Emotional Support

Justine Hyde

I dream of hamsters drowning on the night before our flight; submerged, their sodden fur dragging them under water, beady eyes pleading rescue.

I make my way down the cramped aisle of the plane, breathe in to occupy less space; the low ceiling compacts my shoulders, boxed in. I pause as passengers shuffle bags, headphones, devices, children; find the correct pocket to place their every loose thing. Their slack bodies fold into rigid seats, their wings are tucked in.

A woman bursting pregnant struggles ahead of me; tries to lift her luggage into the overhead compartment. The bag weighs heavy; her arms are bowed. Her stomach pushes a hard convex against fabric. Someone please help her. I consider the harness in my hand; too risky to let it go. Here’s a man; he pushes the bump’s bag up with a grunt. Thanks. That’s alright love. Bump lowers herself into the seat, one hand on her lower back. I imagine being wombcurled, carried safe inside another body’s padding; foetal in a chamber thrumming with fluid heartbeat. Percy strides behind me in his harness; swings his weight lazily from left to right, breathes in the recycled air, scans the floor for food discarded. Excuse us, excuse us. I push past a suit, his body half in, half out of the aisle, one highly polished shoe obstructing our way. He catches sight of Percy who distracts him momentarily, then continues talking loudly into his phone: property prices, exchange rates, inflation. All his talk conflating into radio static, no meaning; white noise grating at me.

We pass a small boy sitting, pointing. Mummy. Mummy. Look! Tugging at her sleeve. Yes, dear. Not looking up from her screen. The boy runs his pudgy hand over Percy, from head to tail. Sleek body. A rush of pleasure lights the boy’s face, grinning devil. I imagine an adult fetish flashing back to this moment.

At last, here are our seats. I double-check my boarding pass. Row 27. I have the window and Percy has the middle, the aisle: both. I edge into my seat, pull the seatbelt across. Click the shiny buckle, tighten it. I coax Percy with a gentle tug on his harness. Come on.

This is our first flight together, almost thwarted. A fuss: first at check in, again at the security scan. I unfolded the letter, showed them. The men in uniform just shrugged. The short, doughy one: I’ve bloody seen everything now. Picked up my bag from the conveyer belt, slung it over my shoulder and marched on with Percy, all eyes fixed on us. Expected another hurdle at the boarding gate but the stewardess—a fog of make-up, a fug of musk, roses, (a hint of vanilla?)—waved us through, no questions.

Good morning, ma’am: the foggy-fuggy stewardess leans in from the aisle, pencilled-in eyebrows arched in permanent surprise. Do you need any assistance here? Looks from me to Percy, back again. Is hers a grimace or a smile? Skin pulled so tight, no lines, no creases. I inspect the edges of her face for a splitting seam, pulling stitches, will it to peel away completely from her scalp. No thank you, we’re fine. Just make sure you fasten . . . scans the passenger list . . . Percy’s seatbelt. I nod, compliant.

Have a nice flight. She gathers Percy in from the aisle. Wouldn’t want anyone to trip. Turns on her heel, a spinning top, a whirling dervish. Gone. I twist and pull; no matter which way I bend it, the belt will not fit Percy. His body does not make sense here. I feel my pulse quicken; beads of sweat collect across my brow. I tuck it under him, hide it. Hope the dervish will not notice it. Percy adjusts his sitting position, the cold metal intrusion against his warm body.

Let’s not worry about it; I worry about it. Percy blinks, unruffled. He does not seem to mind his safety compromised. Where is my phone, interrogate my handbag, fish in its leathery interior, a leather-jacket, a fish out of water. Where is it? I find it. A selfie with Percy. Stretch my arm to its limit; fit us both in the frame, faces close together. Five photos, scroll through my camera roll, delete all but one: Percy looking directly at the camera. Upload the photo to Facebook, post a status update: Mile high club. Switch the phone to airplane mode, drop it in my bag.

A safety message on the tiny television screen hung from the ceiling: In the case of an emergency, always fit your own oxygen mask before helping others. I pause, both hands kid-glove deep in my handbag, look up at Percy. His eyelids are drooping, gently closing. I try to imagine it, his narrow face too narrow for the mask. How would he breathe? A panic; a panic for Percy and his tiny burning airless lungs collapsing. My brain is frantic-electric, synapses pop-pop bursting light bulbs, shattered glass shards pierce my skull. My shallow breathing, shallow breathing. Pass the oxygen mask.

Life jackets are stored under your seat. The dervish again; the yellow vest, her wild-wide, melodramatic gestures. She tugs at the fasteners with Christmas beetle fingernails, hard metallic casings, exoskeletons; lifts the little whistle to her bottle-brush red lips, pouting, blowing suggestively. I look away. Feel the place under my seat for the life jacket; throw me a life-line.

Familiarise yourself with the brace position.

Percy’s eyes now completely closed. He is breathing, easing into the rhythm of sleep. I pull out mints and a novel. Pop a mint into my mouth, the feeling of flavour-heat bursting, tingling, my taste buds conspiring with my skin. Shove my bag back under the seat, open my novel, the dog-eared page from the airport bar. Drinking, too much thinking, more drinking. Fingers slick with hot chip grease, turning the oiled pages of fiction.

The plane’s engines start up, a lurch in my stomach, a churn and a surge of adrenalin. Heart beats faster. Flying: an anxiety heightened since Olivia died. Twenty years together: half my life, my other half. My heart split open and spilt out thick and black like squid ink, blank like a seamless night sky stripped of stars. Last summer was her last season. A purple bed of jacaranda flowers, evenings alive with crickets vibrating, her final crash through ocean emerging with salt-crust skin. She abandoned me to summer and my treasonous mind, curled up like a brown snake ready to strike out from the tinderbox grass. Panic attacks in toilet cubicles, the graffiti speaking evil things, sharp as knives. Trouble sleeping; the void nights, hours stretched out membrane-thin, the no-sound of no other body breathing, the house echoing with her absence.

Come to visit—my sister—it will be good for you. But the flying. Ask the doctor for something. Small white pills washed down in the airport bar with too many glasses of white wine. And Percy—well not Percy specifically—a quiet companion for your flight, to make you less flighty (pun intended); for emotional support, he said. The doctor’s unorthodox prescription and a neatly folded letter to flash when needed.

I did not want a hamster, not after hearing about Pebbles. Poor Pebbles, water-logged fur, rushing bubbles: flushed down an airport toilet. What monsters, that airline. I decided on Percy: calm and very handsome, he does not eat or shit too much, and too large to push under water into a porcelain grave.

Do you mind an extra houseguest, sister?

Is he house-trained?

Now here is Percy sleeping, oblivious to my jittering nerves, the rising drone of engines short-circuiting my thoughts. As the plane taxies away from the terminal, I stare out the oval window; men wearing hi-vis vests and headphones, semaphoring neon-orange flags and LED light wands. May the force be with me.

Between the window’s perspex layers trapped moisture scatters into droplets. Spread the open novel on my lap, crack the spine, and pull the window shade down to block the view. I close my eyes, hand on Percy tentatively, not wanting to wake him.

The shade snaps up with a bang; the shock of sunlight wakes Percy and makes me jump. My novel falls to the floor, words spill into upturned sentences, broken syntax.

Sorry, ma’am, window shades need to be raised during take-off for safety reasons. It is the dervish again, spinning the air. Her arm brushes Percy; he stays calm against the wake of my eyes rolling in my skull sockets.

The plane lines up at the start of the runway, time to split from the black tarmac. I take a final earthbound look out of the window, watch the lift of an aircraft; the weight dips momentarily, then becomes buoyant. I trace its trajectory. Another descends to land, flattening its gradient to ground from oblique to parallel. The two planes’ intersecting choreography; the elegant geometry of crossing hemispheres, while everything about me is at right angles, bent triangular, fears laid out acutely and leaning hypotenuse. Jaw clenches and teeth grind. Just try to stay between the lines: focus on the black tracks of swimming lanes, the white lanes painted on freeways, imagine the flight tracing a landscape of ley lines laid out by standing stones and causeways. My animal fear of being launched into the earth’s atmosphere.

Fight or flight.

I reach again for Percy—he has settled back to sleeping, rhythmic breathing—I close my eyes. The engines rev. We pick up speed along the runway. Hair prickles on end; a thousand needles stabbing into my skin, or a bed of nails and my back bled, restless like a princess with a pea hidden under my mattress. My body presses into the seat, clammy hand bearing down on Percy’s flank. We peel away from the ground. Try to slow my in-and-out breath, my rising heart rate. Trick my body, a free diver conjuring aquatic ancestors. Blood-shift into lungs, contract and release my spleen and flood my body with oxygen, red blood cells. Trapped in a net, dorsal fin twisting to be freed. Eyes shut tight, air pressure ears pop.

Flash back to the last plane trip with Olivia; the release of tears, a relief. I feel the plane relax into equilibrium and open my eyes. My heart reduces its canter and an anvil weight eases off my chest. I take my hand off Percy, brush my sweaty palm against my skirt; it is moulting season.

An announcement from the captain: something about our altitude, or is it attitude? Fine weather at our destination. The seatbelt light switches off but I keep mine fastened. I look out of the window and across the curve of the juddering wing; ordered rivets and layered panels. Scattered clouds spread out beneath us, break apart into a tessellated view of the city, its tentacle suburbs. Then open swathes of green, interrupted by rising and falling hills. Twisting roads and rivers sever the landscape. The vast blue dome of sky embraces us. I fizz: with the bird’s-eye view of the planet, pills and wine, and a lurking predator; its shadow spilling over me, teeth bared and waiting to swallow me.

Special meal for Mister, ah, Percy? A steward holds out a tray covered in foil; his face fixed with foundation, eyes cut out with black liner. Together with the dervish, they make a fine burlesque act.

Thank you, yes. Unlatch the table, place the food in front of Percy, peel back the foil. Reel at the bain-marie drift, inspect the contents. Rice, a vegetable-dice, and mystery protein; a container of granola and a tiny bread-brick lolling on the tray. Go on. Percy tastes the rice, the roll, picks at the granola.

White wine—anything but sauvignon blanc—I tell the steward when he hands me my tray. I leave the meal wrapped in foil, bite-size the chocolate bar, untwist the bottle cap and pour the wine into the plastic cup, gulp it down. Another?

* * *

I must have slept; my tray-table cleared away and lifted back into place. It takes some blurred moments to understa+nd the sound. Percy: standing with one foot on the armrest, the other foot gripping the dervish. He is stretched out, all neck and limbs, and the noise: somewhere between a car horn and the strangle-meow of a cat.

Get this creature off me the dervish screams. Her male sidekick with his mouth fixed in a mute o-shape, hands clutched against his chest in pantomime. Her scream scales my spine.

Percy crashes against seats, wallops heads of passengers, scatters refuse. His unleashed yowling racks me. Unhook Percy and jerk him back into the seat. Everyone watching us.

He attacked me. He tried to kill me. The dervish sobs, whirling down the aisle.

A downy quiet falls, a formless spectre all around me.

* * *

A doppelganger takes the place of the dervish. This new one trundles past row 27, wine bottles rattling on the trolley. I am invisible, banished.

Please return your seats to the upright position and make sure your seatbelts are fastened and your tray tables stowed.

Out of the window, fields contract to suburban sprawl, shrink to an urban grid. The plane takes a wide sweep over the coast. The blue of ocean, white waves push up against yellow sand, row after row of sandstone cliff faces fall away from land.

Wheels lower with a jolt; we reacquaint with the estranged earth; a gentle bump, a long exhale.

We are amongst the last passengers to leave the plane, along with a couple wrestling a bucking horse-child and an old man propped up with a walking stick.

* * *

A woman sinks into the wide embrace of her sister in an airport terminal; a slack leather harness hangs from her hand.

A cleaner picks through a plane cabin wearing latex gloves. He scoops up a dog-eared paperback from the floor and drops it into his garbage bag. On the seat, he finds the tail feather of a peacock and turns it over, admiring the kaleidoscope colours.