by Patty Dann
October 4, 1927
Dear Orville,
I have a confession to make. You know how sensitive I’ve always been to lavender (I can barely write the word without getting a headache) and how so many women use it in sachets, but you know better than most how it makes me instantly seasick on land. I thank you for being a good nurse several times.
Do you remember the time that lady in Spain sent you a letter professing her love for you—I think it was you; perhaps it was to Will or even both of you—and she had sprayed the envelope with lavender perfume? I almost passed out in the post office when I went to retrieve all your mail from your adoring fans.
This morning I had another incident, not one I am proud of, but which I want to confide in you. I opened the bottom drawer of my bureau to retrieve my heavy sweater, the heather-green one I knitted especially for cold nights up at the lake, and I got a strong waft of lavender. I had never smelled it before in the bedroom, so I knelt down and reached in the back of the drawer and there was a small lavender sachet. It must have been Isabel’s—unless Harry had another lady visitor before me . . .
I immediately snatched it, stood up, and threw it out the window as if it were a hand grenade that was going to explode. Perhaps the sparrows will use it to build a nest. Wouldn’t it serve me right if they built one right outside my window and the scent blew right back in?
On a more serious note, I do understand that when Will died so young your heart was broken. But mine was too. I saw a man at the post office with a tattoo on his arm of a date (not the dreaded Wednesday, May 29, 1912); he looked so weary with grief I had the strong suspicion that the tattoo was of a lost loved one. I had sympathy for him, and I imagined a hot needle digging into my own flesh with Will’s death date. You must think I have lost my senses, but this marriage business has made my imagination experience a fierce craziness I have not known before.
What I am trying to say is, I understand more than ever why you are always melancholy now on Wednesdays. Perhaps my marrying Harry felt like another loss, but I am not dead. If you cannot abide Harry, even though I do not understand it, I could see you on my own. Harry is a modern man. I picture you so clearly with all those newspapers from around the world piled precisely like narrow clouds, and all those perfectly arranged books on the shelves with your volumes about birds, bicycles, and aeroplanes. I can also see you at Will’s deathbed, all of us there, the family, a few friends, unwilling to admit it, and you saying over and over, “He will recover. He must get well,” like a small child. We all felt that, Orv. That headline is tattooed in my mind. MAN WHO FIRST CONQUERED THE AIR AND LED THE WAY IN THE AERONAUTIC MARVELS OF THE LAST DECADE SUCCUMBS TO TYPHOID.
This is not a time for our hearts to be broken once again. Rather to rejoice, yes? That our family is yet bigger again? I know I would rejoice if you found the love of your life. I swear I would.
I sometimes wake up with a start at 3:15 in the morning and Harry must soothe me, that precise time our beloved Will passed away. But to fall in love and marry is not the same as typhoid.
In truth,
Katharine
October 5, 1927
KATHARINE WRIGHT TAKES EMERGENCY LEAVE
Carrie says Orv has intentions of visiting this fall. She said she thought he might enjoy the rail journey, but I am not clear if she thought he would enjoy it or if he actually said he would enjoy it, but as Emily Dickinson wrote, “I dwell in possibility.”
I am thinking tonight of Orv’s crash almost twenty years ago. Perhaps if Lieutenant Selfridge had not been so heavy. He was the heaviest person to have flown at that point, and the first to die in an aeroplane crash. His weight should not have affected the propeller, but we will never know for sure.
I would have taken a hot-air balloon to be by Orv’s side. Instead, I took those endless train rides to that dreadful army hospital in Virginia. When I arrived, I do not think I sat at a table to eat for those seven weeks. I know that it was always after midnight when I would return to my room. I would fall over onto the bed, fully dressed, like a large doll. I barely bathed. Orv’s broken ribs and that nasty broken leg—they made me feel that my own ribs and leg were broken. I could not return to teaching after that. Emergency leave simply became my life.
Sometimes when I am blue, as I am now, I make myself remember something happy, like when we dragged the Ping-Pong table outside at the lake house and we would play in the sunlight. I’d love to see those photographs. And when we played eight games and then we chased each other around the table like children and ran into the lake fully clothed.
October 6, 1927
CENSORED
There are times when I have worn out my fingers writing letters to Orv on the typewriter and I am smudged with typewriter ink, and the other days when I switch to the fountain pen, because I am upstairs, and I have no idea if Orv cares either way. I want to be a modern woman and have equal rights, but then part of me would be happy to be back in our bicycle shop with the boys.
On another subject, when I hear the screen door bang shut in the kitchen, I know it is my Harry come back from the cemetery with his muddy trowel and gardening gloves. I know he’s been planting again and weeding around Isabel’s grave. It is these times that I splash my face with water and pinch my cheeks extra hard, willing him to love me as much as Isabel. As I hear him climb the stairs, I want to greet him with all my body. He pulls off his shirt so quickly and hangs it on the bedpost, and we are immediately with each other like ruffians.
We had received an unusual wedding gift—we did not receive many and they were not large, as Harry of course had a whole household, rather a whole lifetime, of items, so we were in no need of a new toasting machine. But we did get a most thoughtful gift from Jean-Louis from his vineyards. Our lunch with the boys and Jean-Louis outside in that courtyard is on the list I am compiling of the happiest meals of my life. He sent a case of his fine wine, which I have only begun to drink a bit, and quite enjoy, but also several bottles of the most delicious olive oil from his vineyards that I use to prepare salad dressing, when Mrs. Crossbottom does not interfere.
One day Harry brought one of the smaller bottles upstairs and put it on the bed stand, and soon he poured a tiny bit into his palm and rubbed it on my breasts. And then we were rubbing it on each other, every part, as we made love. The olive oil bottle is now in the bathroom, in the medicine cabinet. I do not know what Mrs. Crossbottom will do if she finds it. Smash it to bits? But she should not be snooping around. I know Carrie would have simply brought it downstairs and put it in the pantry, where she believed it belonged, and Carrie would not have uttered a word.
October 7, 1927
Dear brother,
I feel as if I should have kept one foot on base. Is that the baseball expression? I imagine I should be asking Harry that question and not you, but I simply must know what is happening in Dayton. We are waiting on pins and needles for your autumnal visit. I hear from my women friends about progress in the cause, but I care also about your cause, ours, about the tiniest details of our home and the smallest and most precise details of your latest drawings. I want to hear the chiming of the clocks, you lining up your newspapers and measuring the stacks with your ruler, then smacking each stack if it was the proper height. I want to hear the sound of you organizing your papers in that special way, with the special paper clips you’ve fashioned, in the shape of an aeroplane.
Are you warm enough? Even though it is still early October, there can be a chill. And in the evenings, when your work is done, do you sit by the fire the way we used to and read? I loved reading to you, even when you insisted; I read you the newest edition of Birds of North America and showed you each picture like a schoolchild. Harry wears sheepskin slippers when he gets home. I think you would love them. I know, I know, you insist on wearing your perfectly polished shoes until you go to bed. Sometimes I would sneak into the doorway and watch you, standing on one leg and carefully untying one shoe, then placing it neatly by your bed. Then r
epeating on your other leg. And then bending down to retie them and line them up! I’ve never known anyone else to tie their shoes once they are off. I can assure you, Harry not only does not tie his shoes after he takes them off, but inevitably the left is where the right should be, and the right is where the left should be. One would think that 50 percent of the time this would not be the case, but perhaps I could send you some photographs of the crooked way his shoes are aligned, or not aligned, although I think the evidence might not be good for your nerves.
Harry and I read to each other as well, although not bird books. He likes American and European books of history, and I keep my American and French novels for myself. We both enjoy Wordsworth, and often before we turn out the light, we say to each other, “I wandered lonely as a cloud . . .” And many nights we are in each other’s arms. Does that strike you as odd for a couple of our age? It is true that in certain positions our bones crackle and we laugh, but we laugh together. Because you are not writing back, I feel free to write about our lovemaking. I hope you are not shocked. But perhaps I want to shock you after what you have done to me.
Lovingly,
Sister
P.S. You know you have always said I had such good ears I would have been a good spy. Today, as I was standing in line, I saw two women ahead of me who were old friends of Isabel’s. We smiled and gave our polite greetings, bowing our heads slightly, but then one of them leaned into the other and said what of course she thought I couldn’t hear—but I did. She said, “Why would he take a spinster bride?”
October 8, 1927
BABY BORN TO GRANDMOTHER
I got such a scare, or should I say thrill. My monthly was two weeks late, and I had the remarkable and jubilant sense that I was with child, that I was carrying new life. I know, my goal in life is not to be written up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, but the thought that out of our lovemaking a human baby could be created is beyond astounding to me, more astounding than being able to fly. I so long to carry a child inside me and give birth. But then, of course, after two weeks, I realized I was not with child. I am not a fool. And I realize the Change will soon be here. I have nobody in the world to tell. I have not told a soul my outlandish imaginings.
October 10, 1927
Dear Orv, Orv dear,
Are my letters tied with a ribbon by your bed or stored in a box on a shelf in the linen closet, or have they not even gotten that far? Perhaps you have instructed the postman to return to sender, but if that is the case, I have not received them. Carrie insists that she hands you every letter, and she is a person I trust with all my heart. I can just hear you instructing Carrie, “Take them away, feed them to the wolves. Scatter them to the winds. Do not disturb me for I am having a spell.”
Carrie says you are slamming the door to your study with increased frequency.
Tuesday I was speaking to her on the telephone, and I know you were right there. I could hear you tapping your pencil on the staircase the way you do. For one extraordinary moment I believed you would come to the telephone the way a normal person would when someone called. I actually heard you talking, although I could not make out what you said, after I heard Carrie asking you, begging you, to talk to me, but then you screamed, “She is making me ill! I am having a spell!” I heard you march away on those hardwood floors, and then I heard one of your famous door-slamming charades.
Perhaps you are so angry that you throw my letters in the fire as soon as they arrive. I know Carrie does not want to cause you any further distress, but I also know she has no desire to cause me pain. She was honest when I told her the news that I intended to wed. It did not destroy her world. She said she would miss me but that I deserved to live. Her exact words were that I should “have a spin at the dance.”
Before she died, Mother told me, as I stood on a stool in the kitchen and she brushed my hair, “Clarity, clarity, clarity. That is what is most important in life—in work and in the home.” And you know? I agree with her. I believe that the way “things” are between us now makes things extremely unclear and this muddiness is causing us both to have spells. I am deeply and desperately in love with my husband, Orv, but you are causing undue distress. Yes, undue.
Sometimes I think if I make clear how much I am grateful for all you have given me it will help. A million thanks, I then send. Thank you for taking me to France with you boys and to Germany. You know the list: going to the White House, the parades . . . Sometimes I wander into the kitchen and stand in front of the sink, gazing out into the yard, and think of the glorious things we did together. It is I who am wandering lonely as a cloud. I did love joining you in Pau in 1909. I loved the parties; I loved the food. The first time I had a croissant I thought I would cry.
You boys were always so shy, but when you bit into your first croissant and said, “I believe the interior of these delights would be just the thing for designing a new wing,” that whole room laughed and cheered in French, and I saw that you enjoyed the attention.
People asked me all the time whether you had a special girl—a fille—back in America who was waiting for you. I know French newspapers were fascinated by what they saw as the “human side” of us. In some ways I think I could have stayed living there. My French is quite good, if I may say so. I loved their attention to daily life, and although they treated you as heroes, they made me feel more human, if that makes sense. There was that woman who left her perfumed handkerchief in your hotel room. I never asked you whether she had left anything else there as well, but when I went in to tidy up, the sheets were rumpled, and I know you are not one for naps. The Reverend did not allow us such indolence during the day. Early to bed and early to rise.
Perhaps we were closest when we were sewing the wings. What a lark, trying to make wings of silk, but let’s be clear: a lark would have known better. There’s the one photo of Will at the sewing machine in one of the albums. I would so like to be seated by you in the front room, turning the pages of the albums together. Although you wouldn’t permit me to take an album, I did sneak one photograph from Kitty Hawk. It sits on my dresser—Isabel’s and my dresser—next to a very faint photograph of Mother. And the strong muslin scent of the wings stays with me. I also can smell when you boys came back from Kitty Hawk with all that laundry that reeked of the salt air. With the sand that had accumulated in the steamer trunks we could have made a whole beach in the backyard in Dayton.
The morning the Reverend found a few grains of sand on the kitchen table at breakfast, I thought he was going to kill us all. Almost as bad as when he railed against us about those piles of silk. “Inventions are one thing, but waste is another,” he scolded. He never liked all the “stuff” of the inventions. But I am thankful for all of it.
And I will be ever thankful to the French for including me in the Légion d’honneur.
In anticipation,
Your devoted sister
October 13, 1927
Orv!
News alert: Harry is married to the Kansas City Star—she is his real lover, although I have no doubt of our love. And I am feeling more comfortable with Harry Jr. I know it is not easy to lose a mother, at any age. I recently confided that to him, that I understood, and I could see a tear in his eye. We were at the dining table, just the two of us, about to eat one of Mrs. Crossbottom’s dreadful zucchini concoctions that taste like watery pudding. His father had not yet come home from downtown. He is a dear boy, really young man now. And I know what it’s like to be a young man in his twenties, after living with you boys. He is musical and does seem wistful when I play the piano. I know he is thinking of his mother, but he has never shown any objection that his father had married again. He acts very kindly to me, his stepmother, although that word has never been said aloud by anyone. The other day I made up a batch of my chocolate toffee cookies, and the next day I found some of the cookies in the trash bin, but I have a feeling it was Mrs. Crossbottom, not Harry Jr.
I had never been down to the paper and I asked Harry if he
could give me a tour. He said he would be delighted to, so I went yesterday. I had awoken in the morning, riding a blue wave of melancholia—perhaps because it was a Wednesday—but when I appeared at his desk and Harry blushed, my spirits lifted. He jumped up and guided me around the office. At each desk we passed, all the men stood up and nodded, even those with green eyeshades on, then quickly returned to hunching over their desks, clacking away at their typing machines. I do find those garters on their sleeves most lovely. I imagine someday there will be women reporters, but when? Judging from the cloud of cigar smoke in that room, it could be many years before those cigar boys let us in.
Most interesting was the linotype machine room. The sound of those machines was louder than a locomotive. Have you ever heard it? Harry had told me before, but I had forgotten, that all the linotype workers were deaf, and it was startling to observe them the moment we stepped into that room. In contrast to the painfully loud machines, the men looked like they were doing an intricate dance with their hands to communicate. They weren’t deaf because the machines made them so, but that is why they were hired! They can concentrate amid all that noise. Isn’t that curious? I took a course in sign language at Oberlin, but these men’s hands flew faster than hummingbird wings, and I understood nothing. When you visit us, not only will you have your own quarters and as much privacy as you need, but I do think you would enjoy a tour of the Star. You and Harry could take in a baseball game and, if you’re willing, jazz along the Missouri River.
I’ve always wanted to ask you how you felt after the Reverend died, just three years after we moved to the big house. I did not see you shed a tear. I know he could be strict, and all that went on, but when you wake in the morning do you expect to hear his voice calling us downstairs to prayers? I cannot say I miss him. Rather, I miss our family’s life at 7 Hawthorn. I do not miss the screech of the photographers shouting questions about how much money we have as we were walking down the street, or those flashbulbs that nearly blinded us during the wild evening in Paris when we went to the opera, but I miss much of what was.