L
eigh read what she’d written so far:
Dear Howard,
I’m writing you this letter because I can’t speak to you in person until next Thursday when you’re back from St. Barts. I know I’ve been really demanding in terms of “us.” I haven’t exactly been patient. It’s just difficult, because I love you so much and want to be with you. Of course, then I torture myself by imagining you with your wife on some beautiful beach and I end up making myself completely crazy.
I wish you could hold me right this minute and tell me everything is going to work out wonderfully, that the gap between us will soon be closed. I’ll do my best
Leigh slammed the pen down on the table, crumpled up the note, and threw it into the wicker wastebasket beside her desk. You are so stupid for falling in love with a married man who also happens to be your boss! She stomped into the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator. Yogurt, skim milk, tomatoes. “Yuck,” she said, closing the door. “Where’s the cheesecake when you really need it?”
She decided that a glass of red wine would have to suffice. She uncorked the nearly full bottle on her counter, took a long-stemmed wineglass from the cupboard, and poured herself half a glass. She looked at the glass and filled it to the top. Then she leaned back against the kitchen counter and took a sip. It tasted dry, but also like flowers and grapes. Like something to be shared with someone else.
A movie played in her head: Howard and his wife walking hand-in-hand at sunset along the beach on St. Barts, their thirteen-year marriage rekindled, passion rediscovered. In the movie, Howard confesses to his wife about Leigh, calls it a brief affair, and swears to end the fling the moment he gets back. Maybe they kiss right there, or maybe she slips her dress over her head and seductively dives into the bathtub-warm water, beckoning him to join her, while a wave . . . “Stop!” Leigh ordered herself.
Bringing her wine into the living room, Leigh decided that she simply could not be trusted with her own thoughts at the present time and chose to park herself on the sofa in front of the TV and pray that Lifetime, Television for Women, had a drama on about teenage pregnancy, codependency, or maybe alcoholism. Or maybe all three in one.
Later, sitting back on her sofa and nursing a second glass of wine, Leigh was utterly consumed by the Valerie Bertinelli thriller. In the movie, Valerie’s sister was beaten to the point of near-death. And Valerie was sure that it was her sister’s husband who was guilty. But he blamed it on robbers, and of course the sister had no memory.
Big-time melodrama, the kind that really sucks you in. And everything was fine until Valerie’s character had a baby. And this dislodged something in the everything-is-fine section of Leigh’s brain, and she found herself suddenly sobbing, clicking off the TV and burying her face in a pillow so that her upstairs neighbors didn’t hear her sobs and think their downstairs single neighbor was being attacked.
seven
Aboard an evening Omega Airlines flight bound for Newark International Airport from Milan, Peggy Jean sat in her luxurious Connoisseur Class recliner. Her slingbacks were off because her feet tended to swell. She read the in-flight magazine, displaying her usual willpower over the cheese-plate appetizer on the tray table before her. One water cracker, one wedge of brie—and that’s all, she told herself.
“Excuse me, but is something the matter with your cheese plate? Shall I get you something else instead?” the slim male flight attendant asked.
Peggy Jean looked up from the article on public payphone bacteria. “Oh, it’s lovely, I had a bit of the cheese.” She coyly glanced at her lap. “But television adds ten pounds, so I have to be very careful.”
“Oh my God,” the flight attendant exclaimed, clearly impressed, “are you a news anchor? Do you know Stone Phillips? He was on my flight just last week! He’s so nice in person, just like you’d think he’d be. I mean you really feel like—”
Peggy Jean cut him off. “No, actually I’m not in news, and you can take the cheese plate away.”
“Are you on a sitcom?” he persisted, the diamond stud in his ear sparkling from her overhead reading light.
Peggy Jean smiled pleasantly. “I don’t believe in sitcoms. I feel that they trivialize relationships and life in general.”
The flight attendant nodded, shifting his weight onto one leg. “I know what you mean. I don’t watch them myself, except I do like some of the old re-runs, like Mary Tyler Moore and Phyllis. I’ve always loved Mary’s apartment—that big ‘M’ she had on the wall.” He made quote marks with his fingers in the air.
Peggy Jean remembered the M.
“Anyway, whatever you do, I love your hair.”
She smiled demurely and touched her hair. “Oh, I haven’t done a thing with it. I just got off the air hours ago, and, well, it must be a wreck by now.”
“God no, it’s wonderful. I love the fact that it’s fashionably short, yet you still manage to get some height to it.”
Peggy Jean knew exactly what he meant. She leaned forward and whispered as if confiding to a dear friend. “The secret is a vent brush, and to go from hot to cold and hot to cold with the blowdrier, always ending on cold.”
The flight attendant’s eyes widened. “I’ll have to remember that.” Then curious, much too curious not to know, he asked, “So you said you were in Milan doing, what? A live broadcast?”
“Yes, I’m a Sellevision host. You know, America’s leading retail broadcasting network? We were doing an Earrings by Italian Artisans show.”
The flight attendant’s mouth opened, eyes flashing recognition. “I’ve heard of Sellevision. Oh my God, I think I just saw something about this recently . . . isn’t that the one where they had a host and he, you know, flashed his you-know-what on live TV?”
Peggy Jean cringed and pressed her lips firmly together. She looked at the cheese plate and suddenly felt very crowded by it. “It wasn’t quite like that,” she said coldly.
“Well, anyway, yeah, I just read about it. Gosh. I can’t imagine.” Then, assuming the demeanor of a professionally trained flight-crew member, he added, “But I hope you enjoy the rest of your flight, and if you need anything, just give me a little wave.” He waved his hand in the air and turned to leave, but remembered the cheese plate. “Oh, and did you say you were finished with this?” He rested his fingers on the rim of the plate.
She noticed he wore clear varnish on his nails. “Yes,” Peggy Jean said, her eyes back on the magazine article. “Quite finished,” she told him, without looking up.
As Peggy Jean read the in-flight magazine article, she was alarmed by the real dangers that payphone bacteria posed. As if ear, nose, and throat infections weren’t bad enough, the germs could easily transfer from finger to eye and from person to person. So even if you didn’t personally use a public payphone, you were still at risk if someone who did touched you.
Why don’t people care? Why aren’t public payphones banned? she wondered. She could understand the need for them would outweigh the health risks in underdeveloped countries such as India or New Zealand. But in America? Everyone she knew owned a cell phone, most of them digital.
Peggy Jean closed the magazine and placed it in the seatback pocket in front of her. It caught on the lip of the airsickness bag, which reminded her. She looked to make sure that the man directly across the aisle from her was still sleeping, and then she reached over and gently removed the airsickness bag from his pouch and placed it into hers, tucking both out of sight. Airsickness bags, she had found, made handy shoe bags for travel. She wore a size five, so it was a perfect, snug fit.
Reclining, she thought back to last winter when she and her neighbor Tina were in Peggy Jean’s kitchen making nativity cookies for the church bake sale. If Tina could only read this bacteria article, she’d understand how silly her comment back then had been, how uninformed.
They’d been sitting at the kitchen table while the last batch of Baby Jesus sugar cookies baked. It was a tricky thing, because the halo som
etimes broke off into pieces, or just part of the halo would break away, leaving something that resembled a horn behind. And that you didn’t want.
“Peggy Jean, I know how much you adore your boys, but it’s funny—I don’t think I’ve ever seen you, well, touch them,” Tina had said.
The comment had taken Peggy Jean by surprise. Why had Tina noticed something so personal? And then commented on it, on something that was a family matter? As if the delicate balance of good parenting could only be achieved through the combined efforts of family and stray neighborhood acquaintances.
“Tina, let me explain something to you,” Peggy Jean had said, clasping her hands together on the table in front of her, her smile of broadcast quality. “All day long I deal with media people, producers, wardrobe, and makeup personnel. People are constantly touching me.” She took a sip from her Lemon Zinger tea and continued. “Fans touch me in supermarkets. They send me little crafts and knickknacks made from Popsicle sticks. Stuffed animals they’ve made out of scraps of unwashed fabric.”
Peggy Jean paused to dab her pinky beneath her eye. “Lord knows I want to touch my boys, just all the time, but I don’t have the luxury that ordinary mothers have.”
Peggy Jean stood to check on the cookies, peering through the glass of the oven door. Then she went to the sink and gave the flowered ceramic dispenser two quick pumps with her wrist, dispensing an amber pool of Dial antibacterial soap.
“Touch is how germs are spread, Tina.”
She rinsed her hands under the scalding hot water, dried them on a fresh Bounty paper towel, and turned to her friend. “And my boys have always been very sensitive to germs. I just can’t expose them. Did you know Staphylococcus can live for hours outside the body? Hours,” Peggy Jean had informed her.
She was startled out of her memory by sudden turbulence. The plane bumped through the air like a speedboat across choppy water. The formerly sleeping man across the aisle from her awakened, gripped both armrests with his hands, and stared straight ahead. Peggy Jean, a seasoned international traveler, turned to him and leaned over. “This always happens when you pass over Greenland. It’s thermo-something, has to do with all their volcanoes, I think.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” the man said, and reached into his seatback pocket for the airsickness bag. Not feeling it, he leaned forward and peered into the empty pouch.
Peggy Jean turned away and looked out her window.
The man made a gurgling sound in his throat, his cheeks plumped out, and he leapt from his seat, dashing up the aisle toward the lavatory.
A moment later, after the turbulence had passed, the male flight attendant appeared and knelt beside her. “Well, hello again,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that we can serve you your specially ordered kosher meal anytime you’re ready.”
Peggy Jean gasped. “My what?”
“Your kosher meal. We have it all ready for you,” He smiled. “If you like, we can serve it to you in courses, like the other passengers, or we can give it to you all at once.”
“I, I didn’t order a . . .” she lowered her voice and spat, “a kosher meal.”
The flight attendant looked at the notepad he was carrying. “You didn’t?” He ran the point of his pen down the list, stopped at a name, and circled it. “Peggy Jean Smythe, seat 12D.” Then he stood up and double-checked her seat number. “Yup, 12D, Peggy Jean Smythe, that’s you.”
“But I didn’t order it, I don’t want it,” she hissed. “I’m not . . .” she turned her head to the window, imagined every passenger on the plane glaring at her, then looked back at the flight attendant. “I’m not Jewish. Not that there’s anything wrong with being Jewish, it’s just that I’m not.”
The mere thought of a potential borscht stain made her anxious. After all, she was wearing a white silk pantsuit with palazzo pants and a sheer white chiffon blouse.
“Goodness, well, I’m terribly sorry,” the flight attendant said, brushing the crease out of his pants as he stood. “There must have been some sort of computer error. So have you had a chance to look at the menu?” he asked, pointing to the enormous leather bound volume that contained a single page.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” she said simply.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Smythe, what can we get for you this evening?”
Regaining her composure, Peggy Jean touched the simple ribbed hoop white gold earring on her left earlobe and then gave a small, polite laugh. “Well, actually, I was thinking I might enjoy having the chicken Kiev.”
He smiled, his head cocked to the side. “The chicken Kiev it is, then.”
Then a look of concern spread across her face. “Where is Kiev, anyway?”
The flight attendant paused, placed the tip of the pen between his lips. He thought for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration. “Let me ask the captain,” he said finally. Then before turning away he added, “I’m sorry for the special-meal confusion.”
“It’s perfectly fine, I was just a little, you know, surprised. Because, I mean, I’m Christian.” Then, smiling, “Of course I don’t suppose a computer would have any way of knowing that.”
He smiled back at her. “No, I suppose not. We’re just not that sophisticated yet.”
To get the whole incident out of her mind, Peggy Jean took a Valium from the One-A-Day vitamin bottle she stored them in. The Valium pills, she had found, came in quite handy.
Hours later, after dinner and the in-flight movie, Peggy Jean decided to freshen up in the lavatory. She unfastened her seatbelt and stood in the aisle, enjoying the brief stretch. She opened the overhead compartment and retrieved her hard-shell American Tourister cosmetics case, then made her way down the narrow aisle to the lavatory door. But before she reached the lavatory, she noticed the flight attendant’s beverage cart parked in the little kitchenette nook behind the bulkhead. All three of the Connoisseur Class flight attendants were napping, as were most of the passengers.
Gently, she slid the metal drawer out and saw all the pretty little bottles; Grand Marnier, Drambuie, Crème de Menthe, and thought, Why not? Why not take a few of the little bottles home, as gifts? After all, it wasn’t like she was stealing. Lord, no. Beverages were complimentary in Connoisseur Class. Her ticket had cost Sellevision well over five thousand dollars and certainly for that amount of money, well . . .
Carefully, she lifted out a little bottle of Grand Marnier. As a young girl, she’d loved oranges.
Of course, the problem was she was still holding the cosmetics case in her other hand. So she glanced around, just to make sure she wasn’t creating a distraction. Then she set the case on the floor and snapped it open. She took the little bottle and plopped it inside, right next to her Aqua-Net. Then she reached for another little bottle. She started to close the case, but it occurred to her that if she gave only two friends the adorable little bottles, her other friends might feel hurt.
So, very quietly she slid the shelf of the beverage cart all the way out, just ever so gently. And she slipped an additional five little bottles into the case. I could tie a pretty bow around these and attach them to the outside of wrapped presents, she thought.
One by one, she slipped more of the little bottles into her case, eventually leaving only the heavy amber scotches and bourbons (for the men). There was no longer enough room for the Aqua-Net, so she left this in the cart also. When opportunity knocks, she thought to herself.
M
ax realized it was futile to try and fight his depression, so he decided instead to feed it. Turning on Sellevision at two in the afternoon, he was surprised to see a closeup shot of Bebe Friedman. Normally, Bebe only hosted the most glamorous shows, during the most premium hours. But as soon as the camera pulled out to a wide shot, he saw that Bebe was sitting alongside Joyce DeWitt, from Three’s Company. Of course, that’s why Bebe was on in the middle of the afternoon—it was a celebrity program. Max un-muted the television and listened to the show.
“. . . and I realiz
ed there was no skin regime for women my age; everything was geared toward twenty- and thirty-year-olds,” Joyce was saying.
“You know, that is so true. Mature women like ourselves, we end up wandering the aisles of the department stores and thinking, maybe I’m supposed to use dishwashing soap on my face or something.”
Joyce laughed and interjected, “That’s exactly it, Bebe. And that’s exactly why I created Joyce’s Choice, because I was fed-up with skin care products that ignore the needs of my over-thirty skin.”
“Joyce, let’s take a phone call. Let’s say hello to Michelle from San Francisco. Hi, Michelle, thanks for calling in. Meet Joyce DeWitt.”
“Hi, Bebe, hi, Joyce.”
“Hi, Michelle,” Joyce said into the camera.
“Bebe, you are my favorite host, and I’ve been trying to talk to you on the phone for years!”
“Aw, that’s very kind of you to say, Michelle. I can’t imagine anybody waiting years to speak with me on the phone, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“And Joyce, I just am so excited by your products! I ordered the Get Started Kit, and I can’t wait to try it, because I have tried everything out there and I’m thirty-six and nothing works on my skin. Did you say it was okay for sensitive skin? Because I have very sensitive skin.”
“Oh absolutely, Michelle. That’s what’s so great about Joyce’s Choice. I worked really hard with the technicians to make sure that my products were perfect for every skin type. And believe me, your skin can’t be more sensitive than mine.”
“Oh, well that’s so good to know. I really can’t wait to try them. Joyce, can I ask you a question?”
Bebe cut in. “Let me interrupt here for one minute—I’m sorry, Joyce and Michelle—but I just need to let everyone know that quantities of the Get Started Kit are becoming very limited now. We started off with twelve hundred of them and now we have less than three hundred to go around. Again, it’s item number F-9450 and it’s twenty-four ninety-seven. Okay, I’m sorry, go ahead.”