The Last Grand Adventure

by Rebecca Behrens

  I never would’ve become the aviator I am without her, or without my sister. You sure were help on the ground—stitching up the fabric, checking the tension, meticulously cleaning wires and binding struts. In those early days, I always felt a smidgen safer knowing my sister’s hands had passed over the plane before I swung myself inside. We Earhart girls have always been the capable type! It’s like I used to say: A lucky charm is a nice balm for frayed nerves, but the best mascot is a good mechanic.

  Today, as I ate fresh coconut and canned meat under a hot sun, I closed my eyes and took myself back to Kinner Field. You and me and Neta, sitting cross-legged on a blanket in the shade. Stuffing our faces with sandwiches and thick slices of chocolate cake while oohing and ahhing at the pilots’ stunts. I loved our airfield picnics—so long as they didn’t cut into my time in the sky. You often complained that I was too busy for my little sister. I was simply eager to be independent, in the air and everywhere else. The runway of life stretched in front of me, with nowhere to go but into the future.

  Snooky once told me: Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I ask you, now, for forgiveness for letting adventures take me far away. I suppose we are part of the same fleet, but I’ve taken a different flight path in life. Truly, that’s my only regret. I know you never much liked me telling you what to do—but please be patient with me, Pidge. We’ll still share some stops on our itineraries. There’s something my friend Eleanor (Roosevelt, of course) used to say: Women are like tea bags because you never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water. Well, whether or not the water is hot, we women are strong.

  The longer I’m gone, the more I must remind myself of that.

  Be strong, Pidge. Don’t give up on your old sis.

  My love,

  Meelie

  An aquamarine sedan pulled up to the curb and tooted its horn before the car jerked into park. I folded up the letter and tucked it carefully back into the envelope. Amelia—Meelie—felt like she’d have died if she didn’t fly, which seemed like a funny way of thinking. Even small risks loomed as potential disasters to me. Still, Meelie wrote she didn’t regret her adventures—even the last one, which had made her vanish for the past thirty years. I shivered despite the Sun City heat. Well, I’m going on an adventure myself now, and with Meelie’s old instructor. Maybe she can help teach me how to “pilot my own life.”

  I shaded my eyes from the afternoon sun. The driver’s-side door opened, and a woman about Pidge’s age—or maybe older—bounded out. She had curly dyed-red hair, dark round glasses, and she was wearing a blouse, long pants, and a scarf wrapped stylishly around her neck. She grinned at me, striding briskly up the sidewalk with a pocketbook tucked under her arm. Her lipstick was bright red—I hadn’t ever seen an older lady with lips so vibrant before. Neta Snook. Thanks to the letter, I felt like we’d already been introduced.

  “Well, I don’t think you’re Pidge, although you’ve sure got her Earhart eyes.”

  That caused a smile to curl at my lips. Nobody had ever told me before that I looked like my grandmother. Instantly I felt more at home on Pidge’s stoop. The front door opened behind me. “Snooky!” Pidge set down the watering can she was holding (she was watering plants again?) and quickly moved past me. She and the woman embraced each other tightly, laughter resetting all the lines on their faces.

  “Oh, how the years have flown,” Pidge said, wiping at her eye.

  “Psssh. You don’t look a day over thirty,” Neta said.

  Pidge rolled her eyes. “You always were full of it, Snooky.” They both chuckled.

  “So who’s this spitting image?” Neta bent down, hands on her thighs, to peer at me in a friendly way.

  “This is my granddaughter, Beatrice.”

  “Nice to meet you, Beatrice.” Neta stood up. “I’m Snooky. Are you coming along with us?”

  Pidge butted in. “Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that. Beatrice, will you load our bags in the trunk?” She grabbed Neta’s elbow and the two old women disappeared inside, leaving me out on the stoop. I got up, smoothed my dress into place, and found our luggage piled inside the door: my suitcase and knapsack, next to a small suitcase for Pidge and the valise. I put the letter I’d read back inside before I loaded the suitcases into the trunk and the knapsack and valise into the backseat. Then I walked back to the front steps and sat down. I tugged at the blades of dry grass. It hadn’t bothered me much when Pidge hadn’t mentioned me on the phone last night. But silly as it was, now that her friend was here, I almost felt left out. Wasn’t there any place in which I fit anymore? Not at my dad’s house, and not at my mom’s. Somehow I had thought that staying with my grandmother this summer, I might hold more of her attention. When Barbara visits hers, she gets lavished with cookies and shopping sprees. She is the center of her grandmother’s world. That’s how I used to feel visiting my grandma Anna’s house. I wondered if to Pidge, I was one more hurdle she had to jump over to get back to Amelia.

  “Beatrice!” Pidge was calling from inside. “Come in and have a late lunch before we head out.” I scrambled up, happy to be remembered.

  • • •

  Neta and Pidge laughed their way through a pot of coffee, and I ate my sandwich quietly, listening. Instead of another fluffernutter, I went straight for the good stuff: a sugar sandwich, made of white bread, butter, and sugar. Barbara and I used to eat them every day after school. It’s the sort of food neither Julie nor my mother will let me eat: Julie because it’s too fattening; my mother because it’s too unhealthy. Sometime before my parents split, my mother started reading all these books on nutrition. Margarine and bacon disappeared from the refrigerator, and my sugary cereals fled the pantry. Weird sprouts and crunchy granola took their places. Already I liked how around Pidge, I could eat whatever I wanted and she didn’t bat an eye. Although, as I chewed through the second half of the sandwich, it started to taste a touch overly sweet.

  I rummaged in the fridge for some milk, still listening to them talk. Neta had a great laugh—a joyful howl. Their stories were full of references to Meelie, which wasn’t surprising, considering she was how they knew each other in the first place.

  “I’ve had this framed in my den for ages.” Neta pulled a photograph out of her pocketbook. “I thought maybe you’d want to see it again.” Craning my neck, I could see that the well-preserved picture showed an old white airplane—just a tiny one, not like a jetliner—and two girls in front of it. The one on the left wore a long coat, pants tucked into boots, and a hat topped with big goggles. The other had on a jacket and boots, and was clutching a leather glove. She wore a hat-scarf combination that covered the lower half of her face, but you could still see her eyes. They sparkled mischievously, kind of like Pidge’s. It was definitely Amelia.

  “That’s right before her first training flight. January third, nineteen twenty-one. Can you believe it?” Neta smiled and touched the photo with her lacquered fingertip. “I remember the day she showed up at the field. Wearing a leather jacket that she later admitted she’d slept in and purposefully stained, to pass herself off as an experienced aviatrix. Your sister said to me, ‘I want to fly. Will you teach me?’ Real direct and determined, so I was fond of her right from the get-go.” She slid it across the yellow Formica table to Pidge.

  “My goodness,” Pidge said. “Meelie looks so excited, and so young. Weren’t you afraid for your life?” She laughed, but kind of sadly.

  “I should’ve been! Amelia was naturally daring, but not always a natural at flying. But I knew, even in those early days, that she was destined for something big. Fame.”

  Pidge smiled. “Although I have to say, she didn’t have a clue what it would really be like, when she had all that attention on her. She told me once that if she could do it all over again . . .” Pidge trailed off, and her lips closed to a purse. “I think nobody could’ve predicted how wild it all got.”

  “Was it hard? Being her sister?”

  Pidge stared at the photo. “Well,
yes. Meelie liked to do things her way, and she liked to tell me how I should do my things too . . . We butted heads plenty. But isn’t it hard being anyone’s sister?” So far, I could agree with that.

  Pidge slid back the photograph, clearing her throat. “Enough of this talk.”

  I was interested in what Pidge had been saying about if Meelie had been able to do it all over again—did Amelia end up regretting her fame? Or her flying? Her letters sounded melancholy at points, and she kept writing that she missed Pidge. But by then they’d moved on to talking about life on Snooky’s ranch, so I picked up my plate and took it to the sink to noisily clean it off. Pidge looked up at me, almost like she’d forgotten that I was in the room at all.

  “I suppose we should get on the road soon. Say, I have an idea! On our way to the station, let’s take a look-see at Kinner Field. It’ll be like the old days.” I perked up—I remembered that from the letter. Maybe we could have a picnic too.

  Neta smiled. “Oh, there’s nothing to see now. That area’s all built up, and the airfield’s long gone.”

  “What a shame. So many memories there.” Pidge stood up, carrying their plates to the sink.

  “Here, Pidge. I can take those,” I said, reaching for them.

  “You call your grandmother ‘Pidge’?” Neta asked, raising a penciled-in eyebrow.

  “At my insistence,” Pidge said, before the blush covered both of my cheeks. “Because I hate the word grandmother. It makes me feel ancient.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Pidge, but we are ancient.”

  “I prefer the term ‘well-preserved,’ myself. But in any case, I’ll race your ancient self out to your Thunderbird!” Pidge dashed toward the front door, moving as fast as her legs would allow.

  Neta pushed herself up from the table and hurried after her, giggling. She turned to me. “Well, come on, kid! Are you going to let these two old birds beat you?”

  Bewildered, I left the plates in the sink and hurried after them. They’d stopped running as soon as they crossed the doorway, taking the front walk more carefully than the carpeted, wide hallways of Pidge’s house. So even though I’m not much of a runner, I blasted past them and reached Neta’s car first. I pulled the handle to open the door and hopped inside.

  “You got there first,” Neta called after me. “Don’t you want to ride shotgun?”

  “No, I’d rather be in back.” I slid to the middle of the backseat and immediately readjusted my dress under my legs—the dark seat was burning hot. I watched as Pidge locked up the house, thinking about the dirty dishes still stacked in the sink. At least I hadn’t left the water running when I chased after them to the car. Even in the short time I’d been around her, I had noticed that Pidge was a lackadaisical housekeeper. Either that was her forgetfulness, or she simply didn’t care about the things in that house. I figured that was the kind of stuff that Julie wanted to know—but I wasn’t about to rat out my grandmother.

  They climbed into the front seats, and then Neta stuck the key in the ignition. She revved the engine. “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand!” The car shot out from the curb, Pidge hollered a hearty “woo-hoo!” and we were on our way.

  Neta was short—whether she had been her whole life or whether it was because she was an old lady now, I didn’t know. Her head barely popped above the headrest. She also leaned forward in her seat, squinting her eyes at what was outside the windshield. I hoped she could see properly. But the way she held the steering wheel was pure confidence—like she was a pilot once again, only for a Thunderbird instead of an airplane. “Turn on some tunes, why don’t you?” she said to Pidge. “We need music for a joyride.”

  Pidge reached over and fiddled with the radio dial. The first song that blasted on had a catchy beat and lyrics that made me think about San Francisco: something about incense and peppermints. Incense was the stuff the hippies burned while they grooved or whatever they were doing up at the Be-In. It reminded me of the pictures I’d seen next to my mom’s article in Look magazine—girls with messy hair and round sunglasses that made their faces a mystery. The long tunics they wore, with all sorts of wild and interesting psychedelic prints. Sandals and macramé. The last time I saw my mom, she was still wearing clothes a mostly normal mother would wear—but her hair was long and natural.

  Another song came on, and in this one a woman wailed about wanting “somebody to love.” Her booming voice and the loud, pulsing guitars filled the car. I liked it. Not as much as I liked the Beatles, but the singing in particular made me sit up and take notice.

  “Yuck—turn the dial, would you? I don’t like that caterwauling.” In the rearview mirror, I could see Neta wrinkle her nose. We were cruising down the highway now, much faster than I’d ever seen an elderly person drive. Whenever we hit a traffic light that looked to be turning yellow, Neta would toot on the horn and barrel through the intersection. “Remember this, Beatrice—yellow means accelerate.”

  Pidge turned the dial and found Frank Sinatra crooning about a paper moon. “Oh, this song I like. It makes me think of dancing,” she said. “We didn’t go to many dances as children, Meelie and I. Our father couldn’t be counted on to take us.”

  “Couldn’t you go without him?” I piped up from the backseat. Unless it was a father-daughter dance, I supposed.

  “No, in those days, fathers had to escort their daughters to dances.”

  “Your father always seemed like a great guy to me,” Neta said. “Sharper than most anyone I’d met. Charming.”

  “He was those things.” Pidge cleared her throat. “But he had some troubles, too. Sometimes it wasn’t easy, our childhood.” That made me sad. At least I could count on my father to take me places, even if Sally would be coming along now.

  “I always wondered why Amelia needed to fly away,” Neta said softly.

  Pidge turned sharply to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  Neta raised one hand off the wheel to wave in a flying motion. “Something compelled her to wander over to the airfield one day! I just wondered what created that yearning to go way up yonder.”

  Pidge settled back in her seat. “Up, and away.”

  Neta sighed. “I wish I could ask her now.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “Which brings me to a question I can ask—Where are you two gals headed this evening such that I have to cart you to the train station?”

  Pidge turned to wink at me in the backseat, which I interpreted as “don’t say anything about the letters and the real reason why we’re skipping town.” I kept my mouth buttoned up, curious what cover story Pidge would spin. Would she tell Neta some version of the truth? As I watched Neta’s short curls blow around with the breeze, I thought that she didn’t seem like the kind of fuddy-duddy lady to pass judgment on us for sneaking out of Sun City. She also might believe us if we told her about Amelia’s letters.

  “I decided my granddaughter should see from where her family came. We’re headed all the way back to Kansas. A sightseeing trip, good for these lazy days of summer.”

  “An excellent plan. But her father couldn’t give you a lift?”

  “Oh, no. He’s busy working—and her stepmother has another child to take care of.”

  “My mother’s traveling too,” I piped up. “From San Francisco to New Jersey.” I don’t know why, but I felt the need to explain that she hadn’t also flown away. So to speak.

  “San Francisco, eh? Ain’t that something.” Neta raised an eyebrow. “Something groovy.”

  “Well,” Pidge said, a defensive note in her tone, which I appreciated, “her mother’s become a reporter.”

  We kept passing other cars along the highway, and if anyone dared to shoot past us, Neta would make an exasperated noise and grumble about speed demons. Then she’d gun it to catch up and overtake them. We made a pit stop at a filling station to use the restroom and grab a couple of sodas. When we got back in the car, the conversation quieted down as Pidge and Neta took in the scenery and sang alon
g to their music.

  Another yellow light popped up ahead, but this time Neta squealed on the brakes. “Sorry. Don’t want to crash.”

  “Were you ever in one?” I asked, meaning either car or plane. It made my palms sweat just to think about it.

  “Oh, yes. In fact I crashed with Amelia in the Canary, once.”

  Pidge butted in, “I helped Meelie buy that plane. Her bright yellow piece of freedom, as she called it. Can you believe we only had to scrimp and save two thousand dollars for it?”

  Neta let out a low whistle. “You’d pay a lot more today.” She drove through the green light and continued her story. “It was July twenty-third. Amelia had just gotten the Canary. On takeoff we didn’t climb high enough to gain altitude, and there was a blasted bunch of eucalyptus trees at the edge of the runway. She had two choices: nose down and hit the trees, or head up and face a stall. Well, she went up and we stalled, then we spiraled down, down, down. The propeller broke on the way, and she busted the landing gear.”

  “Were you terrified?” I asked.

  “Falling from the sky is a sensation I never learned to like, to put it mildly. Anyway—and you’ll appreciate this, Pidge—on the ground I turned to check on Amelia, and she was already powdering her nose. There would be reporters, you see!” They both cracked up. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to laugh about something as scary as a crash.

  The Thunderbird stopped at another light. I looked up and recognized the names on the street signs—we were already in Los Angeles. It was strange to be close to home, without any intention of returning there.

  I watched Neta in the driver’s seat. Amelia had been lucky to have a friend and teacher like her. One of the things Meelie said—that Snooky taught her to ask for forgiveness, not permission—made me feel less guilty about not telling my parents we’d left Sun City.

  The Thunderbird jolted through a left turn. “All right, girls!” Neta exclaimed. “I think we’re here.” Outside the car window was the red-tiled roof and tall arched windows of Union Station. The clock on the tower showed we were cutting it close—it was almost seven. I reached into my knapsack to pull out my Brownie camera and took a picture. Maybe I’d paste it in my adventure journal, once I developed the roll. A picture of where Pidge’s and my journey started. It would be good to get something on those blank pages.