Chapter Thirteen Beverly
Chapter Thirteen
Beverly
No one wants to admit that her mother was right. But five weeks into training, I can tell that I’ve gained a few pounds. Mother always warned me that my sweet tooth would catch up with me, but I dismissed the idea the way we all do when we’re young enough to believe we’re immortal. In New York, walking was as natural as breathing. In Miami, I have been largely indoors and stationary at a desk. With candy bowls splayed on a table in the back for that quick energy fix.
My favorite is Big Hunk nougat, but don’t read anything Freudian into that.
One Friday evening, some of us let off steam laughing about all the euphemistic opportunities that candy-bar names offer, a girl from Texas even managing to turn Swedish Fish into something to make you blush. Although what that is, I can’t remember. It was that kind of night. There was alcohol involved.
The weight is not a casual worry. At the beginning of training, we were measured—bust, waist, hips, height, for the uniforms that would be custom made for us and delivered right before graduation. Uniforms that we were personally paying three hundred dollars for and that now may not fit once they arrive.
I’m not the only one with this challenge. Looking around as we laze on the sands of Miami’s South Beach on the weekend, miniature hamburgers and birch beers from Royal Castle in hand, I can see that most of the remaining twenty-nine of us have grown a little pudgy. It hasn’t been helped by the cocktails and the flan and the rich Cuban food that saturates this city. But, criminy , they’ve all been worth it.
Judy is one of the few to have escaped this affliction. I suspect anxiety is as effective as a diet pill, and if that’s the case, our Pennsylvania girl has that prescription in abundance. And she’s barely spent a penny on our frivolity.
She remains trim and lithe, the perfect specimen of a good Pan American stewardess, causing some of the girls to comment unkindly behind her back, even as they give in to the indulgences from which she refrains. I’ve even heard her called unsociable when she is out of earshot. She’s clearly here with a job to do even as the rest of us are indulging in a certain freedom, and I resent the moniker on her behalf. I’ve said so. Never being one to keep my mouth shut when there’s something I want to say.
As far as I know, I’m the only one Judy’s told about her frightful marriage. I’m the only one who understands why she approaches the training with such determination. For most of us, it’s an adventure. For me, it’s like my first breath of fresh air after a life of stagnation.
But for Judy Goodman, it’s a lifesaver.
If only she would loosen up enough to realize how much life there is for her to live. And to see how Joe Clayton looks at her. Yes, I notice. And so does everyone else at this point. But in just one week, our base assignments will be cast, and unless she’s stationed here in Miami, her chance with him will have disappeared.
I am enjoying a rare break in the lounge chair by the motel’s pool, even as Judy is upstairs in the room surgically attaching herself to our Pan Am binder. Well, that would be a sight. But truly, she is all kinds of nervous with our final exams coming up.
Me? I never was one to cram for a test, and I’m not about to start. I figure I’ll let all the little facts swim around in my head while I enjoy the sunshine. Under an umbrella, of course. Pan American doesn’t want its stewardesses to tan beyond recognition.
“Hi, Beverly.” A slender shadow falls in front of my chaise, and I slip my sunglasses down my nose to see sweet, blond Bobbie Wisnoski standing there. Our sole Polish import in this training class, she came in convinced that she was only hired to fill a language need, but proved to be among the most naturally gifted stewardesses of all of us.
“I bought some diaries for everyone,” she says with a gentle accent. “I’m sure we’ll all want to keep notes of our adventures.”
She hands me one of several leather-bound books in a shade of blue remarkably similar to the Pan American brand. I take it from her, and my hands almost burn with the weight of possibility that the empty pages contain.
“Dzi?kuj?,” I say, certain that I have mispronounced my thank you , but pleased that I have at least tried to learn basic phrases in the six languages represented in our class.
She smiles with amusement and has the class not to correct me.
Like I said. She’s a natural.
Bobbie leaves to go share the rest of her stash. I adjust the umbrella to move with the changing sun and pull a pen out of my bag as I consider how I might like to begin. A few weeks ago, my mind was squarely fixed on escape, on exotic notions. But lately, the siren of family has been calling, and it has colored my original purpose for being here.
I’d called my mother this week to check in on Sami, happy to learn that she was out of the hospital. The coma was thankfully short lived, and in a grand display of how tragedy can turn to triumph, the incident had brought the two of them together for more than the occasional salon visit. Mother was apparently paying for Sami’s recovery and had put her up at the Waldorf Astoria, right there on Park Avenue.
How she worked that out with Mr. Wall Street, I don’t yet know. But I do know that the floodgates have opened. My mother has become uncharacteristically forthcoming about her family, and I am the happy recipient of all she is sharing.
She told me that after my grandmother and Sami left Manila and after their parents died, there were two remaining siblings in the Philippines—Diwa and Tala. They’d been small children when their older sisters moved—unexpected twins when my great-grandmother was thought to be past childbearing years. Diwa ultimately left Manila, too, for New York, but for reasons that Sami didn’t know, she never made it there. She’d heard through other relatives that Diwa had settled in Honolulu, married, and had children.
So that means I have cousins. That’s an experience that is common to most people. But Mr. Wall Street had only one sibling—an older sister who was institutionalized as a teenager. And so the possession of cousins was never mine to know.
I’m thrilled, nervous, dizzied by the knowledge of what this will change for me.
I close my eyes and let words cover me. I lay my hand on the pristine, virginal diary.
And then I open its pages and begin to write.
I’ve seen fog roll across the ocean. It isn’t immediately noticeable until you look up and suddenly an island in the distance that you can always see is no longer visible. It reminds me of the angel of death in the movie The Ten Commandments, its wily tendrils gliding so stealthily that you don’t recognize its danger until it is upon you. Then—you are suddenly cold, as if you have passed through a ghost. And maybe that is what fog is. Not the consequence of a particular concoction of precipitation, but a collection of spirits and memories passing through, searching over the years for an escape from their limbo.
If you believe that our past is woven into our present, this would explain the restlessness that has wearied my soul in all the years of my young life. I have played my part to perfection. Pleasing my parents. Representing our name. Living impeccably and irreproachably. But a fog has always pervaded my notion of happiness.
I now believe that it is the spirits of my ancestors who have resided in the fog. Oh, not the kinds one might try conjure in a séance from the spiritualist days of Conan Doyle. But I do believe that history has a dimension to it that can linger and haunt you. Until recently, I thought that the melancholy I concealed meant that there was something wrong with me.
I learned only a few weeks ago startling things about my mother’s family that I could never have imagined. And as much as it awakened a natural curiosity to learn all I can, more so it has given me an answer to the why.
I hope it is not overly optimistic to think that when I find my cousins, they will embrace me as one of their own and I will sink into their arms and feel that at last, I am in a place where I belong. Because as much as the Atlantic waters have been the playground of my youth, I have always had the sense that it was not quite right. And even before seeing it, I have a feeling that when the Pacific Ocean first comes into view, I will know that I am home.
And that journey will begin in Honolulu.