“The hospital,” Selena said in a normal voice, even though Herb Shepherd was in the middle of announcements. “They took her by ambulance last night. I saw the paramedics taking her away on a stretcher.”
“Did she . . . seem okay?” I don’t know what I expected, except maybe something like at a football game, when the sacked quarterback waves as he’s carried off to get his head scanned. But Mrs. Markmann only gave me a palms-up shrug, like, Who knows? I spent the rest of the hour wondering what had happened to Mrs. Browning and how I could find out. I wondered if I could visit her, or where they took her, or if her son Dave had been called in from Seattle. It seemed hard to believe this was the same glorious day that Holden and I finally touched, but then I thought of dead Mrs. Soames from Our Town saying, “My wasn’t life awful . . . and wonderful.”
Just in case Thea was going to park and walk in to scope out any cute guys in the writers’ group, I left a few minutes early to stand outside the library. I kept getting a weird, fluttery feeling inside every time I worried that she wouldn’t show up at all, but I shouldn’t have fretted, because I’d only been standing there for a few minutes when her dad’s Subaru station wagon appeared in the line of traffic snaking down Murray Avenue. He’d probably insisted on coming, too, since it was already dark. I liked Dr. Palmer, a radiologist who worked with Aunt Andie at Magee Women’s Hospital—I secretly wished that they’d end up together.
When Thea finally reached the curb and parallel parked like a pro, I quickly opened the back door and hopped in. “Hi, Elyse,” said Dr. Palmer from the front. Mid-tug on the seatbelt, I paused, realizing that he was in the driver’s seat, and Thea wasn’t even in the car.
“Thea says to tell you she’s busy.” Dr. Palmer swiveled around and added, “All buckled?” and then waited until my seat belt made a reassuring click before facing forward again, leaving me staring at the bald spot on the back of his head.
“Is she working tonight?” I asked. Thea had a job at the movie theater, saving money for tattoos, but I already knew the answer to that.
“No. No, she’s not. She just . . . wouldn’t come. Which is too bad because I was looking forward to riding over here with her. Q-T time, right?” He put on his blinker and inched the car forward to ease back into traffic.
If Thea were here, she would’ve rolled her eyes and snorted: “That’s redundant. Quality time time?”
“Right,” I said, and then, in a quiet mumble, “Thank you for picking me up anyway.”
“Well, I told her we couldn’t leave you stranded in the city after dark. Getting ready for the toothpick bridge?” he added, and our eyes met in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, um, yeah . . .” I trailed off. And then, because I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I said, “Sorry you’re missing Be My Next Wife. I think Stacey’s going to get a garter tonight.”
Dr. Palmer winced and jerked his head back, as if I had shot him at close range.
WHEN I GOT HOME, THE HOUSE WAS EERILY DARK, EXCEPT FOR IN the kitchen, where Mom was wiping down the stove by a single light. She didn’t turn around even after I said hello. I thought about asking if Toby got a migraine or if Huggie stayed dry during naptime, but instead I leaned against the kitchen island and asked her how the deposition went.
“It didn’t,” she said, scrubbing even harder. “I couldn’t get a sitter, so I had to leave work early.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“How did Daddy seem?” she asked finally, which confused me for a second until I realized she must’ve thought Daddy brought me home from writers’ group. When I told her Thea’s dad came and got me, Mom whirled around. “You asked Gordon Palmer to pick you up?”
“Well, no, I asked Thea, but she’s only got her provisional license and he doesn’t like her to drive after dark.”
“How could you do that to me?” Mom erupted, throwing the sponge into the sink.
“Do . . . what to you?”
“Embarrass me by asking your friend’s father to go a half hour out of his way rather than calling your own father, who could have easily—”
“I didn’t know I could call Daddy! I thought he was . . . thinking! And I saw Thea, so I thought I’d ask—”
“At the group? Thea’s in the writers’ group now?”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh, deciding it was easier to lie. “He was picking both of us up.”
Mom exhaled and told me that the reason she’d given me a cell phone was for emergencies, that I couldn’t just turn it off and not let her know where I was. Then she turned around again to start rinsing a pot this time.
“Why did Daddy leave?” I asked her back.
“Your father thinks he’s unhappy.”
I thought of all the times Mom said that Aunt Andie only thought she was happy. “Well, if he says he’s unhappy, but he’s not unhappy, what is he?”
Mom sighed. “A fucking idiot.”
I went upstairs to my room feeling antsy and worried—about my mom, about Daddy, about Grandma, and maybe even about me. I tried to call Mrs. Browning, but of course there was no answer at her apartment. Then, because I wanted to find her, I decided to turn on my computer and Google her. I don’t know what I was thinking—like maybe she’d pop up with a blue GPS ball, blinking her hospital location? But her name was right there on Amazon, Mary Browning, the author of Miss Bixby Takes a Wife. The used book was selling for ninety-nine cents and the condition was listed as pretty good. If I had a credit card I would have bought it. Instead, I closed out the window, which is when I saw “survived by . . .” in another link, so I clicked again, which led me to an obituary from the Seattle Times. The article was about David Browning and his wife, Caroline Browning, who were killed with their toddler, Tyler, in a head-on collision with a drunk driver on August 15, 1983. Included in the short list of whom they were survived by was Mary Browning of Scarsdale, New York. Out of all the Mary Brownings on Google, I knew this one was mine.
I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over my head, feeling sadder about her loss than about my own, or maybe sadder because of all of those things. It seemed silly to worry about wearing skinny jeans or not wearing skinny jeans or bridges made of toothpicks or even falling in love, when for one second you can be having a cup of tea with someone and in the next, you’re alone at the table with one white cloth fluttering in the breeze. I lay awake for a long time after that waiting for what happens next.
CHAPTER 14
Steel in Love
May 1944
I’m alone in the ready room watching planes take off and waiting for Mr. Hendricks when Captain Babcock walks in, a short, stocky guy with a reputation at Cochran’s Convent for failing pilots simply for the error of being women. I quickly turn back to the window, thankful I got my military check ride out of the way weeks ago and won’t have to worry about him now.
“Miz Lichtenstein?” he asks in a slow drawl around a wad of chewing tobacco. I straighten up, startled, as he checks his clipboard and curls his top lip. “Is that a Jewish name?”
“Yes,” I say, remembering Grace telling me that this man must not have been hugged as a child, and Murphee deciding that he must have a very small penis.
“German?”
“No, sir. I’m from America.”
“I meant the name.” He rolls his eyes and motions for me to follow.
“I thought—is Mr. Hendricks coming?” I ask, jumping up and trailing after him. I’ll take any one of the civilian instructors, because the only way to get assigned a second military check ride is if you’re failing out.
“We’re short staffed today. Therefore you are assigned to me.” As we walk out toward the field, Captain Babcock spits a mouthful of tar on the ground and adds, over his shoulder, “I’ll have you know that I don’t like women, and I sure as hell don’t like women pilots.”
This must be very hard for you to be here, I think, skipping to keep up.
Reaching the flight line, I place my chute on the left win
g of the plane before going through a cursory inspection. With his hands on his hips, the captain keeps puffing out his cheeks and shaking his head, as if impatient to get a move on and fail his next victim. Quickly, I look the plane over from left to right and tip to tail.
“Ready yet?” he asks, aggravated, as I’m kneeling to check for anything leaking from the fuselage.
“Ready,” I say, even though I’m not.
Once we’re strapped in, the lineman comes out to prop the plane, and with one last check of the control tower, I strap my goggles on over my helmet and push the throttle slowly forward on the Stearman, the open-cockpit biplane of my childhood dreams. Propeller buzzing like a saw, and the engine vibrating the soles of my feet to the top of my spine, we bear down the runway into the red grit. Liftoff is positively graceful, the way the tail lifts and we rise through the rocking winds. The noise is deafening but reassuring—a declaration of power—as we make our way across the sky toward white islands of clouds that look like glaciers and snowbanks. Spring may have come to Texas, but at one thousand feet, it’s still blustery winter. As my nose drips over my chapped lips, I can’t help marveling that there’s nothing but a square piece of glass separating me from all this glory.
Grading my banking and navigational skills, Captain Babcock sits behind me, and each time I take us for another round of spins and stalls, my stomach flutters like we’re on a roller coaster. Then, just as I’m pulling up from a snap roll, I look out across the expanse of blue sky and see a band of approaching darkness, black dots in the distance dipping and diving, collapsing and rising like a cloud of bees. Birds, I realize, catching my breath as we draw closer, a great big flock, wuthering to and fro. For a moment, I’m mesmerized by their fluidity and speed, the way they travel like schools of fish in the sky. With a rush and a graceful whoosh they dart, en masse, down and then up and across. If only you could see this, Papa. When another wave of them hurtles toward us, I inhale sharply.
“Lower!” Captain Babcock orders, but he’s too late—the wave of birds is crashing into us—or maybe we’re crashing into them. First comes the jagged sound of the propeller chopping the air and all its inhabitants, and then wings and decapitated feathered bodies rain into the open cockpit. I duck as a crow careens toward my head, and from somewhere behind me, Babcock screams.
Adjusting my hand on the stick, I level out the horizon, which isn’t so easy when my windshield is now splattered in blood. I think of flight lessons back in Pittsburgh, how I was taught to estimate the attitude of the plane simply by the sound of the engine rather than checking my instrument panel. Except there’s an eerie silence, save a quick whisper of wings that swoops past my ear as the remaining flock soars off, untouched, before the whir of the propeller putters to a stop.
“We lost the engine!” I shout, turning the key, trying to get it to catch, except there’s only grinding and the howl of wind streaking past the cables that hold the biplane together. “Captain Babcock?” I glance behind me, just able make out his goggles, which are covered in blood as if he’s been shot in the face. “Sir? Are you . . . ? Sir?”
More silence passes, as a math problem forms in my head: If a man is traveling at one hundred and twenty miles per hour going east, and he’s struck by a one pound bird going west . . . A noise escapes my chest, something between a laugh and a gasp—Is Captain Babcock dead? Then I remember the engine definitely is. I can’t hesitate just because my plane now happens to be a glider. To our right, there’s the dusty prairie, and above, the looming cloud islands, but how am I going to get us all the way back to Avenger without an engine? Aviate, communicate, and navigate, I remind myself. A cornfield will do.
After radioing back to base, I check the straps on my parachute and start looking. At least the dust has settled, and the sky is calm, as gravity takes us lower, two hundred feet, then another hundred more. Peering over the side, I spy the perfect field, except that we’re too high for the approach, so I jam my foot on the right rudder pedal, which yaws the nose to the right and sends us banking to the left, creating the drag we need to descend.
“What the hell are you doing?” a sudden voice barks from behind—concussed Captain Babcock, returning to consciousness.
“Landing the plane, sir,” I say, trying not to think of the feathered carnage at my feet.
“Start the engine!” he orders.
“It’s dead, sir.”
This is just a complex work equation, I tell myself as we dip lower still, thinking of ground school. Gravity is the force, wind our displacement, and it’s up to me to solve for the angle between the two vectors. All I need to do is stay in control, to hit the ground at a forty-five-degree angle while avoiding that water tower, and those power lines, and this tractor . . . It’s physics and luck now.
When we hit the field moments later, the Stearman bounces and rolls on the wheels, flattening knee-high stalks of corn. I clamp my feet on the brakes, and we come to a controlled stop not far from a blue-jeaned man, whose straw sticks to his gaping mouth. I let go of the stick and exhale, my heart still flying in my chest. Behind me, Captain Babcock groans as he unhooks his seat belt and stands up, swaying. Meanwhile, the farmer clutches his shovel in the middle with two hands, like a tightrope walker steadying himself with a balance stick. “Hoe-Lee shit,” his lips are saying.
Captain Babcock staggers out first, and then I unbuckle my seat belt and climb down from the cockpit. It’s not until my own feet hit the ground that I realize I’m trembling.
“You folks all right?” the farmer asks, approaching us as I peel off my goggles and helmet with shaky fingers. My flight suit, I see now, is completely washed in blood. “Why, you’re nothin’ but a girl,” he realizes.
“She landed the plane,” Captain Babcock says, rubbing his head, either in disbelief or pain, and I smile, hoping this means I’ve passed despite steering us into the birds in the first place. If we were back at Avenger right now, the girls would be jumping into the fountain, zoot suits and all, to celebrate. Grace is probably already there, splashing around. Instead, we’re in the middle of a breezy cornfield, with a big sky above and the endless prairie stretching beyond. In my head, I’m already writing a letter describing it all to Sarah—if only it wouldn’t take weeks for our correspondence to crisscross the country.
Captain Babcock asks the farmer if we can use his phone, and he nods, still gawking at me and scratching his head with bewilderment.
“Sorry about your corn,” I say.
THE NEXT DAY IS SATURDAY AND MURPHEE SAYS SHE WANTS TO go dancing—wants us all to go dancing. “Come on, ladies. Enough with the ‘I’m just here to do a job; I can’t have any fun.’ We all passed our check rides. Miri landed a goddamn plane without an engine and almost killed Captain Babcock. We deserve this!”
Vera looks up from her very big binder and says, “I’m not paying a thirty percent tax on a night out, thank you very much,” referring to the new tax on big bands, alcohol, dancing, and fun of any kind. I’d read about it before I left home and, never being in a position to have fun of any kind, didn’t give it a thought.
“I know a little guy who’ll make sure we won’t have to pay any tax on the drinks.” Murph holds up a flask and winks.
“Does he have a name?” Ana grins, showing her deep dimples.
“Yeah. It’s Jim. What do you say? Corn?” Murph adds, turning to Grace, who’s in the middle of kicking off her boots.
She falls back onto her cot. “I just don’t see the point when Teddy’s not here.”
“Oh, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,” Murphee says with a sigh.
I foolishly feel the same way myself—about Sol, who wrote me a postcard two weeks ago: Dear Miriam, It was a pleasure to meet you! I hope you’ll find a way to join us again for Shabbat sometime. I will be thinking of you whenever I see a plane fly by. Yours, Sol. I’ve reread it over and over, just to imagine his hands forming the words on the page, and can recite the postcard from memory. With the rations on gas, Mr. Hendricks
couldn’t take me back to Abilene for services, and despite my fantasies, Sol hasn’t appeared to whisk me away. Maybe I should stop waiting for something to happen.
“I’ll go if Miri goes,” Grace says.
“I could go,” I say slowly, and she sits up and stares at me in disbelief.
“But it’s your Sabbath!”
“Just until there are three stars in the night sky,” I say.
“And then anything goes,” Murphee says, snapping her fingers and swinging her hips.
I OPT FOR THE NICEST THING I OWN, MY AIR FORCE UNIFORM, until I turn around and notice what everyone else is wearing: Murph, orange hair blazing against the black of her knee-length dress; Ana in a belted, tan frock; and Grace in a gray, short-sleeved number that makes her brown eyes look hazel.
“Is that the best you’ve got, Steel?” Murphee asks.
I think of my beige dress, crumpled at the bottom of my footlocker. “It might be hard to dance in my flight suit,” I say.
Grace snaps open her trunk and hands me a dress. “Here, Miri. Try this.”
I gasp at the deep, rich red, a dye color I haven’t seen since the war began, and unfold the rayon material. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh, ages and ages ago.”
“You never see red like that anymore,” Murphee says, admiring the fabric. “Except maybe on the black market.”
“I need some black market shoes,” Ana says with a sigh, holding up her rationed leather pair of kitten heels with a visible hole in the toe.
I slip on the knee-length, V-neck frock, and Grace zips up the back, so the faux sash hugs my waist. The short sleeves have the slightest flip, and my neck—encircled by a gold chain with the Star of David—is completely exposed. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve never owned, and I want to keep it forever.
“Steel, you look like a young Joan Crawford,” Murphee says, and Grace tries to find a tiny makeup mirror so I can see myself.
“I don’t have any nylons . . .” I say.
“Easy peasy,” Ana says and then stoops down and draws a makeup line up the back of each of my legs. “Now you do.”
The Secrets of Flight Page 13