So this flight was a big deal for me.
It was the first trip I’d taken alone in eleven years. The first time I’d bought a plane ticket without asking anybody. The first time I’d gone to see my sister without having to negotiate it for weeks first.
I’d booked it in July. I’d been looking forward to it for three months.
I had a gift bag under the seat in front of me. Purple tissue paper. A card I drew myself, with a unicorn on it, because Sophie is ten and still loves unicorns even though she pretends she’s too old for them.
Inside the bag was the present.
A nail polish kit. Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe. Six little bottles of glitter polish in rainbow colors. A quick-dry top coat. A sheet of tiny nail stickers shaped like stars and hearts and unicorn heads.
Sophie had been begging her mom for real nail polish for a year. Gabi finally said she could have some for her tenth birthday. So I said I’d bring it.
I bought it at a CVS in Somerville. Twenty-four ninety-nine. I wrapped it in purple tissue paper. I was ridiculously proud of it.
It was sitting under my seat in the purple gift bag.
About eighteen inches from the man’s shoes.
Ten minutes later, his foot was still there.
I’d been sitting with my arm in my lap, trying to ignore it. Trying not to breathe through my nose. Reading the in-flight magazine without seeing any of the words.
The woman by the window had given up and was holding a little tin of Altoids under her nose like smelling salts.
“Lord have mercy,” she muttered.
I pressed the call button.
A flight attendant came down the aisle after a minute or two. Young. Maybe twenty-six. Dark hair in a neat bun. A name tag that said KIARA. She leaned down.
“Can I help you?”
I didn’t say anything. I just pointed.
Kiara looked at the armrest. At the five bare toes.
Her face did something complicated. Like she was trying very hard to stay professional.
She leaned around my seat.
“Sir,” she said. Pleasantly. “I’m going to need you to keep your feet in your own space, please.”
The man pulled off his headphones. He looked at Kiara. He smiled. A big, charming smile. All teeth.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Sorry about that. Didn’t realize.”
He pulled his foot back.
Kiara smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
She looked at me. A quick little look that said, I know. I’m sorry. I see it.
She walked away.
I put my arm back on the armrest.
It lasted about four minutes.
When the plane hit turbulence, his toes actually brushed my sleeve.
I felt them. Right against the cotton of my shirt. Warm and bony.
I jerked my arm away so fast I hit the woman by the window with my elbow.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Don’t you apologize to me,” she said. “You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”
I turned around again.
The foot was back. Exactly where it had been. Toes wiggling.
He’d waited until the flight attendant was gone. Then he’d just put it back.
“Seriously,” I said. “Move your foot.”
He sighed. A long, heavy, put-upon sigh. Like I was exhausting him. Like I was the problem.
“Lady,” he said. “It’s just a foot. You’re acting like I put it on your dinner plate.”
The woman by the window leaned over. She looked at him over the top of her reading glasses.
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
He laughed.
He actually laughed.
“You two need to relax,” he said.
He put his headphones back on.
That was when I stopped arguing.
I looked at his foot on the armrest. At his big expensive watch. At his loafers kicked under my seat. At the little smirk on his face.
I thought about eleven years of armchairs and bed edges and dinner parties.
I thought about use your other armrest.
I thought about Tamika’s drawing. I don’t take up much room.
Something in me went very calm.
“Okay,” I said.
He smirked. Clearly convinced he’d won.
He leaned his head back against the seat. Turned up his movie. Wiggled his toes one more time for good measure.
I turned around and faced forward.
The woman by the window was staring at me.
“Okay?” she whispered. “That’s it? Okay?”
“For now,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes narrowed behind her reading glasses.
Then a slow smile spread across her face.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “I see you.”
Her name was Bernadette. Bernie, she said. She was seventy-one. A retired ER nurse from Dorchester. She was flying to Seattle to meet her first great-grandson, who’d been born two weeks early on Tuesday.
“Seven pounds, two ounces,” she told me, showing me a picture on her phone. A tiny red face in a hospital blanket. “His name is Isaiah. After my late husband.”
“He’s beautiful,” I said.
“He is,” Bernie said. “Looks just like a raisin. All babies do. But he’s my raisin.”
I laughed.
We talked for twenty minutes. About her husband, Isaiah, who drove a city bus for thirty years and died of a heart attack at the depot. About her forty-one years in the ER at Boston City Hospital. About the things she’d seen.
“Gunshot wounds, car wrecks, a man who swallowed his own wedding ring,” she said. “A woman who came in with a fork stuck in her hand because her husband reached across the table for the last pork chop. I’ve seen it all.”
“Was the woman okay?”
“She was fine,” Bernie said. “She divorced him. Said it wasn’t the fork. It was the pork chop. Said he’d been reaching for the last pork chop for twenty-two years.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“I know that feeling,” I said finally.
Bernie looked at me.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “I thought you might.”