GOSSIP

GOSSIP

The airport was relatively quiet.  There were a dozen or so people at the ticket counters, scattered among the various airlines.  Across the large lobby at the main entrance was the book store and souvenir shop, and only a few people were browsing there.  It was a lull moment that wouldn’t last, he knew.  He sat with a newspaper on his knees, looking about, waiting.  He looked at his wristwatch.  From where he sat he could see the monitors showing arrivals and departures.  His flight was due to depart on time, though the plane wasn’t there yet.  That always made him anxious. He still had forty minutes and time was passing slowly.  He didn’t want to go to the gate just yet.  That made him more nervous.  At least he could smoke where he was and sip a beer.

     He tried to read the newspaper, but he couldn’t focus.  He thought about his wife, and that caused him to look around expectantly.  Then he sighed.  A man and woman with three children came through the doors and headed straight to the escalators that carried them up to the gates.  As they passed, he felt a pang of longing.  Half a moment later, more people came in.  Then more.  A crowd was assembling up there.  It was the flight from Chicago.  In a few moments, the lobby would be jammed and filled with talk, and people would be hustling and bustling about.  He looked at his watch.  He should be boarding in twenty minutes or so, and the plane wasn’t there yet.  Over the loudspeaker the flight from Chicago was announced.  He finished his beer and lit another cigarette.

     With the newspaper still on his lap, he sat back and tried to relax.  At first there was a trickle that broadened into a flow, and then it became a rush.  Several hundred people passed through the lobby, chattering and laughing, holding hands, hugging still, wheeling babies.  He looked at his watch.  Irritated and depressed, he got up and, taking his newspaper with him, crossed through the crowd to the escalator, finding his way to the gate.  The seats were filled with people, most of them silent or daydreaming, a few reading, all looking resigned to the fact that the plane would be late and that they weren’t going to be told about it.  There was no agent at the counter by the door.  A sign behind the counter indicated the destination, scheduled departure time, and flight number.  There were some unoccupied seats, but people had their jackets and carry-ons in them, and he didn’t want to intrude.  A woman sitting at the end of a row by the corridor smiled at him.  She was sixtiesh and frail, her white hair hanging straight to her shoulders.  Expensively dressed, she looked patient and calm.  He was impatient and irritated and, not returning the smile, turned and went down to the lounge again. 

     For himself it didn’t matter.  It was on account of those who were picking him up at JFK that he felt anxious and worried.  He didn’t like having to rely on his brother-in-law.  He didn’t like his brother-in-law.  But he didn’t know New York, and so he couldn’t very well argue that he’d make his own way.  When Vincent insisted on picking him up, he felt he rather had no choice.  Still, he wished he had resisted.  But there was nothing he could do about it now.

     It was being alone that depressed him.  And that, too, was a reason his brother-in-law insisted on picking him up.  He dreaded conversation with him.  Not that he was insensitive and boorish.  It was that he made you feel he was so caring and concerned.  He didn’t believe his brother-in-law’s concern.  But it was something he had to choke on, for his wife’s sake.  Fortunately, the casket was there already.  Those arrangements were handled by the funeral director.  He’d spend the night with his wife’s sister and family, then, in the morning, they would go to the church, and the cortege to the cemetery would depart.  Another night at the sister’s, then, the next morning, back to the airport.

     But for the moment, the whole of his life seemed to be on hold.  It was now past departure time and still the plane hadn’t arrived and no announcement was made, and the monitors still showed the flight was on time.  He went back to the gate, and everything there was the same, even to the absence of an agent at the counter.  The white-haired lady, catching his eye, smiled again.  “What is it about me,” he thought, “that makes her do that?”  He felt he was in need of something stronger than a beer, and, again, he didn’t return the smile. 

He sat down at the same table he had been at before, a place from which he could see the lobby and across to the ticket counters and the book store and souvenir shop.  He signed to the bartender and asked for a scotch and soda when he came.  An arrival from Minneapolis was announced and departures to Denver and Dallas.  The lobby crawled with people again.  He caught a glimpse of a woman who looked like his wife and felt his heart take a leap.  He suspected that was going to happen often in the coming days.  

     He sipped the scotch, and the smell and taste of it awakened memories.  He slouched mournfully into the chair and gave himself to his thoughts.  The lobby had become quiet again.  Two identically dressed children, a boy and a girl, wandered into the lounge near him and their voices played in his ear.  When their mother called to them, he was roused from his reverie.  He looked at his watch and saw that half an hour had passed.  He rose and went to the gate only to find the same people waiting and no plane outside.  Feeling the white-haired lady had made a connection with him already, he asked her if they had been told when the plane would arrive, and she said she had gone to the ticket counter and asked, but they told her they would let them know as soon as they knew themselves and that was twenty minutes ago. 

     “Here,” she said, removing her purse and carry-on from the seat beside her, “sit and wait.  It shouldn’t be long now.”  She closed the book she had been reading and put it in the large cloth bag she lifted off the seat.

     He hesitated but then decided against going back to the lounge.  The lady seemed in the mood to talk, which he felt would be good to take his mind off things.  So he sat beside her.

     “I’m going to visit my grandchildren,” she said.

     “That’s nice,” he responded with a smile, stealing himself for the kind of conversation he had no knack for.  Were his wife here, that would have been the opening that kept the two of them chatting till the earth gaped or the plane came, whichever happened first.

     “It’s just a shame I have to visit my daughter at the same time,” she added, flashing a smile as she leaned towards him, as though she had let fall reluctantly the not-so-secret secret.

     “Ah,” he said, nodding his head, wishing he had gone back to the lounge.

     “Do you have children?” she asked.

     “Yes, a daughter, eldest, then a son.”

     “Children are a trial, don’t you think?”

     He didn’t think that; in fact, he loved his children and got along well with them.  He was anticipating seeing them in New York, for he badly needed their ministrations just now.

     “My daughter,” she decided to go on at his lack of response, “is a real cross.  She used to want only one thing from me, money, but never wanted to be nice to get it.  I swear, if I’d tripped on the avenue, and a truck came speeding toward me, my daughter would have rushed out there to save the purse.  Then, if she had had time, she’d have given me a hand.”

     He looked at her as though she were a little crazy.  Are these the kinds of things his wife gossiped about with strangers at airports?  He felt compelled to respond.

     “Was she really like that or are you being hard on her?”

     “No!  The truth of the matter is, she is like that, still.  It’s not from my upbringing, I can tell you.  And it’s harder to understand because she and her husband make a lot of money.”

     Not from her upbringing!  Of course.  What can she say, “I created a little monster there, and now I’m paying for it”?  Not likely.  He was feeling smug over the good relations he had with his own children, now out of college and beginning careers.  The woman must be lonely, he thought, and is gnawing some old bone and feeling guilty.

     “You have only the one?” he asked, hoping he might divert her into other paths.

     “Yes, only the one.  More’s the misery.”

     He was beginning to dislike this woman.  But then she said something that turned his feelings around.

     “When her father died, she didn’t come to the funeral because she was on vacation, in Paris, you see, and the funeral would have ruined it all.  I sat through it alone, I did, bore it all without her.  And after that, I had no heart for her at all.”

     This hit home.  He had his wife’s family, and her home from youth, to go to—she was going to the family plot, where he would end up, as well—and thus would not have to bear it alone.  Nevertheless, if his children weren’t going to be there, he didn’t know if he could bear it.  To have to bear it alone—that would be more than he could do.

     “I’m sorry to hear that, that your husband died, and you had to be alone.”  He commiserated with her and began to change his mind about the daughter.

     “Thank you.  It’s been a few years, now.”

     He understood from that that she had gotten over it.  He wondered.  He couldn’t help but to think about himself.  He started to warm towards her.  She was thin and frail, but he could tell she had been attractive.  He noticed she wore no makeup.

     “But your grandchildren, now.  You’re going to see them, and they’re good kids, I’ll bet.”

     “Oh, they’re good, how can they not be?” she said, raising her eyebrows.  “They’re still babies.  Five and three.  Both girls.  I love them to death when I’m with them.”

     “So, you’re expecting a great time.  Good for you.”

     “No, I’m expecting to have words with my daughter.  You see, I have to rent a motel room and a car when I visit.  My daughter doesn’t invite me to stay with her.  I go, and I’m on my own.  I love the kids, but I have to get clear of her this time.  That’s really why I’m going.  To get clear of her.  Those grandchildren are all I’ve got.  It’s going to be very hard.”

     “What do you mean, ‘get clear of her’?” 

     “I mean what I mean.  I’m going there to tell her from now on, if she wants to see me, she’ll have to come to me.  It’s going to break my heart saying goodbye to the little ones.  They don’t understand, of course.  But that’s why I’m going and not talking to her on the phone.  Some things you have to do face to face.  And I want a last time with the girls.  I’ll kiss them both and then leave and that’s going to be the end, because SHE will only come if she wants money, and she doesn’t need that from me anymore.  She’s a heartless, soulless thing, that one is.  And her husband’s no better.”

     “But why give up your grandchildren?  Isn’t that a drastic thing to do because you can’t get along with your daughter?”  He thought he was talking out of place, but she started it, out of some need, and he felt compelled.

     “The answer to that is quite simple.  I can’t take the hurt anymore,” she said, straightening her shoulders, “It’s either break or die.  It’s that bad.  And I don’t want to die.  The little ones will grow.  There’s time yet for them.”

     He wondered how different the story would be talking to them—the daughter and her husband.  He decided, however, looking at the old woman, that she at the very least was mistreated by her daughter, however much the old lady might have failed raising her.  He tried to imagine visiting his son and putting up at a motel, renting a car, because his son couldn’t bear to be close to his father.  He just couldn’t imagine it.  He would have to do something awful before it came to that, and he couldn’t imagine anything he might do that could drive that kind of wedge between them.   

     Was the old lady awful?  He looked at her, and she seemed a sweet thing, maybe only ten years his senior.    Suddenly, the whole conversation took on an air of mystery, became something funereal and full of grief.  As he looked at her, frail and calm and mournful beside him, he was overwhelmed with a feeling that he was being called upon to judge, was being compelled to judge, and all he had to judge by was the woman herself, her presence and her story. He thought it was gossip.  His wife gossiped all the time. But it seemed to him now not so.  He was afraid.  There was something hovering over them that thrilled him with a feeling of the supernatural.  As he looked about, the feeling faded, and the elderly lady appeared just as an elderly lady, and there was something pathetic about her.  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

     “It is warm in here, isn’t it?” she said.

     “I wish the plane would come,” he replied.

     “Then we would be on our way, and who knows what the way will bring?”

     “There’s no chance you and your daughter will reconcile?” he asked. 

     “Reconcile?  Oh, no.  There has to be some warmth for that.”

     “But what if you tried?  What if you said to your daughter, ‘Look, I want to get by all this, to put our differences aside and see the kids more often.’  What might she do?  Wouldn’t that make a difference?”

     She patted his knee and said, “You’re a nice man.  You can’t understand.  My daughter would only think, ‘How could I use that to my advantage?’  She’d see any such words from me as a sign of dotage and wonder how she might profit from them.”

     “You paint a very grim picture of your daughter.  If she is the kind of person you make her out to be, I hope I never run into her.”  He felt queerly attracted to this woman, as though she were someone about to be tested by a great trial and bravely facing it.

     “So do I,” she laughed.  “And now, tell me about yourself.”

     He told her then about his wife and what his day tomorrow held in store. 

     “We are a couple of very sad people, aren’t we?  You go to loss and I to lose.  But it’s not so bad.  You’ll see.  When we are back in our homes, we will have our everyday lives to return to.  Minute by minute, we will get drawn into things, as always, and our lives will still take surprising turns, and in this way we get on.”

     “We get on,” he thought. “Yes, we get on.”  He thought about how his life was going to change now his wife was gone.  He didn’t like what occurred to him.  The kinds of things he would like to do he couldn’t, because he had years to go before retirement, and he had to continue working.  At his age, changing jobs was not easy, either.  He wanted to live near one or both of his children, but that wasn’t going to happen, because they lived now in different parts of the country.  They would welcome his visits—he looked at the woman next to him and felt her sorrow—and they would come to him whenever they could.  He pronounced judgement, heartfelt, deep in his meditation.  It came as a malediction, and its force surprised him: May the heartless freeze in body and soul!

     A woman at the counter announced through the mic that their plane would arrive in a few minutes and they would be boarding soon after that.

     “Well,” the lady smiled, offering her hand, “go with my condolences.”

     “And you too,” he replied.

     She rose and went to the restroom, leaving her things for him to watch.  When she returned, the plane was parking at the gate.