The kid was about eleven and on his Nintendo Switch. I thought about asking him what game he was playing, but I could hear my boys in my head telling me it would be weird. I was in the window seat, his mom was to his left, and his dad and sisters were across the plane aisle. My own sons were a few rows back, deep into their phones and Twizzlers and although they were a bit older than this young gamer, the familiar boyness of it all felt like good luck.
Ollie, our small beagle, was stuffed in his soft-sided bag under the seat in front of me. He was a total pro, having flown many times between New York and California.
"What's his name?" the boy asked.
"Ollie," I said.
His mother looked over at us with a peaceful smile. We were about an hour into our evening flight, heading east. The sun started to fade. I took out my iPad and reclined three inches.
"I have a dog at home, but he has anxiety," the boy told me.
"I'm sorry about that," I said. But I wondered what on earth a dog could be anxious about. Many days, flattened by a to-do list that ends up amounting to nothing yet starts again the next morning, I look at Ollie, lying spread eagle in the sun on my linen comforter, and I would gladly change places with him. Even my fourteen-year-old son is not immune to the stressors of modern living and often muses about having his dog’s life. And since my mom got sick, a pit now lived in my stomach; the beat of my heart and sense of impending doom stuttered through my body in waves.
Our week in Los Angeles had been difficult. My mother's illness had progressed quickly, her pain something terrible to watch. My sisters and I took turns at night sleeping in her bed, feeding her tiny pills before the agony jolted her awake. I planned to take the boys home and return in five days.
After I punched in my code and the Netflix logo spread across my screen, a single, small bark came from the bag. Uh oh. The boy looked at me with concern. My husband had warned me. When he had brought the kids out from NY, Ollie was whining a little, maybe barfing in the bag, eating it up like a snack. Beagles were gross like that. But he had been fine all weekend.
Marcelo had stayed back in LA, so I weighed my options alone. The rule was never to let him out. If I opened Pandora's dog bag, something terrible might happen. But he began to bark with such intense commitment, causing passengers to turn in their seats, that I had no choice. I hoped maybe he had a little motion sickness or was lonely in his tiny mesh prison, and once he got a cuddle and a hello, he would relax. I leaned over, carefully pulled the zipper, and out, with frantic desperation, popped Ollie's head. He was panting, his big brown eyes wild and watery. I turned to my friend for a consultation. "He looks anxious," the kid said, nodding with authority. "Definitely anxious."
"Maybe he's sick?" I offered.
"Nah," said my friend, going back to his game, "he's just scared."
I decided I would pet him the whole time and get him through it. Not my first choice, but ok, but we can do hard things. I bent to him and held his head firmly between my palms while he continued panting, his usually chill demeanor transforming into a vibrating mess. And it was infectious, to be honest, the anxiety. I wasn't the most excellent flier, but had my system of coping. It was The Great British Baking Show and my cashmere sweater with the holes and deep breathing when things got bumpy. And things were getting bumpy. In my life, to be sure, but also on the plane. The seat belt sign dinged on. Please, Ollie, look at me. We were nose to nose, in our bubble. I tried to transmit a healing energy, a kind of canine prayer, into his small, shaking body. Please, dog, calm down. Whatever is wrong with you Motherfucker, please wait until we land.
"Is he ok?" the boy's mom asked kindly, leaning across her son. "Poor thing. We are dog people, so don't worry. Let us know if we can help."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Sharon. And this is Quinn."
"Thanks, Sharon and Quinn. I'm Janel." I somehow sensed we were going to get to know each other well by the end of the flight.
The guy ahead of me looked back as Ollie yelped again, clearly distressed. "Sorry," I said, my head down as I stroked Ollie's ears. The man was young with large wire glasses and a colorful scarf swirled around his neck.
"Please, girl, I am such a dog person. Do. Not. Worry." The middle-aged woman behind me had a perfectly calm, fluffy white Somethingpoo stretched across her lap. When I looked back, she smiled wanly, a curl of superiority on her lips. What a bitch.
"He'll be fine," I assured her. "He'll be fine."
He seemed to have settled down a little, so I gently pushed his head into the carrier and zipped it quickly, hoping the episode was over. I did some diaphragmatic breathing I learned on Instagram and found my iPad. He'll be fine, I said to no one. He'll be fine. I put my headphones back on and started watching Season 12 of GBBS. It was Pastry Day, which was always hard for the bakers in the tent, and I hoped to be able to watch through The Showstopper. And things were going well; he was completely still and silent through the technical challenge, but then, oh no, oh dear God, there was an odor. It was… on the sour spectrum?
The tall, elegant flight attendant, older than me with a chic grey bob and a spray of freckles across her nose, asked if everything was ok. I smiled tightly and squeaked out a fine thank you. I began to sweat.
I grabbed my phone and texted my husband, Marcelo.
“I think he puked.”
"Just keep him in there," he wrote back immediately. "If you take him out, it will be BAD. You just have to KEEP HIM IN THE BAG." I sat breathing as if through a tiny straw, trying not to panic. I remembered riding on my friend Iliana's handlebars when I was eight. We went off the curb, and I could see what was about to happen: me careening from her bike onto the pavement, my lip broken open, the blood pouring down, ruining my yellow sundress. I had no power to stop it. I just had to watch, a bystander to my terrible fate.
I sat shaking my head, remembering the taste of that tinny blood, wishing I had a parachute when a different, yet utterly unmistakable, new, horrible smell erupted. My stomach dropped. There was no noise, no movement at my feet, no warning. I began to pant myself.
"OMG HE SHIT HIS BAG," I texted Marcelo.
"Oh Jesus honey, I'm so sorry. Maybe it's just throw up? Are you sure?"
"OH IM SURE"
The smell may be local, I reasoned. Sure, it was awful, but maybe it hung, like a coastal microclimate, only over me. I looked at Quinn, then Sharon. They were still watching their shows. No one was screaming at me; the passengers were sleeping, looking at their phones, drinking their Pepsi. I leaned across Quinn and touched his mom's arm. "Sharon."
She looked over.
"Sharon, I am really hoping that you can't smell this. But can you smell this?"
She took a beat for emphasis, "Oh yes. We can smell it."
"He has never been sick, never even barked on a plane. I am not sure what to do," I told her.
She gave it to me straight, mother to mother. "I think your only choice is to take him in the bathroom, get some paper towels, and try to clean the carrier."
It was full of liquid shit. On planes, I am the girl who sprints to the bathroom and back, fastening my seatbelt quickly around me. I once saw a photo of a man hanging by his feet from the overhead bin after a violent bout of turbulence, and it haunts me. But there I was, the plane shaking, Ollie curled up on the dirty floor, relaxed after the release of three pounds of toxic waste.
Just so you know, there is no good way to remove 72 ounces of crap from a cloth carrier on a turbulent airplane, so I did what would be described as, a shitty job. I then lifted the bag and carried what must have smelled like a rotting corpse through the entirety of the cabin. People looked up, startled, with confused grimaces, as we carefully made our way back to row 15.
When I arrived, there was no Quinn. Sharon informed me that the flight attendant had found him another seat. Understandable. She asked me if she and he might change seats with my sons so they could sit together.
"Oh my God, of course! I'm sorry I didn't think of that, yes!" I had forgotten about them entirely. She followed me as I went back to the boys.
"Guys, we are having an issue with Ollie. He pooped in his carrier, and Sharon and her son need to take your seats while you sit up with me."
Julian looked up mildly like I was a flight attendant, asking him if he wanted ice with his Starry. "No, I'm good. I'd rather stay here."
"Me too," Fernando said.
It's the kind of disgusted, mystified fury only a parent of teenagers can relate to.
"Um, Guys. This is not a request. Get your things and get up. NOW."
Back in our row, the smell was awful. I swiveled in my seat, made eye contact with whoever would look at me, and mouthed, "I am so sorry." The dignified older man on the aisle in front of us was rigid in his seat but nodded back. The quiet surrender of the cabin was better than a screaming revolt.
I wondered how my mom was– would I make it back in time? She had just started hospice, yet I was traveling away from her with dog shit under my nails. Dear God, let this night end. Fernando got up to get a soda while I put my head back and closed my eyes. How complicated life was. How messy.
"Mother," minutes later, Fernando grabbed my arm. We looked down and saw the bag moving again. Ollie started to scream like a strangled baby. People looked over like they were about to be shot. Wishing to the depths of my soul that I had never been born, I opened the bag when Ollie flew out. Wild, he clawed up my legs and promptly shit diarrhea all over my lap. And then shit some more. Reactions rose around me, oh my gods and gagging, people horrified, people standing up to look. My sons grabbed their noses and disappeared.
"Gross!" they yelled, scrambling away.
"I'm so sorry, everyone; I'M SO SORRY," I shouted out into the cabin as I squashed Ollie back into the crate. When I reached for the wipes, I realized it had spilled between the seats and onto the floor.
One flight attendant walked by, dropping coffee grounds along the aisle to mask the ferocious smell. People disappeared into their turtlenecks.
"Can I get some of those wipes?" the woman behind me with the dog asked. "It's... on my purse and shoes. It's ok. Just some wipes."
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. He has never done this," I said. As I shot up to hand her the wipes, I knocked Fernando's untouched ginger ale off his tray. It flew into the air in slo-mo and landed vertically, as if rigged by Hollywood professionals, and quite fantastically sprayed an eight-foot geyser of soda onto the already traumatized elegant family and all the passengers in surrounding rows. People covered their heads.
"GOD FUCKING DAMNIT," the dignified man sprung up, wiping the stank and stickiness from his cashmere sweater.
I stood in the chaos, the plane lurching, the dog barking, the fog of shit and mist of Canada Dry dripping in the fetid air, abandoned by my children. I was the unfortunate star of my own gross-out comedy. The other flight attendant sprayed lavender mist from a tiny bottle. "Forty-five minutes, everyone, just forty-five minutes," she sang.
"My mom is dying," I said to the woman whose shoes my dog just shit on.
The woman looked over her shoulder like I might have been talking to someone else. I blurted it out as people wiped soda from their eyeglasses and dug their masks from the bottom of their carry-ons. I don't know why I said it. Sympathy was a tall order. Maybe it was in a fever of mortification, my sense of self having dissolved around me. Maybe I needed a friend.
"I'm so sorry. My mom just died last year. Very painful." She was wiping poop off her black backpack.
"Yes," I said back. "It's been a weird time."
"It has." She handed me the wipes.
"You know what," she took a breath and bit her lip, "it's maybe not such a great time to say this, but I really loved you on The West Wing."
"Me too," said a man two rows back. "Donna was my favorite."
And then more people said it–the nice flight attendant, Sharon, people commenting from all sides, telling me they were fans, treating me as if I had just crossed some sort of finish line instead of plunging them into a smelly hell for the past five hours.
After we landed, passengers hurriedly maneuvered around us, making their way off the reeking plane. I wondered as I lugged the damp, heavy bag, my ashen teenagers in tow, if Donna was the reason everyone was so patient. Would anybody else have been zip-tied with their dog and children and held in the galley until landing? But if I'm honest, I didn't care. I no longer met presidents or flew in first-class cabins; no one was offering me court-side seats or even residual checks over thirty-six cents. Yet I would take this perk over any of it. Because on that night, patience was the most luxurious, the most insane privilege ever bestowed upon a soon-to-be orphaned minor celebrity and her anxious, crapping beagle.
.
Last night I couldn't sleep. My best pal of 48 years died two months ago, and frankly I'll never get over that. One of my other closest friends is in hospice putting on her travelling shoes, and, well, the world. I went on substack and looked for my favourite writers, but was stopped by the photo of the beagle. Someone I like had restacked you so I thought - what the hey - I'll give it a shot. I didn't pay attention to your name and notice your picture. I read the whole thing, laughing and crying. As a dog person and a person person who seems stuck in a perpetual grief wheel these days I was touched by this very human story. Then I realized it was you, someone who had played one of my favourite characters on one my favourite shows. Every couple of years my fella and I look at each other and ask ourselves if we are ready to re-watch West Wing. The last time we did we (well, I) cried through great swathes of it. The comparison to what is happening now in your country (I'm a Canadian - wasn't Donna one for awhile?) is too much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to showing us how it could have been. And much love to you as you navigate this time with your mum.
I don't laugh out loud much when I read a story but this one made it happen multiple times, even with the underlying heaviness of your mom. You're a fantastic storyteller, Janel, thanks for sharing.