“He’s alive,” said Merriwether. They all huddled around the bottom steps of the boardwalk, picking at sandwiches and weak coffee that Bennie had picked up on the way back from the hospital. “Doped up good, doctors are taking care of him. His wife is on her way from Philly.” Merriwether’s face twisted up, and when she spoke again her voice was rough. “They say he might not walk again. Definitely not for a good while. Maybe not ever.”
Oscar’s eyes were puffy, his nose red. Colette’s face looked like stone, lips tight. She had a stubby pencil and was sketching something dark on her sandwich wrapper, with lots of crosshatching. Tattooed teardrops dripped down her left arm, from the eye of a parrot. Milosh sat beside her, hunched over so far Birdie couldn’t see his face. Now that she was close she could see that he had a few tattoos as well—abstract symbols and letters on his knuckles and wrists, the back of his neck. Bennie was holding Merriwether’s hand in both of his, cupping it like a bird. The twins had wolfed down their sandwiches and were fidgeting anxiously, their rear ends barely keeping contact with the steps. Smoke drifted up from June’s mouth in a thin, shaky line as she stared toward the ocean, eyes unfocused.
After Charlie fell he sprawled unconscious on the sand for an interminable amount of time while the circus folks surrounded him uselessly, Merriwether pleading through the megaphone for someone to call an ambulance. June landed her plane, cut the engine, and tumbled off the wing before it had coasted to a full stop, her voice a hoarse cry. Medics eventually swarmed and bundled Charlie onto a stretcher and they all left in a storm of shouting, trying to clear a path to the street through the crowds. None of the troupe members stayed behind, so Birdie figured that could be her job, to stay and keep an eye on everything.
She tried to summon up what Charlie had looked like before he fell, but she hadn’t ever gotten a close look at him. A mustache, a build like Dad’s. A horrible twist to his back, one arm bent the wrong way beneath him. She couldn’t shake the image of his crumpled body from her mind.
She’d thought the circus folks might be surprised that she was still there when they’d returned, but Bennie had handed her a sandwich without a word.
“Charlie pushed it too far,” said Oscar angrily. He shoved his sandwich off his lap, scattering shredded meat into the sand, and ran his hands through his hair so it stood straight up. “I kept telling him—he didn’t need to wait till the last goddamned minute to open it!”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” said Merriwether. “The parachute glitched. There was nothing he could have done differently.”
“Well then he shouldn’t have been doing the stupid stunt,” raged Oscar. “He kept talking about how everybody had seen a single parachute drop, they were tired of it—well, I think there were plenty of people who thought one parachute was plenty. He didn’t need to take those kinds of chances!”
“Charlie knew what he was doing. His stunt got us a shot at the Chicago air show,” said June, her eyes still on the horizon, her voice monotone. “It made us a lot of money. It made us a name.”
Oscar didn’t answer.
“Doesn’t matter now,” said Colette flatly. “If we don’t have Charlie, we’re never going to ace that audition.”
They were all quiet, swimming in sadness. Birdie felt miserable. She’d soared, only to be brought back to reality in one heart-stopping instant. She’d been one misstep away from the same fall only moments before.
“We’re still headed for Chicago tomorrow,” said Merriwether suddenly. “Henrieta’s expecting me and the boys, and Hazel’s going to meet up with us there. Maybe we’ll figure something out.”
“With Darlena and Charlie gone?” Bennie asked. “That’s a tough one.”
I’m here, thought Birdie. You’re only down one act. She couldn’t go back to Glen Cove, to nothing. She just couldn’t. But when she thought about Charlie’s body twisted in the sand—his glazed eyes and the guttural animal noises he made as they lifted him in the stretcher—the hungry crowd swelling minute by minute, drawn by the horrific scene below—she wasn’t so sure it was a smart idea to stick around.
Bet your bottom dollar you lose the blues, sang Gilda. In Chicago, Chicago.
“Everyone, think on it tonight.” Merriwether sighed heavily. “This may feel like the end of the world, but it’s not. We’ll come up with something.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE TWINS TOOK OFF DOWN THE BEACH, THROWING ROCKS INTO THE surf, and Bennie and Merriwether left to make sure the planes were all above the high tide mark. Colette and Milosh held hands and went to sit by the water together. Their silhouettes were dark against the sea, their heads bowed together, until the last light went and the moon only caught the barest edges of the waves.
Oscar stared at his hands and June continued to contemplate the horizon. Birdie sat between them in the dark, shivering slightly. The air had chilled now that the sun was gone, and her legs were cold beneath the thin layers of her tulle costume. At least she had her wool coat. She’d put her heels back on, but they didn’t do much to warm her feet. The sequins on her outfit dug into her armpits and were beginning to itch. She had furtively rinsed her soiled camiknickers in a public fountain earlier so she could change back into her normal clothes, but they were still damp. Everyone else was still in their flight suits and costumes, too. Birdie wondered where they kept their normal clothes, and where they slept. She was desperate for a good night’s sleep tonight.
She hadn’t seen her mother since yesterday morning, and Mom would be in quite a state by now. Birdie knew she should get in touch. There was probably a public telephone at the train station, but she felt no motivation to go find it. What would she even tell her? I’m running away with the circus? She made herself remember how blank and distant Mom had been since Dad left. Why should she call her—so Mom could tell her how disappointed she continued to be?
Birdie felt bad about letting Mikhail down. She was missing another dance rehearsal right now, and he was surely already cutting her from the group numbers. He had little patience for girls missing class, and had even cut people just for being late to rehearsal, if it was close to the performance. She’d never seen a principal dancer let him down, though. If she headed back tomorrow morning she could still try to beg for forgiveness. Then she’d still have dance until the big recital was over. And then what? No dance classes, ever again. She couldn’t afford it, and she was getting too old for it, anyhow. She wouldn’t be going to Finch’s, where she and Izzy had hoped they offered ballet along with deportment and etiquette. She wouldn’t even be able to afford to go out dancing for fun unless David took her—and he hadn’t been very interested in such things since the bank closed.
“Poor Merri,” said June, her face in shadow. “I know this brought up painful memories for her.”
“Merri’s man died in a flying accident, when the twins were real little,” Oscar told Birdie. “Somehow, she managed to keep the show running, and even make it better. Merriwether knows how to go on with the show no matter what.”
“That’s so sad,” said Birdie softly. For the first time since Charlie’s accident, she felt tears prick her eyes. She looked down the beach to find the boys, but it was too dark to see them. She could just make out the glowing tips of Merri’s and Bennie’s cigarettes hovering by the planes on the beach.
“Thank God for Bennie,” said June. “He’ll help her through.”
“I’m gonna hate telling Hazel,” Oscar mumbled, wiping his eyes. “She’s gonna cry like a baby.”
Birdie remembered the flask in her coat pocket. She pulled it out, unscrewed the cap, and took a burning swig, then offered it to Oscar.
He gave her a lopsided smile and took it. The gas lamp on the boardwalk far above gave dim, yellow illumination. “You don’t want to come with us anymore,” said Oscar. “Now that you know we all end up paralyzed—or worse. It could have been worse.” Oscar took a swig from the flask, made an appreciative face, and handed it to June.
June scoot
ed close to Birdie and reached across her to take the flask. Her thigh was warm against Birdie’s cold legs, and Birdie was glad when she didn’t move away. “We don’t have a show anymore,” said June. “We don’t have enough time to regroup and get another act together. You should back out.”
The thought of going with them made her anxious in a not-knowing-what-might-happen kind of way, but thinking about not going just made her feel bottomlessly sad, in a no-matter-what-it’s-going-to-be-awful way. “So, what’s this audition that’s in Chicago?” she asked.
“Some guy who’s high-up at the Curtiss-Reynolds Airport saw our act and loved it,” said June. She tucked her hair behind her ear and the lamplight caught her cheekbone and the curve of her lip. “The second annual National Air Races are happening there at the end of August. We got a call to come show them our stuff next Saturday, to see if we can get a contract for the NAR circus act this year.” She sighed heavily, thumb worrying the flask cap. “No chance of that now.”
“But you’re still going to Chicago, right?” Birdie asked as June tasted the liquor and handed it back.
“We gotta head that way anyway,” said Oscar. “Who knows, maybe we’ll come up with something.”
“We should still try out,” said Birdie. A ghost of the thrill of that afternoon buzzed in her veins. Despite what had happened to Charlie, she wanted to get back out on the wing. She took another drink. “Now that I’ve got the feel of it, I’ve got a bunch of ideas for my act. And you’re both such swell pilots—all those loop-de-loops and dives, flying upside down! We can still impress them.”
Oscar shook his head as she passed him the half-empty flask. “You’re a great dancer. And sure, we’re good at what we do. But it’s more than dancing or flying, what they’re looking for. They want something that reminds people that what they’re watching is really dangerous, like Charlie’s stunt.”
Birdie frowned. “Yeah, but look what happened. Nobody wants to take it so far that somebody actually gets hurt, right?”
Oscar swirled the flask and stared out at the ocean. “The first time Charlie did his act, I didn’t know what he was up to—none of us did. I thought he was going to die. And I thought—God, I thought, ‘Wow, this is gonna make us so much money.’ I can’t believe that was the thought that ran through my head. But nothing helps out the bottom line like a death in the show—”
“And then,” June interrupted, “the second parachute opened. Charlie landed, and he was fine. Better than fine—he was a celebrity after that. And, get this—the show’s been packed since then. It was sort of like he died, while also living to perform it again, day after day. That’s what defying death is all about.”
Darlena was the first person Birdie had ever seen walk out on a wing. She’d been truly thrilled that the girl could fall to her death, but somehow, so gracefully, didn’t. But now, Birdie had seen the act. She’d done it. She believed the plane would go up, the girl would do her little dance, the plane would land, and everything would be fine—when, in reality, one mistake could mean death. How could she make people remember that?
June leaned in again to take the flask from Oscar, and Birdie caught a whiff of tobacco and engine grease, and a warm scent that reminded her of sunshine. “We’re always one little misstep from disaster, aren’t we?” Birdie mused as she watched June tip the flask back. “I mean, no matter what you’re doing. Flying a plane, walking down the street, sleeping.” Going to school, going to dance class, eating dinner with Mom and Dad, thinking everything was going to go exactly how you expected it to. “You never know when everything’s gonna fall apart.”
She accepted the flask from June and took another swallow. Whatever was in it was starting to burn less.
“Thinking about it like that takes the scary out, doesn’t it?” said June. “People are so boring and predictable because they think it’s safe, but nothing is risk-free.”
Birdie was feeling less cold. Maybe it was the liquor. Maybe it was June and Oscar sitting close. She leaned back on her elbows and looked up, and her breath caught in her throat. The stars were endless overhead. The sky looked bigger than it ever had before. It seemed much smaller back at home on Long Island, where nobody walked out on the wings of airplanes. Where no one fell out of the sky.
“I don’t know,” said Oscar. “I mean, it’s definitely safer to keep your feet on the ground.”
Birdie giggled.
“Oh please.” June reached across Birdie and poked him in the ribs. “If you think like that, you never do anything fun.”
Birdie decided. Even if none of them knew what was going to happen once they got to Chicago—even if it wasn’t going to be risk-free, or safe—she knew it wouldn’t be what she left behind, and right now that was good enough for her.
CHAPTER TEN
BIRDIE WOKE SHIVERING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, UNDER A THIN blanket on a stiff, narrow mattress that had been Darlena’s. She stared into the pitch-dark of the boarding house room, listening to people breathe around her, and longed for her sleeved nightgown and thick duvet. But a thrill ran through her when she remembered that nobody from her real life knew where she was. She’d just become the kind of person you saw in the movies or the newspapers. She drifted off again imagining how impressed Izzy would be when she got back and told her all about it.
Merriwether shook her awake what felt like minutes later. Headachey and freezing, Birdie fumbled into her camiknickers and wrinkled lavender dress, longing for a hot bath, her vanity full of powders and scents, her silver-backed brush to smooth out her tangles, and her wardrobe full of clean, pressed clothing. At least her undergarments had dried overnight and felt somewhat cleaner after their dunk in the water fountain. She buttoned up her coat and followed the others, shivering, into the still-dark morning.
They took off as the sky began to lighten. John was flying Charlie’s Jenny, with Birdie in the front cockpit; he had begged Merriwether to let him fly. June was piloting her red plane with John’s brother, Henry, as passenger, and Oscar had Merri in the front cockpit of Dad’s Jenny. Bennie, Colette, and Milosh would follow in the Studebaker with most of their things, and would arrive in Chicago the following day.
It became a mild morning with bright sun and little wind. Birdie, exhausted from two nights of little sleep, dozed for the first stretch, until they stopped to refuel from their own stash in a field somewhere in Pennsylvania. Birdie ate some boiled peanuts John shyly offered her, and after they’d lifted off again she stared over the side of the plane and watched towns, fields, roads, and rivers slowly pass beneath them. She pictured climbing out on the wing, an adoring crowd staring up at her. She was ready to try it again. She’d practice like she practiced for dance class, repeating the steps over and over—across her bedroom floor, on the way to school—until she danced the movements in her dreams. She could get really good. Get her name on the posters.
She settled back in her seat and pulled out the picture of Gilda and stared at it, wondering what she might be able to find in Chicago once they landed.
Gilda might have protested Dad’s advances in the hangar, but she was back up on her little stage when Birdie came inside with Izzy and Dad, her shoes kicked off, a martini in hand. Birdie hadn’t given her a second glance, but if she had, she probably would have seen Gilda stare at Dad with that smoldering look she got when she sang, everything forgiven. But Dad’s indiscretion had left Birdie’s mind by the time she whirled into the ballroom. The band struck up the first notes of “Black Bottom Stomp,” and she shot an adoring look at Izzy as everyone whooped—Izzy must have been the one who told them to play this song for her. Birdie lifted her arms in the air, then dipped into a tipsy curtsy. She could hear the champagne in everyone’s shouts, making them holler loud as she raised her arms again.
Unfortunately for Mom, all that ballet training she’d sent her daughter to had prepared Birdie to execute all the latest dance crazes perfectly. Birdie knew all the steps to the Black Bottom. She’d seen the help that h
ad been hired to cater one of her parents’ parties moving their hips and calling out the steps to each other as they cleaned up after, making each other laugh. She’d snuck downstairs, admired them, and asked them how it went, and they’d gamely showed her the moves. Birdie did a quick step, shimmying her shoulders, and Mom’s face tightened predictably. Birdie flipped her hair and began to kick up her feet as Gilda opened her mouth and sang.
Girls swarmed the dance floor behind her, trying to copy her moves. Soon enough Dad was out there, highball in hand, tie loosened, asking her friends for pointers and stumbling over the footwork. David came and asked her to dance. Handsome David, that blond curl falling onto his forehead no matter how he slicked it back with pomade.
God, her life had been perfect. Before the bank had failed, David had asked what she’d think if he proposed to her, in a teasing way, and she’d giggled against his neck. She might go to Finch’s an engaged woman! How romantic.
After the bank had failed—David hadn’t mentioned it again. He’d hardly returned her calls.
Birdie’s heart sank as the plane descended. Even if she got a kick out of performing with the circus, she’d give anything to just go back to how things had been.
She stared back into from where they’d come and wondered if she was headed in the right direction.
They landed near noon in a dusty lot with a small hangar. Merriwether went inside to talk to a man with grease on his coveralls while Oscar pulled out some soggy tuna fish sandwiches wrapped in butcher paper, handing one each to the twins, June, and Birdie.
The boys followed Merri into the hangar with their sandwiches. Birdie sat on the wing of Charlie’s Jenny—whose Jenny was it now that Charlie was unable to fly?—peeled the paper off her sandwich, and took a ravenous bite. The bread was damp and unappealing, but the filling was delicious.
June plopped down beside her. “Whew, it’s gonna be a long day. Coney Island to Chicago in one shot!” She leaned back and massaged her knee, sandwich in her other hand. “My leg was cramping up there, at the end of that last stretch. Good thing the range on these planes is so dang awful, otherwise Merri probably wouldn’t even let us out to pee. She’s a slave driver, I swear!” I sway-ah! June sounded like a Southern belle when she talked, though she looked anything but. Her khaki duster was soiled at the knees, goggles pushed up in her hair, lips and cheeks chapped from the sun and wind.
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