist route and drive down Main Street.  There was a faster way to his Momma’s house, which was really on the outskirts of Jonesborough, but Tom didn’t mind the nostalgic detour.

            Before long, Tom was gripping his overnight bag so it wouldn’t get knocked over as the road turned from paved to dirt.  Once the road turned, Tom would always know, even if he were blind as a bat, that they were nearing his Momma’s house.  Here was where the houses became much fewer and farther between; Tom remembered the worst part as a kid was that it wasn’t all too good of a trick-or-treating neighborhood.  But sooner than expected, the taxicab arrived at the one-story wooden house with a tin roof and a wrap-around porch, where Tom had spent the first seventeen years of his life. 

“Didja grow up in this house?” asked the driver, as he calculated the fare.

“Yep, it was just my mother and me.”  Tom felt his old southern drawl creeping in.  He’d since lost it due to years surrounded by scientists from all over the world.

“Did yu’ins live here a long time?” 

Yu’ins.  Hearing the Tennessee version for what the rest of the South called ‘y’all,’ a word that used to fill Tom’s ears all the time, now caught him off guard.

“I moved away after high school,” Tom replied.  “But my Momma lived here her whole life until a little over a month ago.  She moved into a hospice.  She just passed away, actually.”

“Oh, I’m real sorry to hear that,” sympathized the taxi driver.

“Thank you.”  Tom paid the man, and got out of the car.  He was standing with his bag in his right hand when, for the first time in a quarter century, he breathed in the scent of his Momma’s house in the early fall.  Suddenly, he was eight years old, reading the Jonesboro Sun on the porch; and then he was ten, building forts out of broken rocking chairs in the backyard; and then three, watching the sunlight wash over his mother’s face as she slept late into a Tuesday morning.  And he was all the sudden lonelier than he’d felt in a very long time.

Tom recovered from the flood of memories and creaked up the porch stairs.  The front door was open, naturally.  Once inside, Tom set down his bag on the wooden-planked floor, which had begun to collect quite a bit of dust.  When his Momma got real sick, Tom hired a nurse and a cleaning lady to come by every other day to help out, but they hadn’t been around since she was put in the hospice.  He’d also been paying for his Momma’s phone and electric for several years now; he chose not to cut them off even since there’d been no one in the house, just in case she ever came back.  She didn’t, but at least now he had somewhere in Jonesborough to stay.

Tom turned on the light.

Twenty-five years gone by, and there was just as little furniture as always.  And just as many pictures.  Tom’s mother’s house had always been lined with photographs, from wall to wall, some framed, some just pinned up with a tack.  Photographs of Tom’s ancestors, of the rural Tennessee landscape, some pictures of sights from trips to Nashville and Memphis, a few pictures of Tom himself, and tons of photographs of his Momma when she was young. 

People had always told her she looked like a strawberry-haired Elizabeth Taylor.  She had perfectly almond-shaped, navy blue eyes that glistened when she laughed and when she sang. 

Tom’s Momma had aspired to be a country singer in Nashville all her life.  He had only seen her sing once when he was eleven years old.  His Momma was feeling good that year and got herself a gig singing in a Cabaret in Knoxville.  Tom was standing in the foyer the first time he saw her come out of her room in her performer’s outfit.  She looked like someone you’d see in the movies with her hair all done up and her sky blue dress with fringe on the bottom.  Old Willie Wylie drove them down that night.  Tom’s Momma waltzed right on into that club with her pretty acoustic guitar (not too many ladies could play the guitar back then) and waited coolly backstage until it was her turn to play.  Tom sat right in the front row; he was by far the youngest in the club and couldn’t help but gape wide-eyed at all the women in mini-skirts and men with their pork-pie hats and cigars.  The room silenced when his Momma got on stage.  When she was young, most rooms silenced simply when she unassumingly entered them; so as she strutted her guitar and long legs across the stage, the room fell so quiet, you could hear the swish of the fringe on her dress as she walked even from the furthest table.  She performed “Daddy Sang Bass,” by Johnny Cash.  Her voice was pretty, not extraordinary, but it was her presence that captivated the audience, even as drunk and distracted as they were.  She made Johnny’s lyrics seem like the most important words anyone had even written.  And after her performance, all the pork-pied men approached her, offering their business cards and compliments, asking her for dates and autographs, saying when she was a star, they wanted to say they knew her when.  Tom stood next to her the whole time, holding onto her dress, partially so he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, but mostly so people would know he was her son, and proud to be.

She talked about her future as a country star constantly before that performance and in the decades after, but never again did she perform.  She never went on auditions or even practiced the guitar by herself.  Tom came to the conclusion later in life that his Momma had an undiagnosed mental illness that caused her never to mature beyond the age of thirteen.  He was sure she also suffered from severe depression.  She never cooked or had a real job.  Sometimes she didn’t surface from her bedroom for days.  If it weren’t for the small-town kindness of the people in Jonesborough, there would have been many an occasion in Tom’s early childhood when there was nothing to eat for weeks.  So, from a very early age, Tom had to learn to support them both himself.  Tom knew his Momma loved him, even though she never had the wherewithal to say it; but by the time he was about the age that his own daughter was now, he had given up all hope that she’d ever be a real part of his life.  And once high school was over, he moved far away from the South, to Michigan, to attend college.  He figured by then, his Momma had pretty much given up too.

Tom finished scanning the museum of photos in his Momma’s living room and turned into the kitchen on the right.  Thanks to the hired help, the kitchen was fairly tidy, unlike it had been when Tom lived there.  There was, however, a pile on the table of envelopes, surely full of unpaid bills, and various papers, stacked nearly a foot high.  Tom took a deep breath and sat down, preparing to sift.  His Momma’s will had specified that she wanted to be cremated and that Tom could have the house, which had been in the family for five generations.  But beyond that, it didn’t say much, since she didn’t really have anything to give.  Tom figured he’d keep the house around for sentimental value, until he had a motivation to sell it.  He’d be picking her ashes up tomorrow to take them back to Durham.  The reason he was even at the house at all was to see if his Momma had anything of interest that he might want to keep. 

He picked up the first few envelopes from the table, all dusty and from numerous companies including Comcast, Suntrust Bank, and the Jonesborough Water Department.  Envelope after envelope, Tom glanced at the return address.  Some of them, it seemed, were decades old.  His Momma had unopened letters from personal addresses, including a few from Tom’s house in Durham, which he knew were old birthday cards and messages to MeeMaw from his daughter.  She had accumulated more catalogues and pizza delivery notices than Tom had ever seen.  But nothing of interest.  Tom transferred all the debris into a garbage bag to recycle, and then decided to tackle her bedroom.  The living room with all the photographs was to the left of the front entryway, and the kitchen was to the right.  There was a thin door that led from the kitchen back into Tom’s Momma’s bedroom.  Tom respectfully entered, where he had always peeked in to see if she was awake.  He saw her bed, still unmade from when she screamed for the at-home nurse, who pulled her out of bed and took her to the hospital, where she spent two weeks before transferring to hospice care.  The wooden floor was draped in the same rust-colored carpet, which hadn’t been soft to walk on for years, due to all that had been spilled on it.  Furnishings in the room were pretty sparse.  Cheap blinds that old Willie Wylie had put in ten years ago covered the window over the bed, which sat in between two tables topped with burnt out lamps and bottles of medication that hadn’t been taken.  A closet housing her neglected guitar and clothes from the past fifty years was on the west wall of the room.  Tom approached the left bedside table and opened the drawer.  In it, he found two half-empty bottles of Prednisone, some reading glasses, the Bible, a comb laced with white hair, pages of floral-patterned personalized return address labels that she’d gotten for free in the mail, miscellaneous leaves of sheet music, guitar picks, and an old monogrammed lighter.  Tom pocketed one of her picks and the lighter.  He moved onto the other bedside table.

Tom was rummaging through hair scrunchies and dime-store pearls when he found a folded piece of stationary at the bottom of the drawer.  In handwriting like that of a child, the words “September, 1993” were scribbled on the front.  Tom quickly calculated his Momma was 71 years old then.  He was sure that must have been the first time she’d written in years.  Carefully, Tom unfolded the paper to reveal a list.

            “Wish List,” it was titled.  Tom began to read.

            Wish List

1)    Go to Montreal

2)    Drive a car

3)    Go to Paris

4)    Go to Italy

5)    Have a beautiful house

6)    Get a new refrigerator and stove

Tom couldn’t quite make out number 7.

8)    Make some money

9)    Fix my guitar

10) Sing on television

11) Have a friend

Tom pulled back from the list and scrunched his eyes closed.  He wished his wife were there with him.  He read the list again.

2) Drive a car.

Tom never knew she had never driven a car.  He could have taught her to drive a car.  He didn’t know.

4) Go to Italy

Tom and his family had taken a trip to Rome just this past summer.  He forgot to send her the photos.  Why did he forget to send her the photos?

            10) Sing on television

            Tom bought his mother her first television when she was 62.

           

11) Have a friend

           

Tom delicately folded the list in two like he found it.  He shut the drawer to the bedside table and stood.  He walked out of the bedroom, passed the kitchen, and knelt down beside his overnight bag, where he tucked the list safely next to his wallet. 

Tom slept in his childhood bedroom that night.  It was a random, almost storage-closet sized chamber that branched off the living room.  He’d decorated it with posters of The Beatles and Neil Armstrong as a kid.  Tom didn’t sleep too well that night, due both to the uncomfortable lumps in the sixty-year-old mattress and to distraction.  He spent several hours, lying awake, but still, replaying the missed opportunities in Momma’s life and mulling over what he could have made different.  And contemplating what his own wish list would say.  He could really only think of one thing.

It was 9:15AM when Tom showed up at the Dillow-Taylor Funeral Home to pick up his Momma’s ashes the next morning.  It was only three miles away from the house, a three-mile path very similar to the ones he used to take every day to get into town, so Tom decided to walk.  When he arrived, the funeral director apologized for his loss, and Tom thanked him.  The box of ashes was big and sealed tight.  Tom looked down at his carry-on overnight bag and realized he didn’t have enough room to fit the box.  He could check the box at the airport, he guessed.  Then he considered how strange it would be to check his own mother.  He decided he would check the bag instead.

Tom asked the funeral director if he could use their phone to call a cab.  He was led to their office, where he found a very old-fashioned looking phone with a rotary dial.  He reached for his wallet and retrieved a piece of paper he’d saved with the number of the cab company written on it.  He dialed the number and requested a cab to come pick him up from the funeral home and take him to Tri-Cities Regional Airport.  He put down the receiver.  Tom was placing his wallet back in his overnight bag when he caught a glimpse of the list.  It startled him sort of, because after such a cerebral night, he’d almost forgotten that the list actually existed on paper and was real and folded and sitting in the side pocket of his bag.  Sort of in a trance, his gaze floated blankly for just a minute over the protruding off-white corners of the stationary, until he came to the conclusion that the funeral director probably wouldn’t mind if he made just one more call.  He picked up the phone and dialed.  After five rings, he was about to give up, when his daughter picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Annie, it’s Dad.” 

“Oh.” She sounded surprised.  The upstairs phone didn’t have Caller ID.  “Hey Dad.  What are you doing?  You back in town?”

“No, not yet.  I’ll be back later today.”  There was a pause.  It felt long to Tom. “So, Annie,” he said.  “I was wondering.  Do you want to go to dinner tonight?  Just you and me?  Wherever you’d like.  Anywhere.  Just you and me.”  Another pause.  “Is that okay?” 

“Uhhhh,” Tom heard from over the line.  He realized he was holding his breath.

“Yeah, that’s fine.  I didn’t make any sleepover plans.  Yeah, I’ll pick a place.” 

Tom let out an audible exhale.

“Really?”  His voice went up in pitch.  “Oh good, that’s just perfect.  I can’t wait.”  He really couldn’t.  “See you soon, kiddo.  I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

It was 9:32 when Tom Colley hung up the phone.  He slung his overnight bag over his shoulder and gently lifted the box.  He thanked the funeral director for letting him use their phone, and exited the door.  He stood at the corner of 2^nd and Main, and waited for the cab that would drive him to the airport, where he’d catch the flight that would take him home to Durham, where he would have dinner with his daughter.  Which he knew would be better than any refrigerator or beautiful new house.

Megan; Omaha, NB; Present Day

"Gooooooodevening ladies and gentleman, I'd like to be the first to welcome you to Los Angeles from Omaha, Nebraska."  Most of the flight erupted in that type of laughter that's fairly slow and whimpery since it's intended to prevent one from crying.  "The local time here is 1:42am, putting us at about 2 hours and 10 minutes later than our intended arrival time."  I let out a hyperbolic groan, which woke up the chick sitting to my left at the window seat.  She'd been sleeping up against that wall this whole hellacious flight. Lucky bitch with the window seat.  I whipped out my iPhone and texted, "Look who finally landed" and a pissed-off looking emoticon to the contact in my phone listed as Whiskers.              "I don't think we're allowed to use our mobile devices yet," said the guy to my right.
            "Oh, yeah, sorry," I retorted.  Hate airplane conversations.
            "For those of you with connecting flights, they've deffffffinitely all left by now, so if that's the case, please approach a flight attendant to discuss your accommodations." Luckily, LA was my final destination.  I was supposed to be on a painless nonstop flight to LA from where I lived in New York City to go wine tasting for the weekend with my boyfriend, Max (Whiskers in my contact list; it's my "pet name" for him).  That's actually one perk of being in a long-distance, bi-coastal relationship: whenever we do see one another, it's special, so we always whisk ourselves away to somewhere exciting and vacationy.  I guess the other perk would be how rarely I have to shave my legs.  But this was what I got for trying to give us an extra night together by getting on the last flight of the day on Friday instead of the first flight of the day on Saturday; I warned my boyfriend that my flight wouldn't get in until 11:30pm, but he said it was no sweat and that he was stoked we'd get to increase the number of times we don't have to sleep with only our iPhones as company by one more night.  However, of course, some totally F-ed up cosmic event would hate me enough to cause the world to turn upside down, resulting in my flight of big-city New Yorkers and Los Angelenos to have to make an emergency landing in Omaha.  Did you know that Omaha is a city in Nebraska?  I'll tell you what, I didn't until I got to spend almost two precious hours, during which I could have been spooning in a California king size bed, chilling with a planeful of irritated city folk in the middle of bum fuck nowhere.  The most off-the-grid locale that any of us travel to is Brooklyn (The Valley, for those from LA), so this whole emergency landing in Nebraska shit was completely ironic.  But the clincher, was why we had to make the emergency descent in the first place.

A little over eight hours ago, I was walking my suitcase down the middle aisle of the plane towards my seat, 16A.  My boyfriend had used frequent flyer miles to make the reservation and had kindly chosen me a window seat.  This flight was gonna be an easy one; I couldn’t wait just to pop in my ear buds, lean up against the window, and sleep for the next six hours until I'd be with Max.  Oooh row 16, nice.  I reached my spot.  I hoisted my carry-on into the overhead compartment and filed myself into the 16th row to my window seat.  I plopped down, settled myself, put in my ear buds, and closed my eyes.  Not even a minute later, I felt a harsh tapping on my right shoulder.  

What the hell. 

I peeled my eyes open to see a slightly chunky, Jewy-looking girl with wavy hair extensions and huge boobs poking my shoulder, which caused her obnoxious Tiffany charm bracelet to make a loud chinking sound right up in my face.  Definitely a New Yorker.

            “Uh, scuse me.  You’re in my seat.  16A?  That’s my seat.”  I whipped out the Internet on my iPhone to check my mobile boarding pass.  Love mobile boarding passes; you never have to worry about printing or losing anything.  Sure enough, she was right.  I was supposed to be in 16B. 

            “Shit,” I whispered.  Middle seat?  How was this possible?  I thought Max said I had a window seat.  Guess not… fuck.  “Sorry about that,” I said, and begrudgingly moved one seat over.  I decided I didn’t have to sleep on the flight; I had just downloaded the new Adele album onto my phone, so I figured playing that over and over could keep me entertained for at least half the flight.  Perusing the Sky Mall would take care of the remaining three hours.  I was scrolling through my iTunes when a husky man, probably mid-forties, in a polo shirt and Dodgers cap slid his briefcase under the seat in front of 16C and planted himself to my right.  A Los Angeleno.  I hoped he’d be chiller than the brat to my left who was currently placing a Burberry sleep mask over her naturally snarling face. 

            “Hello, ladies,” said Dodgers cap.  He was jolly.  And a talker.  I wasn’t happy.

            “Hi,” I quietly said back.  Burberry sleep mask pretended she was already asleep and didn’t respond. 

            “So where are you headed?” he asked.  I squinted a little, in confusion.

            “Uh, LA,” I responded, slowly, like he was retarded.

            “No, no, no, I mean are you headed home, or to vacation, or to work?”

            “Vacation,” I answered, sort of shortly, hoping he’d catch the hint that I wasn’t an airplane conversator, and leave me alone.

            “Oh I see.  A New Yorker.  What do you do here?” 

            “NYU student.  I’m actually from Maine originally,” I told him.  He was annoying, but seemed nice enough, and I thought it’d be bad to completely ignore him.  “But my boyfriend lives in LA, and I love it there, so my plan is to move sometime soon.  Not have to fly so much.”

            “Very interesting.  Very, very interesting.”  He was talking so loud.  This dude was weird.  “Interesting.  Well, what do you study at NYU?” 

            “Cognitive neuroscience.”  I hoped that would be enough to kill the conversation.  Revealing my area of study normally confuses people enough to ask no further questions.  Which is actually pretty useful in situations of mind-numbing small talk.

            “I studied physics in college and grad school,” he unfortunately responded

            “Oh, okay,” I said.  “I was never all that good at physics.”  I was trying to be nice.

            “Yeah, well that’s because it’s the most difficult and least understood scientific field.  Obviously you had trouble.”  I could tell he wasn’t trying to be a dick, but I still decided he was a dick.  “Then I joined the Air Force.  Became General at thirty-eight; you never hear of Generals in their thirties.  But, after eighteen years in the military, a person needs something new, you know?”  I nodded.  “But anyway, I don’t mean to tell you my whole life story.  I live in Pasadena now and breed hairless cats.”

He breeds what.

            “Oh, wow,” I said.  It was then that I gave up any hope that this would be an easy flight.

            “Yeah, my wife and I.  We love it.  We breed hairless cats, and give them to various organizations and groups of needy people.  Like the blind.” 

            “Oh, like seeing-eye dogs?”

            “No, like pets.  People forget that the blind have other pets besides seeing-eye dogs.  And hairless cats are perfect pets for the blind.  They’re the kindest little creatures you’ll ever come to meet, and there’s no way any blind person would think they’re ugly, you know?”  I agreed.  “I actually keep two of my own as pets.  Oh I have pictures!  Wanna see?”  He was a little too loud and enthusiastic for any stranger sitting six inches from any other stranger to appropriately be. 

            “Uh, sure.”  He swiftly retrieved a Gateway laptop from his briefcase and opened it to reveal his desktop picture: two hideous, bald, angry looking beasts curled up next to one another on a plaid couch. 

            “This is Casanova and Whiskers,” he said. 

            “Whiskers!  That’s what I call my boyfriend!”  The minute I said it, I knew this guy would not handle it well.

            “Why would you call him that?  Does he have long facial hair?”

            “No, no,” I assured.  This weird Dodgers cap guy was my worst nightmare.  “It’s my ‘pet name’ for him.  Like, ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie,’ but an actual pet name.  It’s nothing.  Never mind.”

            “It’s really a name better suited for a cat.”  I nodded again.

            “You know, I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep now,” I said.  He looked sort of rejected.  Not my problem.  I stuck in my ear buds, switched on Adele, folded myself over onto my lap, and shut my eyes.  Not too long after, the pilot came on to prepare us for take off.  We began our ascent, and to the soulful sounds of Adele, I thankfully fell asleep.

What was apparently a little over three hours later, I awoke to the sound of the pilot on the intercom.

            “Hey, ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the interruption.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but it seems as though we’re going to have to take a little detour.  We’re going to make a hopefully brief emergency landing in Omaha within the next fifteen minutes, just to let someone off the plane.  It shouldn’t deter us more than an hour.  All I ask is that people in Coach please stay in Coach and use their designated bathrooms, and that those in First Class stay in First Class, and use their designated bathrooms.  Thank you, and sorry again.” 

WHAT. 

I jumped to the conclusion that someone in Coach had lost all control of their bowels, had gotten explosively sick all over the Coach bathroom, and was now causing people in Coach to flood up to First Class to pee.  I thought how much I would hate to be the person who caused the delay of an entire flight because of my diarrhea.  Just to be sure, I turned to ask the weird dude to my right.  Burberry sleep mask was still conked out.

            “Is somebody sick and needs to be let off the plane?” I inquired.

            “Actually, we’re making the landing, because there’s a dangerous man on the plane,” he answered, casually.

            “A dangerous man?!” I repeated, surprised both at the information and at his delivery.  “Who?  How do you know??”

            “Yeah, sitting back in 22C, there’s a black man.  Probably in his late 20’s.  Big, with a Mohawk, definitely gay, and he’s got a Chihuahua with him.”  Things were not making sense.  “He’s clearly high on some sort of drug and keeps terrorizing the stewardesses, because he’s demanding they move him and his dog to first class.  He keeps saying his dog refuses to sit in Coach.  I saw him making a bit of a scene, trying to claw his way up to First Class.  I went back there to try to calm him down so we wouldn’t have to make a landing like this, but the stewardesses are nervous, and I get the feeling our pilot is pretty sensitive, so we have to let him off the plane.”

            “Oh my god, that is crazy,” I stated, not knowing what to address first.  “What’s going to happen to the guy?”

            “Oh, he’ll definitely be taken to prison,” weird Dodgers cap guy guaranteed.  “That’s a felony.  Yeah, he’s gonna be in big, big trouble.  I bet he didn’t think he’d end up in Omaha, Nebraska tonight.”  Weird guy let out a little chuckle. 

Uh, yeah, and neither did I.  Omaha, Nebraska?  What the hell! 

Fifteen minutes later, we were on the ground.  People in the rows behind and in front of me started turning on their cell phones and calling loved ones in LA to let them know we’d be late.  A typical one-sided conversation I’d overhear went something along the lines of, “Hey, it’s me.  We had to make an emergency landing… Omaha, Nebraska… I know, so random… The pilot says we’ll be about an hour late… I have no idea why, he didn’t tell us.”  Apparently, weird Dodgers cap guy’s interference in 22C with the subject of our emergency landing provided me with inside information that no one else on the plane had.  At least he was good for that.  Burberry sleep mask probably could have gotten in on the info too, but she was still dead asleep.  I took my phone out of my pocket and texted Max: 

Me: We had to make an emergency landing in none other than Omaha fucking Nebraska.  Some big gay dude with a Mohawk is apparently high on something and has a Chihuahua and was harassing the stewardesses.

Whiskers: What the fuck.

Me: Yeah, it’s insane, we’re gonna be like an hour late.  I’m so sorry.

Whiskers: Yeah you’ll have to explain that to me later.

Me: I know, it’s like, the weirdest shit ever.  I’ll call you when I get there.  Sorry you have to stay up so late.

Whiskers: Oh it’s fine, babe.  I’d be up anyway probably.  See you soon.

After about twenty minutes of listening to confused phone calls, peoples’ frustrated conversations turned to gasps and whispers as four strapping airport police officials in neon yellow uniforms came stomping down the middle aisle towards 22C.  They spoke too quietly to Mohawk man for me to hear an argument if they had one, but not too long after, there he was: a buff, sort of mixed-race dude in a cutoff muscle t-shirt, sporting two blinged-out earrings and what was more like a faux-hawk.  A Los Angeleno, for sure.  He didn’t seem belligerent or violent like I had imagined, as he agreeably passed us, with two airport police in front of him and two behind.  I didn’t spy the infamous Chihuahua; I wondered if Mohawk man got to carry her out himself, or if one of the airport police confiscated the little diva dog. 

I flipped to my Facebook app and updated my status.  I never update my status, but I thought this profoundly bizarre moment was worthy.

“There is nothing stranger than having to make an emergency landing in Omaha, Nebraska because some queen was getting violent with the stewardesses about wanting to move his Chihuahua to first class.  Confused?  Me too.  Except I'm confused in Omaha, Nebraska,” I typed.  An hour later, my status had thirteen “likes.”  

We were supposed to be on the ground for just enough time to escort Mohawk man off the aircraft, but for whatever reason, the police started questioning him while they were still on the plane, so that caused a significant delay.  The pilot kept coming on the intercom to apologize, but people weren’t buying it.  Our landing at the Omaha airport obviously wasn’t planned, so finding the space and time to schedule a takeoff for our flight took a while as well.  Weird Dodgers cap guy was getting restless. 

“This is such terrible, terrible luck,” he told me.  “You know, I was supposed to be on a much earlier flight home today, but that flight got cancelled due to problems with the engine.  Now this.  I’m beginning to think it’s me.  I wish I could have just fixed that engine, so I wouldn’t have had to get on this flight.  I can handle engineering problems much better than crazy guys with small dogs.” 

Oh, weird Dodgers cap guy.  All he wanted was to get home to his wife and hairless cats, yet here he was, in Omaha Nebraska, in the aisle seat, torturing me.  None of us on the flight could believe this outrageous event.  Then it occurred to me: on what flight other than one between the cities of New York and Los Angeles would there have to be an emergency landing because of some freak-show on coke throwing a hissy fit because his Chihuahua needed a first class seat?  Would this happen on a flight between St. Louis, Missouri and Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example?  Between York, Pennsylvania and Little Rock, Arkansas?  What about between my hometown of Portland, Maine and anywhere at all?  Even if the flight to LA had started in Omaha and not New York?  Of course not.  But the biggest divas in the sky always travel between New York and Los Angeles.  And I would never have to deal with them if I just lived in LA.  I groaned an inappropriately audible groan.  Weird Dodgers cap guy gave me a horrified look.  Burberry sleep mask didn’t stir.

Finally, at 1:15am East Coast Standard Time, we prepared for takeoff.  I was exhausted.  I popped in my ear buds once again and was out as cold as Burberry sleep mask in no time. 

I didn’t wake up until the pilot’s announcement when we arrived in LA.

Me: Look who finally landed >: (

Whiskers: There you are!  I was getting worried.  I’ll be there in 20.

Me: Thanks, Whiskers.  This is such a friggin nightmare.

Whiskers: No problem, babe.

Me: I don’t know how much longer I can do these flights, you know.  It’s not fair to either of us.  I gotta move here.  Soon.

Whiskers: I know babe, don’t worry.  We’ll figure it out.  See you in a little.

Me: K.  See ya in a few.  Love you, Max.

Whiskers: Love you too Meg.

Ten minutes later, I was rolling my carry-on out the door to ground transportation— happy to be out of New York, out of my middle seat, far away from Burberry sleep mask and weird Dodgers cap guy with his freaky hairless cat stories.  And especially happy, to be the fuck out of Omaha.