Rose said: ma’am. Please, look down.
Then the woman said, loudly: how dare you. Leave me alone.
Rose said, and her voice was different now, it was the voice she used when she had decided something and had committed to the decision: you really need to look.
She said it with the firmness of someone who has been patient as a discipline and who is now choosing a different approach.
The woman said nothing but I heard a sound.
A shift of weight.
A chair moving.
Then I heard the woman make a sound.
Not a word.
A sound.
A very specific sound.
Rose turned around.
I could see her from seven rows back, the blue blouse, the white flowers at the collar.
She found my eyes.
She winked.
Rose does not wink.
In twenty-seven years, I had never seen Rose wink.
The wink was information.
Something was happening.
I had no idea what.
Then I heard the woman say, loudly, the loudly of someone who is not choosing their volume: what is that?
What is that?
The flight attendant appeared.
She moved toward Rose’s row with the speed of someone responding to something.
I heard Rose’s voice, very calm, saying: there’s no need to make a fuss.
The woman said: I am soaking wet. What did you do?
Her voice was the voice of someone who is genuinely distressed and who is also beginning to understand the dimensions of what has happened.
I unclipped my seatbelt.
I walked up the aisle.
The flight attendant reached the row just before I did.
I looked.
The woman was wet.
Not soaking entirely.
Significantly wet.
On her sleeve.
Her side.
Her lap.
Rose was sitting in her seat with her hands folded and her expression was the expression of a woman who has not done anything wrong.
This expression was entirely genuine.
On the tray table in front of Rose was a small paper cup.
The kind that comes from the little packets of drinks.
Empty now.
I said: Grandma.
She said: I had juice, Callie. You know I like juice when my sugar gets low.
She said it serenely.
She said it with the complete peace of someone who has made a sound factual statement.
The flight attendant looked at the empty cup.
She looked at the woman.
She looked at Rose.
She said, very carefully: ma’am, did the juice spill on you?
