The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  “I was just on my way out,” she said, as I stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. “I have to return a mattress today or its mine forever.” I knew, without asking, that this had something to do with the hot sales guy at Brookstone. Aunt Andie had been buying and returning an inordinate amount of pillows because he’d laughed at one of her jokes.

  I introduced Holden to Aunt Andie, whose eyebrows went up as soon as she heard his name.

  “S’up?” Holden said, leaning over the gearshift to wave.

  “S’up?” Aunt Andie repeated, with an exaggerated head nod, making me cringe. “You’re coming to the mall?” she asked me, and I nodded.

  “While you’re there, buy her some new clothes,” Holden called.

  “What are you talking about? I think she looks fab-u-lous,” Aunt Andie said, exaggerating the word, which made me cringe again. “Later, G!” she called, before shutting the passenger door.

  “‘Later, G’?” I repeated, once he’d driven away.

  “Do people not say that?”

  “Maybe they do,” I said, my self-loathing returning. How would I know what people say, when I’m just the girl wearing the fucking kilt?

  AT THE MALL, WE LEFT THE MATTRESS SAGGING OVER THE TOP OF the car like a maxi pad for the roof, ready to absorb the rain, and headed for Brookstone so Aunt Andie could ask the hot sales guy to help us carry it to the store. “The only problem with the hot sales guy is that his name is Blane. I don’t know if I can ever truly love a man named Blane.”

  I halted, midstride. Just across the expanse of marble tile was the clothing store H&M, whose windows were filled with plastic Karina Spencers, wearing just the right thing.

  “Do you think . . . ?” I hesitated. “Could we maybe try on some clothes first? Just to see what they have?”

  “Oh, dahling, I would love to,” Aunt Andie said.

  So we looked, and I tried on, and I was surprised to find out that some of the skinny jeans were actually comfortable. Aunt Andie kept gushing that I looked amazing, but I wasn’t sure any of the clothes really seemed like me. “Isn’t this too . . . revealing?” I said, squirming in the fitted maroon shirt and jeans, in front of the mirror.

  “Honey, just because you are an old soul doesn’t mean you’ve gotta dress like one,” Aunt Andie said. “What exactly are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t even like most of the girls in my school—why would I want to look like them?” I asked.

  “It’s called assimilation,” Aunt Andie said, which reminded me of my mother telling me the other day after church that of course she was still Jewish. Then I thought of Mrs. Browning and the gold cross that dangled from the chain around her neck and the story I was typing about her Jewish family. Would she, like my mother, consider herself “highly assimilated”?

  “We all do it to get by,” Aunt Andie went on. “It doesn’t have to change who you are on the inside.”

  I stared at myself in the mirror. Would I get used to looking like someone else, eventually preferring skinny jeans and Uggs to Salvation Army poodle skirts and flats? What would Thea say if she saw me now? What would Holden say? Just thinking of that made my heart do a weird thing in my chest, like it was trying to fly away. I caught Aunt Andie watching me, and I quickly pulled the shirt over my head to take it off, so she wouldn’t see me blushing. Just as I was squirming out of the jeans, the saleslady asked through the dressing room door if there was anything she could take up to the register. Aunt Andie raised her eyebrow at me.

  “All of it, please,” I said.

  IT WAS AFTER FIVE THIRTY WHEN WE GOT BACK TO MY HOUSE. I barely had time to get out of the car and head down the stone walkway, when Mom appeared on the doorstep. Her work clothes were rumpled, and her hair was going every which way. If she were a painting, it would be called One Long Day.

  “What’s going on? Where’ve you been? Haven’t you gotten any of my texts?” Mom asked, all in one breath.

  I slipped my phone out of my pocket. “Oh . . . whoops.”

  “She wanted to tag along while I returned a mattress—or tried to,” Aunt Andie explained, handing me my backpack. “I can’t believe it. I’m one day late, and the Brookstone guy won’t let me return it. I’ve bought and returned five pillows. I thought we had a bond.”

  “That’s Blane for you,” I said, and Aunt Andie shot me a wry smile.

  “I don’t understand.” Mom’s blue eyes were darting back and forth. “You drove to Elyse’s school and took her . . . where . . . ?”

  “She showed up at my condo,” Aunt Andie said. “Then we went to the mall. Now we’re back. Got your new things, kiddo?”

  “Got ’em,” I said, a mumble, only Mom kept staring at me, until I finally went ahead and showed her what was behind my back—a shopping bag from H&M—before she managed to set it on fire with her laser beam vision.

  “Early Christmas present,” Aunt Andie said as Mom rifled through the outfits like a customs agent, making me cringe. If Mom had bought me the clothes, she’d make me model them for her and Daddy, while Toby pretended to be sick and Huggie clapped as if he were really at a fashion show.

  “We don’t need these,” Mom said, shoving the clothes back at Aunt Andie.

  “Yes, we do!” I said, my voice a shriek, as I ripped the shopping bag out of her hand.

  “Aunt Andie can’t afford these,” Mom said, enunciating as if I could only lip-read. “She has credit card debt. She owes us thousands of dollars.”

  “You’re really going to do this, Jane? You’re going to keep this grudge going when Mom’s dying?”

  “Wait—what?” I said, startled.

  Aunt Andie and Mom looked at each other. “Oh—God. Your mom didn’t want me to—Elyse—Grandma’s—um . . .”

  “Grandma has cancer,” Mom said.

  I blinked. “Like Daddy?”

  “Yes, but this is a different kind.”

  “Better or worse?” I said, looking to Aunt Andie since, when she wasn’t painting, she worked as a radiology technician.

  “Um—I—according to her doctors—well . . . geez . . .”

  “We don’t know,” Mom told me.

  “The only thing she wants is for us to be normal again,” Aunt Andie said, and my mother laughed, meanly.

  “She also wants you to stop putting all your resources into one dream, but I don’t see you giving up the eggs in the freezer anytime soon. Which would be fine if you could afford the rent.” Aunt Andie winced in the spray of Mom’s words, as if she were spitting. “I heard what she said—that you’ll never be able to commit to any man, because you’re not committed to reality,” Mom added.

  “Grandma said that?” I asked, startled.

  “She says what she wants now,” Aunt Andie said, her voice grim. “No filter. ‘It’s my deathbed,’” she added in a singsong just like Grandma would, if she were actually on her deathbed.

  “Wait. Her deathbed?” I repeated. Suddenly Mom’s last-minute trip down south made sense. But Grandma walked miles on the beach before breakfast, and sang loudly in the evenings on the dock, and cackled with her head tipped back at dinner. It couldn’t be true. “And you didn’t tell me?” My voice was doing that shrieking thing again.

  “Honey, she’s okay,” Mom said. “I spoke to Rabbi Horowitz and Pastor Stan and told them we want everyone on this. Pastor Stan’s got three different churches praying for her—what?” she snapped, since Aunt Andie’s smile was sudden and sort of rueful.

  “It’s just a strange side effect of status, where you can farm out your greatest needs—someone to cook your meals and scrub your toilets and shop for your groceries and now, someone to pray for your miracles. When does the delegation stop?”

  Mom stiffened like she’d opened the door for a FedEx package and found a Jehovah’s Witness instead. “Thank you for bringing my daughter home,” she said, all businesslike.

  “And for the clothes,” I said quickly, still clutching the bag. “We’re keeping the clothes.”
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br />   Mom glared at me before turning her death beam back on Aunt Andie. “In the future, if you want to shop for Elyse, you can write me a check, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Mom—”

  “Elyse, go inside.”

  “Wait—I’m sorry,” Aunt Andie said in a breathless, urgent rush. “It’s great that everyone’s praying. Maybe it’ll work. Jeez, I hope it works. But whatever happens, I just want us to be okay, Jane,” she added, and it hurt me to hear the pleading in her voice, but Mom didn’t seem to be moved.

  “Good night,” she said, before closing the door, and then whirled around to face me. “We’re not finished.”

  “Yes, we are,” I said, stomping up the steps, only the carpet was so plush, my feet made only an unsatisfying, muffled thump.

  “Elyse, wait—get back here!” she shouted.

  I could’ve waited to hear what she had to say—about Grandma, and Daddy, and even Aunt Andie—but it was much more satisfying to walk away, knowing that she was suffering, maybe even more than me.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sweetwater

  March 1944

  The train station in downtown Pittsburgh is loaded with servicemen and women, the cadets and the WACs and the WAVES, and women traveling with small children—families en route to extended relatives, while the men are at war. The Red Cross is there, too, handing everyone in uniform a pack of cigarettes or a hot cup of coffee. It’s too hectic to worry about how I’m feeling or fret about the fear in Mama’s eyes whenever I glance over my shoulder to make sure she and Sarah are keeping up. Instead I press on toward Platform 6, trying not to clip anyone in the feet with my bag. I’m grateful when Tzadok slips the suitcase from my hand and lifts it high overhead. “We must get you on this train, Little Bird,” he says, expertly weaving through the throngs of humanity.

  It’s cold outside on the platform, and my breath hangs in the air, but the crowd keeps me warm in my thin, wool coat. Before long, the train pulls in and the bodies on the platform push forward, as if we’re all going to the same place. There’s hardly any time to say goodbye, which is probably a good thing, since Mama, crying openly now, is killing me with her tears. It’s like the end of the farewell parties for the servicemen, only I don’t even have a photograph of myself in uniform to leave her with for the mantel.

  “Do good things, Miri,” Sarah whispers in my ear, giving me a quick hug and slipping an envelope into my pocket.

  “I hope you find all you are seeking,” Tzadok says with his German accent, handing me back my bag and, despite his formal speech, I know that he means it.

  “Go,” Mama says, pushing me away before I can hug her one last time. And even though she’s insisting—or maybe because of it—I have this strange feeling that nothing will ever be the same between us.

  It takes five days to get to Texas. I spend the first leg of the ride sitting on my suitcase at the end of the packed car trying not to think about Mama—not of her naked finger where her diamond ring used to be, or how she was scrubbing the toilet when I’d asked her to send me to college in the first place. The night before I left, Sarah and I were both curled up on our sides, facing each other, when I whispered across the tiny space between our twin beds, “What if she never forgives me?”

  “She wouldn’t let you go if she thought you shouldn’t do it,” Sarah said. “Mama probably wishes she could fly away, too.”

  “But what if—”

  “Stop,” Sarah said, and in the yellow light of the candle her face was soft and shadowy, like a memory. “Now is not the time to doubt.”

  As the crowded train lurches along, I close my eyes and exhale, recalling how safe I felt in my sister’s gaze. Then I remember the envelope in my pocket and take out her short note, which is actually a quote by Virginia Woolf from A Room of One’s Own:

  If you stop to curse you are lost, I said to her; equally if you stop to laugh. Hesitate or fumble and you are done for. Think only of the jump, I implored her, as if I had put this whole of my money on her back; and she went over it like a bird.

  Think only of the jump! My sister wrote. I know you’ll fly high for both of us.

  At last, after a mass exodus in Chicago, I’m finally able to scramble for a seat to myself before the crush of passengers embarks. I end up facing a bespectacled older man wearing a yarmulke who smiles at me as if we’re kindred spirits when he notices the Star of David hanging from my neck. Focusing out the window, I try to make my mind as flat and blank as the landscape passing by, trying not to think of Mama’s teary eyes, or how thin and breakable Sarah felt when we hugged, or even Tzadok’s expectations for when I return. The other day he said, “It is good for you to do this now, before you make your life.” Does he think this is something I just need to get out of my system before I come back to marry him?

  In the dining car, I use the pocket money from Uncle Hyman to buy dinner: a small piece of bread and cheese, green beans, and a tiny portion of meat. When the serviceman in front of me gets twice as much food on his plate, I can’t help wondering if I got less because I’m a woman or because—like my seat mate “the Rabbi,” with an equally sparse serving—I’m Jewish. Then another cadet slides up to the counter, and I watch as the steward smiles before loading up his plate with extra meat. “That’s enough. Really,” says the soldier, as the steward heaps more food on his dish. Then I realize it has nothing to do with race or religion or gender: it’s the uniform. Rations don’t apply.

  The train pulls into Houston at six in the morning, and then I take a bus to Sweetwater, still swaying like I’ve been on a boat the last five days. Besides some tumbleweeds blowing across the airfields, a control tower, and the barracks, surrounded by a chain link fence, there’s not much to see, except for the planes—oh, the planes! As soon as I hear the discordant roar of a hundred propellers, stopping and starting, growing distant and drawing near, something wakes up inside me, as if I’m finally coming to after a three-year slumber. There’s an open-cockpit PT-19 taking off with level wings and a perfect pitch, and here’s a BT-13, “The Vultee Vibrator,” coming in for a noisy landing. Meanwhile, six women in flight suits and parachutes make their way to the field where the Texan AT-6’s are parked. They look so assured, like women warriors, and I wonder if one day that’ll be me. Mesmerized, I stand there, following each plane’s departure and arrival, praying I haven’t forgotten how to fly.

  My bunk is nearly empty when I get inside: just six lonely-looking cots and footlockers all in a row. Except that one person is already present, a girl with brown curls, who quickly runs her arm across her nose and bleary eyes. “Oh—hi! Sorry to—I’ll just . . .” I say, as if I’ve wandered into the men’s shower. Quickly choosing the cot in the far corner, I hoist my suitcase on top and keep my head down.

  “I’ve just gotten some awful news,” the girl blurts, and I glance behind me, as if she may be confiding in someone else, someone who deserves to be privy to this information. I’m not sure I’m ready for naked emotion from a complete stranger; in fact, I’m not even ready for roommates. The physical space seems smaller than the room Sarah and I share at home.

  “My mother sent a telegram,” she goes on. “My uncle’s dead. At least, that’s what the U.S. government says.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling a rush of genuine concern. “Do you have to leave?”

  “Well, we aren’t having a funeral, not until we know for sure. He’s been missing in the Pacific for a year. Besides, even if we were certain, I wouldn’t go home. It took me three days to get here. I’ve been preparing for this for the last four years.” The girl looks at me. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

  “No, I . . .” I trail off, thinking of Mama warning me that you can’t trust anyone who isn’t related to you. Why cry in front of people who don’t share your blood, who would betray your confidence in an instant? While I don’t necessarily believe this, I must’ve taken it to heart, because the girls I’ve grown up with in school are more like ac
quaintances than friends. I didn’t tell any of my old classmates that I was leaving for Texas. I couldn’t imagine anyone would care.

  “If my mom sent a telegram that my uncle died, I wouldn’t even cry,” I confess now, because this far from home, trusting seems more like an instinct than a risk. After all, this pilot with the earnest brown eyes probably gave up everything to be here, too. “When my dad died, I wished like anything it had been my uncle instead,” I go on. I’d thought of this many times, how things could’ve been so different for all of us, even Mama. Because Papa was the only person to nudge her grimace into a smile and her smile into a startled laugh, as if she was surprised by the sound. “Everyone would’ve been so much happier if Uncle Hyman had been the one to die,” I add, almost wistfully.

  “Well, everyone except for maybe . . . Uncle Hyman,” the girl says, deadpan, and just to hear his name on the lips of this stranger sends a smile shooting across my face. She grins back and stands up to extend her hand, which is when I see how tall she is, six feet, with long, model legs. “I’m Grace Davinport.”

  “Miri Lichtenstein,” I say, humbled by her height. Nevertheless, after we shake I go ahead and move my stuff over to the footlocker next to hers. She’s in Sarah’s spot now. “Where’s home?” I ask, snapping open my suitcase.

  “Iowa.” She tells me she’s logged more than twenty-five hundred hours back in Ames, thanks to her family of farmers who pitched in to keep her flying after the Civilian Pilot Training Program at the University of Iowa ended. “I just had to promise to bring them along as passengers.”

  “You’re lucky. I haven’t been able to fly for the last three years.” I don’t want to admit that I couldn’t afford to continue lessons that weren’t federally funded, but she can probably figure that out, the same way she seems to know that I want her to tell me I’ve got nothing to fear.

  “You’ll be fine,” Grace says. “They’re going to reteach us everything anyway—we’re learning the ‘army way to fly,’ right?”