Nervous to Fly
A short story — will she find the inner strength to meet her father?
Meeting my father at the age of twenty-three takes every ounce of my being. Those who love me the most caution that I don’t need to do this. I know they are trying to protect me, but they don’t understand the void, the longing for connection, and the feeling of the unknown course through my veins. A child doesn’t just pop into the world with no story behind it. Some stories are tragic, some are blessings, and some are unknown.
Before I place the decade-old barrette into my purse, I glide my fingers over the faded sunflower design. For my 13th birthday, my mother gifted me a sunflower summer dress with a pair of matching barrettes. One became lost somewhere along the way. Over the years, the remaining one served as a worry stone. “Chris, when you get nervous at school, touch the barrette in your hair and remember I’m with you always,” mom said as she helped get me ready for the first day of high school. That moment marked the last time we got along.
The wedge between us grew each time I asked her about my father. “Who is he? Where is he?” echoed over the years. At one point, I imagined aliens left me behind, “She’s protecting me from evil extraterrestrials.” My vivid imagination, inspired by popular films, filled in the missing information.
My hunger for finding him ignited from the time my mother tried to kill herself a few months after that 13th birthday. Did I ask too many questions? Is that why she went into the garage after I went to school one morning and turned on her car? Was it my fault because they had been fighting about her desire to contact him? My mother refused to speak about her suicide attempt and the mystery man.
As I park my car at the airport, I see two missed calls from her. I want to turn my phone off, but Frank said he will text when he lands. The desire for caffeine and comfort inspires me to find a little coffee shop I remember had the best hot cocoa years ago. Today I will need something stronger.
I wander the airport looking for that café, wondering why he hasn’t texted yet. A large analog clock looming over a bank of chairs reminds me I’m early.
“Excuse me, where did you get that coffee?” I ask, startling an older woman carrying that café’s signature forest green cup. She smells like caramel.
“Just down there a little way,” she replies as her pace quickens.
I find the Corner Café. The memories of the last time I was here pour over me. As I take in a deep breath, I feel for the barrette in the outside pocket of my purse.
Ten years ago, my mother, my aunt Susie, and I sat at a small table towards the front of this café. I remember looking from my aunt to my mother like I was watching them in a tennis match, feeling invisible during their adult conversation.
“This program is supposed to be the best. You will go for three months, get better and come back home. I will take care of Chrissy. She will be fine with me. Right sweetie?” my aunt said to me. I nodded in agreement because it seemed like the correct thing to do. I focused on the whipped cream disappearing into my hot chocolate.
My mom placed her hand on top of mine, “You’ll be okay, right? I know three months seems like a long time, but it will fly by baby girl.”
“Can I get more whipped cream? It’s all melted,” I asked.
“Yes, in a bit. I need to board my plane in a few minutes. I love you. I’ll send postcards and letters, okay?”
“My hot chocolate is getting cold. Can I get more?”
“Chris, this is serious, forget about your drink. I’m leaving for three months. Don’t you care?”
My aunt stepped back into the conversation. “Chris, say goodbye to your mom while I get you another hot chocolate.”
I noticed my aunt winked at my mom as she got up. The metal café chair scraped against the tile flooring, announcing to those around us our conversation was ending. We stood up together. I followed my aunt, ignoring my mom. I didn’t look back. “Susie, where is she going?”
“It’s for work,” my aunt lied.
I would learn years later that she was heading to an intensive mental health program after she attempted suicide. Pieces of the puzzle trying to fit together as I got older.
Now standing in line to get an expresso, I look around. The place looks about the same, the same table and metal chairs in. I take my sunflower barrette out, grasping it in my right hand. It hits me that the only times I’ve been at this airport was to say goodbye to my mother and to pick up my father whom I’ve never met.
I get out of the café line and find a lounge area nearby. I find a seat facing out to the tarmac, wishing I were a passenger flying away. My thoughts drift to him.
Over the years, I imagined what he looked like. When I was little, my mom and I watched old movies together. She would tell me the gossip about the golden days of Hollywood. I pretended my father was a bit of Robert Wagner mixed with Tony Bennett. Some days Cary Grant, a girl can dream. My dreams filled in the blanks, like a Mad Libs word game.
The questions haunt me at night as I try to fall off to sleep. Did he like to do crosswords each day like me, real ones, not on a phone app? Should I hug or shake his hand when I first see him? What if he hates me? What if I hate him?
Over and over, I replay our brief phone conversation a few days prior. I asked him to text a photo, so I knew who he was, but he said he didn’t have any recent photos. “I’m sure I’ll be the only person arriving in Minneapolis wearing a Miami Dolphins t-shirt,” he said, sounding a bit like Robert Wagner before breaking off the conversation abruptly.
As I sit in the airport lounge, an older man wearing a bright pink and lime green tie with matching socks sits down a few chairs away. His fidgety right leg shakes the bank of chairs, fueling my nerves. I abandon my seat to pace around, seeking a terminal monitor showing the arrived flights.
I feel the phone vibration in my pocket, praying that it is Frank. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Please text me when you get this message. I need more time,” his text reads.
What, isn’t twenty-three years enough time? I notice the timestamp is an hour ago. Why am I just getting this message? I call him back, but it goes straight to voicemail.
I circle back to where I was sitting, deep in thought about what to do next, when the lime-green tie man asks, “Nervous to fly?”
“Um, what?” I answer, not wanting to engage with another human being.
“You were pacing around. I’ve flown a lot over the years with work, so I’ve seen many nervous flyers before,” he replies.
I want to tell him he is making me more nervous about asking these questions. I remain silent. Mom is right. She said he would do something like this. He can’t be trusted.
I look over from the lime-green tie guy to the families surrounding the airport lounge, laughing in excitement as they embark on a new adventure. Mothers, fathers, kids, grandparents. That’s all I ever wanted. I think about the one and only real vacation mom and I took together. Never on a plane. We drove for three hours to a resort in the middle of the woods. It was a slice of heaven to an eight-year-old. It was the first time I smelled chlorine at a pool. We indulged in a vanilla malt every afternoon after hours of swimming. We laughed under the sun, even on a day filled with rain. It was an escape with no questions.
I can’t keep going like this, feeling incomplete. He doesn’t know me, so why does he keep avoiding me?
I pull out my phone, not caring if anyone listens to the conversation. Mom picks up on the first ring.
“Why don’t you trust him? Why haven’t you told me about him?” I ask.
“He’s not coming, is he?” she replies.
“No, don’t do that. Don’t follow up my question with another question. I have a right to know about him, to make up my mind,” my voice rises with each intake of breath. I don’t care that lime-green tie guy is staring at me.
“As your mother, my job was to protect you. That is what I’ve been doing. You don’t understand…”
I interrupt. “By never telling me about him, answering basic questions when I was a child, you’ve made me feel small. Like I don’t matter. You don’t understand what it feels like to feel incomplete. If you had simply told me about him, the good, the bad, all of it, then I could decide. It’s selfish. You’re selfish,” I say as I push the end-call button.
My therapist would be proud if she heard what I said to my mom. “You need to communicate your feelings openly with your mom and put up boundaries if she will not communicate with you,” she would advise in each session. That’s not a simple task when your mother once tried to end her life after asking those questions.
After ending the call, I power off my phone, needing time to think. To walk. To decide. I dig in my purse, feeling for my barrette to hold, forgetting I was still holding it. I scan the lounge, stopping at the lime-green tie guy. He has tears rolling down his cheeks. He’s been listening to my conversation.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, why?” I’m embarrassed. I need to get out of this place, find fresh air. The sounds from all the people excited about their trips invade my head, causing the room to spin. I try to stand, but vertigo holds me back. I plop down into the blue plastic seat.
“You’re very white. Sit still. Drink some water. You look like you’re going to faint,” he says as he grabs an unopened water bottle from his carry-on.
“Thank you. I’m sorry I was sort of loud there on the phone. I’m not normally like that.”
“You don’t need to apologize. I’m glad I overheard you.”
I don’t know how to react. I want to crawl into someone’s luggage and disappear. We sit in silence for a few minutes as the color returns to my face.
“Thank you for the water. I think I’m fine now. Enjoy your trip wherever you are going,” I say as I stand up, looking over at him. I notice a Miami Dolphins’ t-shirt on the ground next to his carry-on bag, which must have fallen out when he grabbed the water bottle. A Miami Dolphins shirt. I look back at him and sit back down. Any words I could muster float away. He’s Frank. He’s my dad.
“I was going to change when I got off the plane,” he says, noticing I put the puzzle pieces together. “I panicked. Your mom texted me right before I boarded the plane.”
“Wait, what? She texted you?” I ask, not surprised she would intervene, but taken aback she was communicating with him.
“Yes, she didn’t want me to come here. She didn’t want me to ruin your life. Those were her words. I called her when I landed.”
“She has no right to keep us apart. I don’t understand.”
“Your mother is a strong, independent person who wants the best for you. Our situation is not, was not, a happy-ever-after ending. I made a horrible mistake when she first told me she was pregnant. She always told me she didn’t want or like kids.”
That sounds like my mom. She was the lady in the neighborhood that yelled at my friends for being loud or if someone walked in our yard.
Interrupting our conversation, a toddler in the airport lounge lets out a blood-curdling scream. Everyone shifts their attention to the parents who are looking down at their uncontrollable child like they were ready to abandon the poor thing.
“What did you say to her when she told you about the pregnancy, about me?” I ask.
“I told her I would give her the money she needed to take care of the situation. I regretted those words the instant I said them. I saw the look on her face, tears forming in her crystal blue eyes. She went white like you did a few minutes ago. She disappeared the next day.”
“She disappeared? How long were you two together?”
“We were never really together, like boyfriend-girlfriend. We worked together at a law firm for five years. I was married, Chris,” he says, looking down at his worn sneakers.
He was married. That was why she didn’t want to talk about him. My mom was the youngest of eight in a strict Irish Catholic family. I barely knew any of them, except for aunt Susie. She told me they had a falling out, but she never went into detail. She alluded it had something to do with them, not her. Maybe both were the correct answers. She was never the type of mom that demanded I get straight A’s. Or I get into some top college. “Just do your best, Chris,” she would advise. She accepted me as I was. I wish I had returned the favor.
Being a child, buried under the secrets of others, suffocated me. When I was little, everything was black or white. Good or bad. Never in between. Now as an adult, I see the vivid colors meshing; the lines blurring into a tangled, messy creation. The screaming toddler morphing into the confused adult. Life is not perfect and neat. It’s time I move forward. He’s here and I will enjoy whatever time I can.
It’s surreal sitting next to him, looking into his golden-brown eyes, the same as mine.
“I’m sorry for the text. I’m sorry for spring all of this on you. I’m sorry for not being there for you,” he says.
“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know about you, but I need some coffee. I know a place around the corner.”
As I place the barrette back into my bag, I see the family with the screaming toddler, who is no longer crying. The child’s father is carrying the now-happy girl, wiping away her tears as they walk towards the boarding line.
Frank looks over to me as he gathers up his bag. “Can I give you a hug?”
“I would love that,” I say as my anxiety flies away.
Thank you Denise Larkin for publishing my short story.
