The Seat She Took From My Grandmother

I thought that was a strange thing for her to say. I kept walking.

My seat was 17A, the window. In 17B, on the aisle, was a girl who could not have been twenty-five, holding a baby boy against her shoulder with one arm and trying to get a diaper bag under the seat with her foot. She had a spit-up cloth over one shoulder and the look of somebody who had been awake since Tuesday.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, before I had done anything. “He’s usually good. I’ll try to keep him quiet.”

“He’s fine,” I said. “He’s perfect. I’m Megan.”

“Kim. This is Eli.” She stood to let me in, and I saw her wince, and I saw that she was trying to hold the baby and her own boarding pass and a bottle all at once. I took the bottle. It seemed like the least I could do.

I did not sit down, though. I stood half crouched at my window seat and watched row fourteen over the tops of the headrests.

All I could see of Grandma was her white curls. Across the aisle from her a man of sixty or so in a seed company cap looked at the woman, looked at the bags, and went back to his newspaper in a way that was somehow worse than an answer.

A flight attendant was coming down from the front.

She was the senior one. You could tell by how she moved, not hurrying, closing an overhead bin with the flat of her hand as she passed it and never breaking stride. She was near sixty, trim, silver hair cut short, with reading glasses on a beaded chain and a little gold wing pin on her navy dress. Her name tag said Patty.

She had the face that flight attendants have during boarding, pleasant and about four seconds from the end of her patience.

“Somebody rang?” she said to row fourteen.

“She did,” said the woman in 14B, pointing with her iced coffee. “And before she says one word, I want it noted that I haven’t done anything. I paid for this seat.”

“All right,” Patty said, and turned to the window. “Ma’am? What can I do for you?”

I had stepped out into the aisle by then. I couldn’t help it. Kim swung her knees aside and let me by without my asking.

So I was close enough to hear my grandmother clearly.

“I’m sorry to bother you during boarding, dear,” Grandma said. “I know it’s your worst ten minutes. I only wanted to mention there’s loose baggage in this seat, and I didn’t want you finding it at the door when you’re trying to close up.”

It was so far from what I expected her to say that I actually stopped walking.

She had not complained. She had not said one thing about the woman. She had reported a bag, in the calm voice of somebody reading off a grocery list.

Patty’s eyes went to the tote and the shopping bag. Her pleasant face tightened just slightly, the way a teacher’s does. “Ma’am,” she said to 14B, “those are going to need to go overhead or under the seat in front of you.”

“They’re fine where they are.”

“They’re not, I’m afraid. I can help you find room.”

And then Patty looked back at my grandmother, to thank her, I think, or to check she was all right.

She stopped.