Layover

This week's The Red Dress Club prompt was to write (fiction or non-fiction) about a time when you took a detour. Where had you intended to go and where did you end up?

This piece is fiction, and I think the idea is solid, but it didn't come out on paper the way it did in my head.  Any suggestions about how to fix it are much appreciated!

Layover

July 2011
“We have begun our descent to Paris De Gaulle, where the current weather is slightly overcast. After making great time in the air, we will be in the gate in approximately twenty minutes, about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Thank you for flying with us today.”

The pilot’s routine spiel trickled into Caroline’s light slumber, a smile appearing, somewhere between wry and relieved.

‘Great time in the air?’ Maybe for the rest of the passengers.

It had taken Caroline almost nineteen years of layovers to fly to Paris from her small New York town.


July 1992
“I thought we agreed on backpacks?” her best friend called from the bathroom.

“That is a backpack!” Caroline groaned, gesturing to the gigantic travel backpack bobbing in the middle of a sea of clothes, shoes, and guidebooks. “It’s useless to think I can fit everything in that thing.”

“Don’t forget these. Who knows what we’d have to buy over there,” Anna laughed and tossed over a full box of tampons.

Preoccupied with trying to figure out what clothes were necessary for their senior trip to France, Caroline caught them without thinking. Prepared to throw them into the disaster on her bed, she noticed the thin film of dust on the top of the unopened box. Her brain made calculations before her stomach could stop it, and blood rushed to her head, her mouth suddenly too full of saliva.

Anna silently held Caroline’s hand when she waited three minutes for the second pink line to appear and held it again when Caroline couldn’t face her parents alone and held it once more when she told the guy who turned out to be a boy when he heard the news.

But Anna couldn’t hold Caroline’s hand all the way from France or college in Boston or any of the places the girls had planned on going together before their lives veered north and south.


February 1993
“Well, you can’t do it alone,” her mother had finally said from behind eyes that seemed permanently filled with tears.

Caroline brought Lydia home to the house she had entered as a newborn eighteen years before.

But she was alone. Alone at night when Lydia wouldn’t stop nursing or crying or nursing. Alone in her college classes, so grateful for her scholarship that she studied next to Lydia’s nightlight so her grades never dropped. Alone when she avoided eye contact with guys in her classes, hating the look in their eyes when she inevitably mentioned her daughter.

Gradually, the sleeping got better, and Lydia began to smile, and Caroline was never alone again.


January 2011
Lydia’s eyes sparkled wildly as she handed Caroline the envelope, postmarked New York City.

“Parsons?”

“Accepted, but look what else’s in there,” Lydia prodded, and Caroline saw an airline confirmation e-mail, an e-mail with Caroline’s name on it.
“Lydia? What is this? I can’t tag along on your trip to France.”

“Mom. Stop. I’m not saying we need to spend every minute together. You stick to your museums, and I’ll stick to mine. You know, Chanel, Hermes, the classics,” Lydia answered, smiling, and Caroline knew she couldn't miss another trip to Paris.


July 2011
Fully awake now, Caroline slid her small travel pillow into her satchel. She grabbed Lydia’s dog-eared copy of Vogue from the seatback next to her and stowed it next to the travel pillow. Gently, she smoothed her daughter’s hair with the singular softness known only to mothers and watched the plane descend into Paris.