Paullina Simons: Six Days in Leningrad

This made us feel better. Consequently we did not do what we usually do when confronted with graduates at the American Airlines Advanced rudeness program, which is to display our own higher learning degrees from Angry and Defensive Rudeness schools.

Kevin and I didn’t have time for a decent good-bye. It was 7:10 AM, time for take-off. Bye, I’ll call you, I said. I don’t know when — because of the time difference. I’ll do my best, kiss the kids for me when they wake up.

I sat in seat 7A — a bulkhead seat! The first time I had one in eleven years of flying.

As I was climbing past the girl in the aisle seat, I noticed she was extremely friendly. She made lots of eye contact, said hello, was interested in the contents of my purse, in my magazines, in my Walkman, and in finding out how I was and if I was well.

She turned out to be a missionary, one of the forty traveling to St. Petersburg. She told me they were all from a mission near Dallas.

“Oh,” I said. “A Catholic mission?” Because Catholics were the only kind of missionaries I knew. It made sense that the Catholics would be headed to Russia to preach Roman Catholicism to us Russian Orthodox. The Catholics have been trying to reunite with us ever since our one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church split in the Great Schism in 1054. Boy do we hold a grudge. We still haven’t forgiven them for what they did to the Nicene Creed way back then.

But no, these weren’t Catholic. Carrie said they were a non-denominational mission, going to preach the word of God to the Russians. Like trying to convert us. As if the Russians were heathens.

I wanted to tell Carrie that though the Communists tried to create their own brand of religion with Lenin worship and Stalin worship, they failed, but before I could speak, Carrie looked outside my window at the clouds and the sun, and said, “Isn’t this beautiful? How can anyone doubt there is a God when you see beauty like this that He made?”

I mumbled incoherently, glanced indifferently outside the window and turned on Guns n’ Roses on my Walkman screeching at me that in paradise city the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Carrie tried to talk to me. Blessedly she gave up and put on her own Walkman. She then tried to write in her diary, but I could tell she was not inspired, even by the lovely clouds. I read over her shoulder. She began, “I thank my Father for…” and stopped.

For good. She closed her notebook and went to sleep.

She snored loudly. I heard her through the din of the 747 and Guns n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction .

My stomach, still queasy after my vodka dinner the night before, could take no more than half a banana. When she woke up, Carrie offered me hers and her yogurt too.

We landed in LaGuardia at 11:30 a.m., right on time.

My bag wasn’t there.

First I checked at the gate, hoping that maybe it would be there, the way my children’s strollers magically appear.

I went to the baggage claim area, and met my soon-to-be driver, a polite fiftyish West Indian man, who stood with me and watched the baggage carousel go round and round and round.

And round.

And round

The missionaries’ bags came. All three hundred of them it seemed. The other passengers’ bags came. People were lifting off three, four bags at a time. But my one lousy garment bag would not come.

I lived the whole rest of my trip in those 25 minutes when I stood and waited for my bag. I was so tense, if someone blew on me, I could have snapped in two. I imagined… the bag going on a different flight, to Las Vegas, Chicago, Seattle. In the past my kids’ car seats would sometimes disappear. Other times our suitcases would not make our plane but would arrive on a later flight. It was now certain that I would miss my St. Petersburg flight. Could I go to Russia without my clothes? Could I go and buy what I needed there? All that I needed? Did Russia even have all I needed? Shoes, underwear? Jeans, make-up? But what about the ten T-shirts I bought for my father’s friends? What about my coat?

No, I’d have to miss the Aeroflot flight. My six days in St. Petersburg were now going to be five. What if the bag was irretrievably lost? Well, I knew American Airlines would apologize. They would say they were really, really sorry. All this because of one unhelpful woman. I never hated anybody more than I did her during those 25 minutes. My body twitched with anxiety.

During this time, my Minute Man driver, courtesy of the publicity department at St. Martin’s Press, was standing next to me serenely humming a happy tune. Bob Marley’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy . I wanted to put a sock in his mouth.

I was so tightly wound that when the bag finally did appear, hallelujah, I did not feel immediate relief.

Cheerfully the Minute Man grabbed my one single bag and began to wheel it. I hurried. He sauntered. We ambled across the road into the parking garage and guess what? He couldn’t find his car.

It was 12:05 p.m.; my plane was due to leave at 1:15 whether or not I was on it, and he couldn’t find his car.

He approached one black Lincoln Towncar, laughed — as if it was so funny — and said, “Wait, that’s not mine.”

Oh. Ha ha.

Aimlessly we searched for a while. He looked at another Towncar license plate. “No, that’s not mine, either.”

And then he stood. He just stood not moving, in the middle of the parking garage, looking to the left, then to the right, but basically looking as if he had absolutely no idea what to do next. Perhaps he was thinking of hailing a cab.

Lacking any ability at that moment to hide what I was feeling, I said nothing, in the fear that I would greatly offend the man and he would refuse to drive me even if he did eventually find his vehicle.

And eventually he did. He laughed again, leaning into my face, inviting me to laugh too, and said, “They all look the same!”

I smiled thinly. “Are you sure this is yours?”

He laughed harder.

We took off at 12:12 p.m., and got to Kennedy in great time. The Van Wyck did not defeat me. On 12 July 1998, I came as close as Elaine on Seinfeld had come to beating the Van Wyck Expressway.

On the way, I pictured my husband in the pool with the kids in the d100-degree weather. New York was 85 and lovely. The Van Wyck is not a particularly beautiful road — to say the least. Why did the Van Wyck look so beautiful to me then? I missed New York.

I wheeled my bag to the Aeroflot check-in line, and stood for five minutes behind 70 people. Someone yelled in Russian, “Anyone for the St. Petersburg flight?” About ten of us moved forward.

“More for the St. Petersburg flight? Flight completely full!” the man yelled with exasperation, still in Russian. What would my Kevin have done? Or 99 percent of the American population who don’t actually speak a word of Russian? My husband can say two things: “ Koshmar!” (“Nightmare!”) and “ Bozhe Moi !” (“My God!), both phrases aptly describing the situation of waiting in the wrong line for a flight that was leaving in a half-hour and was completely full. I looked for the missionaries, but they were nowhere to be found. Had they made it to Kennedy before me? They certainly got their hundreds of bags before I got my lousy one.

In any case, I was shepherded “over there,” and waited for an Asian woman to take care of me. She spoke no Russian, which at first seemed a blessing, but a small one, for she spoke no English either.

Her computer broke down in front of my eyes, and she looked as helpless as the Minute Man driver searching for his black Lincoln. She spent five minutes threading tape or paper into the computer, another five looking longingly at the screen. “Is there a problem?” I finally said.