The Wrong Terminal and My Sister Fern
Then he said, “You’ve got that money sitting in a book earning nothing, and what’s it for, Mom? What is it for, if not this?”
I had no answer, because it was for me. But that is a hard thing to say out loud at an Easter table to a boy who stood in your doorway with a lawn mower for a year.
Fern called that night. My sister Fern is seventy-six and lives eleven miles away in Clayton Grove. She drove a school bus for thirty-four years and has seen what children do when nobody is looking.
“Has he shown you a ticket?”
“He said he’d handle everything.”
“Then ask to see it. Ask to see all of it before you hand over one nickel.”
“Fern,” I said. “He’s my son.”
There was a long silence on the line. Fern does not fill silences. She lets them sit until you have to look at them.
“I know exactly who he is,” she said. “That’s why I said it.”
On the first of May I went to First Farmers and asked for a cashier’s check. Randy said the resort wanted the whole thing up front for the family package rate. He wrote the name on a slip for me, a travel company in Florida, the one with the deal.
Jean at the window has known me since she was in braces. “Miss Oleta, are you sure about this? It’s your whole book.”
She asked once more, softer. I got sharp and told her I was eighty-one and did not need a chaperone. I am still sorry I spoke to her that way.
Between that day and October, nobody showed me a ticket. Randy said it was all in his email, the airlines do it electronic now. Every time I thought of asking, I heard Fern’s voice, and I got stubborn, and the stubbornness went the wrong direction.
I packed one small suitcase. Two swimsuit cover-ups Kayla had picked out. My good sandals. My Bible and my blood pressure pills and a sun hat from the church rummage sale, five dollars, with a ribbon.
Randy said Kayla and the children would drive up the night before and stay with Kayla’s mother in Kirkwood, and go to the airport together. He would pick me up himself at five-fifteen and we would meet them there.
Everything he said sounded sensible. That is the thing I most want you to understand about being taken by someone you love. It feels like being taken care of.
He was at my door at five-fifteen with the truck warm. He took my suitcase from my hand like it was glass. His hand on the wheel was damp. He talked all the way down Highway 50 about the water, and how Cody was going to lose his mind over the sea turtles.
At the airport he pulled up to the departures curb, set my suitcase on the sidewalk, and walked me through a pair of glass doors into the ticketing lobby, a high bright room with a wall of windows and a row of benches. The sign over the counters said Terminal 2. I did not know there were two. I had not flown since 1998, and I thought an airport was an airport.
He handed me the paper. It was folded in thirds, the top third showing, with a flight number and Honolulu and a date printed small in black. It was a printout, not a boarding pass, though I would not have known the difference.