"You know what the worst of it is? We send Yseult down to Kildare on the train, and Mummy and Dad take her to Sunday school."
"No!"
"She better not grow up to be some scary homophobe," said Marcus.
"Trust me for that much," Jael told him. "To be honest, it gets her out of our hair for a few hours so we can have a shag."
"I used to prefer chat rooms to phones," said Marcus, "because there's pictures."
"Used to?" Jael repeated.
"Does this mean your libido's been sublimated into gardening?" Síle wanted to know.
"Actually..." He took a bashful sip of saki.
Jael leapt in. "Don't say you've found some action in the badlands of the Northwest?"
"No, the badlands of Temple Bar," he said, jerking his head. "He lives above Vintage Vinyl. I've spent the whole weekend there."
"So that's why you've been ignoring my texts," said Síle accusingly.
"You whore!" Jael congratulated him, loud enough to startle the occupants of the next table.
"Name and serial number!" Síle felt an absurd pang: She should have been the first to know, but she'd been so preoccupied with Jude recently...
"Pedro Valdez. He knows you, Síle."
"Pedro from Barcelona? Jaysus, small world! He did the photos for that Pride Exhibition I ran back in, what, '93?"
"So you could have introduced us all those years ago?"
"How was I to know you two would like each other, out of all the nellies of my acquaintance?"
"Of course we do," said Marcus. "He's gorgeous, he's hilarious, he's a brilliant designer—"
"I'd have thought Pedro might be a bit quiet for you," she said.
"Not at all! He's self-contained, that's all."
Jael shrugged. "There's no predicting these things."
"I'm so glad," Síle told Marcus, her arm around his shoulder.
"Bet you wish you'd stayed in Dublin now," remarked Jael.
He stuck out his tongue at her.
"The last bit of matchmaking I did was such a disaster," said Síle, "I've sworn off it."
"Which was that?"
"My sister, Orla. I set her up with William—he was my trainer on a management skills course—but over the years he's gone creepily ultra-Catholic. But listen," she said to Marcus, "how come you and Pedro never ran into each other before?"
"We think we must have, once, at some fetish night on the Quays round about '98—"
"He's using 'we' already, do you notice?" said Jael grimly.
"—but he was wearing a rubber mask, so I don't remember his face."
The women snorted with laughter.
"So, Jude Lavinia!" Síle was lying by the fire in her purple velvet dressing gown, spreading her hair over an embroidered silk cushion to dry.
"Shut up," said Jude. "I wish you hadn't wormed my second name out of me."
"You veell tell me ayvrysing," drawled Síle in a Transylvanian accent.
"It must be pretty late, your end."
"I'm just waiting up for The Sopranos."
"A choir?"
"Jude! Sometimes your ignorance of TV makes you sound like a Martian."
"Ah."
"So has spring come to Ontario yet?" Síle asked.
"Oh, it's practically summer. The lilac in the backyard started blooming on Mother's Day, which I took as one of Mom's rare jokes."
"Sweetheart," said Síle, sorrowful. A Silence. "Our Mother's Day is in March, not May; it must be a matter of when the flowers come out." She pictured Jude wiping her eyes with her cuff. Which shirt? The black cotton one? "I wish you were here; you could cry into my very absorbent hair."
A wobbly laugh. "I remember it well."
"By the way, Jael and Marcus think it's a bit suspect, your falling for an older woman just after losing your mother."
There was a distinct pause before Jude said, "Wow. That hadn't occurred to me."
"You're joking."
"The two things aren't connected."
"Everything's connected, sweetie," said Síle.
"Well, call me naïve—"
Síle wished she hadn't started this. "I didn't mean—"
"But I think your friends are too quick to jump to conclusions."
"Well, that goes without saying," she hurried to agree. "We Dubs, we talk faster than we think."
"Rizla's your age; maybe I just don't find young people that interesting. And if you'd ever met Mom—well, let's just say you and she have absolutely nothing in common," said Jude briskly.
Síle wriggled to get more comfortable on the sheepskin rug. "I wish we were having this conversation in bed."
"Mm," said Jude, a long drawn-out sound. "The thing about you older women is, you really know what you're doing."
"Why, thank you! But I'm not vastly experienced. Jael's got this concept called sexual density," said Síle, "it's the number of people you've had a genital encounter with, divided by the years you've been sexually active. She says anyone whose density's under one has ripped up the invitation to life's party."
"What's Jael's density, then?"
"It was up around five when I first knew her, but since she married Anton it's been slipping badly."
"What about yours?"
"Let's see—counting you," Síle decided, "that would be six over, what is it, twenty years ... that's only about nought point three women per year."
"One leg," suggested Jude, "or an arm and a few ribs."
Síle laughed.
"I can't believe there've been only five lucky winners before me."
"What, leathery whore of the stratosphere that I am?"
"It's just that ... you've traveled so much, you know? You've swum in enough oceans to be able to draw comparisons. You like so many different kinds of food, music, movies..."
"Why hasn't my love life been equally eclectic? I don't know," Síle told her. "Maybe I've been too busy traveling and eating and going to the cinema."
"Just dialing your number makes me wet."
Síle sat up, and her hair fell in damp veils around her. Neither of them said anything for a minute. Odd, she thought, how much people would pay in peak-time charges to listen to each other's Silence.
"Síle? Are you there?"
"Yeah. Just speechless."
"Now that's a first."
With the shuttle beeping outside at dawn, and the blackbirds screeching, Síle pulled on a new pair of black tights while signing off on an e-mail to Jude.
The thought of you's a constant shock to me, like
the smell of a cut lemon. All yours, S.
"Nuala and Tara, you've got Spanish, yeah? Any Japanese, anyone?"
"A tad," said Justin.
She examined his lapel. "Great, but where's your pin?"
"I don't know how it happened, Síle—"
"Not left on the hotel table again? Next time this'll have to go in your file," she warned him.
"Yes, Mammy," under his breath.
She grinned back at him. "Now I'll be in the main cabin tonight, with you, you, you, you, you, and you," she said, pointing. The other five would be in premier, which was lighter work than economy but more servile, she always thought. "Captain says there's a bit of chop expected over Greenland and his is grapefruit juice. Clamato for the first officer."
"What's the passenger load?" asked Coral, adjusting her jade neck-scarf. She looked hungover; more than once, this year, Síle had caught her taking a restorative suck on the on-board oxygen supply.
"Ninety-six percent," Síle told her. Grimaces all around: In her early days it had been more like 50 or 60 percent, with whole stretches of empty seats.
"I heard that Russian airlines let passengers stand up, to pack more of them in," volunteered Lorraine.
"Old aviation myth," said Justin a little snottily.
Scanning the manifest, Síle noted a minor TV celeb, a passenger who'd been turned back for lack of medical clearance for a broken leg, and three who hadn't shown (which meant, in
her experience, they were still in the bar). As she went forward to help fold up the baby buggies, a waft of cold air stiffened her smile. Síle thought about her friend Dolores, who'd fallen asleep with her face against a train window and had a paralyzed cheek for months.
"Is this your first time flying, aren't you a great lad? Sir, I don't think that's going to fit ... Well, sure, try it the other way round, but if not I'll be happy to check it for you. Yeah, this is 12E, there's no 12F. I know, it's not logical, there's no I or J either."
She noticed one red-faced woman who looked well over thirty-two weeks along, now that her coat was off, but if she'd made it past the gate agent Síle wasn't going to give her any grief. Up the length of the plane, pressing bins shut, Silently counting heads. A man plucked at Síle's sleeve wanting to know if they served Drambuie, so now she'd have to start her count all over again.
"We thank you very much for choosing to travel with us," Síle concluded over the PA, "and we wish you a very pleasant flight. A chairde, tá fáilte romhaibh inniu," she began from the start in practiced Irish.
A Cork woman defended her daughter's electronic bear. "You're not seriously telling me that a Talking Teddy's going to banjax the navigation system? What kind of tin can are we flying in?"
"Please turn it off now," said Síle. Iron voice in a velvet smile. "Sir, would you like an aspirin for takeoff? The pressure can build up inside a cast."
The moment of liftoff brought her the usual surge of pleasure, as she sat strapped into the jump seat. She wondered whether Jude would ever learn to like it: Were passions contagious? Síle couldn't remember when, at three or four, she'd first become aware of the magic trick of hopping between countries, continents even. But what she'd loved from the start was the way that houses became boxes, cars insects, humans specks of dust, in a miniature play world. And the abstract patterns: plough tracks looped across rectangular fields, rivers like gigantic lazy worms, mountains mere folds and wrinkles in a quilt. That sense of strangeness, of possibility. You felt you were gliding slowly when in fact you were going faster than anything. And as the plane angled up through cloud, the dull fog gave way, and you found yourself hovering above the infinite, dazzling reaches of the snowfields.
Of course, the irony was that once Síle had started working as a flight attendant, she'd been too busy stacking, storing, serving, and chatting to look out the window.
A call from the flight deck; the first officer told her the smoke sensor in the premier toilets was lit up. She sent Jenny to knock on the door and threaten a fine. Síle bounced a carrot-stained baby up and down the plane for five minutes, and managed to make him stop crying by singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in his ear. They passed an old woman hawking phlegm into a sick bag, and she thought of George L. Jackson, and stopped to offer a glass of water. These people were under Síle's protection: thousands and thousands of them over two decades. She did a quick sum, and discovered that over a million passengers had passed through her hands.
"More sugar? No decaf, I'm sorry. They should, I know, I've suggested it before." Nuala spattered coffee on a passenger's cuff and had to rush down the plane for a dry-cleaning claim form. "Don't fret about it," Síle said in her ear, squeezing by a few minutes later, "in my first year I spilled hot tea on a two-year-old and thought my career was over!"
"Oh thank you, sir, it is a striking uniform, isn't it; it's by Louise Kennedy."
Flashback to the ghastly eighties one: the long boxy green jacket with big pocket flaps, the blue sleeveless woolen number. Early nineties wasn't any better, with all those military buttons, shamrock buckles, and coy blouse collars. For someone who thought of herself as stylish, Síle had spent an alarming percentage of her life in ugly uniforms, it occurred to her now. She summoned up an image of her mother in the crisp lines of the Air India uniform, jaunty cap, pearls, gloves ... Her mind strayed to Twilight Girls, that 1959 pulp classic about an affair between two sultry stewardesses.
The first spare moment Síle got, she checked her messages. An e-mail from a cousin in Delhi announcing yet another new baby, and one from Jude.
I should be calling the Society of Canadian Archivists to thank them for the loan of their humidity measuring machine but instead I've been looking up your clan (online, you'll be glad to hear). Did you know you're a direct descendant of Heremon, fourth-century King of Ireland? There was also a Sir William Brooke O'Shaughnessy who introduced the telegraph to India, and cannabis to Western medicine...
Sometimes I say it out loud just to make it real: Síle Sunita Siobhán O'Shaughnessy. When I walked past the General Store an hour ago I saw you buying stamps, but I guess it was a hallucination.
Síle shot off a reply.
((((((((jude))))))))))
(If you were a visitor to chat rooms you'd know this means a big hug.)
A small boy in a psychedelic tracksuit is playing with his yo-yo and staring at me as if he knows I'm writing to a woman half my age (okay, 64% of my age) who somehow loves me back despite the fact that my sentences (if you can call them that) run on and on and on. At LAX the other day I saw an ad for "Apple a Day" Vitamins that advises "When you don't have the time or opportunity to eat an apple, take the equivalent nutrients in one easy-to-swallow tablet." I can literally hear you cracking up at that--telling me that if you ever don't have the time or opportunity to eat an apple you want to be put out of your misery with a shotgun.
Love Síle (that's an order)
Paperwork and gossip in the galley: When would management cough up the long-promised pay raise, and what good had last year's work-to-rule strike done at all? Lorraine, verging on the plump, had received an oh-so-subtle letter from personnel inviting her to join the airline's free Weight Watchers program. There were rumours about a bag of coke stashed in a cistern in the block-booked set of top-floor rooms the airline's crews used in New York. Apparently it was true about the Denver security screener who put himself through the X-ray machine to see what his brain looked like.
"Padraic, I'll hold it for you, the latch is bollocksed; Nuala's lost a nail to it already. Yeah, I've inputted it in the log twice. The bathroom's the other way, madam," Síle told a passenger, reverting to her professional voice. "Oh, you're doing your stretches, excellent. Mind your head on the locker."
And she was off on her rounds again like some peculiar nurse. "If it's in Spanish you're probably on Channel 3, try Channel 1. 400 Benson and Hedges, here you go, that's forty U.S. dollars." Peddling tobacco was the bit of her job Síle liked least. "Hang on, let's see ... miniature plane, ages three and older, no, not for a newborn. Six Waterford Crystal Tot Glasses, a Connemara Candle, and a pair of J Lo Shades, certainly."
In five hours they'd be on the tarmac. Arab airlines followed all pronouncements about time with "God willing," which seemed sensible. Unless that was another old aviation myth.
More paperwork, hot towels. "Euros or dollars? Sorry, new rules, only soft drinks are on the house in economy. On the plane, yeah, ha-ha. Yes, madam, dinner's on its way."
Considering how many passengers left their food uneaten, they were always in a hurry to get it. Since the airline had downgraded its meals, Síle brought her own: There was a Camembert and apple panino waiting for her in the rear galley. "Mind, the foil's hot. Did you ask for a non-dairy low-sodium vegetarian meal? Ah, I'm sorry, you have to order in advance. We've just run out of the chicken, I'm afraid; can I interest you in the beef? It's in ... some kind of gravy."
Síle's mother had served five-course dinners from a three-by-four-foot galley, Shay never tired of reminding his daughter. Yeah, I know, Da, Síle would throw back with a roll of the eyes, waltzing and discussing Gandhi all the while. Everything had been more chic in those days; Síle imagined that lost world in slo-mo black-and-white, violins surging on the soundtrack. Sunita Pillay offers that first clean smile to a young Dubliner flying to Bombay on his brewery's business. My name's Shay O'Shaughnessy, and what might yours be? Worlds touch, tremble, spin into a different orbit.
The aisle of the narrow plane fades into the aisle of a church and "Here Comes the Bride."
Síle caught herself yawning, even though this was only leg two of her Friday-to-Tuesday rotation. The trick to long flights was to keep moving. What was it airlines used to say, in the bad old days when flight attendants were forced to retire upon marriage or the first crow's foot, the era of secret weddings and hidden pregnancies? The job calls for young legs, that was it. Ever since Marcus had taken a buyout package, he'd been nagging her about the health hazards: Cabin crew had three times the injuries of miners, apparently, and more radiation exposure than nuclear plant workers. At least schedules were better than in her mother's day, she reassured herself: Sunita had flown up to 120 hours a month, whereas Síle did an average of only seventy-three. Sometimes when she felt the energy draining out of her, in the middle of a flight, she closed her eyes, then opened them wide and became her mother, ever soignée, ever gracious, gliding down the aisle on ever-young legs.
It was at night that time went haywire, Síle thought in her hotel room, waking with a jerk from a miserable dream of playing tennis with Kathleen, the balls coming down on them both like hail. You could drop your head on the pillow and then, what felt like a moment later, struggle up to slap off the alarm: Where had those eight hours disappeared to? Or else you could lie in the dark in restless anxiety, dipping in and out of consciousness, with every hour feeling like forty days in the desert.
She conjured up Jude, or rather her absence, a hot ghost for Síle to wrap her body around. She reached for her gizmo and lit up the screen.
I used to be a great sleeper, but since meeting you I seem to have lost the knack. Sometimes I recite old pop lyrics; sometimes I work my way very slowly over your body, checking I remember every crease, every freckle. Does it count as consensual if my spirit ravishes you in your sleep? What if we're both asleep?
Last night you showed up in a sinister bonnet and a dress with a bustle--clearly this dream was inspired by your hilarious description of the school workshops. I'm insulted that I haven't infiltrated your dreams yet, Jude, but I'll just have to believe you that new people take about ten years to get processed by your subconscious. It's just that I resent being a "new person." I find myself wishing that (here comes a perverse one) I could have been present--as a fourteen-year-old towel-holder or water-boiler--at your birth. I miss all of you I know, Jude, and all of you I've never known too.