30 - FLIGHT
Lacey
We caught a flight together Wednesday morning. The cruise was four days and three nights. I wanted to tell Janice about the things Ricardo and I had done. They seemed exciting, strange, and impossible, and for once I had stories of my own.
But Ricardo had begged me not to tell her. So I didn't. But I was a woman who didn't keep secrets from Janice. The fact that there was now an entire region of my life I was hiding from her felt like wearing a coat I hadn't bought.
But I had plenty of other things to tell.
We were forty minutes into a two-hour flight. Janice had paid extra for first class. She hadn't asked. I hadn't complained. I could barely pay my bills at this point. I had a vodka tonic. Janice had a champagne. Janice always had champagne at altitude.
"I had lunch with my dad and met Carol," I said.
Janice turned more fully. "Oh God. I forgot that happened. How was Carol?"
"Carol was younger than I expected."
"How much younger?"
"I'm not sure, but she looked around forty-five."
"That's not younger. That's your age in ten years. That's closer to you than to your father."
"I'm aware," I replied curtly.
"And?"
I tried to find the word for it. I went with the simplest.
"She was nice."
Janice waited.
"She was extremely nervous. She loves my father.
" I tried to put a shape to how much. "She loved him the way people love each other in romance novels, except the romance-novel version has the decency to settle down by the third chapter, and Carol's wouldn't settle.
It kept leaking out of her. She finished his sentences.
She squeezed his knee under the table. She turned to him before she answered the questions I'd asked her. That kind of thing."
"That is a lot of detail for someone you've described as nice."
I looked down at my tray. "I noticed things about her."
The plane bumped through something.
"I wanted to dislike her," I said. "But I couldn't. She's the kind of woman I'd have made friends with if Dad had brought her over as a colleague from work. I liked her, and so I couldn't be angry about her like I wanted to."
"Why did you want to be angry?"
"That she was younger. That she had a body. That she was wearing a dress."
I hadn't meant to say it that way. Janice didn't say anything.
"It was a wrap dress," I said. "Knee-length. Neckline structured. Not low. Stockings. Pumps. Hair done. Full face. She was perfectly put together."
"All right."
"My father loved it."
"Sure. Your dad is male, right?"
"If I'd worn that dress at fifteen my father would have made me change."
Janice looked at me. "That dress."
"That dress. Or a less interesting dress.
I wore a sundress to a school dance when I was fifteen that had nothing on it.
No neckline. The strap was a regular strap.
He sent me upstairs. He told me I looked like I was inviting attention.
There was a cardigan in the back of my closet that I was supposed to put on before I left.
My father is dating a woman whose entire wardrobe consists of clothes he taught me a woman wasn't supposed to wear. "
"Ah," Janice said.
"He's happy. He's happier than I've ever seen him."
"That's good, right?" she asked.
"I'm not sure what to do with that."
The flight attendant came down the aisle with the cart. We waved her on.
"Lacey," Janice said. "You have to talk to him. You've been holding this too long."
"I know."
"Not the dress. The whole thing." She wasn't smiling now. "You can't keep it to yourself anymore."
"Yeah."
"I'm right."
"I know you're right."
"I'm just saying. When we get back."
"When we get back. Okay."
She turned back to her champagne.
I looked out the window. Florida was somewhere under the cloud layer. I let Janice's sentence sit for the length of one cloud and the next. It didn't move.
When we get back.
I had a list of things I'd been putting off. The list was long. I nodded. Yes, I thought, I am going to finally tell my dad what I have been holding all these years. The ice had melted in the glass.
Janice took a sip of her champagne and glanced at me sideways.
"So," she said. "Have you seen Ricardo this week?"
There'd been no preamble.
"This week?"
"This week. Since the club."
"Um." I picked up the vodka tonic. I drank from it. It didn't buy much. "I saw him."
Janice was looking at me now with the expression she usually reserved for patients who were lying about their symptoms. "Lacey."
"Janice." I looked at her.
"How many times?"
"A couple."
"A couple?"
"Yes."
"In what context?"
I shrugged and drank the rest of the vodka tonic.
Janice tilted her head. "You know, when someone says, 'a couple times' the way you just did, it usually means they're trying to decide how much of the truth they can get away with telling me."
I looked at her. "That's a very specific diagnostic criterion."
"It is," she said. "I've been refining it for years. Works on both patients and best friends."
"Janice."
"I'm just saying. If you tell me you saw him twice and it turns out you saw him four times, I'm going to be offended that you thought I couldn't do basic math."
I laughed despite myself. It came out smaller than I wanted it to.
She waited.
I set the empty glass down. "I can't answer that on a plane."
She looked at me hard. Then she sat back in her seat and turned, almost gently, to the window.
"All right," she said. "Not on a plane."
She didn't sound surprised.
"Tell me more about the cruise," I said. I still didn't know how it really worked. Panels and workshops in the daytime, she told me, parties and dancing and shore excursions, and enough open time to enjoy being somewhere beautiful.
"No men around at all?" I asked.
Janice grinned. "You don't need men to have fun, Lacey. I'll make sure of it." And she clinked my empty glass.