"Okay, I see what's the matter," my mother says. "Please make sure that you have extinguished all smoking materials and that your tray table is in its upright and locked position." I wish I had a tray table in my bedroom and I wish I smoked, just so I could extinguish my smoking materials. I love flying south to visit my grand-parents and I've already memorized almost everything these flight attendants say. "Would you like the whole can?" I would say. I would get to serve peanuts in small foil packets and offer people small plastic cups of soda. Plus, I like uniforms and I would get to wear one, along with a white shirt and a tie, even a tie-tack in the shape of airplane wings. When I grow up, I want to be the one who opens those cabinets above the seats, who gets to go into the small kitchen where everything fits together like a shiny silver puzzle. I love the airport, the smell of jet fuel, flying south to visit my grandparents. Maybe she is going to Hartford, Connecticut. I'm standing in the bathroom next to her because I need to be with her for as long as I can. My umbilical cord is still attached and she's pulling at it. My mother only wears fancy shoes when she's going out, so I've come to associate them with a feeling of abandonment and dread. She wears high heels all the time, even when she's just sitting out back by the pool in her white bikini, smoking menthol cigarettes and talking on her olive-green Princess telephone. Lydia has teased black hair, boyfriends and an above-ground pool.
Because she normally lives in sandals, it's like she's borrowed some other lady's feet. I can't stop staring at her feet, which she has slipped into treacherously tall red patent-leather pumps. People have always said she looks like a young Lauren Bacall, especially in the eyes. "She makes it look so easy." She pinches her sideburns into points that accentuate her cheekbones. "That hateful Jane Fonda," she says, fluffing her dark brown hair at the crown. Yesterday she went to the fancy Chopping Block salon in Amherst with its bubble skylights and ficus trees in chrome planters. "Damn it," she says, "something isn't right." She stands back and smoothes her hands down the front of her swirling, psychedelic Pucci dress, biting the inside of her cheek.
Her white, handgun-shaped blow-dryer is lying on top of the wicker clothes hamper, ticking as it cools. My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick.
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