Mark Dunn - American Decameron

But I wasn’t called back.

They never tell you why, but I think I know what happened: I have a large mole on my chin. It isn’t the most disgusting mole you’ve ever seen, but it’s quite noticeable, and a former boyfriend, speaking, perhaps, on behalf of all of my former boyfriends, told me the night he broke up with me that, try as he may, he just couldn’t get past it. I don’t think the recruiters at American Airlines got past it either.

Anyway, there was an empty seat in First Class, and that’s where the airline put me. Maybe I wasn’t destined to be a flight attendant, but at least I could return to Cincinnati in style. And after what happened that afternoon, I’m happy I never had the opportunity to go into this line of work. I’m not sure what I would have done if placed in the same situation as the First Class attendant on that flight.

I don’t remember her name.

Let’s call her Susie.

I sat next to a young man who had something to do with the audio-electronics industry, and he was initially very talkative and friendly, but once he got a glimpse of the other side of my face (where the mole was), he suddenly got very busy marking up something spiral-bound with graphs and flowcharts.

Across the aisle from me were two women. I recognized the one in the aisle seat instantly. She was Tricia Swearingen, the forty-something-year-old televangelical wife of the televangelist Luke Swearingen. Both she and her husband preached the “Prosperity Gospel” every night and twice on Sunday on probably one of the most popular syndicated religious programs on the air that year. And it was apparent that Ms. Swearingen practiced what she and her husband preached, because here she was sitting pretty and prosperous in First Class, and I had to imagine that it was the contributions of thousands of the couple’s loyal and generous viewers that allowed them to do this and such other things as keep a fleet of Mercedes-Benzes and live in a house that was beyond palatial (sometimes she and her husband would broadcast their show from the mansion’s “great room”). The two were obviously quite proud of their wealth, which God, apparently, wanted them to have for doing His work so well.

My grandmother was a big follower of the Swearingens. When we had to move her to the nursing home and my dad and I were cleaning out her apartment, we found at least six different Bibles in her bedroom bookcase, each personally embossed on the cover and mailed to her, according to the accompanying letter, “as our way of saying thank you for your gracious love offerings to The Hour of Faith , hosted by Luke and Tricia Swearingen, and featuring ‘The Hour of Faith Singers’ and the blind Harpist for Jesus Marietta Gee.” I always wondered aloud, when I found myself visiting my grandmother during the hour that the show was on, why it was that Brother Swearingen, who had helped countless crippled people rise up from their wheelchairs or throw off their crutches, and who had healed attendees to his televised services of everything from mild eczema to Hashimoto’s encephalopathy — why it was that Brother Swearingen couldn’t place his hands over the eyes of blind-from-birth Marietta Gee and give her blessed sight, since it wouldn’t have affected the beautiful, angelic clarity of her plucking of the harp strings, and would have kept her from stumbling around backstage and sometimes disturbing the broadcast.

“Because it isn’t God’s will that Miss Gee should see,” my grandmother invariably replied.

I debated whether or not I should introduce myself to Ms. Swearingen, since we had already exchanged pleasant smiles across the aisle, but I was in a terribly unsociable mood. I had come to the painful realization that my chances of being invited back for the next level of interviews were about nil (I think it was the way that the interviewer kept levelling side glances at my you-know-what), and there was that constant reminder of my failure in the person of the über-efficient, preternaturally polite flight attendant, Susie, who did not have a you-know-what anywhere upon her peaches-and-cream countenance. I finally concluded that I should not disturb the handsome yet slightly hard-featured telegenic preacher-woman. She was, after all, reading her Bible.

You believed me, didn’t you? No, it wasn’t a Bible. It was the latest issue of Redbook . And the real reason that, ultimately, I didn’t say anything to her was because there was already someone doing just that: the forty-something woman sitting next to her. Because of the jet-engine drone I couldn’t hear what that woman was saying to Ms. Swearingen, but it seemed to be a fairly one-sided conversation — the other woman talking, Ms. Swearingen nodding and appearing to be only half listening.

Apparently concluding through Ms. Swearingen’s monosyllabic responses and her unsubtle body language (i.e. arms across her chest) that the popular evangelist really didn’t wish to engage her, the woman got quiet and turned to look out the window at the billowy cloud shelf. Whereupon Ms. Swearingen mouthed a private “Thank God.”

Maybe I should have just let it pass, but I couldn’t help myself. “Excuse me,” I said across the aisle. “I noticed that you just thanked God. I know who you are. My grandmother — she watches you and your husband all the time.”

“Oh, is that so?” Ms. Swearingen pushed a fallen strand from her molded blond do back onto its rigid mound.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what were you thanking God for? The safe return home of the orbiter Columbia yesterday?”

“Oh, no. Although I do pray for our brave astronauts each and every day. No, I just—” She lowered her voice, though she really didn’t have to. It would have been difficult for the other woman to hear what she was leaning over to say to me. “Well, I just sometimes need a little time to myself. My life is very public, very hectic.”

“What was she saying to you — if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Something about — oh, I just couldn’t get the gist of it from the way she was rambling. Something about her daughter. Who knows?”

I nodded. I had an open in-flight magazine in my lap, and I now focused my gaze upon its pages so as to let Ms. Swearingen know that she didn’t have to keep talking to me. Seemingly grateful for her release, the televangelist returned to her own magazine, or to her nails — I wasn’t going to keep looking at her to know for sure just which it was. All was quiet for about a minute and a half, and then the other woman turned and said something to Ms. Swearingen seemingly right out of the blue that was delivered in transparent anger, and then she pushed her call button, unbuckled her seatbelt, and got up. Susie, now wearing an apron that matched her uniform, emerged from the front galley to meet the woman in the aisle as Ms. Swearingen and I (and even the gentleman of the graphs and flowcharts) looked up. The conversation between the woman and Susie the flight attendant was near enough that I could hear every word.

“Is something the matter, Ms. Smith?”

“I can’t sit next to this woman anymore. Can I move to that seat there?” The woman pointed to the empty seat right in front of me.

“I’m afraid that seat is occupied, Ms. Smith. The gentleman is in the lavatory. There are available seats in Coach if you’d like to go back there.”

“I suppose I have no other choice. I can’t sit here. My sister paid for me to fly First Class to see her, and now I’m coming home. You must do me a favor: please come get me when we land so that I can get off the plane with the First Class passengers, or my husband will worry that something’s happened to me. He’ll be waiting at the gate, you see.”

“Ms. Smith, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Once we land, the passengers generally jump into the aisles and there would be no way to get you past them without great difficulty. Won’t you reconsider and keep this nice seat?”