Gate 31B

Margaret Stork

JFK - LHR

20:45

7F

The boarding pass lay on the table beside an empty wine glass.

“Yes, yes, Claire.”

Maggie tipped back the last of the wine.

“Of course I’m going.”

She twisted a strand of hair around her fingers until it hurt.

“Please. Just tell Mom I’m coming.”

She stood, pinning the phone between her shoulder and jaw, and crossed to the counter. The screen went dark. The boarding pass wrinkled in her fist.

“Just the wine?”

Maggie nodded, already handing over a bill. Back at the table, she poured the wine into the glass. Her phone lit beneath her hand.

19:39.

An hour before she had to board another plane. Nine years had gone so fast!

Her hand closed around the prescription bottle in her bag. Her thumb tested the childproof cap. Alprazolam had always paired well with her sister.

She wondered how many it would take this time.

Claire had always been the smart one. She finished a PhD in physics before Maggie had even left high school. Maggie had always been measured by comparison. The wine passed down bitter and warm. She cleared her throat. Claire was barely able to speak now. Soon her voice would sound robotic.

The area was getting crowded. The voices around her mixed with the speakers announcing they would not announce boarding calls. Trolleys rolled up and down the hall behind their owners.

“You promised Mom you’d come when the moment arrived.” Claire had made sure she couldn’t ignore it. She had meant to help. She had also known what that promise meant for her.

She glanced at the info panel:

19:51.

She should get going. She’d rather stay.

The display cycled through more lines than it could show at once. Maggie stood in front of it until she found it: Gate 31B - On time. She pulled her suitcase across the moving walkways and the polished floor until Gate 31B rose ahead.

Her stomach tightened at the sight of the planes taking off. She found a seat facing the toilets instead. Her hand rose to her mouth and she placed a pill under her tongue. The sour taste spread quickly. She had learned to like it. She breathed slowly. Long enough to feel her hands steadier.

She’d had Alprazolam in her bag since her twenties, when being the wrong daughter had stopped feeling manageable. Then Claire’s health changed the equation, not the result.

She felt it inside already. Not like dizziness or sleep, but like being left with her thoughts at a tolerable distance.

“You need to promise.”

Her mother held her gaze, a thin sheen of tears gathering at the edge of spill.

“I will wait for you, Maggie.”

She promised. That was why Claire was her future now. It would start the moment she stepped off the plane. A gate agent stepped behind the podium and people began gathering into a line.

Her phone buzzed in her palm.

Claire.

A picture, she’d rather not see.

“20:05 Mom insisted this couldn’t wait.”

She stood up and joined the line. Whatever calm the pill had given her vanished as quickly as the sourness. Or maybe this was too much already. Her right hand trembled. She gripped the phone tighter.

“Madam?”

A man in a cowboy hat gestured to the gap ahead of her. The word came out in a neat German accent. The line had moved without her. She nodded and walked. Three steps closer to the plane.

Her hand searched for the passport in the bag. It found the pills first. Her mom’s kitchen rose around her, eleven years earlier. Her sister’s medication box lay open on the table. Pills were scattered across it in small heaps.

“Maggie, dear, your sister is going to need us”.

Her forehead rested on her arms. Her tears fell on the table. Her mother filled each day slot with the right pills.

“Don’t count on me. I need a life of my own,” she said.

She didn’t want to be mean. But she meant it. The day she left Margate for New York, she swore she’d never return.

The German cowboy tapped lightly on her shoulder. Maggie stepped aside and let him pass. She glanced at the row of empty seats nearby. Then she moved back into line behind him.

Her fingers rushed over the screen as she tried to avoid the sight of the picture:

“That’s fine with me.”

Her reply came in beneath Claire’s message and half the image disappeared.

She stepped aside to look beyond the cowboy’s back. The gate was getting closer. Her heart skipped a beat. Her hand went to her chest. Her heart hammered under the sweater. Then the sourness returned to her mouth.

She pursed her lips and let the air out slowly. Not steadily. Her body was claiming control. By the time it passed, the line had moved. She could feel the glances on her. A gap had opened where she had been. She tightened her grip on the suitcase and went to the back of the line.

Her phone buzzed again.

She switched to airplane mode.

Everything would be in the air with her. Would she still get to hold her mother’s hand? She would find out in Heathrow. Whether Claire was there or not would tell her the rest.

A young woman joined the line behind her. A toddler clung to her mother’s leg, crying.

“I don’t want to go!”

The woman dangled a chocolate bar in front of her.

“No, I want Grandma now!”

Maggie turned back to the gate. Her balance faltered. She steadied herself on the man in front of her. It took a second for her mind to catch up.

“Sorry,” she said in a muddy voice.

The man answered in a language she didn’t quite recognize. She nodded. The words rearranged in her mind:

“May I help you?”

His Scottish accent had thrown her. She let him help her into a seat.

“Only for a moment,” she said.

No more than fifteen people remained in line. The little girl was weeping on her mom’s shoulder. As they approached the podium, she stared at Maggie, worn out, almost asleep.

She made herself get up and head for the toilets. Her legs took her there; her mind lagged behind.

The mirror returned her mother’s image from old Polaroids Maggie had once found in the underwear drawer. In one of them, her mother looked frightened at what might have been a Halloween party. She imagined the laughter after the scream.

Maggie cupped water in her hands and splashed it over her face. Then she pressed one cold hand to the back of her neck and into her hair.

The mirror gave her another picture. One she had found with the first. In that one, her mother looked calm. A little sad, too. That was what life around Claire had made of her. Maggie knew the same life was waiting for her. How had she ever thought she’d escaped it?

When she left the bathroom, the hall looked deserted. The line was gone and only one gate agent remained at the podium. Behind it, the door to the jet bridge. The plane, the aisle, the seat, the window.

Maggie looked to the opposite side. She lifted her foot. The other foot didn’t follow.

“Last call for Margaret Stork for London Heathrow, please report to Gate 31B”.

The speaker went silent.

“Repeat…”

The second time her name floated in the air, she rushed to the gate. The agent checked her boarding pass first, her passport, and repeated her name a third time looking directly at her. Maggie couldn’t help looking away.

She walked the aisle with her eyes on the seat numbers. Row seven. Close enough to disappear into the seat.

I’m coming, Mom. Hold on.