Betty Cavanna

by A Girl Can Dream

  “If you can learn rules, you can learn to apply them,” Mr. Scott said quietly. “If you want to participate in any sports this spring, Loretta, you’ve got to settle down to a good deal of concentrated work.”

  Rette wriggled internally, like an impatient filly champing at her first taste of the bit. She would have liked to bunch the paper into a little ball and fling it from her. She hated math; she always would hate math. She never in the world would be able to make figures behave!

  But she didn’t say any of these things. She said: “I knew I’d handed in a terrible paper. I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to work out the problems. I don’t really understand them, I guess.”

  “I guess,” repeated Mr. Scott, with a movement of his upper lip that might have been a smile. “For the next month, try really applying yourself. If things don’t improve, you’d better have a tutor. After all, if you’re planning to go on to college, you can’t just overlook a possible flunk.”

  Rette shook her head numbly. The word “flunk” had an ugly sound. She had always received good grades, even excellent ones, in everything but math. There was her undoing. From fractions to algebra, she had been led balking every step of the way.

  Always, however, before this, she had just managed to skin through. Now, apparently, her past was catching up with her.

  “I’ll be glad to work with you any Monday or Wednesday afternoon after school,” Mr. Scott was saying generously. “If there’s something you’re having special trouble with, bring it to me then.”

  Something? Everything! Rette thought, but she didn’t admit to such abysmal ignorance. She thanked the teacher with what grace she could muster and scooted out of the room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gramp sat beside Mrs. Larkin on the sofa, peering down at the book of snapshots that lay in her lap. Rette was seated cross-legged in front of the record cabinet, rearranging the albums so that her favorites could be more easily reached. Her dad was writing checks at the secretary, and Tony was reading “Dick Tracy.” It was a typical Sunday afternoon.

  “And there’s Rette,” Mrs. Larkin was saying, “tagging around after Tony like a fat puppy. Wasn’t she a dumpling at three?”

  To Gramp’s old eyes the snapshot was little more than a blur, but he nodded happily. “She was a very pretty child.”

  “Was,” repeated Rette, as though to herself.

  “Here she is again,” Mrs. Larkin went on, “still at Tony’s heels. She used to drive him crazy—remember? Even followed him to the baseball diamond when he went off to play with the boys.”

  Tony looked up from the comic section. “Ask me if I remember!” he said.

  Rette chuckled. “I could catch a curve by the time I was six,” she said. “And I wasn’t any more trouble than Scrappy Lambert’s collie. He insisted on chasing every fielder.” She twisted around. Once the boys tied both of us to the same tree.”

  “You didn’t!” Her mother looked at Tony.

  Tony nodded ruefully. “Yes, we did.”

  “I howled,” Rette said, “and a police car came along and the cop told Tony it was against the law to tie a child to a tree in Pennsylvania.”

  “Now,” Tony announced comfortingly, “she’s beginning to make it up.”

  Rette didn’t bother to deny it. Her shoulders shook a little with repressed laughter as she turned back to her record albums, and she said, “Would you like to hear the Oklahoma! music?” then didn’t wait for anyone to reply.

  The contagious gaiety of the songs seemed to make Tony restless. He tossed aside the paper, got up, and wandered around the living room whistling an accompaniment softly. He paused by a lamp table, picked up the copy of Wind, Sand and Stars Rette had given him, seemed to be about to settle down with it, then suddenly tossed it aside and went upstairs two at a time, whistling a little louder now.

  Through the patter of a chorus Rette could hear him pick up the telephone and give a number, but it wasn’t until the automatic changer finished its complement of records that she knew he was talking to a girl.

  In this one respect, Rette decided, Tony hadn’t changed since he was a leggy kid in high school and she was a child in pigtails. He still had a special telephone voice for girls. It was a habit he’d formed when he wanted, above all things, to exclude the family from his private affairs—a method of talking directly into the receiver in a tone so low that it seemed simply an indefinite rumble, with no distinguishable words.

  Apparently, although it irritated the family, the girls liked it, because now, as before the war, he never seemed to lack dates. Rette could hear him hang up, go whistling into his bedroom, and then the closet door and a bureau drawer banged in quick succession, which meant that he was dressing to go out.

  A few minutes later Tony clattered down the stairs, pulling on a tweed sport coat as he came. He went over to the closet, stuck a hat on the back of his head, and shrugged into his topcoat. His father looked up from the telephone bill, at which he had been frowning.

  “Going out?”

  Tony nodded. “Need me for anything here?”

  George Larkin shook his head. “Just idle curiosity,” he grinned.

  Tony decided to include the family in his plans. “Got a date with a girl Rette recommended,” he told them. “Ellen Alden by name. She sells books.”

  “I never—” Rette started with a childish thrust of jealousy. But Tony was gone.

  The afternoon dragged along, the midwinter gloom increasing with the hours. Rette shut the record changer and took Tony’s book and went upstairs to lie on her bed.

  But she didn’t read. She lay and stared at the ceiling, hoping it wouldn’t rain or snow to spoil the trip to the airport tomorrow, wishing Sundays weren’t so long, wondering why older people always seemed to enjoy the day. After church there was nothing to do—but nothing. She supposed some of the girls, like Elise, had dates, just as Tony did. She wondered what it would be like.

  Rette could count the dates she’d had during her four years in high school on the fingers of one hand. There was that awful night when Tolbert Norton had taken her to the movies. Tolbert had surprised her on the telephone, and she had acquiesced from sheer confusion, to die a thousand deaths as she walked through the summer twilight down High Street beside a boy any other girl in her crowd would have scorned.

  Tolbert had pimples during that sophomore summer, but by fall he had apparently outgrown them. He’d asked Rette for just one more date, and she had turned him down haughtily. Then, to Loretta’s amazement, Dora Phillips had taken him up, and Tolbert had never needed to look her way again.

  There were a few other stray engagements, blind dates arranged by a friend, or boys enlisted to walk Rette to and from a party. Mostly they were unsuccessful affairs, during which Loretta, to hide her uneasiness, maintained an attitude of rather boyish camaraderie. During this last semester she had been left severely alone, and when she thought seriously about the situation, she wasn’t really surprised.

  Rette rolled over on her stomach and put her head in her hands, staring out at the black branches of a maple tree outlined by a street light, which was switched on at five o’clock this time of year.

  She guessed she’d call Cathy Smith and see if she felt like walking over. But Cathy was absorbed in reading the last of the books in the Flicka saga and couldn’t be persuaded to put it down.

  There was nothing left to do but call Margaret Lewis, who made the mistake of being always available. Margaret was flattered to be asked over and came as fast as her thin legs could carry her, arriving pinched and red-nosed from the cold.

  Bountifully, Rette invited Margaret to stay for a pickup supper. The girls made sandwiches while Mrs. Larkin stirred a large pot of cocoa, and they carried the food into the living room to eat in front of the open fire.

  Gramp, who had retreated before “company,” edged his way downstairs again and joined the family. Then he persuaded Rette to play records of some of the Gilbert and Sullivan music he loved an
d everyone lay back and hummed along with the expert singers from the D’Oyly Carte troupe.

  Margaret, Rette could see, was captivated by her mother, as were all the girls she brought home. She was proud of her family for being vivacious and young in heart, and when Margaret praised them she said, “But your parents aren’t old.”

  Margaret was putting on her coat and bandanna before Rette’s bedroom mirror. “They’re not old,” she said, “but they’re sort of settled. They don’t understand kids very well—and they worry a lot, about money and things.”

  Rette laughed. “Everybody worries about money.”

  Margaret said, “They worry about me too.”

  “You?”

  “About whether I’m out too late, and about my marks at school, and about—” Margaret sighed and bit her lip as though she were making a confession—“about my health.” She paused, then plunged on. “For instance, they’re having a fit because I want to go on that field trip to the airport tomorrow.”

  “But why?”

  Margaret shook her head. “Flying’s a lot of foolishness, and I may catch cold.”

  Rette laughed again, because in those few words Margaret’s description of her parents was pat. “We all may ‘catch our deaths,’ as Gramp always says, if it doesn’t warm up. Brrr.”

  The girls walked downstairs side by side, and Gramp rose gallantly to say good night. He took Margaret’s hand and told her it had been a great pleasure to meet her. Then he eyed her cannily. “Do you play pinochle?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Margaret confessed.

  Gramp dropped her hand immediately and turned away. “Well,” he said, “well, good-by.”

  When Rette came back from closing the door behind her guest, he was grumbling to himself as he creaked upstairs. “What good’s all this education? Girls aren’t even taught the fundamentals any more.”

  Rette stood with her hands on her hips, looking up at him. “Fundamentals like pinochle?” she asked.

  “And can you name a better game?” he stormed back at her. Then he glanced toward the davenport, where Rette’s mother was curled in a corner with her favorite magazine. “Bridge!” he snorted. It was his last word for the night.

  Tony came home half an hour later, his face ruddy with cold and his gray-blue eyes sparkling. He tossed his hat and gloves on a table and came over to rub his face against the sleeve of his mother’s cashmere sweater.

  “I stayed for supper,” he said.

  Mrs. Larkin smiled. “Where there is food, there is Tony.”

  “You’ll have to meet Ellen, Mother. She’s quite a gal. Different.”

  “How different?”

  “I don’t know.” Tony hesitated. “She doesn’t jitter, and she’s got some sense.”

  Rette was all ears, though she kept her eyes on her book. If only she could find out what boys like Tony admired in girls, maybe she—

  “How about my bringing her here for supper some night?” Tony was saying, as he stretched his long legs and fastened his eyes on his shoes.

  “Any time,” said Mrs. Larkin calmly, as though it weren’t unusual for Tony to suggest bringing a girl home. But Rette looked up in surprise and caught a flicker of interest in her mother’s eye.

  “Maybe next week end,” said Tony. “Friday or Saturday.”

  “Just let me know.”

  Rette closed her book and said: “Guess I’ll go to bed. I’ll be home late tomorrow, Mother. I’m going out to the airport, you know.”

  Tony looked up quizzically. “Airport?”

  “Rette’s class is making a field trip to the new airport,” her mother said.

  Tony didn’t pursue the subject, so Rette went upstairs and laid out clean underwear, the newest of her school sweaters, and a Scotch plaid skirt that had been a Christmas present. With a mild and pleasant sense of participation, she was ready to greet the new day.

  Fortunately, Monday’s temperature bettered Sunday’s by ten degrees. The sun shone with pale promise of spring and the bus—a big one—was crowded. Margaret had not come, but Elise was there, and Judy, along with a crowd of junior and senior girls who had frankly come just for the ride and the opportunity of seeing that glamorous Mr. Irish again. Jeff Chandler was sitting with Larry Carpenter, and, as Rette had predicted, Corky Adams and one of his cronies shared the seat just ahead.

  Loretta couldn’t help wondering who, in this group, would actually try for the prize. She hadn’t realized that so many Avondale High students were even superficially interested in flying, and she considered the situation soberly as the bus rolled up School Street and down the highway, past the entrance to Cherry Tree Road and into the country beyond.

  Barely half a mile from the edge of town, the driver turned into a winding secondary road that led past the Tisdale farm. No longer, however, were the flat fields covered with barley and winter wheat. As the driver slowed down to turn along the eastern boundary of the former farm, Rette could see a wind tee directly in front of her and an air strip which ran down almost to the road itself.

  In the distance, near the farmhouse, which had been left standing, was a newly completed hangar and a couple of low buildings still under construction. Everything, to the high-school crowd, looked very raw and new.

  Judy said, “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” and Rette was about to agree reluctantly when she caught sight of a plane taxiing down the strip toward the starting point, only a few yards from the road they were now traveling.

  “Hey! That’s a new Stinson Voyager!” Rette heard Corky shout, as the plane reached the end of the strip.

  The plane turned, headed into the wind, and the pilot started his take-off run. No sooner was he off the ground and climbing for altitude than a Piper Cruiser glided in, about twenty-five feet above the bus, and gently settled down onto the runway.

  At the roar of the motor, so close above his head, the bus driver pretended to duck. “Boy, this is a busy spot!” he said as he turned the long bus into the airport drive. “Wouldn’t think people’d be anxious to go up in the air, cold as it is.”

  Rette felt a shiver of sympathy crawl down her spine—or was it a shiver of excitement? She climbed down from the bus alongside the hangar and followed the faculty member in charge of the expedition across a cleared area to the old farmhouse, outside of which hung a new sign, with the word “OFFICE” lettered in black.

  Stephen Irish met them at the door, looking more rugged than ever in flying clothes. He pushed forth his lower lip and grinned when he saw the size of the crowd. “Glad to see you,” he called, with a gesture akin to a salute. “We might as well begin our conducted tour right here.”

  Along with the rest, Rette crowded into the office, where Mr. Irish divided the group into two, turning one section over to a flying instructor he introduced as Andy Keller. Andy was a raw-boned young man, as homely as Mr. Irish was handsome, but Rette rather liked his appealing, mongrel-pup look, and wasn’t too disappointed to find herself in his group.

  The next half hour was interesting. Andy explained to his followers the traffic pattern of the airport, a diagram of which was hanging on one wall of the office. He told them that with a northerly wind, the pilot used the north-south runway, and pointed out the importance of the wind tee in deciding the take-off direction.

  Rette listened carefully, but found much that the young man said as meaningless as one of the problems in algebra with which she so frequently struggled. The hangar and the actual planes harbored there interested her far more. She had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue, but none of the girls seemed to be doing any talking, so she restrained herself.

  Andy showed them a Piper Cub, describing its action and its parts as he led the group around it. Rette’s head was buzzing with words that were new to her—aileron, fin, jury struts, elevator. Flying sounded much more complicated, even, than she had imagined. Who was it that had been telling her dad it wasn’t much harder than driving a car?

  At the end
of the separate tours, Mr. Irish took over and talked to the entire group briefly. “One of you,” he said, touching with a caressing gesture the wing of a trim little Cessna by which he stood, “is going to have a chance to fly one of these planes. The first time you feel that stick move in your hand will be one of the thrills of your lifetime. And

  “I’m wishing you luck, each one of you who decides to enter the contest. If you’ve got a real yen to fly, and an average gift of gab, go to it. And here’s a tip. Keep what you write about flying well within your own world. Keep it sincere.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “And I’ll be seein’ you!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Well within your own world.”

  Rette pondered the flyer’s words on Saturday morning as she sat at the low pine desk in her bedroom, her legs wrapped around a Hitchcock chair that had come from Gramp’s house on King Street.

  In front of her was a sheaf of yellow copy paper such as the staff of the Arrow used, and between her even teeth was the end of a pencil, thoroughly chewed.

  She wished she knew what Mr. Irish had really meant by that remark. Like the title chosen for the essay contest, it seemed ambiguous. Rette looked at the single sentence on the paper before her and sighed.

  “From stories and legends handed down through the years, we know that even from earliest times people have dreamed of flying.”

  She knew. All week Rette had been haunting the reference room of the public library. She knew about Daedalus and Icarus and Hermes and the legends surrounding their attempts to fly. She knew that Archimedes and later Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci had believed in airships. She knew that in 1678 Besnier, a French locksmith, had constructed a curious flying machine with wooden shoulder bars and muslin wings.

  She had read everything she could find on the beginnings of aviation, on the early dreamers preceding the Montgolfier brothers, who made the first successful attempt to fly in 1783 with their hot-air balloon. She was full of her subject, yet everything she wrote seemed static to her. She wanted to get the lift, the thrill, of the idea of flight into her writing. But the words stood still.