While boarding her plane in DC, Maxine couldn’t stop thinking about Roo, her geriatric dachshund. She fretted over Roo throughout the flight and the instant the plane landed in San Francisco, she called Theresa to check in. Roo had developed a respiratory infection earlier that week. Although they had two young and healthy black Labs, Roo remained Max’s beloved baby.
“Ay, mija,” Theresa chided, “you’re on vacation. Don’t worry about us. Roo is fine. I’m fine. Minnie and Moe are fine. Have fun and forget about us for a few days. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try,” Max promised. She never grew tired of her wife’s clipped Puerto Rican accent. If truth be told, the Latin twirl at the edge of her words turned Max on to this day, even after more than fifteen years together. Like Gomez in the old Addams Family Show from the Sixties, Max would say to Theresa, “Tish, your Spanish drives me wild.” Unfortunately, Max couldn’t understand what Theresa said in Spanish. She could just hear Robin (in her head) chastising her, “You’re so white Maxine. You’re married to a Puerto Rican and you still haven’t learned Spanish.” But Max was hopeless at learning languages. She had taken a full year of beginning Spanish on three separate occasions in her life and she still couldn’t even order food in the language at a Mexican restaurant. Not everyone was a linguist. She had other talents. As a labor attorney, Max often traveled on business. One would think she would have gotten used to spending short stints of time away from Theresa and the dogs. But she always missed them, no matter how interesting the people she met or the places she visited. She was a homebody at heart.
Max retrieved her carry-on suitcase from the overhead rack and deplaned. It felt good to not have to hurry for a change. She had plenty of time to rent a car before Robin’s flight arrived from Lexington and Melanie’s from JFK. She decided to grab a sandwich at an overpriced airport café before hopping the shuttle to the rental car agency. She caught herself wishing that she had not agreed to give Melanie a ride to Capitola with them. It was a selfish wish. It made sense, of course, for the three of them to drive together from the airport. But Max would have liked to have had that little window of time alone with Robin. Dear Robin was such a purist; so true to her beliefs in the way she chose to conduct her life. By contrast, Melanie’s life offered a cautionary tale about what happened to disorganized people. Melanie had never left Syracuse, married her high school sweetheart Ned in a shotgun wedding after she got pregnant, and given birth to the oldest of her five children at the age of eighteen. Max resolved to extend generosity to Melanie and to make an effort to stop judging. She turned off her tablet, bussed the remains of her lunch into the nearest trash bin, and headed for the shuttle to the rental car agency.