The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  The next day, Elyse was twenty minutes late to the restaurant. Late enough for me to read the menu and order a cup of tea, but not so tardy that I was once again imagining her funeral. Just sitting there on the back patio of the restaurant in my favorite blue suit and squinting into the sunlight made me wish I were waiting for Thomas instead. He always loved me in Santiago blue, the color of my Airforce uniform.

  A mother and her youngsters ambled by the outdoor seating area, and I watched as the little boy dutifully steered his baby sister’s carriage right into an inkberry bush. Dave as a child came into my head then, the way Dave at any age had a tendency to appear since he’d stopped speaking to me. This time, he was six years old and swimming in the pool at the Scarsdale Golf Club, which had, only weeks before, made headlines for not allowing a debutante to attend a ball because her escort was determined to be of Jewish descent. “Mama, what’s it like to be you?” he asked, treading water, his little blond head bobbing up and down. “I mean, I’m here and you’re standing there, and I just want to know what’s it feel like? Do you like being you?”

  “I love being me,” I said, crouching down—ready with a towel because his lips were already blue with cold. “Because I have you.”

  I blinked and looked around. The mother and her children were gone from the sidewalk, and my teacup was empty. Elyse had arrived, wearing her usual attire: khaki pants and a white oxford shirt. But she didn’t look right—rather, she didn’t look well. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was hugging herself as if she were cold.

  “Bus sick?” I asked, as she pulled out a chair and slumped into the one across from me.

  She shrugged and nodded, glancing around. “This is nice,” she said, and it was nice: the outdoor table, the breeze rippling the white cloths, the small vase of fresh cut flowers, the muted sounds of traffic down on Fifth Avenue below.

  “How’s your novel?” I asked.

  “I haven’t had time to work on it much lately.” Her shoulders were hunched. “Sorry I missed the group on Tuesday night. My parents were—busy—and well . . . neither one would take me. But I’m thinking of making Larissa a spy,” she said. I wondered what on earth a fifteen-year-old would know about espionage. “And of course she’ll have to fly planes and stuff.”

  She seemed so downcast that I hoped she wasn’t including a female pilot as a plot point to please me—or upset that I’d never paid her. “Here—for last time,” I said, slipping some cash out of my change purse, since she’d left my apartment before I’d had the chance to remember the money in my wallet.

  “Oh, you don’t have to—I’m not finished typing yet—”

  “My dear, I insist,” I said, setting the money down, as a waitress appeared to ask us if we’d decided yet. Elyse barely peeked at the menu before ordering a cup of Earl Grey, but I went ahead and ordered the high tea, complete with scones and sandwiches and clotted cream and jam. After all, we were taking up a table.

  “So what’s the title of your book gonna be?” Elyse asked, once the waitress was gone, and my bills were still lying beside her napkin.

  “My book?” I repeated and then laughed belatedly. I’d been so busy thinking of her book. I thought a moment. “Maybe The Forgiving Trees.”

  “And what does that mean?” she asked, raising a single eyebrow.

  “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “When Dave was five years old, he said he was going to write a book called The Forgiving Trees, and my husband and I thought it was delightful, although we had no idea where it came from. Nor did he. But that’s what he said. Of course, he turned out to be a musician, not a writer.”

  “Well, you better ask him if you can use it now. Maybe he’ll need it for a song.”

  “Oh, well . . . I don’t think he’ll mind . . .” I murmured.

  Elyse leaned over and unzipped her backpack, producing the Dictaphone and tapes, along with the small, framed picture of Murphee, Grace, and myself standing by my Fairchild PT-19. I’d let her borrow the photo last week after she’d seemed so intrigued. It was a sign, of course: a sign that I should go on with the story.

  “Where exactly were you in this picture?” she asked, sliding it toward me.

  “The airfield in Sweetwater, Texas. ‘Cochran’s Convent,’” I said with a smile, as the waitress, bearing a tray, delivered a tier of scones and tea sandwiches, along with fresh pots of tea for both of us. “Please. Eat,” I added, nodding at all the food, but Elyse just shook her head and picked up a lemon, as if she weren’t sure whether to suck on it or squeeze it into the tea.

  “So, why’d they call it a convent—it was, like, an all-girl campus?”

  “Well, certainly there were some men. Many of the instructors were men. But it became a training facility for women, so the male cadets were specifically warned not to land there.”

  “Did your husband fly, too?”

  “Thomas? Oh, no. He had terrible eyesight. But Grace was engaged to be married before she left for Texas at the age of nineteen.”

  “Did her fiancé mind when she left him for flight school?”

  I shook my head. “He was a cadet himself, on his way to Camp Lejeune. And her family was very proud of her. There was a sense that we were contributing to the war. Everyone wanted to give a little bit.”

  “Did any of your friends get shot down?”

  “We were ferrying supplies, and delivering ships from factories to air bases, not going to battle. Still, lives were lost.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of crashing?” Elyse asked, reminding me of Sarah’s daughter Rita, who’d asked me once if I was ever afraid of falling from the sky.

  “Not really, no. I knew I had to be careful up there. But I just didn’t think that was going to be how I would go.”

  “But . . . why did you want to—take that risk? Because of the war?” she added quickly.

  “Because it was exciting!” I erupted. “It was the golden age of aviation. Everyone wanted to fly. And oh, those open-cockpit planes were romantic—the Eisenhower jacket, the helmet, the goggles—Hollywood all the way,” I added wistfully, recalling my disappointment when I found out from my flight instructor that pilots didn’t actually wear scarves like in the movies—the risk of getting the material caught in a propeller and strangling oneself was too great.

  Elyse slumped back in her seat, hugging herself again. “So where are they now—Grace and Murphee, I mean?”

  “Well, I don’t know about Murphee. But Grace died—later on. After she’d lived long enough to have grandchildren.” I’d learned that much from the USA Today article. I took a sip of tea and set my cup down with only the smallest clink. “We’d lost touch many years before. Right after the war ended, actually.”

  When I glanced up from my cup of tea, Elyse’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s just . . . so . . . sad,” she said. “You called her your best friend, and you only hung out with her for . . . how long, exactly?”

  “Well. Less than a year,” I answered. I had only lived a fraction of my life with Grace—a particle of life in the vast scheme of time—but she was part of an era when I’d felt the most like the woman I was supposed to be. With Grace, I was the most carefree. “Embarrassing, really,” I accidentally muttered aloud. “I’m embarrassed . . . to be this old.”

  Elyse surprised me when she started to giggle. “That’s silly.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt.

  “I just can’t imagine what on earth I’m still doing here,” I admitted with a sigh.

  “Well, there must be a reason,” she said, her voice full of naïve conviction. “And I think you look great for your age,” Elyse added, finally reaching for a scone and stuffing it into her mouth.

  “How old do you think I am?” I asked.

  “Um . . . ninety?” she guessed, her mouth still full.

  That made me laugh. “Ninety-one? Ninety-two?” she kept going.

  “My dear, one should always go low. And a word of advice: no one ever wants to hea
r they look good for their age. It is implicit in the compliment that I would look frightening if I were twenty-one.” Elyse laughed, such a hearty sound for someone so thin and small that it made me suspect she was capable of immense passion, even if she didn’t realize it herself. “Do you want to be a great writer for your age or just a great writer?” I added, and she stopped laughing.

  She reached for a triangle of salmon sandwich, finally realizing she was hungry after all, it seemed.

  The truth of the matter was, Elyse was precisely that: an excellent writer for her age. And who could blame her for being fifteen? What had she experienced in her very few years on earth, aside from what she’d absorbed in books and movies? She had mentioned her father had been ill in the past, and when I’d suggested she write about that, she had said, “But then writing wouldn’t be fun anymore.” Elyse was blooming with imagination and a sharp sense of humor, that much was clear from the opening pages of her novel. But it was also juvenilia. Unlike Jean Fester and Selena Markmann and Herb Shepherd and the lot of them who coddled her efforts, I wanted to make Elyse better than her age.

  “I’ve been thinking about your novel,” I said. “About these four sisters with such complicated names . . .”

  Elyse cringed. “My mom said their names are too weird, right? Especially Cordelia’s. She said my characters should have ordinary names.”

  “I say, choose anything that spurs your imagination. I’m terrible at naming characters myself. Whenever I get stumped, I’ve been known to just plug in the name of someone I know, which is rather like cheating, don’t you think?” I asked, and she smiled. “The real question, my dear, is what do you do with your characters once you’ve got them all together? They have to be united against something together, and it can’t just be that they all hate math.” Her expression turned thoughtful, as she tapped her fingers absently over the cover of her book. “Perhaps there’s something sinister going on at the school that they slowly uncover?” I suggested. “The headmaster secretly—”

  “Fights with his wife about wanting to cheat on her?” Elyse asked.

  I blinked.

  “The sisters could . . . overhear or something . . . and devise a plan to stop it?” Elyse picked up another scone and doused it with a spoonful of strawberry jam.

  “Well, that’s one avenue I hadn’t considered.”

  “My parents might be getting a divorce,” she added in a low, wobbly voice. “I heard them arguing the other night.”

  So that’s what a fifteen-year-old knows about espionage, I thought. The teapot shook in my tremulous hand, spilling its contents on the tablecloth before I managed to set it down. “Sometimes disagreements appear catastrophic simply because you’re there to witness it,” I said, mopping up the tea with a napkin.

  “My dad said he wants a divorce, and my mom was really mad, and neither one of them knows that I know.” Elyse appeared to be struggling to swallow, as if the scone had turned to ground chalk in her mouth. “Do you believe bad things happen in threes?”

  “Oh, heavens,” I said. Try nines.

  “Because first there was my dad, and now my parents. It makes me wonder what the next bad thing is going to be . . . People at church say it’s a miracle that my father survived pancreatic cancer. But I don’t know.” She looked up at me. “Maybe he just had a good surgeon.”

  Sipping my tea, I gave a noncommittal shrug since I myself had never entirely believed in miracles, or at least, I couldn’t fathom that one could happen to me. Then again, what was my definition of a miracle? A good marriage, for fifty years; a healthy child who grew up, reached his full potential, and kept a close relationship with his parents; a husband who died without suffering, surrounded by an extended family at the bedside? Most of that had come true. Perhaps I wanted too much.

  The waitress was back, asking if we were ready for the check.

  “Can I help with this?” Elyse asked, her hand vaguely gesturing to the detritus of our meal.

  “The tab is on me. Take your hard-earned money, my dear.”

  “I didn’t finish typing yet. And besides, you keep giving me ideas for my novel anyway.” Her head snapped up. “Is it okay if I use—”

  “My dear, you may use it all,” I said with a smile.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Telegram

  March 1944

  Miriam Lichtenstein, what is this?” Mama shrieks, on the evening of the party, holding up a bag of sugar as if she’s never seen one before. She sent me out this morning to trade food ration stamps with the women who meet for coffee each week, and now here I am, twelve hours later, with all the wrong ingredients. “I asked you to trade the meat and sugar stamps for vegetables and eggs. I didn’t ask for sugar. We don’t need sugar.” She doesn’t mean for this week, she means ever, or at least until the war ends—as if abstaining from apple strudel and knish, cheese blintzes and spice cake actually saves lives.

  “Sarah needs sugar,” I say, because ever since Elias was declared dead by the U.S. Navy two years ago, my sister, too sad to eat, has lost quite a bit of weight. She’s just a slip of a thing now, with jarring cheekbones and a new cough that makes me shudder.

  Mama must be silently worrying, too, because she goes ahead and puts the sack of sugar in the back of the cupboard without another word. I’ll tell Sarah where it’s been secreted, so she can make herself a good cup of coffee. It comforts me, imagining that maybe this is all it will take to make her better.

  Elias left for war in the summer of 1942, just after his daughter’s first birthday, and we gave him a going-away party then, too, like the one we’re attending tonight for one of the neighborhood boys. I hate these parties, which always start out like a wedding and end like a funeral, all in one night. Behind every handshake and every lingering hug at the door, you’re forced to acknowledge that Death is very near and imminent.

  In Elias’s case, he was declared missing, then dead, after a German U-boat blew up his submarine. It seems stupid and careless that it happened so close to home, just off the coast of North Carolina before he even got anywhere, but the world has shrunk as the war draws near. Ever since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we’ve been readying ourselves for potential invasions on the beaches of both coasts. At night the air raid sirens go off, because the steel mills are potential targets. We draw the blackout curtains and wait for the all clear. Sarah and I have figured out the precise distance a candle can be from the window without being detected by the air warden on the street below. It’s nice to have her home again for these moments, but it feels like only a part of her is actually here.

  Upstairs, I find Sarah staring out the window at our neighbors, the Byrds, whose gaggle of blond children are playing in the backyard of the house just across the alley. I’ve seen them running into the street when the iceman arrives, and sometimes playing some sort of keepaway game with the toddler. “Biting baby!” the older children scream, as she runs in circles and they scatter, avoiding the swipe of her teeth. We also find them mildly fascinating because they’re the only Christian family on the block, still here despite the influx of Jewish families twenty years ago. If my niece Rita, three now and precocious as ever, were awake, she’d love to join them.

  “Any news?” Sarah asks, noticing me.

  “There’s sugar. In the back left of the cupboard,” I say, unbuttoning my grimy blouse and stepping out of my skirt.

  “Oh, wow,” Sarah says with a smile. “Coffee, again. And I meant, any news?”

  “Nothing,” I say, knowing we’re talking about the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

  Two years ago, when I was eighteen and my flight career seemed permanently stalled, my old instructor told me there was an “experiment” going on in Texas: pilot Nancy Love had created the first squadron of women pilots to ferry aircraft for the war—with a minimum flying age of twenty-one. That same September, with the permission of General Hap Arnold, aviatrix Jackie Cochran established the Women’s Flying Training Detachment in Houston, where
female pilots would undergo the same flight training as male army cadets. I applied immediately, but it wasn’t until July 1943—the month the two training sites merged at Sweetwater—that I was invited to Cleveland for an interview.

  Knowing better than to ask for permission, I told Mama I was going to visit a classmate for the weekend and then, to pay for the train, I hocked my pearls, the lovely little strand Papa had given me when I was eight. At the pawnshop, after opening the velvet box, I’d held the necklace gently on the pads of my fingers—marveling at the pinkish color of the pearls—and almost couldn’t do it. The only way to part with them was to tell myself that Papa was buying me a ticket to fly.

  In Cleveland, there were six other women waiting to interview along with me, each of us clutching our logbooks and pilots’ licenses—me, additionally anxious about my age. But the assistant to Jackie Cochran told me not to worry; she’d seen my scores from flight school; Jim had written me a fine letter, and they would keep all my credentials on file.

  I returned to Pittsburgh, bursting with hope and suspense, only to be met with nearly four months of silence. Fall semester started at Pitt, where I studied stenography and bookkeeping—and one Shakespeare class for Sarah—and bagged groceries at the general store on the weekends, until at last, another telegram arrived: If you’re still interested in becoming a Women Airforce Service Pilot, report to Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania, for an Army Air Forces physical on December 18th, 1943. Once again, I had to find my own way across the state, this time to stand in a line with a hundred men in their undershirts and skivvies—gawking at me, before the doctor slipped me behind a curtain—only to be told absolutely nothing. It’s been ten weeks, five days, and nine hours since I passed my army physical—but I tell Sarah, “I’m trying not to think about it,” as though I’ve been able to stop.

  “Aren’t you coming tonight?” I add, realizing she’s wearing her gingham belted dress. The Old Sarah wouldn’t be caught dead at an evening party in gingham.