They sat in a cluster of high-backed leather comfort. Dale and Sara in 3A and B with the Little Sisters directly behind. Dale had renounced coach class fifteen years ago; their forward seats were no fluke. Daddy Dale Baron specialized in gestures of both the empty and full variety, and over the years First Class tickets had become habit. Sitting comfortably while the rest of the world trudged toward certain cramp, the Barons knew no other way to travel (Dad considers self-importance an admirable trait well worth a few bucks. Maybe not his defining quality, but notable.)
Christmas sat two days away while Mexico was fast approaching. Gerald R. Ford International to O’Hare to Los Cabos, Michigan to the Baja in under six. A disappointed champagne bottle rested between Dale and his wife. They’d shared it over Oklahoma but hadn’t found gaiety or restful sleep inside the rising bubbles. Daddy Dale filled the aisle seat, leaving room for his bad left foot and general largeness. His size can’t really be overstated, though it’s nothing ridiculous. His heft is the controlled kind that brings to mind large stones and government buildings. (I hesitate to quantify height and/or weight, as he seems capable of expanding and/or shrinking depending on the situation. I tend to think of him as “bigger than remembered”.)
In the enormous seat next to him, Sara Baron’s forehead pressed against the cold of the thick glass window. It was a childish pose tidied up by her beauty. Neither had said a word for more than hour when Dale turned from the well-drawn complexities of the latest exhaustive Presidential biography (volume 3 of 4) to hit the Times Bestseller List. He glanced at Sara then back at the girls.
A pasty crowd of Midwesterners filled the 757. They were anxious to escape the
blanket of gray that settled down over the Great Lakes in November. There was a noticeable titter as the topography of the Baja Peninsula became visible. Scorched desert replaced the quilted fields they’d left behind, like a giggle the excitement passed
through the stale air, seat to seat. Vacation loomed and not even the luxurious forward rows were immune.Â
A patriarchal grin (one of many at his disposal) settled across Dale’s wide
face. He watched Lindsay and Julie as they waited out the flight plugged into iPad
oblivion. Ms. Lindsay, the elder sister, wore travel wear that rested between
Donna Karan casual and Viet Cong battle fatigue (the label said Donna Karan). She wore a bulbous pair of sunglasses that hinted at spousal abuse, and her legs were pulled up on the seat. Shoeless, she held her device against her knees with both hands and read the screen intently.Â
Jules stared out the window like her mother minus the dour. Pony tailed and blued eyed, Littlest Sis played girl next door to Ms. Lindsay’s attempted urbanity. A hooded “East Soccer” sweatshirt and single freckled cheek made her appear younger than the three years that separated the two. Julie remained the baby that Lindsay hadn’t been since vocalization. To a father’s eye, they complemented each other perfectly.
“Dad?” Lindsay said with sunglasses still on the screen.
Dale’s smile expanded still further threatening to wrap around his head, “What are you reading?”
Lindsay didn’t respond. A Bushwick-based electro-pop band (called The Sitter’s Asleep or maybe Antihistamine Blocker) beat in her ear (so indie Lindsay). She’d arrived home from NYU the day before, and Dale’s gaze betrayed pride in her independence mixed with two parts fatherly “where did the time go”. His chalky blue eyes held on his gorgeous twenty year old and her so blasé pose. He reached a big hand and tapped her tablet twice with an index finger. She looked up offering a creeping half smirk and two big glass eyes.
“What’s the book?” Dale repeated.
“Vacation reading,” Dale said, unsure if she could hear but warmed by her inability to surprise, “A beach book.”
Lindsay’s glasses stayed trained on him for a moment before returning to the screen. She nestled further into the seat as a rebuke. Dale didn’t bite. Surrounded by his girls and his wife, he was a ball of fuzzy good feelings, a softy. They were together and they were nearing certain paradise, and he was to blame. He studied Ms. Lindsay and Jules. He watched them and he enjoyed the many contours of parental pride.
His wife moved beside him and he turned. Sara had spun onto her knees to face the
girls. “Almost there,” she said mustering cheer, “Better let me see your passports.”
A little louder, “Girls.”
Dale turned in the seat and again tapped Lindsay’s Ipad.
“Passports. Your mother wants them,” he said to the glasses.
Lindsay pulled out an earpiece, “What?”
Sara smiled at her oldest, “Passports. I need them.”
Color rose beneath the dark glasses, “Why?”
Lindsay’s smile had a way of slinking across her face like a fan dancer, menace
stirred with intrigue as it did, “Already did mine.”
“You don’t need one. One per family.”
“That’s not a rule or anything.”
Sara’s voice tightened, “It’s a law.”
“I feel like they’ll let me slide by.”
“I suppose they would but it’s not necessary.”
“I’d prefer to enter the country on my own.”
“Lindsay,” the name fell out of her mouth, dejected. Sara slumped back and stared at the seat in front of her, Lindsay’s instigation beyond her current capabilities. Dale felt a twinge of sympathy go along with the easy flow of satisfaction. He kept his eyes on his wife as the plane banked out over the Gulf of California and the Stewardess made landing announcements.Â
Sara’s good looks trumped not only the ridiculousness of her pouting lips but also her age (over twenty years younger than Dad). Last night had taken a toll though. Her hair, not as spectacularly dark as Lindsay’s but still tinted by opulence, was pulled back in a ponytail, exacerbating baggy eyes. Her still youthful skin didn’t shine so bright as usual. “Do we have to start again?” she asked without conviction and surely not loud enough for Lindsay to hear.
Dale’s grin shifted from patriarchal to patronizing. Sara’s inability to handle
Lindsay’s goading somehow seemed kind of cute and perfectly in the familial moment. Her tense mouth and slumped shoulders only added to his warm pleasure, “Nothing’s starting, dear.”
Sara didn’t have the energy for him either. She didn’t look but said, “If Lindsay wants to fill out her own form I don’t see the problem.”
Lindsay’s passport appeared from around the seat, capitulation being the magic
word. Dale grabbed the hand playfully, “Nothing’s easy is it, Ms. Lindsay? Your sister’s
Lindsay allowed the fatherly moment five good seconds before she pulled away.
She shook Julie’s leg and mouthed “passport”. Littlest Sis reached into the backpack at
her feet, rifled around, and came up with the document. She passed it up with a too loud,
Dale handed the documents to his wife, and she folded out the tray table. The
plane’s descent was in earnest now and the flight attendants were making their rounds
collecting trash and righting reclined chairs. Antsy vacation excitement mixed with landing anxiety. The amplified white (plane) noise mixed with shufflings and murmurs and made Dale feel further from his wife than their actual distance. He thought she wouldn’t notice his close observation (then again he probably wanted her to know.)
He said nothing as she sat with her pen poised above the form. She filled in the
standard details, the names and dates and addresses. She moved quickly from line to line until she reached the declarations box. No snide comment, no bit of sarcasm or telling sigh, Dale only watched and gave the slightest shake of the head. It wasn’t dramatic or clownish - let’s call it “practiced”. The matter of the three enormous boxes in the baggage hold was not forgiven, and with that slight movement he let her know.
Sara quickly scribbled an “x” in the blank and muttered a “Jesus, Dale.” She closed her tray table just as the flight attendant asked. The uniformed woman leaned in front of Dale giving him a full whiff of perfume too strong for close quarters at 30,000 feet. Sara smiled at her unasked demand, and placed the forms and the passports into a pocket of her carry on and returned to the window to watch the ground approach.Â
Dale remained silent. He listened as the Flight Attendant told the girls to turn off their “electronic devices”. His silvery hair, always slickly in place, fell back upon the headrest and his grin screamed over the airplane’s engines and the sounds of landing gear unfurling.
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