The Secrets of Flight (20 page)

“Okay, you guys. Shut up,” Holden said, but he was smiling when he said it.

“Watch it!” Rob Parker said, lunging for the flour. I watched
as the lacrosse player tipped the bag before it hit the floor in an explosion of flour. “Fumble!” the blond guy yelled, and even Holden was laughing. When I turned and ran, he didn't even call after me.

A
FTER SCHOOL,
I
WAS JUST GETTING BACK FROM THE BUS STOP
when a horn honked from a BMW turning around in our driveway. It was Dr. Khaira, leaving, and I waved back, wondering if he'd been looking for my dad, wondering if Mom considered him part of “the community” or if he was allowed to know the truth about the divorce.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, after rolling down his window.

“Hey,” I said, hiking the strap of my backpack up on my shoulder. And then, because he looked so very sorry, I asked, “Is everything okay?”

He shook his head. “I think you better go inside.”

I
DUMPED MY BOOKS AND SHOES IN THE MUDROOM AND WALKED
into the kitchen, which was empty except for the same breakfast dishes crusting in the sink from this morning. In the family room, Toby and Huggie were watching
SpongeBob SquarePants
, and Huggie was already in his Batman pajamas, even though it was only four o'clock.

“Where's Mom?” I asked.

“Upstairs talking on the phone. Grandma died,” Toby added, glancing away from the TV.

“No, she didn't,” I snapped.

“Ray called. He said she was ‘septic.' That's like an infection in your blood that kills you. Ask Mom,” Toby said, since I
was just standing there, slack-jawed, while SpongeBob danced around celebrating dental hygiene.

“But I just saw Grandma. I saw her
four days ago
. She was fine.”

“Ask Mom,” Toby said again, before turning back to the TV.

Upstairs, Mom was in her bedroom, so deep in conversation with Rabbi Horowitz that she didn't notice me until I stood next to her, flapping my arms. “Five minutes,” she mouthed, covering up the mouthpiece. I listened for a second but as soon as I heard her talking about “flying Margot's body back to Pittsburgh,” my heart switched from beating to vibrating, and it was suddenly hard to take a deep breath.

“I know, I know—
shocking
,” she said. “We didn't even know she was sick.”

No,
you
didn't know
, I thought.
Maybe if you'd listened, she'd still be alive.
“Clueless,” I hissed, my voice trembling with sudden rage and something else—panic, maybe. Panic that Grandma could be gone just like that, as if her life meant nothing at all. But Mom just furrowed her eyebrows at me and shooed me from the room.

Across the hall, my dolls and stuffed animals and pink rug looked like relics from another era of me. I wanted to call Thea and tell her the impossible news that Grandma was dead but I couldn't call Thea, because Thea wasn't speaking to me. I wanted to tell Daddy, but I couldn't tell Daddy when he wasn't even living here anymore. I even wanted to call Grandma and tell her, but then I remembered and started to cry. Had I actually sat here last night, drawing a new mouth on a
sack of flour
—which only made its smile more misshapen and slightly
evil—imagining myself as Holden's girlfriend, when a deadly infection was multiplying in Grandma's blood? I was the clueless one.

Ten minutes later, Mom was still on the phone when I walked past her room again, my eyes raw and my head still swimmy with tears. “Devastated,” I heard her say, which made me want to hurl a toothpick bridge at the wall just to watch it shatter, until I remembered I hadn't even built one. My limbs were still twitchy with dread, as if they were conducting electricity. Thumping back down the steps, I accidentally knocked over Huggie's Lego tower in the process, which wasn't the shatter I was going for, thanks to the carpet on the landing. Gently, I scooted the remains out of the way with my foot and then kept going to the mudroom, where I emptied everything from my backpack except for the toothpicks and slipped my arms through both shoulder straps.

In the garage, I untangled my bike from the rack and considered my helmet for half a second before snapping the chinstrap in place with a sigh of self-loathing. What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn't even run away without taking basic safety precautions?
Charles Darwin applauds you
, Grandma said in my mind, which made my throat tighten when I thought of how, from now on, Grandma's voice was just a construction of my imagination.

In the windows facing the driveway, I could see Huggie leaning his head on Toby's arm, as they shared a bowl of microwave popcorn in the blue glow of the TV. For a second, it was hard to pedal away, especially when I realized it was thirty-two degrees, and all I had on was a sweatshirt. But eventually Mom would be looking for me, and scaring her to death, even briefly,
was a satisfying thought. Besides, there was only one person I could think of who would know how to build a bridge out of toothpicks. Unfortunately, I kind of wanted to kill him, too.

D
ADDY ANSWERED THE DOOR AT HIS NEW APARTMENT LOOKING
bedraggled in a T-shirt and jeans. His mouth gaped for a second but he immediately pulled me into a hug and asked, “Elyse, are you all right?” He must've seen that my nose was red, my eyes were puffy, and that my teeth were chattering after riding five miles to his place. My helmet was still dangling from my fingers, and I resisted the urge to slug him with it. “I'm sorry about Grandma,” Daddy said, his chin in my hair. “I loved Margot, too. The whole thing is kind of a shock. I'm so sorry she's gone.”

“I'm so sorry you
left
,” I snapped, startling myself, which made him step back, as if struck by a power line. “I mean, I get that Mom's annoying. But what about me? What about Toby and Huggie? You didn't even say good-bye!”

“I'm sorry,” Daddy said, sounding more bewildered then apologetic.

“How could you just leave?”

“It's kind of hard to explain. Even to myself.” He sighed. “Does your mother know you're here?”

I nodded, even though I hadn't even received so much as a frantic text yet. “I need help with my physics project,” I added, almost belligerently.

“Sure, sure. Let me just straighten up a few things.” He turned and walked into the bedroom, while I set my helmet down on one of the chairs and glanced around. He had a nice view of the Allegheny River, where the red and gold trees were
reflecting across the water in the setting sun. The place was compact. The kitchen island was a quarter of the size of the one we have at home, but instead of the clutter of school papers and mail there was only a single pen, decorated with the letters of a drug company. I picked it up and studied the letters for a moment in my palm:
Pfizer
, they spelled. I thought of Natalia, the Viagra rep “who was almost my mother.”

"Elyse?” Dad called from his bedroom. “Have you eaten?”

“No,” I said, following the sound of his voice down the hall. He was just finishing making the bed, and the room was mostly neat except on the floor was an open duffel bag.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, tossing the last pillow by the headboard, and I shrugged, too afraid that if I mentioned the women's silk pajamas hanging out of the bag, I might start screaming. “Well, I am,” he said. “Let's get a pizza.”

I waited until we were back in the kitchen and Daddy had hung up the phone with the restaurant to ask, “What's the deal with Natalia? Is she your girlfriend now?” It was scary: my voice sounded almost like Mom's.

“I—it's complicated.” He faltered. “I'm not moving to California. And she lost her first husband to pancreatic cancer. She thinks she'd be stupid to date a guy with the same thing.”

I felt my eyes get big. “Wait—the cancer's back?”

“No, no, no. You just . . . never know in life.”

There was something so depressing about the way he said it, like he'd fully resigned himself to the eventuality of death and the notion of never seeing me again. I didn't mean to start crying again, but I couldn't help it. When Daddy wrapped his arms around me, I let him, thinking that one day even this moment would be a memory, which made my face feel like a
sponge, wringing water all over his T-shirt. I wished I could go back in time to when my parents laughed at each other's jokes, and Daddy could swing Huggie onto his shoulders and still have a hand for each of us, or back to last weekend when Grandma and I were cracking up outside the hospital, or even back to yesterday when I stood on the edge of the lawn in the wind and watched the leaves floating down all around me and knew that Holden wanted me, too.

“Remember Noah?” I suddenly said, wiping my snotty face with my hand, and Daddy's pupils kind of dilated. “My twin who died?”

“I—don't remember telling you his name.”

“Well, you did.” My voice was wobbling again. “Sometimes I wish he'd lived, so if anyone treated me like shit, Noah could kick his ass.” I didn't mean to swear in front of Daddy; it came out before I even realized I'd said it.

“Elyse,” Daddy finally said, his voice cautious and grave, “whose ass do I have to kick?”

“Nobody.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I just want things to be different.”

“Me, too.” His shoulders sagged. “I'm sorry I left without saying goodbye.”

L
ATER, WE WERE SITTING AT THE BAR IN THE KITCHEN EATING
pizza when he asked me about the physics project.

“I have to build a bridge. Out of toothpicks. Here's what I have so far,” I said, reaching into my backpack to pull out ten boxes of toothpicks, which I carefully stacked on the table in a neat little tower, next to my water glass. “It's due tomorrow,” I added, blotting my pizza with a paper towel.

Daddy looked at the boxes of toothpicks and looked at me. Then he started to laugh, and laugh, until his eyes were tearing. His giddy disbelief made me smile, even though I hadn't planned on smiling at him ever again. Since he was handling the news pretty well, I figured I might as well take out the drawing of the bridge that I'd been imagining all along, the one that couldn't possibly be constructed. “Here's what I had wanted to build,” I said, handing him the picture, complete with five arches and crisscrossing cables and a separate, parallel foot path. “But I think we're going to have to come up with something a lot easier.”

Daddy sobered up, as he inspected my drawing. “It's beautiful,” he said, and when he looked up at me, there was excitement in his eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time. “This is the one we should make.”

“But it has to hold thirty pounds.”

“This is the one we should make,” he said again, tapping the picture, and I gave him a watery smile, imagining myself walking into Physics the way that Grandma had walked into the interventional radiology room to meet the cold steel table—chin up, back straight—and with my bridge, soaring.

1945

I
n the beginning, he sent updates every few weeks—student housing was depressing, the subway system confusing, his coursework daunting, and he missed me, missed me, missed me—but either Sol's overwhelming schedule or my complete silence have made his letters fewer and farther between. I focus on flight instead and the growing anticipation of where my orders might send me after October's graduation. There are one hundred and twenty possible air bases I might be stationed at—one hundred and twenty places to forget Solomon Rubinowicz.

In late August and September of 1944, I make two solo cross-country flights, the first from Texas to Delaware in the PT-19, the open-cockpit, wooden plane covered in fabric that we initially trained on, and the second at night, a round-trip from Texas to New York in the AT-6. There is something about
hovering over the earth at 208 miles per hour in the dark that makes every thought disappear except the single question:
What does the plane want?
I feel myself becoming one with the craft, anticipating every rattle in the engine, every dip and spike of the instrument panel, every light in the distance, every cloud in the sky. The constant alertness and repetitive adjustments to stay aloft become almost meditative, so that the sound of the engine is no longer deafening, and the vibrations of the plane nothing more than a hum.

In October, we are commended for being safe and dependable pilots who fly “the army way” and honored at graduation with our silver wings. We receive our orders with a caveat: in light of the imminent disbanding of the Women Airforce Service in another two months, it's okay to leave now; we've already done a great service to our country. Not one of us, not even Vera Skeert, considers going home early.

I end up in San Diego, where I spend the next two months test-piloting B-26 bombers, massive, twin-engine aircraft that come back from the Pacific in pieces. Crews patch up the steel fuselage, riddled with gaping holes, overhaul the engine and repair the landing gear, and then leave it to our all-women crew to fly the beasts to make sure they really work. Each time we land at a new army base to deliver “the Flying Coffin,” we are met with bewilderment from our male counterparts, who seem shocked that we can handle two thousand tons of steel in the air—or even, where it's most crucial, on the landing, where many pilots have stalled out and crashed. Or maybe they just can't get over the pants. (“You girls should be in skirts,” says a cadet, embarrassed to have accidentally called me “sir” until I
removed my helmet. “You try strapping on a parachute over a skirt,” I say.)

The Soviet Union has invaded Germany, and the United States has landed in Iwo Jima, and soon the soldiers—including Grace's Teddy, if he can just hang on—will be coming back home. We fly back to attend the final graduation of the last class of women pilots, which takes place on a bright, cold day in December. Sitting in a row between Murph, who's been towing targets at Camp Davis, and Grace, who's been ferrying planes from Andrews Air Force Base, I glance at the rows upon rows of uniformed women pilots and can't believe it's all coming to an end.

“Listen up, ladies,” Grace says in a whisper. “You're all invited to the wedding next summer.”

“We'll be there with bells on,” Murphee says.

“I hope Teddy has some single friends,” Ana says with a grin, leaning forward on the other side of Murph.

“If I take a train from Baltimore, would anyone be able to pick me up in Des Moines?” Vera asks, her voice doubtful. “Otherwise I'll have to look for a bus from the train station, and if the church isn't close to the reception—”

“Can we worry about the logistics later, Vera?” Murphee asks.

“Invite Sol,” Grace quietly urges me. “I know that he'll change his mind. You were meant for each other.”

At the mention of his name, my face heats up. I never told Grace I was the one who broke it off and certainly not the reason why. “He can't think about marriage; he has to focus on medical school,” I said, because to admit more would betray
him and all that was at stake for his future. Besides, I couldn't imagine she'd really understand his dilemma, although maybe I should've given her more credit. After all, we were, each and every one of us, about to get our dreams snatched away forever.

Moments later General Arnold takes to the podium, and we crane our necks to see him, a white-haired man, with rounded cheeks and a well-decorated uniform. After giving us a history of how the WASPs came to be, he congratulates all of us for our hard work, for the service we've done. Nevertheless, we've completed our mission, and the Women Airforce Service is officially over.

That night, we go out to dinner at the Blue Bonnet and secretly spike our sodas and toast the rest of our lives. Afterward, when the cattle wagon never arrives to bring us back to base, we stumble through the empty streets of Sweetwater on foot, our arms slung over each other's shoulders, our breaths clinging to the chilly air. Leaning on Grace, I look up at the sky and wish I weren't fuzzy with rum, because I need to memorize these constellations before I never see them again.

“I feel like we're being kicked out,” Ana says, on my other side.

“That's because we are,” Murph says, slurring slightly. “You heard General Arnold. ‘Each and every one of you is ordered to leave the premises by December twentieth.'”

“Everything we've been through, and everything we've risked has been for nothing,” Vera mutters.

“Not for nothing,” Grace says. “The men were always going to come home one day.”

“I just really thought—we'd proved something,” I say.

“We did, damn it,” Murph says, sending the line of us off-kilter when she lurches forward.

“I hate goodbyes,” Ana says, with a strange, barking sound, and when I look over I realize she's not laughing at all, but crying. And then we're all hugging each other in the road and promising to keep in touch forever, promising we'll never forget what we did, even if everyone else does.

Three days later, we're scattered back to our old lives: Murphee Sutherland back to waiting tables in New Jersey, Ana Santos back to painting still lifes in Chicago, Vera Skeert back to training for the opera in Baltimore, and Grace Davinport back to Iowa, to finish planning her wedding.

I land at the Sixth Ferrying Service Detachment in Pittsburgh, realizing as the wheels of my plane touch down that this is it—the AT-6 may go up again but not with a woman in the cockpit, and certainly not with me. Still reeling, I get a ride from the airport to the looming TB sanatorium on Leech Farm Road. Except that it's closed to visitors when I arrive, and Sarah's nurse sends me away until tomorrow. So I take the trolley back to Squirrel Hill and then walk to Beacon Street from Forbes Avenue. Still wearing my dress blue uniform, I catch smiles and waves from neighbors shoveling snow and children playing hockey on the icy streets, which makes me grin and wave back, despite the ache of loss inside me. Never have I felt so American and simultaneously betrayed. How could the lobbyists have rallied against us? Why couldn't General Arnold have done more to make us part of the military?

I've been home for all of ten minutes, sitting in the kitchen with Mama as she kneads the challah, when she tells me that
she's glad I'm back, because they desperately need another seamstress in Uncle Hyman's shop.

“I can't replace Sarah,” I say, glancing through the window at the gaggle of blond children playing in the alley. Is it possible that in the ten months since I've been gone the family next door has added more children to their impossibly large brood? They're everywhere, laughing and screaming and swinging their hockey sticks. “I'm terrible with sewing.”

“If you can be taught to fly, you can be taught to sew.” Mama's hands move quickly over the dough, pushing, pulling, and pounding.

“Maybe there's something else I can do to earn money . . . something at the airport . . .” Even as I'm saying the words, I can't really imagine it. What would I do—become a Pan Am stewardess after I've flown a B-26 bomber? And besides, I'd have to become certified as a registered nurse first, which means more school.

“Miriam, your flying days are over,” Mama says, and the words feel sharp and heavy in my chest.

My niece bursts in through the back door then and stops short when she notices me at the kitchen table. “Come in and get warm, Rita. Take off your coat. Not on the chair; put it on the hook. And say hello to your aunt,” Mama says, as my niece paces through her orders, never taking her big brown eyes off of me.

“Hi, Aunt Miri.” She comes to stand in front of me, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Rita has dark braids and eyes and though her wrists look like twigs you could snap, I can tell she's strong and scrappy. “Do you like flying planes?” she asks, and I nod. “Are you ever afraid of falling from the sky?”

“Never,” I say automatically, and she smiles. “Was that you outside, playing street hockey in the alley?” I add, pinching her cheek, still pink from the cold.

Rita grins and tells me she just likes to watch the big kids. “Want to come upstairs and see my doll?” she adds, tugging on my arm.

“I would love to see your doll,” I say, letting her pull me to a stand.

“It was her mother's.” Mama's voice is terse as she washes the flour off her fingers.

“Her name wouldn't happen to be Caroline?” I ask, and Rita gasps in surprise.

“Take off that uniform,” Mama says at my back, and I exhale. “You're home now.”

U
NPACKING MY DUFFEL IN MY ROOM,
I
FEEL AS IF
I
AM COMING
back from another planet and touching earthly objects once again. The carpet is pinker than I remember, the painting of a little girl dressing her doll over the bed childish and quaint. How is it possible that I left only ten months ago, when everything feels so different? The first thing I do is take a bath, and afterward I stare at myself from many angles in the mirror, wondering if my future has already been written or if someday, sometime, I might bloom again. Without flying and without Sol, it doesn't seem possible, which is probably why, an hour later when I am across the dinner table from Cousin Tzadok, and he is smiling at me with kind brown eyes and saying with his thick German accent, “Welcome home, Little Bird,” I remember how he drove me all the way to Indian Town Gap and think,
Maybe I could love you
.

Despite Mama's orders to hang up my uniform forever, I wear it the following day when I go to visit Sarah alone. Outside, sycamore trees extend their leafless branches over the sidewalk that leads to a hulking brick building. Treading carefully on the ice, I think,
Well, isn't this collegiate?
Inside the building, where the patients and nurses whisper in the corridors rather than speak, I pretend that this is actually a library, or a convent—anything but a TB sanatorium.

At the end of a sea-foam-green hallway, I find Sarah lying in bed, propped up on two pillows, wearing a white nightgown. The room is empty except for her bed, a desk with a washbasin, and a chest of drawers. At least the tall windows still manage to fill the room with light.

“You're back! Oh, Miri, you're back,” Sarah says, and I'm startled by her hazel eyes, how big and hollow they are, but on her lovely face is the same wide smile.

“I'm back,” I say miserably.

“What
happened
? Mama said the women's airforce disbanded,” Sarah says, and I love her for exactly this: thinking of me right now when we should only be worrying about her.

“It's over,” I say, shaking my head. “They don't need us anymore.”

“But what about the petitions to Congress?”

“The men lobbied against us. They didn't even let Jackie Cochran speak at the hearing. General Arnold did all he could but . . .” I shake my head. “He had to go fight a real war.”

“Oh, Miri, I'm so sorry. I loved your letters. I reread them again and again. It made me happy to know you were out there living, while I've been stuck in here. Is that all for me?” Sarah adds, nodding at the clutch of books and cards and papers—all
the news of the outside world—in my hands. I awkwardly hold out newspapers from Mama, and the cards Rita made out of construction paper, which makes Sarah's eyes well with tears when she opens them.

“Oh, I miss her. You can't understand how it's killing me to be here,” she says, and it's true, I don't entirely understand, but the evening before when I hugged Rita, and she touched the buttons on my blazer and beamed up at me, I felt a surge of longing that wasn't for the sky.

“Well, at least you've got a nice view,” I say instead, nodding at the huge windows facing the street and the snow-covered lawn.

“Don't,” Sarah orders, which makes me look away from the window and stare at her. “Don't pretend it isn't horrible.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, pulling up a chair by the bed. I want to reach for her hand, but I'm still afraid. Mama told me she'd been coughing up blood the day they took her away.

“All I can do is lie here, or sit up and read. This week I'm allowed to wash and sit up for an hour. Last week, they collapsed my lung, to give it some rest, and I had to take all my meals in bed. I look for you in the sky, though,” she confesses with a sheepish smile. “Whenever I see a plane, I imagine you're the one flying it.” She shifts in bed, her hand moving up to her lower ribs. “Tell me about Sol, Miri. I never understood why it ended between you two just because he left for New York.”

I let go of the breath I've been holding since touching down in Pittsburgh. “He changed his name to get into medical school.”

Sarah's eyebrows knit together, and at first I think she didn't hear me.