the tap, headed to the gate and boarded the plane.
At row 18 a large man was sitting in the aisle seat. A third of him spilt over the chair. His right arm had already claimed the middle armrest. He did not look up as Angie pushed her purse into the overhead compartment. She stood for several moments before he moved into the aisle and then she wedged herself into the window seat.
Her revenge was how often she had to pee.
Angie made her first trip to the bathroom shortly after takeoff. Her second was twenty minutes later. When she returned from her third visit, the large man had moved to the window.
“Touché,” he said as Angie lowered herself into the aisle seat.
“Thank you,” she replied.
An hour and forty minutes later Angie was in the washroom for the sixth time when the plane began to plummet. She grabbed the faucet with her left hand, cradled her belly with her right and pushed her bum against the door. Water splashed onto the front of her shirt, soaking it once more. She immediately realized that Veronica was a stupid, stupid name. She made a promise to both God and her unborn daughter to find a better one, should they survive.
The dive lasted three long seconds. When the plane levelled off Angie ran back to her seat. She fastened her seat belt, tightly. The large man beside her opened the plastic window shade. They both squinted. When their eyes had adjusted to the light they saw thick black smoke billowing from the plane’s far right engine.
“I wouldn’t worry. There are three others,” the man sitting beside her said. Then he wiggled into his chair, folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.
“Good afternoon,” said an authoritative voice from the speaker over top of Angie’s head. “This is your captain. Yes. We’re experiencing some … minor … technical difficulties. Nothing to worry about, folks. But we’re going to have to make an unscheduled stop. We should be landing in the … at the … Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport in about fifteen, seventeen minutes. We … ah … apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll be all right.”
It was the we’ll be all right that started the panic. There was a collective gasp. Angie’s breathing became shallow. Superstition took over and she began to believe that if she could just decide on the perfect name they really would be all right. Sarah, Rachael, Jenny, Candi, she thought, desperately. “Vanessa, Abigail, Helen, Franny,” she said out loud. Then the pressure overwhelmed her imagination and all she could come up with were random nouns. “Celery, Oboe, Loofah,” she muttered. “Garamond, Decanter, Frizzante, Pilates. Rolex, Evian, Dasani, Perriella.”
The plane began its descent, which was steep. It dipped forwards. It wobbled to the left and the right. Angie used both of her hands to clutch the armrest as she became convinced that they were all going to die a horrible fiery death.
Then she looked at her forearm and she instantly knew what had to be done. Unfastening her seat belt Angie stepped into the aisle.
“Sit down!” yelled a flight attendant.
“I’m saving us all!” Angie yelled back.
The overhead compartment squeaked as Angie opened it. Pushing back a suitcase that started to fall out, she grabbed her purse, sat back down and fished her phone out. Then Angie dialed the number that she hadn’t been able to wash away.
The plane jumped. The phone on the other end began to ring. The runway came into view. “Hold my hand!” she said to the man beside her. He opened his eyes and looked at Angie, blankly. “I’m pregnant and alone and frightened and you will hold my goddamn hand!”
Angie held her hand out. Her seatmate took it. He squeezed, tightly. The phone rang for a fourth time. The plane tilted to the right. Several passengers screamed. The phone rang again and then it was answered.
“I’ll do it!” Angie yelled. “I’ll get them. I’ll get all of them. I’ll bring them to you!”
The back tires hit the runway. The plane slowed. The front wheels touched down and the passengers applauded. Angie breathed out. She realized how tightly she was holding both the phone and the hand of the man in the seat beside her.
“I knew you’d come around,” Grandmother Weird said.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Before we commit to anything …”
“I’d start with Lucy.”
“Well,” Angie said. She looked out the window and then she looked at her hand, which was still engulfed by the meaty palm of her seatmate, “I am in Winnipeg.”
ANGIE WEIRD REALLY WAS BORN in a hallway, and this is how it happened. On May 4, 1987, when her mother, Nicola, went into labour her father, Besnard, drove them to the hospital in his beloved 1947 maroon Maserati. Besnard had purchased the two-seater seventy-two hours before Angie’s birth. It wasn’t suited for city driving. Besnard wasn’t used to driving it. He stalled six times on the way to the hospital.
His sixth stall happened at the southeast corner of College and University in downtown Toronto. They were close enough to the hospital that Nicola could see it. She sat in the passenger seat, staring at it longingly. She stared at Mount Sinai Hospital in a way she hadn’t stared at her husband in quite some time.
Besnard sat in the driver’s seat, trying to restart the engine. The car behind him began to honk. He sighed, deeply. The impending birth of his fourth child failed to excite him. He’d begun to see his children as some kind of venereal disease, direct results of copulation. At home he already had three children, all under the age of five. He loved all of them. He knew he would love this child too. This was the problem. As he continued trying to restart the engine, his wife opened the passenger door.
Nicola got out of the Maserati and walked the last two hundred yards on her own. The doors to emergency slid open automatically. The admitting nurse dropped her paperwork and rushed over. Nicola was put on a gurney and wheeled through the swinging doors before Besnard had a chance to park. Nicola screamed as she felt Angie’s head start to crown. It was her fourth birthing experience and she knew that the worst was, or at least soon would be, over. They had almost reached the delivery room when a doctor ran up and stopped the gurney, examining Nicola right in the corridor.
“Do not push anymore! Stop!” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Nicola yelled.
“Stop pushing right now!” the doctor said, firmly. He looked into her eyes and held her hand, gestures that Nicola never forgot. She stopped pushing. She breathed as deeply as she could. She concentrated on these things, which is why she didn’t notice how quiet everyone had become.
“Can I push now?”
“You cannot,” the doctor replied. “The cord’s around the baby’s neck.”
Nicola gritted her teeth. She did not push. So much pressure built up inside her that her nose started to bleed.
“Almost got it,” the doctor said.
“My goddamn head is going to goddamn explode!”
