by Patty Dann
Should we have handled the finances differently with Reuchlin? I know he was not comfortable with the $50,000 he inherited from Wilbur in 1912. He always believed that because he had not helped with the invention then he should not receive any monetary gain. Reuchlin always said he did not want charity. When you come to visit, we could visit his grave. You know he’s buried not far from here. I have visited a few times and left flowers, but I should go more often. When I die, I would like to be scattered from an aeroplane. Does that sound too modern? Some of the flappers I’ve met talk about all sorts of ways they want to be buried. One woman I read about in the Star was said to be buried with her goldfinches! Would you like to be buried with birds? I can’t bear to think of you being buried at all. I need to be near you, I think in Dayton, in our family plot.
Forgive my mood today, but sometimes I am overtaken with emotions. Perhaps it is all this activity I am having with Harry. I recommend it though, I do, Orville—yes, even at our age. Do I shock you? In Ohio I feel women were making so much progress. I was so excited about the prospect of sitting on a jury. And here in Missouri we do not have that right. I wish I could go home for that. I fear I will never be a true citizen of Missouri. Did you know it’s called the “Show Me State”? I imagine you do, because you know the names of everything, but do you know why? In 1899, Representative Willard D. Vandiver said, “Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You’ve got to show me.” Of course, though it did not secede, it was also a slave state. We must never forget that.
Yours truly,
Your sister, a proud suffragist
September 1, 1927
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS’ MOTHER
The sky today was perfect for flying—no clouds and, of course, a breeze, but not too much, and I had the desire to leap into a plane and fly back to teaching Latin to those high school girls. I would say they helped shape my world as much as Oberlin. I loved when there were winter breaks on sunny days, when the headmistress blew her whistle and we would all, teachers and students, burst out into the snow. We teachers tried to be grown-up, but we would play hide-and-seek with the girls, crouching behind the big sugar maples in our long dark skirts and coats against the white, white snow. We would all grab the wooden toboggans leaned up at the side of the chapel for the girls to hurl down the snowy hill. Many nights after sledding, I’d fall into my cold sheets and listen to the clatter of deer hooves on the steps of the back porch. And when I missed Mother, I would take out my copy of Little Women that she read to me when I was young.
Our mother was born in 1831 in Virginia and then moved with her family to Union County, Indiana, the following year, and she studied literature at Hartsville College. I know she wanted to be more than a wife and mother. She was an educated woman. I never had time to ask if she had suitors other than the Reverend. People say her skill with a hammer and nail and all things mechanical came from her father. She did say he let her work in his shop, side by side as if she were a boy.
But what I really want to ask is “Mother dearest, how did the Reverend, your husband, treat you? Did you enjoy your lovemaking with him?” but of course I never did and shall never know. But what does echo and prove to be so true is what she told me once, when she was braiding my hair on the kitchen steps. It was late March. The geese were honking as they returned after their winter travels.
“Katharine Wright,” she said, yanking on my hair, “some of the best ideas are the simplest. Remember that.”
Mother treated me like the inventor I was, even from a time now long ago. One winter day a man came to interview me after classes. He had waited for me all day, lurking outside the schoolyard, and when I finished my last Latin lesson, there he was at the classroom door.
“Are you the Wright brothers’ sister?” he asked. It was the first time anyone had called me that. Perhaps that was when my life changed forever.
“And what is it like to be the Wright brothers’ sister?” he asked, taking his pencil from his hatband.
“My brothers are hard workers” is all I could muster up to say. My head was a tumble of thoughts, but that is what was in the paper the next day: WRIGHT SISTER SAYS WRIGHT BROTHERS ARE HARD WORKERS.
Life has come to feel like swimming in Lake Huron, where you pass from ice-cold water to a patch of warm water, and then before you know it, you’re in cold water again.
I am reading a book by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. He said, “Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life . . . But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning—for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”
I think he is a wise if peculiar man, as all wise men are, and that no matter how smooth or raggedy the arcs of our lives are, we are all trying to leave our mark, just like those girls’ toboggans left tracks in the snow.
I think if a journalist knocked on my door and asked what it was like to be the Wright brothers’ sister now, I would add a few things, not about Orv not saying boo to me. I could not bear for that to be the headline, WRIGHT BROTHER REFUSES TO TALK TO WRIGHT SISTER. No, but I would have other things to add besides the fact that they were hard workers. There are other facts I would add. Things were said and done thirty-five years ago, when we were not technically children, but because Orv, Will, and I were late bloomers, we were like children. The Reverend was, of course, not a child, but grief can be a shocking master.
On another note, about the sky, I wish I were as comfortable with the nighttime sky as I am when the day breaks. Right this minute I could walk outside in my dressing gown and stare up at the summer night sky, but it is not the stars that guide me. I am much more confident when the sun is blazing through the clouds. Someday I shall learn the constellations though. Orv and Will knew them all.
September 23, 1927
SEPTEMBER STORMS
It is 2:00 a.m., and a raging thunderstorm is clapping down on us with jagged lightning zigzagging the sky like Orv’s socks, but Harry is sleeping through it.
I think thunderstorms are one of the few times I actually pray for people who are in the air.
I think of Mother in storms as well, when we used to run outside and grab the clothes off the line, even in the middle of the night. Mother did not believe it was bad luck to leave clothes out overnight, but Mrs. Crossbottom wouldn’t dream of it. As she told me with great authority, “People steal all kinds of things these days.” Yesterday I suggested that we could lock up each item on the line. Predictably, she was not amused.
Once, in Dayton, when Mother was still alive, a deluge hit us on an August day, and quickly all of us, even the Reverend and the boys, were out there grabbing clothes off the line. We all got drenched, and when we came in and threw the soaked clothes in a heap on the kitchen table, I could see the Reverend look at Mother’s breasts through her wet dress. I saw her blush, and she said to me, “Katharine, please wring out these clothes. Your father and I have something to discuss upstairs.”
It has occurred to me, just at this moment, as I sit naked in the tub in Kansas City and the storm bangs and flashes all around, that possibly my parents did not go up to discuss anything but went up the stairs to make love.
September 24, 1927
Dearest Orville,
I want to tell you to be careful with your finances. As precise as you can be in some areas, we both know you can be scatterbrained. I feel as if an arm has been removed, by not being able to look at the books. Who is doing that now?
I am not wasting ink on telling you something for my amusement. I am writing this because I sense something is wrong in the world, Orville. You know how you and Will teased me about having premonitions. You are correct, I have made errors. I predicted people would have telephones in their automobiles and that it would be possible to walk on the moon, neither of which has occurred, but financially I have not steered you wrong. You always said, “All the wor
ld needs is a suitable breeze,” but things are more complicated than that, and I believe America is spinning out of control. A breeze is not the solution, Orville Wright, a breeze will solve nothing.
With concern,
Your worried sister
September 25, 1927
CENSORED
I know this is not something I would normally talk about, but nothing is normal anymore. Blame it on the humidity. I am perspiring as I sit naked in the tub.
I was straightening out my closet, trying to find some comfortable clothes in this heat, and I came across a brown paper parcel. I brought it down, it smelled faintly of lemon soap, and I checked to make sure Mrs. Crossbottom wasn’t around. This was when Harry was downtown. I opened the package, and there were lace underthings! There was a brassiere that was most provocative, with a flower on each nipple (excuse the smudges but my hand is shaking as I write that word). And then there was a sort of girdle with garters, but also very lacy and provocative. I knew they were Isabel’s. I’ve seen enough photographs to know they were her size, which is not unlike mine. But they had not been worn, that was clear.
And then, forgive me, I shut the door quietly but firmly and locked it, and took off all of my clothes and laid them on the bed. Then I put on the underthings, which were a bit tight, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I had never done such a thing.
I think I shall wear them for Harry.
September 26, 1927
WRIGHT SISTER BECOMES WRIGHT MOTHER
There is a possibility that if our mother hadn’t died of tuberculosis when I was fourteen, things would have been different. How is one to know? Orv always grew impatient with me if I asked such questions. In fact, I never did mention Mother to him, because I knew how upset he would get, but he didn’t like if I posed the question of “what if?” unless it was about something scientific. Then he was in “all hog,” as Will would say. I confess I was sometimes jealous of Will and Orv’s closeness. In a way they had a marriage, and then when Will died, I was there for Orv, perhaps too much so. But matters of the heart? It wasn’t that Orv would normally hurl a vase of flowers against the wall or even speak about things fraught with emotion, more that, instead of having a civil conversation, he would get a glazed look in his eyes and respond with “Sister, do we still have any of that apple cobbler?” The most emotional he got was when he said, “Sister, do you think that flying is an affliction?”
Had our dear mother lived, I certainly would not have taken care of the Reverend and the boys the way I did. In fact, it was when our mother died that I stopped being Katharine around the house and became “Sister.” They couldn’t call me “Mother,” so “Sister” would have to do. I now had a role. I was in charge in a way for which I was not prepared, taking on a job I did not want to do.
As for marriage, I simply did not believe it was in the cards for me. Would Mother have wanted me to go to Oberlin? The Reverend was oddly forward thinking about women when it came to education. I did have a suitor, more than that, at Oberlin. I was engaged briefly when I was there, but the young man played football and baseball and talked incessantly of that. His lips did brush my cheek, although perhaps brush is an overstatement. He really was not the sort of person for me, and we drifted apart. My roommate said he was “too much of the world” for me, meaning he did not read poetry. But the fact was I had the boys to take care of at home and the Reverend’s demands were clear. I could have wed at a “normal” time and had children. But here I am, in Kansas City, a newlywed in my fifties.
One family story goes like this: when I was only a few weeks old, Orv picked me up from the cradle and insisted on trying to sit me on his chair at the dining table. He threw a fit when I rolled off onto the floor. Family lore also insists I did not land on my head and was not damaged in any way, which is comforting. This occurred when my mother was alive, so it seems Orv was always protective of me, or at least had some sort of special feelings for me.
September 26, 1927
Dear Orv,
I picked the very last valiant raspberries today, not many, but later I shall make some jam. As I knit your socks, I am sitting here on the cozy embroidered armchair by the fireplace in our study. Of course, there is no need for a fire, but I do have my feet up on a footstool. I don’t think I’ve ever sat this way before. What would the Reverend have thought? I know what he would have said. “Sloth is not becoming to you, Katharine Wright.” The fact that I am knitting would not matter to him. Harry is home from downtown, sitting on his chair on the other side of the fireplace, reading about the Civil War, which now is beginning to feel further away from our lives. I have seen that look in his eyes before and know not to push him. In that way he is like you. As you boys and Father are the only men I have shared a home with, I do not know if this is normal. All I know is that when you are upset, it is best to leave you to stew.
Just now he looked up from his book and said, “All those young boys, all those young boys.”
I recall you said those exact words during the Great War. I wish you could be here to discuss your thoughts with Harry. A hundred times you’ve said if it were not for the aeroplane so many would not have suffered. But as always, I don’t think you should take it all on your shoulders. I had a friend, a girl at Oberlin, a woman now—she’s moved to California with her husband, who is a pilot, and he is teaching her to go up on her own. She said she would have enlisted if she could have, but I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel it is in women’s nature to fight. To fly, yes, but not to kill.
If you came for dinner tonight, you and Harry could talk into the evening and I would not disturb you. I see you rolling your eyes and tapping your pencil on your mustache. It is true, I would put forth my views, but I would allow you men to find your friendship again.
Even though Harry is a journalist, he is not immune to the horror of war or the horror of a young Negro man being hanged from a tree. It is not only men, though they are doing this too, Orv. It is women, and we are doing nothing.
The Battle of Antietam is what Harry is most obsessed with these days. I have just learned to use that word. I realize you have your obsessions too, although I know you might throw a heavy object at me if I used such a word. But Harry is reading everything he can get his hands on about the battle. To think all those boys just faced one another in a cornfield and 23,000 were injured or died in one single day. If you boys had gone off to war, I do not know what I would have done. Just now Harry read to me how an order from General Robert E. Lee had been left wrapped around three cigars in a field near Antietam, which changed the course of the Civil War. I think General Lee was supposed to have written it in his own hand, but maybe it was an aide. Should I send you a note wrapped around three cigars?
Love,
Your sister, who cannot stand the smell of cigars (although it is one of the smells of Harry I love, along with his pine shaving lotion)!
P.S. Today I was at the pharmacy and a woman passed me and said, “It’s snowing down south!” and it took me a while to realize she meant my slip was showing. I turned bright red, I’m sure!
Pardon, pardon, pardon, s’il vous plaît—we are having rhubarb pie tonight if that will entice you.
September 27, 1927
MISIDENTIFIED WOMAN
Thank the good Lord there was a breeze today, a perfect day for flying. Perhaps it is being intimate with Harry, although I have never used that word before, but Harry has made me freer in all kinds of ways. If you asked any number of people who observed Orv and me when we were younger—and we were constantly observed by the press from all around the world as well as folks in town—they would say Orv and I were like son and mother, even though I am three years his junior. And several times, as we got older, and stood patiently for photos on dusty fields and even at the White House with photographers shouting at us to smile, they would assume something odder. I would nudge Orv and mutter to him to look less serious, and the following day it would be written, by otherwise intelligent journal
ists, that we were husband and wife. I do not make such things up. I have all the clippings carefully filed in boxes in Dayton. I did not take many belongings with me when I left Ohio. In some ways I admit I feel like a runaway bride, although this is not my choice. If Orv had approved of my marriage, we could have gotten married in the backyard behind the big house or, better yet, up at the lake, on the dock on Lake Huron. No, he should have been at the wedding. There is no excuse. I would much prefer to be back and forth to Dayton, staying over there after making the journey, continuing to participate in some of my work—the rights of women, the rights of children—and I do miss being the Wright brothers’ sister.
September 28, 1927
Dear Orville Wright, inventor of three-axis control, which allows the pilot to steer the aeroplane and maintain equilibrium,
Attention, attention, to the world-famous man who alphabetizes dairy products in the icebox. Attention, attention, this is your sister calling.
Harry has gone to watch baseball—the Blues is the name of the team. I thought I’d go through life as a canceled stamp, but here I am married to a man who loves baseball. I’m afraid I don’t know whom the Blues are playing though. Perhaps they are playing the Yellows. I know you don’t care, but I’m trying to. Sometimes he goes to watch the Monarchs, which is a team in the Negro League. I have slowly, very slowly, learned the rules—and some of the terms. Ducks on the pond. That’s when there is a player on every base. How do you like them apples?