The Armrest
Something warm brushed my elbow.
I was four hours into a packed flight from Boston to Seattle. Middle seat. Row 23. Somewhere over Montana. I’d been half-asleep with my head tipped back and my arm resting on the armrest, trying to forget that I still had two more hours of this.
Then I felt it.
Warm. Soft. A little damp.
I looked down.
Five bare toes were resting on my armrest.
Right next to my elbow. Close enough that if I’d moved my arm an inch, I’d have been touching them.
For a second, I honestly thought I was imagining it. I blinked. I looked again.
Still there. Five toes. A big one with a ridge down the nail. A little one curled under the others like it was hiding. A tan line where a sandal strap had been.
Then the smell hit me.
I don’t know how to describe it except to say that it was the smell of a foot that had been inside an expensive leather shoe for a long time, in a hot airport, without a sock.
It was sour. And warm. And somehow also a little bit like cheese.
The woman in the window seat next to me, an older woman with silver braids and reading glasses on a beaded chain, wrinkled her nose. She looked at the foot. She looked at me.
“Is that,” she whispered, “what I think it is?”
“I think so,” I whispered back.
I turned around in my seat.
The man behind me looked about forty-five.
Tan. Fit, in a gym-membership way. Salt-and-pepper hair cut short and expensive. A navy quarter-zip pullover with a little embroidered logo of some golf club. A big silver watch on his wrist that probably cost more than my car. Wireless headphones. A laptop open on his tray table, playing some action movie with lots of explosions.
His shoes were kicked under the seat in front of him. My seat. Brown leather loafers. No socks.
He’d stretched one leg up, bent at the knee, and wedged his bare foot through the gap between my seat and the window seat. Right onto my armrest.
He was leaning back with his eyes half-closed, looking extremely comfortable.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He didn’t hear me. Or he pretended not to.
“Excuse me,” I said, louder.
He pulled one headphone aside. Just one. He looked at me like I was a fly that had landed on his sandwich.
“Could you move your foot?” I said.
“It’s not touching you.”
“It’s on my armrest.”
“My feet need to breathe.”
I stared at him.
“Then let them breathe in your own seat,” I said.
He smirked.
“It’s an airplane,” he said. “We’re all sharing space.”
He glanced at my other arm. My left arm. The one on the far side, where the window-seat woman’s elbow already was.
“So use your other armrest,” he said, “and don’t bother me.”
I stared at him.
He smiled. Put his headphone back on. Turned back to his explosions.
And he wiggled his toes.
Right next to my elbow. All five of them. Like he was waving at me.
I want to tell you that I said something clever right then. Something sharp and funny that made the whole row laugh.
I didn’t.
I turned back around in my seat. I pulled my right arm off the armrest. I tucked it into my lap.
I made myself smaller.
That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.
Use your other armrest. Don’t bother me.
I’d heard that before.
Not those exact words. But close enough.
My name is Leah Moreno. I’m thirty-eight years old. I teach art to seventh and eighth graders at a middle school outside Boston.
I was flying to Seattle for my niece’s tenth birthday.
My sister, Gabi, lives in a little blue house in Ballard with her husband and her two kids. Sophie, who was turning ten. And Mateo, who’s six and thinks I’m the coolest person alive because I can draw any dinosaur he names.
I hadn’t been out to see them in three years.
That’s a long story. The short version is that I was married for eleven years to a man named Doug, and Doug didn’t like to travel, and Doug didn’t like my sister, and Doug didn’t like it when I went places without him.
So mostly, I didn’t go places.
Doug wasn’t a monster. I want to be fair about that. He never hit me. He never screamed. He paid his half of the bills. He remembered my birthday most years.
He just took up space.
All of it.
He’d stretch out on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, and I’d sit in the armchair. He’d spread out diagonally across the bed, and I’d sleep curled up on the edge with one arm hanging off. He’d turn the TV to whatever he wanted to watch, and I’d read in the kitchen. He’d talk over me at dinner parties, and I’d smile and nod and wait for him to finish.
When I said something about it, he’d say, “Leah, it’s not a big deal. Just sit somewhere else.”
Use your other armrest.
For eleven years, I used the other armrest.
I got smaller and smaller until I didn’t even notice I was doing it.
We got divorced last spring.
It was my idea. That surprised everybody. Doug most of all.
I was sitting in the armchair one night in February, grading seventh-grade self-portraits, while Doug lay on the couch with his feet on the coffee table watching football. And one of the self-portraits was by a girl named Tamika. She’d drawn herself very, very small, in the bottom corner of a huge empty page.
At the bottom, she’d written: This is me. I don’t take up much room.
I sat there and looked at that drawing for a long time.
Then I looked across the living room at my husband’s feet on the coffee table.
Then I looked down at myself. Curled up in the armchair. Knees pulled up. Arms tucked in.
I didn’t take up much room either.
I filed for divorce in March.
So this flight was a big deal for me.
It was the first trip I’d taken alone in eleven years. The first time I’d bought a plane ticket without asking anybody. The first time I’d gone to see my sister without having to negotiate it for weeks first.
I’d booked it in July. I’d been looking forward to it for three months.
I had a gift bag under the seat in front of me. Purple tissue paper. A card I drew myself, with a unicorn on it, because Sophie is ten and still loves unicorns even though she pretends she’s too old for them.
Inside the bag was the present.
A nail polish kit. Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe. Six little bottles of glitter polish in rainbow colors. A quick-dry top coat. A sheet of tiny nail stickers shaped like stars and hearts and unicorn heads.
Sophie had been begging her mom for real nail polish for a year. Gabi finally said she could have some for her tenth birthday. So I said I’d bring it.
I bought it at a CVS in Somerville. Twenty-four ninety-nine. I wrapped it in purple tissue paper. I was ridiculously proud of it.
It was sitting under my seat in the purple gift bag.
About eighteen inches from the man’s shoes.
Ten minutes later, his foot was still there.
I’d been sitting with my arm in my lap, trying to ignore it. Trying not to breathe through my nose. Reading the in-flight magazine without seeing any of the words.
The woman by the window had given up and was holding a little tin of Altoids under her nose like smelling salts.
“Lord have mercy,” she muttered.
I pressed the call button.
A flight attendant came down the aisle after a minute or two. Young. Maybe twenty-six. Dark hair in a neat bun. A name tag that said KIARA. She leaned down.
“Can I help you?”
I didn’t say anything. I just pointed.
Kiara looked at the armrest. At the five bare toes.
Her face did something complicated. Like she was trying very hard to stay professional.
She leaned around my seat.
“Sir,” she said. Pleasantly. “I’m going to need you to keep your feet in your own space, please.”
The man pulled off his headphones. He looked at Kiara. He smiled. A big, charming smile. All teeth.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Sorry about that. Didn’t realize.”
He pulled his foot back.
Kiara smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
She looked at me. A quick little look that said, I know. I’m sorry. I see it.
She walked away.
I put my arm back on the armrest.
It lasted about four minutes.
When the plane hit turbulence, his toes actually brushed my sleeve.
I felt them. Right against the cotton of my shirt. Warm and bony.
I jerked my arm away so fast I hit the woman by the window with my elbow.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Don’t you apologize to me,” she said. “You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”
I turned around again.
The foot was back. Exactly where it had been. Toes wiggling.
He’d waited until the flight attendant was gone. Then he’d just put it back.
“Seriously,” I said. “Move your foot.”
He sighed. A long, heavy, put-upon sigh. Like I was exhausting him. Like I was the problem.
“Lady,” he said. “It’s just a foot. You’re acting like I put it on your dinner plate.”
The woman by the window leaned over. She looked at him over the top of her reading glasses.
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
He laughed.
He actually laughed.
“You two need to relax,” he said.
He put his headphones back on.
That was when I stopped arguing.
I looked at his foot on the armrest. At his big expensive watch. At his loafers kicked under my seat. At the little smirk on his face.
I thought about eleven years of armchairs and bed edges and dinner parties.
I thought about use your other armrest.
I thought about Tamika’s drawing. I don’t take up much room.
Something in me went very calm.
“Okay,” I said.
He smirked. Clearly convinced he’d won.
He leaned his head back against the seat. Turned up his movie. Wiggled his toes one more time for good measure.
I turned around and faced forward.
The woman by the window was staring at me.
“Okay?” she whispered. “That’s it? Okay?”
“For now,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes narrowed behind her reading glasses.
Then a slow smile spread across her face.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “I see you.”
Her name was Bernadette. Bernie, she said. She was seventy-one. A retired ER nurse from Dorchester. She was flying to Seattle to meet her first great-grandson, who’d been born two weeks early on Tuesday.
“Seven pounds, two ounces,” she told me, showing me a picture on her phone. A tiny red face in a hospital blanket. “His name is Isaiah. After my late husband.”
“He’s beautiful,” I said.
“He is,” Bernie said. “Looks just like a raisin. All babies do. But he’s my raisin.”
I laughed.
We talked for twenty minutes. About her husband, Isaiah, who drove a city bus for thirty years and died of a heart attack at the depot. About her forty-one years in the ER at Boston City Hospital. About the things she’d seen.
“Gunshot wounds, car wrecks, a man who swallowed his own wedding ring,” she said. “A woman who came in with a fork stuck in her hand because her husband reached across the table for the last pork chop. I’ve seen it all.”
“Was the woman okay?”
“She was fine,” Bernie said. “She divorced him. Said it wasn’t the fork. It was the pork chop. Said he’d been reaching for the last pork chop for twenty-two years.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“I know that feeling,” I said finally.
Bernie looked at me.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “I thought you might.”
Twenty minutes later, he fell asleep.
I heard it before I saw it. A low, wet, rattling snore from the seat behind me. The kind of snore that sounds like a garbage disposal with a spoon stuck in it.
I turned around very slowly.
He was out cold. Head tipped back against the seat. Mouth open. Headphones crooked. The explosions still playing on his laptop, which had slid sideways on his tray table.
His bare foot was still on my armrest.
Inches from my elbow.
Toes slightly curled. Relaxed. Peaceful.
Completely unguarded.
I stared at it for a moment.
Five toes.
The nails were a little long. A little yellow. The big toe had that ridge down the middle. There was a little tuft of dark hair on top of each toe, right above the knuckle.
I looked at the purple gift bag under the seat in front of me.
Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe.
Then I looked back at the foot.
And an idea came to me.
I’m an art teacher.
I’ve spent fifteen years teaching thirteen-year-olds to paint. Watercolor. Acrylic. Tempera. Finger paint, once, with a group of sixth graders who’d been very bad and needed to get it out of their systems.
I can paint a perfectly straight line on a moving surface while a child screams in my ear.
I can paint very, very quietly.
And very, very fast.
I glanced at Bernie.
She was watching me. She’d seen me look at the gift bag. She’d seen me look at the foot.
One of her eyebrows went up. Slowly.
“Would you mind,” I whispered, “blocking his view? If he wakes up?”
Her eyebrows rose even higher.
“Why?”
I leaned closer to her. I cupped my hand around my mouth.
And I whispered my plan.
Her eyes widened.
Then she put both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Her whole body shook. Her silver braids bounced. Tears came to her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered through her fingers. “Oh, you’re actually doing that? You’re my queen.”
She winked at me.
I smiled.
I reached down very slowly. I pulled the purple gift bag out from under the seat in front of me. I moved the tissue paper aside, careful not to crinkle it.
Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe.
I opened the box.
Six little bottles. Rainbow colors. Glittery.
I picked the pink one.
Not just pink. Bubblegum Galaxy. That’s what it said on the bottom. Hot pink with silver and purple glitter suspended in it like stars. The kind of pink you can see from across a parking lot. The kind of pink that a ten-year-old girl would love more than anything in the world.
I picked up the quick-dry top coat too.
And the sheet of tiny stickers.
Bernie shifted in her seat. She leaned forward a little, tilting her body toward the aisle, so if he opened his eyes, the first thing he’d see would be her silver braids and her reading glasses.
She pulled out her phone and pretended to look at pictures of her great-grandson.
“Go,” she whispered.
I turned around in my seat. I got up on one knee, facing backward, like I was looking for something in the overhead bin.
The man was still snoring.
His foot was right there. On my armrest. Relaxed.
I unscrewed the cap of Bubblegum Galaxy.
My hands didn’t shake. They never do when I’m painting.
I started with the big toe.
One stroke down the middle. Then one on each side. The way I’ve shown a hundred thirteen-year-olds how to fill in a shape. Smooth. Even. Bright.
The glitter caught the reading light above his seat and sparkled.
He snored.
Second toe. Three strokes.
Third toe.
Fourth.
The little one, curled under the others like it was hiding. I had to be careful with that one. I used the very tip of the brush.
He shifted a little in his sleep. Made a sound. A little mmph.
I froze.
Bernie froze.
He settled back down. Snored again.
I let out my breath.
Then the top coat. Quick-dry. Thirty seconds to set, it said on the bottle. I painted it over all five toes. Fast. Smooth.
Then the stickers.
I peeled off a tiny silver unicorn head. I pressed it gently onto the middle of his big toenail. Right on top of the pink glitter.
I peeled off a little silver star. I put it on the second toe.
A heart on the third. Another star on the fourth.
And on the little curled-up toe, the tiniest sticker on the whole sheet. A rainbow.
I sat back on my heels and looked at my work.
It was the best thing I’d ever painted.
The whole thing took less than a minute.
I put the caps back on the bottles. I put the bottles back in the box. I put the box back in the gift bag. I tucked the purple tissue paper over the top.
I slid the bag back under the seat in front of me.
I turned around and sat down.
I folded my hands in my lap.
Bernie was shaking so hard with silent laughter that the whole row was vibrating. She had tears running down her face. She was holding her phone up in front of her face like a shield.
“Lord,” she whispered. “Lord, Lord, Lord. Forty-one years in the ER. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
I sat back.
And I waited.
It was the longest forty minutes of my life.
Every time he shifted in his seat, my heart jumped. Every time his snoring changed, I held my breath.
The foot stayed on the armrest. I could see it out of the corner of my eye. Glittering under the reading light. Pink as a flamingo. With a tiny silver unicorn on the big toe.
The quick-dry coat had set. I’d checked. It was solid. It wasn’t coming off without nail polish remover.
And I didn’t have any nail polish remover.
I’d left it in my checked bag. Because it’s a liquid. And it was over three ounces.
Nobody else in row 23 had any either. Bernie checked her purse just in case.
“I’ve got Band-Aids, Tums, a rosary, three butterscotch candies, and a picture of Denzel Washington,” she whispered. “No remover.”
“Why do you have a picture of Denzel Washington?”
“Honey, I’m seventy-one,” she said. “I don’t owe anybody an explanation.”
Kiara came down the aisle with the drink cart about twenty minutes later.
She stopped at our row. She glanced at the armrest. At the foot.
At the glitter.
She stopped. She stared. Her mouth fell open a little.
She looked at me.
I looked back at her. Very innocently.
Kiara’s face went through about six different expressions in two seconds. Surprise. Confusion. Disbelief. Understanding.
Then something that looked a lot like joy.
She bit her lip so hard I thought it might bleed.
“Can I,” she said, her voice shaking a little, “get either of you ladies something to drink?”
“Ginger ale, please,” Bernie said, very seriously.
“Same,” I said.
Kiara poured two ginger ales. Her hands were trembling. She handed them to us.
Then she leaned down, very close to my ear.
“I didn’t see anything,” she whispered.
“See what?” I said.
She pushed the cart down the aisle. I heard her make a noise about three rows later that sounded a lot like a sneeze. But wasn’t.
About forty minutes after I put the cap back on the bottle of Bubblegum Galaxy, the man woke up.
I heard the snoring stop. I heard him smack his lips. I heard him stretch. A long, satisfied groan.
He pulled his foot off my armrest.
I didn’t turn around. I kept facing forward. I sipped my ginger ale.
Bernie had her phone up in front of her face. Pretending to look at pictures of baby Isaiah. Her shoulders were already shaking.
I heard him close his laptop. I heard him shift around. I heard him stand up.
He stepped out into the aisle.
Barefoot.
He didn’t put his loafers back on. Why would he? He’d been barefoot for two hours. He was just going to the bathroom.
He stretched again. Arms over his head. Watch glinting.
And he started walking toward the back of the plane.
He made it only a few steps.
A passenger across the aisle, a teenage boy in a hoodie with a Mariners cap, was sitting in 24C with his phone in his hands. He glanced up as the man walked past.
He looked at the man’s face.
Then he looked down.
He did a double take.
His mouth fell open.
And then he burst out laughing.
Not a little laugh. A huge, honking, uncontrollable teenage-boy laugh. He doubled over in his seat. He slapped his knee. His phone fell on the floor.
Someone else turned around.
A middle-aged woman in 25D. She looked up from her book to see what was so funny.
She saw the man’s feet.
She gasped. She put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes went huge.
Then another.
A businessman in 26A. An older couple in 26B and C. Two college girls in 27D and E.
One by one, people turned around. One by one, they looked down.
At the man’s right foot.
Bare. On the gray airplane carpet.
With five hot pink glitter toenails, sparkling like a disco ball under the cabin lights.
With a tiny silver unicorn on the big toe.
And a rainbow on the little one.
The laughter spread like a wave.
Row 24. Row 25. Row 26. Row 27.
People were laughing so hard they were crying. The teenage boy in the Mariners cap was making a sound like a seal. One of the college girls was pounding on her tray table. The older woman in 26C was laughing so hard she had to take off her glasses.
Even the flight attendant stopped.
Kiara was standing in the galley at the back of the plane with a coffee pot in her hand. She saw the man coming. She saw his feet.
She set the coffee pot down very carefully. She turned around and faced the wall.
Her shoulders were shaking.
The man frowned.
He’d stopped in the middle of the aisle. He looked around. At all the faces. All the laughing.
“What?” he said.
Nobody answered.
He looked at the teenage boy in the Mariners cap. “What’s so funny?”
The boy couldn’t speak. He just pointed. Down.
The man looked down.
I’ve seen a lot of faces change color in my life.
I’ve seen thirteen-year-old boys turn red when their crush walks into the room. I’ve seen my own face turn red in the bathroom mirror after Doug corrected me in front of his friends. I’ve seen Bernie’s face turn the color of a beet from trying not to laugh.
I’ve never seen anybody turn as red as that man.
It started at his neck. Above the collar of his navy golf-club quarter-zip. A dark, blotchy red. It crawled up his jaw. Across his cheeks. Up to his forehead. All the way to the roots of his expensive salt-and-pepper hair.
He stared down at his right foot.
At five glittering hot pink toenails.
He lifted his foot off the carpet. He held it up in front of his face. He turned it from side to side. The glitter caught the light.
The little silver unicorn winked at him.
The whole back half of the plane went up in another roar of laughter.
Then he spun toward me.
His face was crimson. His eyes were wild. He was still holding his foot up in the air, balancing on one leg in the middle of the aisle like a flamingo.
“What the hell did you do?!”
I set down my ginger ale.
I turned in my seat. I looked up at him. Calmly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“Don’t you play dumb with me!” He pointed at his foot. “You did this! You painted my toenails!”
“Your feet needed to breathe,” I said. “I thought they might like some color too.”
Bernie made a sound like a teakettle.
“This is assault!” he said. “This is… you can’t just… you touched me! While I was asleep! I could have you arrested!”
“You put your bare foot on my armrest,” I said. “Next to my arm. For two hours. After the flight attendant asked you to move it. After I asked you three times.”
“That’s completely different!”
“Is it?” I said.
He opened his mouth. Then closed it.
“You told me it was just a foot,” I said. “You told me I was acting like you put it on my dinner plate. You told me we’re all sharing space.” I shrugged. “So I shared. I had some nail polish. You had some toenails.”
The teenage boy in the Mariners cap applauded.
Kiara came up the aisle. She’d composed herself. Mostly. Her face was very red. Her lips were pressed together very hard.
“Is there a problem, sir?” she asked.
“Yes, there’s a problem! Look what she did!” He held his foot out toward her. “She painted my toenails! While I was sleeping!”
Kiara looked at his foot. She looked at the unicorn.
She took a very deep breath.
“I see,” she said. Her voice wobbled a little. “Sir, earlier in the flight, I asked you to please keep your feet in your own space. Did you keep your feet in your own space?”
He didn’t answer.
“Sir,” Kiara said gently. “Was your foot on this passenger’s armrest while you were sleeping?”
He looked at the armrest. At me. At Bernie.
At all the people in rows 24 through 27, every single one of them staring at him.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“I think,” Kiara said, “it might be a little bit the point.”
“I want it off,” he said. “Right now. Somebody give me nail polish remover.”
He looked around the cabin. “Does anybody have nail polish remover?”
Nobody did.
The college girls in row 27 checked. The older woman in 26C checked. A man three rows up who was clearly wearing eyeliner checked.
Nobody had any.
“Liquids over three ounces,” Kiara said apologetically. “Most people pack it in their checked bags.”
“Then do something! Give me something!”
Kiara thought about it.
“I have some alcohol wipes in the first aid kit,” she said. “They might take some of the glitter off. Maybe. Probably not the pink.”
“Fine! Get them!”
She went to get them.
He stood there in the aisle. Still on one foot. Everybody still staring.
“Sir,” Bernie said from the window seat. Very sweetly. “You might want to put your foot down. You’re blocking the aisle.”
He put his foot down. Slowly. On the gray carpet.
The glitter sparkled.
Somebody in row 28 whistled.
He went back to his seat. He sat down hard. He shoved his feet back into his brown leather loafers. No socks.
Kiara brought him a handful of little foil packets of alcohol wipes. He tore one open. He started scrubbing his big toe. Hard.
Nothing happened.
The quick-dry top coat was doing its job.
He scrubbed harder. The little silver unicorn didn’t budge.
He tore open another wipe. And another.
After about ten minutes, he’d managed to get the rainbow sticker off his little toe and a tiny bit of glitter off the edge of his big toenail.
The rest was perfect.
He threw the wipes on his tray table. He leaned his head back against the seat. He closed his eyes.
He didn’t say anything else for a long time.
And his feet stayed on the floor.
I turned back around and faced forward.
My hands were shaking now. Now that it was over. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
Bernie reached over and took my hand.
“You okay, baby?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
“That,” Bernie said, “was the single greatest thing I’ve ever witnessed on an airplane. And I once saw a woman give birth in the aisle of a flight to Orlando.”
“Really?”
“Twins,” Bernie said. “I delivered ’em. The airline gave me free flights for a year.”
I laughed. It came out shaky.
Bernie squeezed my hand.
“You stood up for yourself,” she said quietly. “Didn’t you? For the first time in a long time.”
I looked at her.
“How did you know?”
“Because when he told you to use your other armrest,” Bernie said, “you flinched. Like somebody had said that to you before. A lot of times.”
I looked down at our hands.
“Eleven years,” I said.
“Mm-hmm.”
“My ex-husband,” I said. “He took up all the space. All of it. And I just kept getting smaller. And I didn’t even notice.”
“And today you noticed,” Bernie said.
“Today I noticed.”
But here’s the thing.
Sitting there in my seat, with Bernie’s hand on mine and the man behind me silent, I didn’t feel the way I thought I would.
I thought I’d feel triumphant. Victorious. Like I’d finally won.
And I did, a little.
But I also felt something else.
I felt a little bit sick.
Because I’d touched a stranger while he was asleep. Without asking. Without permission.
That’s exactly what I was angry at him for.
“Bernie,” I whispered. “Was that wrong? What I did?”
Bernie was quiet for a moment.
“A little,” she said honestly.
I looked at her.
“I’m not gonna lie to you, baby,” Bernie said. “You painted a man’s toenails while he was sleeping. That’s crossing a line. A little line. A glittery pink line. But a line.”
“He crossed a line first.”
“He did,” Bernie said. “A big one. For two hours. After he was asked nicely four times.” She shrugged. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it. Lord knows he did. I’m just saying you know the difference. Between what he deserved and what you’d normally do. That’s why you’re feeling sick right now. That’s your conscience. That’s a good thing to have.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Forty-one years in the ER,” Bernie said. “You know what I learned? Everybody who comes through those doors is somebody’s somebody. Even the drunk who throws up on your shoes. Even the man who swallows his wedding ring.” She patted my hand. “Even the fool with his foot on your armrest.”
I sat with that for a long time.
The plane flew on over Idaho. The sun was going down outside the window. Orange and pink and purple, like the inside of a seashell. Like Bubblegum Galaxy.
About an hour before landing, I heard something behind me.
A sound. Very quiet.
I almost didn’t hear it over the engines.
A sniff.
Then another.
I turned around slowly.
The man in the seat behind me was sitting with his laptop closed and his headphones off. He was looking out the window. At the sunset.
He was crying.
Not loud. Not sobbing. Just quiet tears running down his red face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand like he was angry at them.
He saw me looking.
He looked away fast.
“What,” he said. Gruffly. “Come to finish the job? Paint the other foot?”
“No,” I said.
I didn’t know what else to say.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He laughed. Bitterly. “Do I look okay?”
I didn’t answer.
He looked down at his loafers. At his feet inside them. At the glitter he knew was under there.
“I’m meeting my daughter,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“At baggage claim,” he said. “In Seattle. She’s eight. Her name’s Maddie. I haven’t seen her in four months.” He swallowed. “Her mom moved out here with her in June. After the divorce. This is my first visit.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“I haven’t slept in two days,” he said. “I’ve been so nervous. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know if she’s going to be mad at me. I don’t know if she even wants to see me.” He looked out the window. “I was going to make a good impression. I bought a new outfit. I got a haircut. I was going to be the cool dad from Boston.”
He laughed again. Wet and broken.
“And now I’m going to walk off this plane,” he said, “and the whole flight’s going to be laughing at me, and my kid’s going to see me with pink glitter toenails and a unicorn on my foot.”
I sat there.
I didn’t know what to do.
All the anger I’d had for him, all of it, just drained out of me. Like water out of a sink.
He wasn’t a monster. He was a tired, nervous, divorced dad who hadn’t slept in two days. Who took up too much space because maybe he didn’t know how not to. Who was flying across the country to see his little girl and was terrified she wouldn’t want him.
He was rude. He was gross. He was selfish.
But he was also somebody’s somebody.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked at me.
“I’m sorry about the nail polish,” I said. “That wasn’t okay. I shouldn’t have touched you without asking. That was wrong.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
“You’re apologizing to me?”
“I’m apologizing for the part that was wrong,” I said. “Not for the rest of it. The rest of it, you earned.”
He was quiet.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I did.”
He rubbed his face.
“I’m sorry about my foot,” he said. “On your armrest. That was disgusting. You asked me nicely like four times. I was being a jerk.”
“You were,” Bernie said from the window seat. Without looking up from her phone.
He actually laughed. A real one this time.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
He looked at me.
“My ex-wife used to say I take up too much space,” he said. “In everything. In the bed. On the couch. In conversations. She said I never noticed anybody else was in the room.” He shook his head. “I thought she was being dramatic. I thought it was just an excuse. For leaving.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Maybe she wasn’t,” he said quietly.
His name was Grant.
Grant Whitley. Forty-six. He worked in commercial real estate in Boston. He’d been married for fourteen years to a woman named Rachel. They’d divorced in April. In June, Rachel got a job offer in Seattle and took Maddie with her.
“I fought it,” Grant said. “In court. I didn’t want them to go. But the judge said Rachel had primary custody, and the job was a good opportunity, and I could have Maddie for the summers and every other Christmas.” He swallowed. “I missed the summer. Work. I couldn’t get away. I kept saying next month, next month. And then it was October.”
“So this is the first time in four months.”
“First time.”
“What’s she like?” I asked. “Maddie?”
Grant’s whole face changed.
All the redness and anger and embarrassment went out of it. He smiled. A real smile. Soft.
“She’s amazing,” he said. “She’s funny. She’s so funny. She does impressions. She does this impression of me on the phone with clients that’s honestly devastating.” He laughed. “She loves horses. And slime. And this cartoon about a unicorn who’s a detective.”
I froze.
“A unicorn,” I said.
“Sparkle something. Sparkle Paws? Sparkle Detective? I don’t know. She’s obsessed with it.”
He stopped.
He looked down at his loafers.
“She paints her nails,” he said slowly. “Every day. Rachel lets her use this little kid polish that peels off. And every time I saw her, she’d beg me. Daddy, let me paint your nails. Please, Daddy. Just one. And I always said no.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought it was silly. I thought… I’m a guy. I have client meetings. I can’t walk around with pink fingernails.” He looked down. “She cried once. When I said no. She said, ‘You never let me do anything fun with you.’”
The cabin was very quiet.
Grant looked down at his feet.
“She’s going to lose her mind,” he said softly.
I didn’t say anything.
Bernie didn’t say anything.
Grant just sat there, looking down at his loafers. At the feet he knew were glittering pink underneath.
Then he started to laugh.
Quietly at first. Then louder. Until his shoulders were shaking and his eyes were watering.
“She’s going to lose her mind,” he said again.
The plane landed at Sea-Tac at 7:42 p.m.
When the seatbelt sign turned off, everybody stood up. Grant stood up too. He pulled his carry-on out of the overhead bin.
The teenage boy in the Mariners cap was standing in the aisle right next to him. He looked at Grant. Then at his loafers.
“Dude,” he said. “No offense. But that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Grant looked at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I bet it was.”
“Can I take a picture of your feet?”
“No,” Grant said.
The kid shrugged. “Fair.”
I got my backpack out of the overhead bin. I picked up the purple gift bag from under the seat.
As we filed off the plane, Kiara was standing at the door. Saying goodbye to everybody.
When I got to her, she leaned in close.
“That,” she whispered, “was the best flight of my entire career.”
She squeezed my arm.
Then Grant came up behind me. Kiara looked at him. At his loafers.
“Sir,” she said. “Have a wonderful visit with your daughter.”
Grant stopped.
He looked at her.
“How did you know I’m visiting my daughter?”
Kiara smiled. “You told the whole row about forty minutes ago. You were kind of loud.”
Grant’s face turned red again.
But this time, he laughed.
Bernie and I walked to baggage claim together.
She was going to carousel five. So was I. So was Grant. Everybody from our flight was going to carousel five.
Bernie’s granddaughter was waiting for her. A young woman in her twenties, holding a sign that said GRANDMA BERNIE with hearts all over it.
Bernie hugged her so hard she lifted her off the ground.
“Where’s the raisin?” Bernie demanded.
“In the car with Darnell,” the granddaughter said. “He’s sleeping.”
“Then what are we standing here for? Let’s go!”
Bernie turned to me before she left.
She took my face in both her hands. Her palms were warm and soft and smelled like butterscotch.
“You listen to me, Leah Moreno,” she said. “You take up space. You hear me? You take up all the space you need. On airplanes. On couches. In beds. In conversations. You don’t use the other armrest ever again.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She kissed my forehead. Then she was gone.
My bag was one of the last to come out.
I was standing at carousel five, waiting, when I heard it.
A little girl’s voice. High and loud and excited.
“DADDY!”
I turned around.
A little girl was running across baggage claim. Eight years old. Wild curly brown hair in two pigtails. A purple sweatshirt with a cartoon unicorn on it wearing a detective hat. Pink sneakers that lit up when she ran.
She was running toward Grant.
Grant dropped his carry-on. He knelt down on the dirty airport floor.
She slammed into him so hard they both almost fell over.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you came, you’re here, you came!”
“I came, Maddie,” Grant said. His voice was breaking. “I’m here. I’m so sorry it took me so long, baby. I’m so sorry.”
He held her. Right there on the floor of baggage claim. With his face buried in her curly hair.
A woman walked up behind them. Late thirties. Dark hair. A tired, cautious face. Rachel, I guessed. She stood a few feet away with her arms crossed. Watching.
Her face softened a little when she saw Grant crying.
Maddie pulled back. She looked at her dad’s face. At the tears.
“Daddy, why are you crying?”
“Because I missed you,” Grant said. “So much.”
“I missed you too.” She grabbed his hands. She looked at his fingernails. Plain. Short. Clean.
She frowned. “Daddy, can I paint your nails? Mommy let me get new polish. It’s purple. It’s got sparkles. Please?”
I watched Grant’s face.
I watched him think about it.
I watched him look down at his loafers.
Then he looked up. Across baggage claim. At me. Standing by carousel five with my backpack and my purple gift bag.
He smiled.
“Maddie,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
He sat down on the floor.
Right there in the middle of baggage claim at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In his navy golf-club quarter-zip and his expensive watch.
He took off his right loafer.
Maddie looked at his foot.
At five glittering, hot pink, Bubblegum Galaxy toenails. Sparkling under the fluorescent airport lights. With a little silver star on the second toe. A heart on the third. A star on the fourth.
And on the big toe, a tiny silver unicorn.
Maddie stopped breathing.
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes got huge.
She put both hands on her cheeks.
“DADDY,” she screamed. “YOU HAVE UNICORN TOES!”
The whole carousel turned around.
Grant laughed. He laughed so hard he had to put his hand on the floor to keep from falling over.
“I do,” he said. “I have unicorn toes.”
“Who did it? Did you do it? Did you paint them yourself?”
“No,” Grant said. “A lady on the airplane did it.”
“Why?”
Grant looked at me again.
“Because I was being rude,” he said. “I put my stinky foot where it didn’t belong. And she taught me a lesson.”
Maddie looked at the toes very seriously.
“It’s a good lesson,” she said.
“It’s a very good lesson,” Grant agreed.
Behind them, Rachel had put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.
I think it was both.
Maddie looked up. She followed her dad’s eyes across baggage claim.
To me.
She pointed.
“Is that her? The lady?”
Grant nodded.
Maddie let go of her dad’s hands. She walked across baggage claim. Her light-up sneakers blinking pink with every step.
She stopped in front of me.
She looked up at me. Very serious.
“Did you paint my daddy’s toes?”
I knelt down so I was eye level with her.
“I did,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? They’re so pretty.”
“I’m sorry because I did it while he was sleeping,” I said. “Without asking. That’s not a nice thing to do to somebody. You should always ask first.”
Maddie thought about that.
“Okay,” she said. “But he was being rude?”
“He was being rude.”
“So it was kind of fair?”
I thought about Bernie. A little line. A glittery pink line.
“Kind of,” I said. “Kind of fair. But next time, I’ll try to find a better way.”
Maddie nodded like that made perfect sense.
Then she looked at the purple gift bag in my hand. At the tissue paper sticking out the top.
“What’s in there?”
I looked at the bag.
Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe. Six little bottles. Five of them full. One of them, the pink one, a little lighter than it was this morning.
Sophie’s birthday present.
I thought about Sophie. Ten years old. In her little blue house in Ballard. Waiting for her aunt to arrive with the nail polish she’d been begging for all year.
Then I looked at Maddie. Eight years old. In her unicorn detective sweatshirt. Who’d been begging her dad to let her paint his nails since she was old enough to hold a brush.
Who’d cried once, because he said no.
You never let me do anything fun with you.
I reached into the bag.
I took out the little bottle of Bubblegum Galaxy.
I held it out to her.
“This is the one I used,” I said. “On your daddy’s toes. Do you want it?”
Maddie gasped.
“For real?”
“For real.”
“But it’s in a present bag. Isn’t it for somebody?”
“It’s for my niece,” I said. “But she’s getting five other colors. I think she’ll be okay without this one.” I put the bottle in her small hand. “Your daddy’s toes match this one. So you can touch them up when they start to chip.”
Maddie stared at the bottle. Then at me.
Then she threw her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She ran back to her dad. She held the bottle up over her head like a trophy.
“Daddy! Daddy! She gave it to me! Can I paint your other foot? Can I? Please?”
Grant looked at her.
He looked at the bottle.
He looked at Rachel, standing behind him, wiping her eyes.
Then he took off his other loafer.
He held out his left foot. Bare. Unpainted.
“Go for it, kiddo,” he said.
Maddie screamed with joy.
She sat down cross-legged on the floor of baggage claim. She unscrewed the cap. Her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth in concentration.
And she started to paint her father’s toenails.
Badly. Messily. Way outside the lines. Glitter all over his knuckles. A big pink blob on the side of his foot.
Grant didn’t care.
He sat there on the dirty airport floor with his pants rolled up and his feet in his daughter’s lap, laughing, while people stepped around them with their suitcases.
Rachel sat down next to them.
After a minute, she reached over and held Grant’s hand. Just for a second. Then she let go.
But she sat there.
I picked up my suitcase off the carousel.
I walked out the sliding doors into the cool Seattle night. It was raining a little. Of course it was. It’s Seattle.
My sister Gabi was pulling up to the curb in her old green Subaru. Sophie and Mateo were in the back seat. They saw me and started waving and screaming.
I got in the car.
“Aunt Leah! Aunt Leah! Did you bring it? Did you bring the nail polish?”
“I brought it,” I said. I handed Sophie the purple gift bag.
She tore through the tissue paper. She opened the box.
She frowned.
“There’s only five,” she said. “It says six on the box.”
“I know,” I said. “I gave one away.”
“Why?”
I looked out the back window of the Subaru as we pulled away from the curb. Through the glass doors of baggage claim. I could still see them. A man in an expensive watch sitting on the dirty floor. A little girl in a unicorn sweatshirt bent over his feet with a tiny brush. A woman sitting next to them, laughing.
“Because somebody needed it more than you,” I said.
I told them the whole story at dinner.
Gabi laughed so hard she cried into her lasagna. Her husband, Theo, had to leave the table. Mateo didn’t really understand, but he laughed because everybody else was laughing. Sophie wanted to know if the unicorn sticker stayed on.
“It stayed on,” I said.
“Can you put one on my toe?”
“After dinner.”
After dinner, I sat on the living room floor with Sophie’s feet in my lap. And I painted her toenails. Purple. Grape Starlight. With a tiny silver unicorn on each big toe.
Gabi sat on the couch and watched us.
When I was done, Sophie ran off to show her dad. Mateo followed her, demanding his own unicorn.
Gabi slid down off the couch and sat next to me on the floor.
“You seem different,” she said.
“Different how?”
She thought about it.
“Bigger,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Not like that,” she said, laughing. “Not your body. You. You seem bigger. Like you’re taking up more room. You used to sit like this.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Tight. Small. “Every time I saw you. With Doug. You sat like this.”
I looked down at myself.
I was sitting cross-legged on her living room floor. Arms out. Leaning back on my hands. Taking up space.
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“I did,” Gabi said quietly. “For eleven years, I noticed. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
I flew home five days later.
I booked an aisle seat. I’d never booked an aisle seat before. Doug always took the aisle. I always took the middle.
I sat in 14C with both arms on both armrests.
The man in 14B looked at me. Then at my elbow on the armrest between us.
He moved his arm to his lap.
I didn’t apologize.
I smiled at him. “Thank you,” I said.
He smiled back.
That was it. That was all it took. I’d spent eleven years thinking it would be a fight. It was just a smile.
A few weeks later, I got an email.
At my school email address. I don’t know how he found it. Probably Google. Leah Moreno, art teacher, Somerville. I’m on the school website.
The subject line said: Unicorn toes.
There was a photo attached.
A man’s feet. On a soft blue rug. Ten toenails. All painted.
Not Bubblegum Galaxy. Every one a different color. Purple. Green. Gold. Orange. Blue. Messy. Way outside the lines. With stickers. Stars and hearts and moons. And a little silver unicorn on each big toe.
Underneath, he’d written:
Leah —
Maddie paints them every time I visit now. Every two weeks. I fly out on Fridays and she’s waiting at baggage claim with her nail polish kit. She says it’s our tradition.
I’ve had a client ask about them twice. I tell them the truth. My daughter did it. They usually laugh. One of them showed me pictures of his own kid’s handprint paintings on his office wall.
Rachel and I are doing better. Not back together. Just better. Better at sharing space, I guess. She says I’ve changed. She says I listen more. She says I notice people now.
I started taking the middle seat on flights. On purpose. To remind myself.
I keep my feet on the floor.
I wanted to say thank you. For the lesson. Even the part that crossed a line. Maybe especially that part. It was the first time in my life anybody made me feel what it’s like when somebody takes up your space without asking.
I didn’t like it.
I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
— Grant
P.S. Maddie says to tell you the unicorn detective solved a new case. It was about a missing sparkle. She says you’ll understand.
I printed the photo.
I took it to school.
I pinned it to the bulletin board in my art room, right next to the window, where the light comes in.
My eighth graders saw it the next morning. They wanted to know whose feet those were.
So I told them.
All of it. The armrest. The foot. Use your other armrest. Bernie. Bubblegum Galaxy. Baggage claim. Maddie on the floor with her tongue sticking out.
They laughed so hard the principal came down the hall to check on us.
When they finally calmed down, a girl in the back raised her hand.
Tamika.
She’s in eighth grade now. Taller. More confident. She’d joined the art club in the spring.
“Ms. Moreno,” she said. “Was that okay? What you did? Painting his toes without asking?”
The whole room got quiet.
I thought about it.
“No,” I said honestly. “Not completely. I crossed a line. A little one. A glittery pink one. But a line.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Because he’d crossed a bigger line first,” I said. “Over and over. And I’d spent a lot of years letting people cross my lines without ever saying anything. And I think, for the first time, I wanted somebody to know what that felt like.”
Tamika thought about that.
“So it was kind of fair,” she said.
I smiled. Maddie had said the exact same thing.
“Kind of fair,” I said. “But here’s the real lesson. The part that matters.”
I went to the whiteboard. I picked up a marker.
I drew a long line. Like a row of airplane seats.
Then I drew two little stick figures sitting side by side.
Then, between them, an armrest.
“Everybody gets their own armrest,” I said. “Everybody. You don’t take somebody else’s. And you don’t give yours away.”
I turned around.
“Some of you take up too much space,” I said. “You talk over people. You put your stuff everywhere. You don’t notice there’s anybody else in the room. You need to learn to keep your feet on the floor.”
A couple of boys in the front looked at each other guiltily.
“And some of you,” I said, looking at Tamika, “don’t take up enough. You make yourselves small. You sit in the corner. You draw yourself in the bottom of the page. You let other people put their feet on your armrest because you think you’re not allowed to say anything.”
Tamika looked down at her desk.
“You’re allowed to say something,” I said quietly. “You’re allowed to say, move your foot. As many times as it takes. And if they don’t listen, you’re allowed to get creative.”
The whole class laughed.
Tamika looked up.
She was smiling.
That afternoon, Tamika handed in a new self-portrait.
It was the first project of the year. The same assignment I give every September. Draw yourself.
Last year, she’d drawn herself very, very small, in the bottom corner of a huge empty page. This is me. I don’t take up much room.
This year, she’d drawn herself huge.
Filling the whole page. Edge to edge. Arms stretched out wide. Standing tall. In a purple sweatshirt.
And at the bottom, in her careful handwriting:
This is me. I take up as much room as I need.
And on her toes, colored in with pink glitter gel pen, she’d drawn tiny silver unicorns.
I still have one bottle of Bubblegum Galaxy.
I bought it at the CVS in Somerville the week I got home. Twenty-four ninety-nine for the whole kit. I gave the other five bottles to the art room for a project.
I kept the pink one.
It sits on the windowsill of my apartment, next to a little plant and a photo of Bernie holding her great-grandson Isaiah. She texts me every few weeks. Pictures of the raisin. He’s not a raisin anymore. He’s fat and bald and laughing.
Sometimes I paint my own toenails with Bubblegum Galaxy. On Sunday nights. Sitting on my couch with my feet up on the coffee table.
My couch. My coffee table. My feet.
I take up the whole couch now.
Both armrests.
And when I’m done, I put a tiny silver unicorn sticker on my big toe.
Just to remind myself.
That there’s a difference between taking somebody else’s space and taking your own.
That you can say move your foot as many times as it takes.
And that sometimes, the person who crosses your line is just a tired, nervous dad who’s never noticed anybody else was in the room.
Until somebody makes him look down.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.