Half Empty Airport

This story was inspired by the words of the Suzy Bogguss song, "Taking the Red Eye Home", by Suzy Bogguss and Doug Crider. Thank you for the song, Suzy.

*****

Here I am sitting in this damn airport, not a dollar in my jeans, hoping that I'll have money when the credit card bill for my flight shows up. I suppose Dad will cover me for it, but I hate to do that to him. After all, it was my mistake.

The airport is all slightly scuffed tile floors, chrome here and there, artificial plants and those arrival/departure boards that only make sense if you can find a clock. The one I found was down by the out of country arrivals, though I imagine there are more, better hidden than that one was. Things have been a bit rough. I'm not all that steady, just now.

I was just checking on the flights home. They're all supposed to be full for today, but there are usually no-shows. That's what I'm hoping for. I don't really know what I'm going to do if I don't get out tonight. They won't let you sleep in this airport. It's a long way to walk back home, and my shoes aren't going to be much good after the first thousand miles. Dad doesn't know I'm coming yet, even though I called to tell him I'd left Bert. I'll call again when I'm sure of a seat. I called the last time I left Bert, and the time before that, so he's entitled to think I'll go back to him again and not make it home. Not this time, though.

The first time I left Bert Dad offered to come get me. I knew he didn't have the money to fly.

"I'll get Jack to drive me," he told me. Good old Jack. Always there when we needed him. I guess he was looking out for Dad now. A real country boy. He still works at the hardware, the way he did all through high school. He'll probably be working there when he dies.

"No, I'll catch a flight. There's nothing here I want to take."

"If you say so, Cindy."

It probably hadn't been smart to turn him down. When Bert came to the door of the motel room I'd moved out to while I worked out the flights and checked for a vacant seat, whining and apologizing and threatening to shoot himself, I caved in and went back to that place I used to call home. I like to think that if Dad and Jack had started their trek across country I'd have held out, but likely not.

What did the song say? "Leaving is hard but staying is worse." It took me a while to figure that out. Almost two years, in fact.

It all seemed so wonderful when I met Bert. I was flipping pancakes for a living, the type of job America provides for people who have degrees in sociology and no hankering for either the academic life or social work. Both are eminently cutthroat occupations, perhaps because if they were done properly there would be no need for them and everyone's insecure. Bert seemed to be employed, always a plus, reasonably good looking, fit, and smouldering.

He was from away, just in town for a week, he said. The first night he picked me up after work we screwed all night. I wasn't much good the next day.

We knew what was going to happen the moment he touched my hand to lead me out to his car, a nondescript rental.

"I want you, Cindy. Do you want me?" I nodded. Instead of the "Aw shucks Miss Cindy" approach I'd been used to, this directness turned me on. The "Aw shucks" crew wanted the same thing, though, always. It's what men and women are about, I suppose, or at least that's what I supposed then.

We stumbled into his room at the local motor hotel, a few miles out of town, a step up from most of the motels around, the same way Bert seemed to be a step up from most of the men around town. He was on some kind of a course related to his job in investment banking. I later found out that investment banking meant selling mutual funds, but Bert made it sound classier.

Bert wasn't anything to tell Dad about in the way of lovers, not that I ever told Dad about my lovers. He was too hasty, never let me warm up. He was persistent and had great stamina, so I usually had an orgasm by the time we were into the third or fourth time. I liked the way he paid attention as if I was the most important thing in his life. Eventually I understood that the most important thing in his life was precisely what I was. A thing, not a person. One step up from his car. But I was in too deep by the time I figured that out.

Just before Bert was due to fly back to California he invited me to go out there with him and I accepted. There was a little bit of trouble getting me a seat, and it turned out that I had to take the next flight. Bert hadn't thought to turn in his own first class ticket. The flights were a couple of hours apart but he promised to be there waiting for me, and he was.

Dad had been unhappy. He hadn't much taken to Bert the time or two they'd met, and he thought I was an idiot for taking up with a man so completely after knowing him less than a week. I, of course, knew better. Amazing how much my dad has learned in the last couple of years. He's a pretty wise man, now.

Jack Preston, a big boy, one of the guys who were always there but I never went out with, just told me to call if I had a problem. Jack worked at the hardware to support himself and his mom. I had no idea what he could do for me in California.

"Just look after my pappy, Jack," I asked him. For some reason talking to Jack always brought out my back country accent, the one that had caused so much trouble when I started college, so much so that I'd ruthlessly squelched it. Jack looked troubled, but he nodded.

"I'll do that, Cindy."

It was a romantic running away, and for a while I was happy in California, all the new sights and the different way lives ran out there. Bert was incredibly attentive and the sex was almost continuous when he wasn't working.

After two years, I ended up sitting in this half empty airport waiting for a seat on a flight list that kept getting shorter and didn't have my name on it yet. I had no idea what I'd do if there wasn't a seat. They wouldn't let you sleep in the airport and this time I didn't have the money for a motel. The flight ticket had maxed out my card.

The first time I'd left Bert, it had been because I was sick and tired of his constant carping, his ready criticism, harping on what was wrong with me, trying to pull me down to match his own inadequacies as a man and as a person. I hadn't fought back hard enough when he came to me and promised to reform, to get counselling, to stop being so disapproving. He even tried tears.

"Cindy, you know I love you. I can't live without you."

"You can't love someone you are constantly trying to belittle, Bert."

"I do. I'll change. I promise."

His promise lasted six weeks and two days, and then he was at me again. I don't know why I didn't leave again, but Bert was insidious. It started again very slowly, something that could have been a mistake or unintended or even misheard. By the time two weeks had passed he was up to full speed, maybe even worse, and I was so used to it I just took it. It sounds so stupid now.

The next time, when I should have left him and didn't, it was his infidelity. Hackneyed as it seems, it was lipstick on his collar. I kept the shirt out of the wash and faced him with it when he got back from work that evening. In those days I was a playground assistant and supplementary tutor for some of the more difficult students, so I was always home long before Bert was. He was often late home, and had evening appointments a couple of days a week.

"What's this on your shirt, Bert?"

"Dunno. Is supper ready?"

"Not until we get this sorted out. It's lipstick. Who have you been seeing?"

"No one. Nobody. You know I only live for you, miserable slut that you are."

I suppose it was the insult that made me push on.

"Bullshit, Bert. You've been with another woman. Give me one reason why I shouldn't start packing. Doesn't even have to be a good one."

"Because I love you. She didn't mean anything to me, Cindy. I just needed to fuck her to set the seal on the deal." Fool that I was, I believed him. After he got away with the first one, Bert was unfaithful to me regularly. I felt I'd lost the opportunity to tell him no. I thought about taking a lover of my own, a stupid revenge fuck or seven. I wasn't so downtrodden that I didn't realize what that would do to me, what that would make me. There were chances, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe I was a fool.

I actually left Bert the second time for a completely unrelated reason. He kicked a dog. One of the people on our floor in the apartment building had a dog, a little thing, sort of roly poly, and very young. It peed on the floor in the hall one day when its owner hadn't been fast enough getting the poor thing outside. The owner was carefully cleaning up the mess, but Bert stepped in it because as usual he wasn't looking where he was going. When he realized what he'd stepped in, he kicked the author of his misfortune, enough to lift the poor dog. The dog screamed in pain. There wasn't too much the poor dog's owner could do, since she was only a bit of a thing, but she stared right into his eye and told him

"I hope somebody big enough to do the job kicks you just like that you sonofabitch."

Bert got nailed for cruelty to animals. I never let him find out I was the necessary independent witness. By that time I'd left him. I called him an unmitigated bastard to his face and he nearly clocked me then. Maybe if he had he'd never have sweet talked me into going back.

Bert started hitting me after I went back that time. Often he pretended the blows were accidental. Just one at a time for a while, then two at a time. I was sinking into a kind of apathy from his continual carping. I think I was starting to feel that I was so inadequate I deserved those blows. My dad would have had a heart attack. He was old school. A man never, ever hit a woman. Ever. I knew if I told him he'd come racing out to kill Bert, and Bert would kill him, all one hundred per cent aboveboard self-defence. I needed to get away and I couldn't do it. Nobody was going to help someone as worthless as I was, anyway.

Finally the day came when Bert beat me black and blue, a purposeful, thorough beating that did no lasting damage but bruised my body and my soul and had me walking in pain. I never knew what set him off this time. From the bits and pieces I put together after, someone at work had demeaned him in a fashion he couldn't return. I was there to absorb his revenge. That one scared me. I figured the next time he'd kill me, or at least do real damage. So I left. I spent my last dollar on a cab to the airport the next morning just after Bert left for work. Everything flying back east to home, even close to home, was full up. So there I was sitting in the airport all day hoping to hell a seat would open up and I could get out. I'd call Dad again as soon as the seat came up.

The day wore on toward evening. A couple of guys noticed the bruises, the few that Bert had let show in his temper, and asked if I was all right. I just nodded. I almost cried at the thought these people wanted to be of help. What was important, though, was getting home. I knew Daddy could make it all right for me once I was home and with friends. Nothing else was enough.

The seven p.m. flight was full. I might have bribed a passenger to take a later flight, to vacate a seat, but what with?

I sat and fiddled as I waited. I read the whole paper, one somebody had left on the bench that morning. I had my purse, even though there wasn't any money in it. Passport from when we were going to go to Acapulco and Bert cancelled three days before. I never did think he'd bought the tickets. Driver's licence, even though Bert never let me have a car, never even let me drive his car. I wondered whether the kids at school would be all right. I'd never missed a day of work before.

What else? Lipstick, powder, a little blush. Maybe I'd make up a little when I got home, or just before, to look better for Dad, cover the bruises. Some of them, anyway. There wasn't enough to cover them all. Dark glasses. I'd worn them in the cab to hide the worst bruises. They'd look worse than the black eye inside under the fluorescents, especially this time of night.

I checked at the counter. The eight o'clock flight was filling up. They were starting to board.

"Sorry, ma'am, no vacancies on this flight."

There were three more that night: nine, ten and midnight. I was down to three chances. At least I didn't have baggage to worry about. I didn't have anything, anyway.

Back to the bench. Exploring my purse was at least keeping me from crying again. No more crying. Bert was crying. Not being with Bert meant no more crying. I sniffled a bit. Well, not much more.

There was one of those purse packs of tissues and I pulled one out to dab at my eyes and absorb the tears that were just hanging at the edges of my lashes. I looked around for a mirror. I was half afraid to go to the ladies in case they called my name, but a quick check with the attendant told me they'd hold a vacancy for at least ten minutes, seeing as it was me. I made sure they had the spelling right. Cindy (for Cynthia, but I wouldn't likely recognize that if they called it) Norton. Cindy sure as hell wasn't short for Cinderella.

I'd made friends with the attendant after shift change earlier that evening. "Norton," she'd said. "Means north of town."

"Or north town, or something else I've never looked into."

"I'm Weston, west of town. Makes us neighbours. Neighbours got to look out for each other. I'll keep an eye out for you."

"Thank you. I have to get out tonight."

Did I really have to get out tonight? I couldn't know when Bert would come after me. I knew he would. He usually waited a day or so, hoping I'd crawl back to him. That, I never did. He'd been meaner than ever before, this time. Mean enough to wake me out of my apathy. It was going to hurt when I went back, all those 'I told you so's floating around, but I'd live with that pain. I'd die with Bert's pain. Made the choice easier, somehow.

Bert should have known he'd crossed over all the lines there were this time. He should be panicking. I needed to get away. I couldn't risk that he was just giving me rope.

I checked out the image in the mirror in the ladies. I was looking not too bad if you discounted the bruising. Dad would be upset, but even if I was a little too thin I was close enough to his little girl who'd left him two years ago, a touch battered, still pretty.

When I came back to my corner of the bench I started in on my purse again. A loose tissue I'd used for something. I threw it out. It seemed like housecleaning. Then there were the keys to the house, including one for the garage, totally useless to me. I threw them out, too. Bert could get new ones made for his next woman. There were half a dozen cards with stamps. Get ten stamps and a free whatever. I threw them out. My library card. Gone. No way was I coming back here. There wasn't much more. I decided to leave it. After all, a purse should look lived in.

The nine o'clock flight was full again. When it came time for the ten o'clock flight, Ms. Weston waved me over as the passengers started to board.

"Be ready to go. We're still a minute away from cut off and one passenger is missing. If he doesn't get here in the next fifty-five seconds, you've got your seat."

I started counting seconds. All I needed was my jacket and purse. I had them in hand, ready to go as soon as I got the green light. I was down to twenty-four seconds when there was a tremendous clatter. A man came hurtling towards the check-in desk.

"Hold that plane. Hold that plane."

He turned out to be the missing passenger. Ms. Weston and I exchanged disappointed glances as she checked him in and sent him down the ramp. Close, but no cigar.

"One more flight tonight," she told me. "The red-eye. Here's hoping." She crossed her fingers. I crossed mine. Two more hours to wait.

It was getting on for midnight when the PA system said something like "Bzz BHzz woood Ms. Norton pleez roopeerd alla repoot doskud." I looked at the check-in desk in the unlikely event this had something to do with me. My buddy Ms. Weston was waving frantically at me. I ran over.

"We've had a cancellation. You've got a seat." She was almost as giddy as I was. "Let's get you checked in."

The formalities only took a moment.

"Now get on that plane."

"I gotta call home!"

"You've got to get on that plane now. I'll call for you. Number?"

I gave her the slip with Jack's number on it.

"It's our friend Jack. If I call Dad in the middle of the night he might have a heart attack. I can't risk that. Jack rolls with the punches. He'll be fine."

"Take it as done. Move it."

I thanked her for all her help and ran down the ramp. I was flying. She was laughing. Four hours, maybe four and a half, and I'd be home.

***

I hadn't slept. There are people who can sleep on the redeye and people, like me, who can't. Tonight - this morning - I was too excited anyway. I'd shucked Bert. I was going home. Daddy would wrap me up in his love and I'd be safe and wanted. No more tears. Well, maybe a few. Happy tears, though.

Time to disembark. As I left, the cabin attendant just told me good luck, as if she knew what I'd gone through and what I was going to. I couldn't help myself. I gave her a quick hug and told her thank you. Then I was climbing up the boarding ramp.

Four and a half hours on the plane and three hours time difference made it 7:30, almost civilized, and surely not too early for the good ole boys.

I'd decided I looked okay, but I stopped at the ladies' anyway. I touched myself up a bit, dried the happy tears and attended to business. Then I stepped out, ready to start life anew. New, now, but on a firm base. I was home again, with family and friends and support, no more lonely, no more abuse. I almost flew down the stairs to arrival.

They were there, just as I'd hoped. Daddy and Jack, both looking strong and loving, my bulwarks against the world and the Berts that were in it. I started crying again. I almost think Daddy was crying, too. He never did that. I was hugging him too tightly to be sure.

"Oh my Cindy Lou," came a rough voice that sounded like Daddy.

"Love you, Daddy," I muttered into his shirt. He heard, though.

"Me, too, sweetheart," he muttered back.

Jack left us alone for a few minutes but when the baggage carousel started up he interrupted us enough to ask what my bag looked like. I pulled myself away from Daddy for a moment.

"No bag, Jack. I'm all there is."

"And that's plenty, Miss Cindy, enough for us all."

I hugged him, too. Big, handsome, reliable Jack. All the comforts of home.

"Thank you for coming, Jack."

"No thanks necessary, Cindy. Just seeing you back again is enough."

Jack shepherded us out to the parking garage where our car was. Daddy hadn't traded since I'd gone. It was still the same old Chevy. Jack got in to drive after offering the honour to Daddy.

"I'd rather sit in back with my daughter and be chauffeured," Daddy had replied.

"No blame for that choice," Jack answered. "It's good to have her back, good to have you back, Cindy."

"It's good to be back," I answered, my arms still full of Daddy. Daddy wasn't all that demonstrative a man, though I'd known for all my life that he loved me, but he wasn't letting go this morning. It felt grand to be loved that much.

Once home I was still too excited to rest. I was sure I'd hit 'collapse' sometime soon after all the emotional turmoil and a night with no sleep, but not yet. Daddy and I got coffee and sat in the front room and talked. I told him everything. Perhaps I was too tired to hold anything back and perhaps I thought somebody should know just how stupid I'd been and how damaged I was.