“Someone needs to be here for Rita,” Sarah says, shaking her head and coughing into her fist. “Besides, I can’t go to a party alone. At least you have Tzadok.”
“We’re just friends,” I say, and she gives me a look. “What? It’s true.” Despite my parents’ conviction that Tzadok is a good match, despite that I asked for—and he gave me, without hesitation—the ultimate favor of driving five hours across the state and back again, I’ve spent the last two years avoiding formal courtship. At times, I accompany him to family events, but I’ve never held his hand, never looked into his eyes and kissed him, nor has he ever made any such advances. On the way home from Indian Town Gap, I was even so blunt as to mention that I’m never getting married.
“You’re too busy chasing your dreams, Little Bird,” Tzadok said, using his pet name for me ever since I confessed the truth about what I was training for. “I admire you for wanting something so badly,” he added, staring at the road, making me pity him for his own lack of ambition. “Sometimes I think, ‘I will never speak German again.’ There used to be more to my country than Nazis.” He gave me a sad smile and, once again, I felt guilty for chafing against his gloom.
“You could do worse,” Sarah says tonight, and she’s right. He has a tiny apartment, a working vehicle, a formal education, and perpetual job security working for Uncle Hyman. But the only thing I feel when he looks at me intently is an urge to flee from his kindness.
“Remember when we both wanted to marry Dickon from The Secret Garden?” I ask, struggling with the zipper of my clean frock. “He could just blow his whistle and birds and squirrels and bunnies would come greet him.”
“We’re not living on the moor in England, and Dickon’s not real. Here, let me help,” Sarah says and, gratefully, I let her take over. She even lets me borrow her comb, since mine is missing. The joke is that for the few years she was gone, I didn’t brush my hair once. “Tzadok will be mesmerized,” she says, when I’m finished with my hair.
“You marry him,” I say, and as soon as the words slip out, I think, Too soon.
Luckily, she sounds amused when she says, “But he only has eyes for you,” and it seems, for a moment, the Old Sarah is back.
“Miriam!” Mama calls from the bottom of the stairs, making me hesitate.
“Be nice,” Sarah says. “The man ruined his tires for you.”
I come downstairs to find not Tzadok in the doorway, but instead a pimply-faced teenager in uniform handing my mother an envelope. She thanks him and ushers him out before turning to me with a question on her face.
“It’s a telegram,” Mama says, handing me the envelope.
After tearing it open, I read with Mama peering over my shoulder. It’s an invitation, I realize, to come to Texas for the Women Airforce Service, dated March 4, 1944. Signed by Jackie Cochran herself. I yelp for joy and then clamp a hand over my mouth.
“Is this real?” Mama asks, snatching it out of my hand. “Jackie Cochran sent you a telegram? But how did she get your name? Hyman!” she shouts, before I can answer. “Jackie Cochran sent Miri a telegram!”
“Who’s Jackie Cochran?” Uncle Hyman asks, coming into the front hall.
The answer tumbles out of me: “One of the greatest aviators ever—she won the Transcontinental Air Race—set the transcontinental flying record—”
“That Jackie Cochran?” Uncle Hyman asks, frowning, and I nod.
“How did she get your name?” Mama asks again, and I tell her that I applied—with recommendations—for the position last year.
“But why on earth does she think you can fly a plane?” Mama asks, and I hesitate and glance at my sister, Queen of Secrets, as she makes her way down the stairs. I think of when she told them she was in love with an actor. I wonder now, Is it worse to know how to fly? Sarah nods at me now. Go on, her eyes say.
“I learned through the flying program at the University of Pittsburgh—it was in the paper, you saw it . . . . The president thinks we need more pilots to win the war, so . . .”
“I heard they banned women,” Uncle Hyman says, and from his voice, I can tell he thinks that was a good idea.
“That was before. Now that we’re at war—”
“They’re sending women into battle?” Mama asks, her voice rising.
“Not in America,” I say, thinking of the Russian “Night Witches” flying bombing missions overseas, “but we need more trained pilots to help here.”
Uncle Hyman grabs the telegram and shoves his glasses up on his head to get a better look. “Texas! You can’t go to Texas! How will you get there?” When I say the train, of course, he barks, “On whose nickel?”
“What about school?” Mama says, her voice eerily quiet.
I tell her I’ll take a leave of absence, which sounds much better than dropping out.
Uncle Hyman keeps rereading the telegram. “It doesn’t look like Jackie Cochran is offering any compensation for travel—to or from Texas if you don’t make it through the program.”
“Can you try out for the Women Airforce Service after you graduate from college? It’s just one more year,” she adds.
“Mama, I have to go now. They just lowered the flying age,” I say, and then watch as her face collapses into worry lines.
“How many girls applied for this position?” Sarah asks, her arms folded across her chest.
“I don’t know. Twenty-five thousand?” I shrug.
“Twenty-five thousand?” Mama repeats. “And she picked . . . ?”
“Me. Yes, Mama. Me! Can you imagine?”
She is imagining it. I can see it in her eyes, which are growing more wistful than worried. Maybe she’s thinking of what my father’s reaction would be if he were here right now, or maybe she’s thinking, like Sarah, that one of us should be able to leave the house on Beacon Street.
“Let me understand this correctly—you lied to us?” Uncle Hyman asks, his face tomato red. “You haven’t taken a single course that I paid for?”
“I did. I took some—”
“Flying lessons!” he finishes. “At the university! And now you want us to buy you a train ticket across the country?”
“She has to go,” Mama suddenly says, oh so quietly, it almost breaks my heart.
“Your mother and I need to talk,” Uncle Hyman says.
“She’s going, Hyman,” Mama says, and I’m surprised and grateful. “You heard her: twenty-five thousand applied. They picked Miri.”
I want to hug Mama, but before I can move, Uncle Hyman snaps at me to go to my room. “Both of you!” he says, jerking his head at Sarah.
I want to tell Mama I’m sorry for wanting so much and sorry for all that I’ve hidden, but Uncle Hyman is glaring so furiously that I run upstairs, light on my feet, with Sarah on my heels, and we close the door to our bedroom, and shut the shades, and we hug and scream and laugh and dance, all with complete, tiptoeing, arms-a-waving silence. What is it about being on the precipice of change that makes one capable of joy and fear simultaneously? As if she’s read my mind, Sarah gives my shoulders a shake and whispers, “You can do it.”
“But what about you?” I ask, suddenly worried.
“What about me?” she says, shrugging her thin shoulders. “I’m going to be fine.” Then she shoots me her unforgettable smile and adds, “I already am fine.”
CHAPTER 9
Mock Marriage
I kept hoping that Mrs. Browning was right, and that the fight between my parents was just a small shower on the weather map of their marriage that only seemed like a hurricane. But on Friday morning, Mom flew down to Key West for the weekend, which meant things were seriously screwed up in the state of the union if she was desperate enough to tell Grandma about it.
Five years ago, right after Huggie was born, and right when my mother “needed her most,” my grandma Margot moved to Key West. Mom decided the best way to let Grandma know how much she missed her was to never let us visit Florida and to never call to say hi and to always let
the machine pick up. Mom also couldn’t get over that Grandma had a boyfriend, “this Ray guy,” as in, “What do we really know about this Ray guy?” Mom’s been suspicious of him ever since our one and only visit four years ago, when he took us on a kayak tour through the mangroves and pointed out rare species of birds and plants that my brother Toby later told us were not indigenous to Key West.
Mom got back from visiting on Sunday night, and the only thing she would say at breakfast on Monday morning was that Grandma “sends her love.”
“Did she have any—advice for you?” I asked, my mouth full of cereal, as Mom spackled peanut butter all over the bread for our sandwiches like a tile guy who has to move quickly before the cement dries. “You know . . . helpful tips . . .” I said, and Mom stopped and stared at me, her face grave.
“There are things I need to tell you, but now is not the time.”
Watching her shove all the sandwiches into Baggies, I stood there gathering all of my questions: What if you tried to be more fun? What if you weren’t such a hater? What if Daddy changes his mind?
“Elyse, please get moving, before you miss the bus,” Mom said.
I left for school kind of glum, especially when Holden Saunders drove by the bus stop in his MINI Cooper and didn’t even look my way.
AT LUNCH, THEA CAME OVER AND PLUNKED HER TRAY DOWN SO forcefully her soda tipped over, and then she said, “Oh, shit!” as she mopped it up, like somehow I’d shoved her from across the table. I guessed she was pissed because Mrs. Desmond announced who our spouses were for the “Marriage Project,” and I got Holden Saunders and she got Carson Jeffries, this kid who always wears shorts, rain, sleet, or snow. Although in some ways, they kind of look perfect for each other: there’s Thea with her black hair and combat boots. And there’s Carson in his nose ring and Converse sneakers and Hawaiian shorts. They’re both kind of saying fuck you, I think: to absent mothers, reality show sisters, to winter. “You did the reverse psychology plan, right?” she asked, picking up her sandwich. “You didn’t list him as someone you’d want to be paired with?” She didn’t have to say who the “him” was.
My peanut butter kind of stuck to the back of my throat but I managed to say, “No, of course not,” even though the truth was that I listed Holden Saunders twice, plus I put an asterisk beside his name and wrote at the bottom of the index card: “Holden is my next door neighbor, which would make it a lot easier for extracurricular projects.”
The day got better after physics class, when Holden came over and said, “Hey. Elyse, right?” just the way I always imagined he would one day! And then he said, “I guess we have to plan this budget or something. What have you got going on sixth period?”
“Gym. My study hall is fourth period, but that’s when you have Spanish,” I said, and he looked so surprised that my cheeks started burning.
“How about the library right after school?”
“Don’t you have lacrosse practice?” I asked, and he looked a little startled again.
“I’ve got mono. Not allowed to play for six weeks because I might rupture my spleen.”
“That’s great!” I said, a little too happily. “Two thirty it is!”
In the library after school, it took us a while to get started, because people kept coming over and saying hi to Holden, and he’d joke around with them and he wouldn’t introduce me unless someone gave him a questioning look, and then he’d say, “Mrs. Desmond married us. She’s my Psych 101 wife. This is our honeymoon, now beat it.” Which I guess isn’t a real introduction, but I didn’t care, because it was thrilling to be called his wife in front of these people who’d otherwise never talk to me. Even Karina Spencer was at the library giggling at a table across the room with some other drama girls, and I saw her looking.
“So, like are you on the field hockey team?” Holden asked, after he’d opened a can of Coke stealthily, so Mrs. Jermaine, the librarian, wouldn’t hear it. I was confused for a second until I realized he thought that the kilt I was wearing was part of a uniform.
“No, not field hockey. Not any team. I thought about doing cross-country . . . but then I didn’t.”
“I don’t blame you. There’s a reason you send people to do laps when you’re trying to punish them,” he said, and I laughed harder than I should have. I just couldn’t believe that I was finally allowed to look into his green eyes without quickly glancing away, that I was saying words and he was saying other words back.
Then Thea walked by with Carson Jeffries. When she rolled her eyes at me behind his back, I just nodded and made a face, as if I felt her pain. Once they were gone, Holden nodded in their direction and said that it was too bad Mrs. Desmond hadn’t arranged any gay marriages.
“Oh, I don’t think he’s gay. He just likes to wear shorts.”
“Not him. Her. Aren’t you two . . . ?”
“Gay?” A noise came out of me that was supposed to be a laugh but sounded more like someone was strangling me. “No. She’s my best friend. But we’re not . . .” I shivered and glanced away from his face and somehow met eyes with Karina, across the library, who quickly looked down at her own book. Karina was wearing skinny jeans and a low-cut tank top and her hair was long and curly. All of a sudden, I realized how Holden saw me and I hated it. Hated myself.
“Is it true her sister’s on Be My Next Wife?” he asked.
“You mean Stacey? Yeah. Why? Do you like her?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.” Thea always says it sucks, living in the shadow of a SILF.
“Eating crackers?” I said, confused.
“Forget it.” He took a pad of paper out of his backpack and fished around in a pocket until he came up with a pen. “Did they finish filming, though?”
“Yeah, but all the contestants are sequestered in an underground bomb shelter right now. They can’t come up until the final show airs.” I said it so deadpan that Holden stared at me for a second before his face cracked open into a smile and then he laughed and that made my annoyance float away.
We finally got started on the budget. Holden thought it would be a good idea to figure out our monthly income before we totaled up our expenses. He asked what I wanted to be someday.
“A writer,” I said automatically. Then my cheeks flushed thinking of Mrs. Browning saying, Don’t write because you want to be a writer, write because you have something to say! I left out the doctor part—it sounded too intimidating, even to me.
“Aw, shit, seriously? Looks like I’m gonna have to be the moneymaker.”
“What do you want to be?” I asked, even though the point of the exercise is to show us how much it costs to raise a baby when we’re still in high school, not working on Wall Street.
“If it were up to me, I’d build houses. I helped my uncle gut a house last summer. That was cool. We had to demolish these old rooms and stuff.”
“I hope there wasn’t any asbestos in the walls,” I blurted out, a stupid joke. Or not even a joke. Just me: turning into my fucking mother.
“Asbestos?” he repeated and laughed. “I-I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure there wasn’t. You’d have to wear special hazmat suits for that.” Oh, my God. Stop talking about asbestos, I thought.
My face was hot, so I quickly looked down at the list he’d made of all the things we had to budget for, like clothes, books, food, cable, car maintenance, gas, and reminded him that he’d forgotten health insurance. “For my asbestos exposure,” he said with a smile, and I laughed. “Guess we won’t have to spend too much on clothes,” he added, nodding at my outfit.
“Hey, I resemble that!” I said, a line my aunt Andie always says, from an old army show called M*A*S*H. But even though Aunt Andie always makes me laugh when she says it, Holden just looked at me like he didn’t know what to think.
After looking back at his list, he asked if we were supposed to budget for the baby, and when exactly we were being issued this sack of flour that we would have
to feed and clothe and provide child care for? I told him not for another two weeks, and that we’d have to agree on a name. “We’re making it a boy,” Holden said.
“We don’t get to pick the sex, remember? ‘Just like in real life.’”
“In real life, you get to choose your spouse,” Holden said.
“What if she gives us a sack of flour with disabilities?” I said suddenly, and then mimed Mrs. Desmond offering us a swaddled infant: “Congratulations! Your baby is just a torso!”
Holden choked on his mouthful of Coke and sprayed it all over the table. Then he kept laughing and coughing, and I was laughing, too, and Karina Spencer and the girls at her table were watching us, and I felt like I finally existed. The librarian came over and told us we had to leave. In the corridor, on our way out of the building, Holden offered me a ride home. Then he added, “Maybe next time we can meet at my house,” and my face hurt from smiling so much. “Hey, aren’t you in my physics class?” he realized, and I nodded. When he asked if I had a partner yet for my toothpick bridge, I told him I didn’t, even though I was supposed to go to Thea’s that weekend to work on it. “Maybe we can be partners,” Holden said. It was suddenly, definitely the best day of my life.
AFTER SCHOOL, I ASKED HIM TO DRIVE ME TO AUNT ANDIE’S SO the ride would last longer. We listened to music as he zigged and zagged around traffic on the bridge, but I wasn’t really paying attention to anything except for Holden’s hands, tapping on the steering wheel, and his jeaned thigh on just the other side of the emergency brake. I thought of Mrs. Browning’s stepcousin Jack driving her five hours out of his way to Indian Town Gap and wondered if love was proportional to the distance traveled. If I were Mary and Holden were Jack, what secret would I ask him to keep?
When he pulled up outside Aunt Andie’s condo, Holden put the car in park and said, “Well, wifey,” and I laughed so hard I almost forgot to get out of the car, until I realized Aunt Andie was tapping on the passenger window. Her frizzy brown hair was barely contained in a clip, and she was wearing a skirt and sweater instead of her usual painter’s overalls.
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