by Theasa Tuohy
“It wouldn’t surprise me if you were afraid,” Laura said now, with what she hoped was a sympathetic voice. “I read that your brother was killed in a plane.”
“Charles was killed by a bullet in a war, not by an airplane.” Jenny stood up abruptly. “Planes are safe. You can depend on them.”
Laura put her hand out with a calming, almost shushing kind of gesture. “Please don’t go, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sure it’s painful to think about. You must miss your brother.”
“Of course I miss him.” Jenny sank back down into the chintz cushion of the hand-painted chair. Her voice deepened, took on a ghostly, almost hollow tone: “That was a long time ago.” Her eyes went far away. “I was only six.”
“It’s interesting, don’t you think,” Laura probed, “that you’ve chosen the same profession he did?”
“It’s not my profession. I’m a housewife. I didn’t start flying because of Charles, I started flying because of John. Besides, I just told you, I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of women working as mechanics on engines. You have to learn about physics and aerodynamics and all those things. It’s too much trouble.” She banged her cup again. “It’s so frustrating. You take up a hobby that’s swell, just a lark, and everyone wants to turn you into something you aren’t.”
Laura wouldn’t let up. “But why don’t you want to get good at what you do?”
“I am good at it! I flew under all those bridges in New York, didn’t I?”
“Why stop?” Laura was genuinely perplexed. “People have to stretch themselves to accomplish anything.”
“Oh shoot. Look at you. Out here running around, butting your nose in . . . for what? You don’t even know how you’re going to get back home. I’m not interested in living on the edge like that. It’s a silly thing you’re doing. You’re aggressive, pushy. And you’re so intense about everything.” Her voice took on a petulant tone. “Why won’t people let me fly the way I want to fly? My parents think it’s too much and you and Roy and others like you think it’s not enough.”
“You’re so I-don’t-give-a-darn.” The implied criticism was harsh in Laura’s voice. This was an attitude that was incomprehensible to her, a woman who’d had to find her own way to school as a child, scour for college scholarships, make her way through the thicket of a rough-and-tumble newsroom.
Jenny opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when the maid came back with a cut-crystal pitcher of ice water with floating lemon slices, and placed it on the high gloss of the inlaid table.
“You were saying?” Laura prodded after the woman had cleared away their empty plates and left.
“I just don’t understand why you see something wrong with having fun.” Jenny’s tone became defiant. “My husband and all his friends fly. So I don’t see why I shouldn’t too. That way I know what they’re talking about.”
Laura frowned, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. “I’m not the one you need to convince that you should be flying. It sounds to me like it might be yourself.”
“What nonsense. I’m going to bed. I have a show to do tomorrow.” Jenny rose from her chair. “I’m sure if you ask the maid to wash and iron that crumpled blouse, she’d be glad to. Since you got outfitted up to look like me, I assume it’s the only one you have.”
Laura drew in a sharp breath. “I guess I was wrong about you. You just fly to hang out with the boys, to get male attention. They all think it’s cute that you fly. Is that it? No wonder they all treat you like a doll. That’s what you are. And with me here, you’re not the only doll around.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SKETCHING THE ACTION
Laura still couldn’t believe she was really doing this, but here she was flying along, riding in the cockpit behind Jenny in her curious-looking old plane left over from the Great War. It had four wings, two on top of each other on each side, or maybe it was considered only two wings. She would have to ask. One wing was across the top of the plane’s body, what they called the fuselage, and the other two wings were on each side at the bottom. There were supporting poles and wires running between the top and bottom wings, and some of the poles went directly from the top set of wings to the fuselage.
As Laura, with a pad in her lap, made a sketch of the plane, Jenny periodically turned around and stared with a quizzical look. Laura would give a slight shake of her head and shrug. That girl’s view of the world is so narrow that she can’t comprehend someone else’s curiosity, she decided, and continued her sketch. There were two wheels at the end of poles about four feet long stuck out in front like a kid’s go-cart. These made the plane’s front, or nose, stick up in the air several feet, while its tail rested on the ground. But once the plane got in the air, then the whole fuselage stayed in a straight line, the nose no longer pointed upward. This was certainly a time she could use Cheesy and his camera. She had to see about trying to get him here.
Clem had helped them get going by pushing the wooden propeller around and around until it cranked up the engine. They had rolled along on the ground for quite a while, Laura waving to Roy and Clem, who stood in the dusty patch of grass, watching. Then miraculously they were in the air and she was looking down at treetops and cornfields. Of course, she had done this getting-in-the-air thing twice, coming here from Cleveland, but with men who flew for a living. She hadn’t paid much more attention to the process than she would with a taxi driver, yet seeing Jenny do it somehow made her proud. She’d have to think later about what the difference was.
Right now she was worried about Barnes. She still hadn’t called him, nor checked with Western Union to see if he had sent money. But how could he object when she’d already filed stories about Roy and the jumper and Jenny and the stolen plane, and would soon have one about her own exploits with a flying circus?
Surely she would get some wonderful stories—if she could keep the problems with Jenny from exploding. It seemed quite clear that Jenny wasn’t used to sharing the spotlight.
Laura had gotten in the plane this morning anticipating that Jenny would do some extra dips and turns to try to scare her or make her sick, but she wasn’t worried; she had ridden the Loop the Loop at Coney Island several times when she was a kid. Besides, she was determined not to let this pampered prima donna get the better of her.
Jenny was signaling her from the front cockpit. With her back to Laura, she was making a large circle with her right arm extended straight out. Laura gripped her notebook, trying to figure out where she could stick it so as not to lose it. If the plane started rolling around, she didn’t want her notes flying out. Nor herself! She had a pillow at her back to give her a tighter fit in the cockpit. Despite the animosity between them, Jenny had explained that she always stuffed something behind her when she flew. Laura pushed her pencil in her pocket, sat on her notebook, and grabbed some metal pieces that were part of the exposed interior of the fuselage. And her head started to spin.
Their assignment was to fly upside down a couple of times and do a few barrel rolls—whatever they were. The idea was that the women were to pass over the crowd to warm them up then they were to land and sit in the stands for the rest of the show. Today was special. They were part of a rodeo and other acts, different from the barnstorming plan Roy had set up for the next several days.
And suddenly, Laura was nearly upside down and could see what was probably the stands. Tiny dots of people waving and cheering. And just as quickly they were gone. The plane was spiraling. Perhaps rotating was a better word because they seemed to stay in the same place, not moving forward. The stands came in view again, then were gone. And around and around they went.
“A barrel roll, indeed. It’s called what it is! I should have been smart enough to figure that on my own.” Laura said this out loud, speaking to the passing wind, trying to get back some equilibrium, some sense of orientation, by hearing the sound of her own voice. We’re rolling over and over, like a barrel. Once again, once again. How many of these things could they do?
Laura had lost count at four. She wasn’t worried about her breakfast, but she was getting very dizzy. When the dots of people came into view this time, it looked as though they were on their feet and screaming.
When had she heard screaming like that? Laura searched her memory. It was a dream. Yes, the dream she’d had in the hotel room in Cleveland. She was driving an airplane that looked like a taxi. She also remembered that the dream began with Jenny not letting her get on the school grounds to play with the other kids. Laura smiled to herself, thinking how her mother always wanted to inject Freudian theory into everything. “You exhibit a father fixation even when you don’t know who he is.” Mother would love the fact that Laura’s subconscious had pegged Jenny a lot quicker than her conscious mind had.
Laura was shocked at herself for having had such an argument last night. She’d never had a fight with a woman before, except with her mother. And for a time, those fights were so constant and so debilitating that Laura had finally vowed to just quit having them. She never won, she never got anywhere with them, could never get information about her father, so why not just stop? She found that stoic acceptance of her home life worked much better for her. She discovered the word détente in one of her college political science classes, and decided that was the perfect way to describe her situation. Détente. She liked the concept: call off hostilities and get on with life. Throw your energies into school, into work, finding your own place in the world. She was ferocious at that, which made it so hard for her to comprehend Jenny’s laziness toward everything.
So what, Laura wondered, had caused the big commotion with Jenny? Laura had never had a boyfriend to fight over; she assumed that was the bottom line with Jenny. She wanted the men all to herself. Somehow this felt familiar. She’d always known her mother didn’t like female competition from any quarter, but it had never occurred to Laura that her mother would see her own daughter as a competitor. Maybe that was it—with both her mother and Jenny! What a strange revelation to be having here in the middle of the air. Perhaps something about Jenny, or even just being in close contact with another woman, was putting her life in some sort of context. Laura had never really had friends. Her mother was her window on the world. She’d always known her upbringing had been what a lot of people called bohemian; perhaps it was even stranger than she’d ever realized.
An image flashed in her mind of her mother’s poet friend, the baroness, walking around the Village with pink postage stamps stuck to her face and a coal shuttle on her head to make a Dadaist statement. Evelyn made fun of the male poets who complained that Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven was too sexually aggressive.
“That’s the way women should be—getting what they want and doing what they want to do,” Evelyn retorted. One of her mother’s lovers, William Carlos Williams, admitted that he’d finally had Else arrested for pursuing him so vigorously, and another poet, Wallace Stevens, claimed he was afraid to go below 14th Street for fear of her rapaciousness.
But heavens, if all those proper girls at Barnard were as shallow as Jenny, Laura was just as happy not to know how to lead a conventional life. Being, as her mother called her, “a déclassé reporter,” suited her just fine. Which made her think of Barnes. She’d better get in touch with him soon. And she had better start lining up ideas for more stories. Describing riding in a plane upside down was probably not good for more than one day’s edition. Luckily, today’s flying stunts were part of a Wild West show. They were performing now at someplace they said was famous, called the Hundred and One Ranch. John, Jenny’s husband, was even coming up from Oklahoma City to see it. She was eager to meet him and see what kind of strange bird he was. And what about this Clem? Maybe there was a story in that. Why was a guy in coveralls driving such a fancy car and brought up in a mansion?
Laura blinked into the Sunday-morning sun; her dizziness seemed to have subsided. The plane was flying level, and Jenny was waving, or signaling something again. Actually, she had turned in her seat and was yelling and pointing, but Laura shook her head. She couldn’t hear a thing over the sounds of the motor and the wind. Jenny finally hung her arm over the side and pointed down. Laura leaned out and looked. Wow, they had gotten much closer to the ground. It was a huge crowd. Huge, huge crowd. Roy had said last night that they expected ten thousand people at the ranch today, and it looked like he was right. He said a story in yesterday’s paper claimed that a hundred and fifty Rotarians from New England were arriving by train as guests of the local Rotary Club.
The plane swooped down and Laura could see, indeed, that the stands were filled with people waving at them. She could also see animals, probably bulls and horses, in pens around the main arena. She suddenly realized what Jenny’s gesturing had been about. She was indicating it was now okay for them to fly low, the arena was clear of animals—they were all in their pens. Clem had warned last night not to buzz over while the roundup part of the show was going on. A cowboy trying to tame a bull or rope a steer could be stomped or mauled if the animals were spooked by the noise of an airplane.
As they dipped over the arena, Laura could hear a strange echoing boom reverberating around them—the public address system. An announcer was supposed to be hyping the crowd with the news that there were two “little ladies” in the plane. Next, Roy would do what they all said were his difficult and celebrated outside loops. Then they were going to watch the headliner of the day: some crazy was going to jump from a plane and land on an animal. It was unclear to Laura just what was involved in this stunt, but she knew New York readers would love it! She’d already checked that news photographers would be here, and she felt certain she could arrange to get shots sent to the Enterprise-Post.
Jenny gave another wave from the front cockpit, and this time they did a few last gentle rolls. The grandstands and dusty cornfields and a cowboy with a lariat all revolved in seeming slow motion before Laura’s eyes. What a strange kaleidoscopic view of the world. She felt she could see the earth’s curve. The land looked parched, dry and sandy, with only spots here and there of green, but a lovely breeze skipped along Laura’s face. The cowboy was twirling his rope in ever-widening circles above his head. Cheering came and went in waves—at times it would nearly drown out the sound of the engine. And then with a roll, as they turned upright to the sky, it would recede like Coney Island breakers going back to the sea.
The noise got louder and the engine stopped. Laura looked around, startled, realizing she had lost herself in the immense beyond, and saw that they were on the ground with cheering crowds surrounding the plane. It was difficult to come out of her dream state of clouds and sky and cornfields suffused with the smell of exhaust fumes. She was dazed as she looked out and smiled at the masses of friendly faces. Her eyes seemed to have gone frighteningly bad, everything dim and blurry. Perhaps she was dizzy again. Suddenly Roy was there to help her out of the cockpit and onto the wing. Clutching her reporter’s notebook, she was still straining to see clearly when she realized it was her celluloid goggles that were making her view dim and scratchy. As soon as she yanked off her shades, she saw Jenny on the ground kissing an older man. Must be her husband, but why did Laura think she knew him? Of course! The man seated next to Jenny in the rumble seat at Roosevelt Field. That’s a surprise, Laura thought. This guy really does travel around with Jenny when she’s doing her stunts.
“Is that John?” Laura asked Roy, taking his arm and leaning in close to his ear.
“Yep, a great guy. We flew together in the Lafayette Escadrille.”
“The what?” Laura held herself back from asking how to spell it.
“Group of Americans who went over before the US got into the war. We were attached to a French squadron taking pot shots at the Red Baron and his boys.” He gave her a smug grin. “We made mincemeat out of the Huns.”
Another possible story. Laura was stopped from asking more questions when Clem came loping up to tell them he had saved them seats to watch Roy’s upcoming exhibition. She noticed with reli
ef that the stands—built in an L shape along two sides of the arena—were covered, providing some protection from the relentless sun. The crowd was so large that hundreds of people were standing on the field all around the bleachers. A border along the top of the stands read, Miller Bros. 101 Ranch. In the excited shoving and pushing to get to their seats, Laura got a chance to say no more than hello to Jenny’s husband, a handsome man with a firm handshake who looked to be in his early thirties, considerably older than Jenny. Clem seemed to go out of his way to make sure he seated himself next to Laura. Jenny was on her other side.
“Not bad,” Jenny said, turning to Laura with a cocky smile. “You didn’t lose your breakfast.”
Laura could feel a slight blush. Why should she care about compliments from such a superficial girl?
Roy was going to do an exhibition of the outside loops for which he and Jimmy Doolittle were famous. As he climbed high in his Bellanca cruiser, Jenny, with a superior air that again reminded Laura of her mother, gave a running commentary of what he was doing and the risks involved in this maneuver.
“He’ll go to about five thousand feet . . . Watch, now, see, he’s leveled off. He’ll drop from, wow, see, there he goes, he’s pushing his stick to bring the nose up a bit so he can make an imaginary circle rather than just dropping straight down. Being on the outside of the loop makes it very dangerous, not at all like doing it inside—the force against him is trying to yank him out of his seat. It’s so strong he could stall, or worse, black out.”
The crowd was going wild as the plane accelerated toward the ground. People were on their feet screaming, men waving their cowboy hats and stomping their boots.
“See, he’s at the bottom of the arc upside down,” Jenny continued. “He’s throttling up, climbing to repeat the circle.”
Laura could barely catch her breath. What a brave, exciting man, she thought. Most of the adult males of her acquaintance were the bleating poet friends of her mother or the gruff Neanderthals in the newsroom.