What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [13]
Sharla was already up by the time I came downstairs, standing watching at the living-room window, eating a bowl of Cheerios and sliced peaches. “Look who’s moving in,” she said, her mouth full. And then she said something unintelligible.
“Is later?” I asked.
Sharla swallowed. “Liz Taylor,” she said. “I swear to God.”
I looked. I saw the resemblance. For a moment, I wondered if it were true. But this couldn’t be Liz Taylor. I had seen Liz recently in Photoplay, and her hair was short. This woman’s black hair hung down to the middle of her back. And a silver/black German shepherd lay beside her. Liz would have poodles, I was sure of it. They all did, in Hollywood.
My mother came into the room. “Stop spying!” she said, then came to the window herself. “Oh,” she said. “Well. My goodness.” And then, “Well, they certainly have some nice antiques. Oh, look at that, a brass bed. Wouldn’t I love to have that!”
“When do we meet her?” I asked. Every light on my console was lit.
“Well …” My mother’s brow furrowed; she wiped her hands absentmindedly on her apron. It was a new one, made out of a towel with blue and green geometric shapes.
“I suppose we could invite them to supper,” she said. “They won’t have any time for cooking today. And I’ll make her a little coffee to put in the thermos right now. You girls can bring it to her.”
“I’ll carry it,” Sharla said.
I could never beat her. “Front seat/by the door/called it/no changes!” she’d say, before the words were fully out of my parents’ mouths that we were going somewhere in the car. What Sharla never thought about, though, was that the ride home was often longer. It could pay to bide your time, to hold out for a chance at winning something later that would be better than what was offered now.
I hear the bong of the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign, look down, and see that mine is not secured. I have a thought to leave it unhooked, just to see if I get caught. But then a flight attendant appears, leans in toward me. “You need to fasten your seat belt,” she says quietly, as though to spare me from embarrassment.
“I was,” I say, and the words sound petulant, as though they are coming from a child. “But thank you!” I add, too late; the attendant is several rows up. She’s moving quickly, trying to get to her own seat; the plane has begun to buck like a bronco.
People laugh nervously—something about this seems pretend, even ridiculous—and then it is remarkably silent. I clutch the armrests, get mad at my mother all over again, because now she might be responsible for my death. But then the flight becomes abruptly smooth; people gradually begin conversing, and then we are all back to normal.
The flight attendant starts down the aisle again, smiling. She’s quite overweight, especially for a flight attendant, and I like that. For one thing, it makes me think she’s a lot more capable than the thin ones. In the event of an emergency, give me somebody who can pick me up.
For a brief time, Sharla wanted to be a flight attendant—“stewardesses,” they were called then. When she was a senior in high school, someone from the airlines came out to the house to meet her, sat beside her on the sofa in the living room with his closed briefcase on his lap. In the end, Sharla was judged not pretty enough, though it was presented to her in a much more tactful way in a letter she received a week later. Georgia and my father were incensed; I was secretly happy. I didn’t want Sharla to be flying away all the time; I didn’t want anyone going away. “She’s every bit as pretty as any stewardess I’ve ever seen!” my father said. I wasn’t sure. I’d flown only a couple of times, on family vacations, but the stewardesses I saw then were remarkably pretty: the kind of women you wanted to stare and stare at. It was the kind of beauty Jasmine Johnson had, though her beauty had a dark, pulling side that could make you uncomfortable, that