22C

This plane is humming like a dying refrigerator. It’s a low, grinding buzz, and it’s rattling my skull. This flight is supposed to last nearly four hours, but this plane sounds like it won’t last four minutes.

Given the current state of the FAA, this fear is not unfounded. Paroxysms of anxiety race through my being. I try thinking of something else.

I’m slouched in 22C, window seat, right across from the toilet. I’m staring at the wing like it’s gonna sprout feathers and fly off on its own. Maybe the wing will just detach from the plane. It could happen, you know. Flying these days is like Russian Roulette.

There’s a middle-aged guy sitting next to me who looks older than he’s acting. Unkempt hair with a bald spot. Long goatee. Big hairy arms, one of which is hogging the arm rest. He reeks of stale coffee and desperation. He’s flipping through SkyMall like it’s the Bible.

I’m trying to stay calm, doing my best to block out the recycled air and the kid three rows back screaming about his juice box. It’s futile. My brain is a pinball, bouncing between dumb shit and oh-shit moments.

Then I remember, and it’s like a brick to my face.

The ring.

His ring.

The goddamn ring.

I left it.

Back at the apartment.

Sitting on the bathroom sink, glinting under that flickering fluorescent light like it’s mocking me.

I check my ring finger, and it’s not there.

I left his ring at home.

FUCK!

I see it clear as day. A classic signet style ring with a large oval shaped face. The top part with the letter “O” in a stylized font in the center. The shoulders with a decorative floral or leaf-like patterns flanking the “O.” “Oberlin College” inscribed on the outer edge of the front of the ring. “1952” inscribed at the bottom.

Mom gave me that ring before she died.

It was Dad’s class ring. He wore it every day until the cancer ate him up. Said it was mine now.

Oberlin College is in Ohio in the town of Oberlin, a little over half an hour west of Cleveland.

Dad went there for two years, dropped out to join the Army when the Korean War broke out, and then finished up in ’52.

Romulus Linney, the playwright, was a classmate. So was Eduardo Mondlane, the Mozambican revolutionary. Dad never liked name-checking, but he mentioned these two people.

“Keep it close, son,” Mom said of the ring.

I did.

I kept it on my finger like a talisman, as if it could ward off evil spirits.

And it did.

I wore it through all the shitty retail jobs I’ve had as I’ve pursued this acting and writing career; through the breakup with Melanie that disemboweled my soul; through every day trials and tribulations that sometimes seemed insurmountable.

Things got infinitely bad with Melanie. She was A May Day Parade’s worth of red flags that I ignored. I walked into that stupid love triangle with eyes wide shut. Her gaslighting and other manipulative games when it all went sideways, losing my best friend over it. A breaker of salt water crashing into an unsealable wound.

That ring was a tiny anchor to sanity.

Sometimes I think I’m alive today because of that ring.

I was drinking a lot. Going to bars alone and driving home when I knew damn well I was over the legal limit. My attention to detail - parking down the street front the bar instead of the parking lot; making sure all front and rear lights were working before I left the bar; and focusing like a laser beam as I drove along, lest I catch the attention of an LAPD saturation patrol, and a sighing relief when I made it home again without hitting someone.

Fucking stupid, but that ring was like a Celtic knot…

This morning, I took it off to wash my hands. I set it on the sink. My phone buzzed. The Uber’s here. Shit! They’re earlier than I expected. I know they have to wait five minutes before they can cancel, and being an Uber driver myself, I know a lot of these guys will zap it at the 5:01 mark. So I grab the suitcase, and race out the door. I didn’t even lock the deadbolt. I just split.

Now I’m 35,000 feet up, hurtling toward Denver, and that ring’s back in LA. It’s probably slid off the sink into the drain by now. Maybe the landlord’ll snatch it when he does his monthly “inspection” that’s really him sniffing around for weed so he doesn’t have to buy his own.

Fuck.

Fuckity.

FUCK!

I clench my fists, dig my fingernails into my palms. I need to clip them. The guy next to me glances in my direction, eyebrows up like I’m about to pull a knife on him. Chill, man. I’m not that guy. I’m just the idiot who left his dear dead father’s ring behind because I’m a fucking space cadet who can’t get his life together long enough to catch a flight without screwing something up.

The plane jolts, turbulence, and the seatbelt sign dings on. Lovely. With my luck, this plane was built by Boeing. Where can I find that out? Does all the emergency stuff behind the Sky Mall mag mention that? Or are they keeping it secret now? Prolly better off not knowing.

The flight attendant’s chirpy voice crackles over the intercom, telling us to stay seated. Don’t worry, lady. I’m not going anywhere. I’m stuck here, drumming my fingers on the one arm rest my neighbor to the left hasn’t taken over, while cramped into this tiny coach class seat no one over 5’ 3” can sit in with any degree of comfort..

I close my eyes, rewind the morning, try to picture the apartment.

I woke up late because I didn’t set the alarm, but I still had enough time to get dressed, brush my teeth, and bug out, but there was no margin of error. I stumbled to the bathroom, peed, splashed water on my face, took off the ring—why? Why’d I take it off?

I took it off because of that one time my fingers were wet and it slid off my finger, bounced in the sink, and rolled around and would have gone down the drain were I not in possession of perfect reflexes to grab it in the nick of time. It never fit snug on my finger. There was always some play when my hands were wet, or it was cold.

So it was good that I took it off.

I set it on the sink, grabbed my toothbrush and started brushing. Then the phone buzzed. I bolted. Probably left the toothpaste cap off too. Melanie would have blown a gasket.

The sink’s a mess now. Crusty and gross. A date with Comet will do the trick, whenever I get around to it.

Mel would have loved that too.

I open my eyes, stare at the clouds outside. Big beautiful fluffy bastards rolling by like they don’t care about my problems. Mom’s voice creeps in, uninvited.

“You’re too scattered, Timmy,” she’d say, shaking her head. “Slow down. You move too fast. You get ahead of yourself. You miss a lot when you do that. Take a breath, Slow down, focus. Stop and smell the roses.”

I loved how she quoted Simon and Garfunkel without realizing it, but it was easy for her to say. She wasn’t not juggling a dead-end job, a landlord who thinks he’s Tony Soprano, and a plane ticket to a conference I’d rather bathe in Easy Off then attend. Some tech thing, all buzzwords, suits, where I’ll stand in a booth pretending I know shit about the cloud while sipping lukewarm instant coffee from a styrofoam cup. All the responsibilities of a “real job” I could give a flying fuck about but I had to prove to Melanie and the world that I’m not a misfit.

I miss the simple days of mindless work, where I could focus all my time on writing, acting…creating!

The ring, though. That’s the deal. That’s the shit.

It’s not just some trinket, pawn-shop junk. Its Dad’s hands.

I remember them, big and soft. He was a gentle soul. Kind. Reserved. Stoic. His eyes showed his love, even if his actions didn’t. He wasn’t there. Often. He went to work at the VA. Came home. Would relate the events of the day as Mom and I picked at our meatloaf. Then he’d go downstairs and watch The Huntley-Brinkley Report (before switching to The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour when I was in high school). I was on my own.

Life was complicated. A vicious cycle. I was a little shit to him. Rebellious, but not in the cool way the girls liked. A clueless rebel. So much unfocused anger I had brought on myself. Because I didn’t stand up to the tough guys who shook me down for lunch money. That was the ethos of everyone I knew growing up who had parents involved in their lives. So I blamed myself for his absence without asking if the chicken or egg came first.

So many what-ifs.

Then came the cancer and it devoured him. He gave Mom his ring. She gave it to me as she dying herself.

“Your father knew what was going on. He wished he could have helped. I did too. I’m sorry son,” she said. “Please take his ring.”

She drifted off to sleep.

Three days later, she was gone, too.

So the ring is mine. Or it was mine, and I’ve lost it because I’m a dumbass who can’t keep track of anything. Melanie told me that one time I misplaced it after the shit hit the fan with us.

“You’re a walking disaster, Tim. Disorganized, immature, clueless,” she said before biting into a Mint Milano cookie.

I shift in my seat. My leg’s cramping. My right sit bone is killing me.

The guy next to me grunts, adjusts his elbow on the armrest to allow me minimal room to rest my elbow. He’s reading an email on his phone. Something about how the team leader wants something in some way and that he should touch base with Carol about something or other.

“Touch base.”

I hate that phrase.

I glance at the wing again, the little rivets, the metal gleaming in the sun. I wonder what’d happen if this thing just dropped out of the sky. Would anyone care? Would anyone know?

Mom’s gone, Dad’s gone. Melanie went back to Adam, sanitizing the history of our relationship so he’d take her back. It worked. He won't talk to me. Can I blame him?

Maybe the ring’s better off lost, sitting in that grimy apartment, free of me and my chaos.

No.

I held his right hand as he died. Mom held his left. My sister cried into Mom’s shoulder.

“I love you Stacy,” he said to my sister before turning his head to me. His skin was like paper. “I love you, Timmy.”

He squeezed my hand.

“I love you Barbara,” he said to Mom.

And then he was gone.

The plane dips again. Then it drops. The passengers gaps. My stomach lurches. I grip the armrest, forcing my neighbor’s hairy arm off. He mutters something about turbulence.

No shit, Sherlock!

I want to scream. Bang my head against the window until it cracks. I just sit there, breathing hard, picturing the ring. Maybe it’s still there.

The engine’s failing refrigerator hum returns. I stare out at the cottony cloud mountains drifting by, those cottony mountains indifferent to the chaos inside this metal tube. I’m jealous of them.

His ring is a phantom weight on my absent finger.

It's gone.

Maybe.

It slipped away like everything else.

Like Dad, Mom, Melanie.

Like the chance I ever had of ever being anything other than a scattered, anxious hot mess of a man in a death trap, hurtling through a vast, indifferent sky.

Maybe it's better this way. Maybe the ring, like them, deserves a clean break, a silent departure. Maybe I'm just not meant to hold onto anything. Maybe I'm just meant to watch it all drift away, like smoke, like clouds, like the faint, fading echo of a life I can't seem to get right.

The ring is there on the sink.

Right where I left it.

I might as well believe that.

I’m tired of worrying.

I think I am.

The turbulence ended awhile ago. The seat belt sign is off. The chirpy flight attendant wheeling a cart stops in front of my row. The guy next to me gets a diet coke and a tiny bag of peanuts. I get a diet coke and Biscoff cookie.

One of the few pleasures of flying the airlines haven’t taken away.

Yet.