Her Last Flight
Page 8
Irene’s coffee was cold. Her sandwich was nothing but crumbs. She looked down the table to Sam Mallory, who had long since returned his attention to the man sitting beside him. Sandy had finished her cream and found her way into his lap, one paw outstretched across his waist like a lover, and he stroked her small calico head with one hand and smoked a cigarette from the other. The glass of whiskey stood empty in front of him. The collar of his flight suit was unbuttoned.
“I don’t know,” Irene said. “Flying costs money.”
“Most pilots I know don’t let that stand in their way. They find the money, one way or another. They find a way to get in the air, whatever it costs them.”
When Irene was nine years old, just before her mother got sick, she went with her parents to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. She saw the Tower of Jewels and the Palace of Fine Arts and all the other glittering exhibits, but what she loved best was the wooden roller coaster in the Joy Zone. The speed and the noise, the way it whipped you about. She made her father pay for ride after ride. When she got home, she set about building one in the backyard. It started on top of the treehouse her father had built, about twenty feet high in a eucalyptus tree. She nailed together wooden boards and fitted the rails to her red wagon. She still remembered the way it felt when she climbed into the wagon at the top of the track for the first time, staring down the curve to the ground. It was like the way you felt on your surfboard when a giant wave began to swell up beneath you, lifting you upward into the break, and you knew you were about to experience the ride of your life or else possibly break your neck, one or the other, no telling which.
“Yes,” she said to Mrs. Rofrano. “I guess I know what you mean.”
Hanalei, Hawai’i
October 1947
My suitcase is already packed when I wake to brilliant sunshine. I packed it at three o’clock in the morning, after tossing in bed for hours, because I figured I might as well do something useful if I wasn’t going to sleep. And it worked! When I climbed back into bed my nerves went still, as if the act of packing had flipped some switch inside me from on to off.
How my head aches. How stiff and sore the length of my body. I long for coffee, but that means going downstairs to face the desk clerk, so instead I wash and dress. It turns out the hour is only just past six o’clock, so I have plenty of time to make the boat to Oahu. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’m wearing a white shirt and navy slacks, and a cardigan sweater knotted around my shoulders in case of draft. Underneath the collar of my shirt, the necklace lies against my skin. I guess I’ll have to face Leo again, on the boat, but I figure he’ll be busy at the wheel. When we arrive, I can slip away in the bustle, and Leo will go to visit his uncle at the hospital in Honolulu, on the other side of the island, and that will be that.
Now here’s a funny thing. To think I was knocking bits with Irene Lindquist’s own stepson! What a gas. What a way life has of connecting you by invisible threads with other human beings. On the other hand, how could I have guessed they were related? Leo’s mother was a local girl, he explained last night as he buttoned his shirt, a native Hawaiian with whom Olle fell in love when he first arrived in Hanalei as a healthy young globe-trotting whippersnapper a quarter-century earlier. Leo was born seven and a half months after they married, or something like that. I didn’t dare ask Leo how she died; at such a moment, it hardly seemed tactful. Anyway, he was already halfway out the door, rushing off to the Lindquist house to get the full story from his father and Irene, who had returned from Oahu once the doctors had stabilized Uncle Kaiko.
Uncle Kaiko. Of all the dumb luck in the world.
I rise from the bed and unlatch the suitcase. Buried between the shirts and the underwear, the small leather-bound diary has the electricity of an artifact. I smooth my fingers over the top and sides to remind myself that it’s real, that Sam Mallory’s fingers rested here, too, that he lived and breathed and requires some kind of justice.
The clock says a quarter to seven. Time to go.
I close the suitcase and lift it from the luggage stand. Pick up the matching leather satchel that holds my portable darkroom equipment, my notebooks, my hairbrush, my jar of Pond’s cream.
The door creaks when I open it. The stairs creak too. I suppose they send some warning of my approach, because Irene Lindquist is already on her feet when I reach the foyer.
“Good,” she says. “You’ve already packed.”
Lindquist has left her beat-up yellow truck at home today. Instead she’s driving a fast little ragtop Buick, cherry-red, creating such a monumental draft that I can’t hear a thing, and half the time I can’t even see through my hair that blows every which way. We roar past the harbor. I catch a glimpse of the passenger ferry, two or three customers lined up at the gangplank, though not Leo in his sharp navy uniform, the one I tore off him yesterday evening. He’s probably in the deckhouse.
The car curves up the bay and around the point, past Lumahai Beach of yesterday morning, until we come to a sprawling white house overlooking the ocean, surrounded by porches and flowering shrubs and a few clusters of mature palms.
“Nice place,” I say, when she shuts off the engine.
“We call it Coolibah. You’ll be staying in the guest cottage.”
“Oh, I will, will I?”
“Not that I don’t trust you, Miss Everett,” she says dryly, “but this was the deal, remember? If we’re going to be sharing secrets, I’m going to keep you where I can see you.”
“Are we going to be sharing secrets?”
She opens the car door and removes her sunglasses. “Probably. Now collect your things and follow me.”
It occurs to me, as I follow this legendary woman down the lawn to a cottage, that I have somehow lost the upper hand in this match and that perhaps I never had it at all. The cottage is tiny, and a fresh coat of white paint can’t quite disguise its ramshackle character. Irene tells me, as she opens the door, that this was the original building on the property, when she bought it from some fellow who had thought to make a fortune in pineapples, and discovered too late that he had a brown thumb.
“We don’t have many guests, so I’m afraid it’s not all that up to date.” She flips on a light, and boy was she telling the truth. There is an ancient canopy bed with a yellowing counterpane and two flat pillows, a dresser nobody wanted, a braided rug my great-aunt Mildred would call old-fashioned, a general air of dust and must. Even Lindquist looks taken aback. She inspects the interior of a Victorian wardrobe and frowns. “I suppose I’ll have Lani come down this afternoon and freshen it up a bit,” she says.
“Perhaps you might loan me that cat of yours, as well? I have a feeling I’m not the only inhabitant.” I gesture in the direction of the baseboard, which sports a mousehole large enough for Mickey.
Lindquist pokes her head through a door. “At least the bathroom’s new. Olle had the plumbers out last year, when his mother-in-law made noises about moving in.”
“His mother-in-law? From his first wife?”
“Let’s just say she remained a thorn in his side, even after poor Malina died. And of course she was still Leo’s grandmother. Luckily for Olle, she met a man from the south shore before she could move in, and married him instead.”
I run my finger along the edge of the dresser. “You know, I don’t believe you mentioned a stepson.”
“You never asked. Anyway, I try to stay out of Leo’s business. He’s a grown man. He doesn’t need me meddling in his private affairs.”
“Not the evil stepmother, are you?”
She folds her arms. “You know, you puzzle me, Miss Everett.”
“Me? Why, I’m an open book.”
“Call me vain, but I always thought that when somebody discovered me at last—and of course I knew somebody eventually would, I knew this blessed anonymity couldn’t go on forever—it would be somebody who admired me.”
“I admire you plenty.”
“They’re not exclusive, you know. You can admire somebody without liking her especially. Besides, I don’t hate you.”
Lindquist laughs. “What would you call it, then? Resentment? A general cussedness at me and the world?”
I sit on the bed, stretch back my arms, and cross my legs. “Nothing like that all. It’s just that I’ve learned, in my years on this earth and especially behind the camera, not to trust the outward face a woman like you presents to the world. It’s usually the opposite of what lies inside.”
She nods. “Go on.”
“And in any case, I’m here to learn about Sam Mallory. So you’ll forgive me if I regard you as a possibly hostile witness. You’ve got your own reputation to protect, haven’t you? So I can’t allow myself to be blinded by that famous charisma of yours.”
“Charisma?” She sounds genuinely bemused.
“Oh, you’ve still got it, believe me.” I bounce one foot. “But I’ve got to remain objective.”
Whatever the cramped dimensions of this little dump, whatever the antique mismatched furniture and the small, furry bedfellows, you can’t deny it’s got location. The morning sunshine streaks through the window. The window itself peeks toward the sea. In the silence that settles between Lindquist and me, the surf reaches in and says rush, rush. I could almost call it magical. I could almost start to like this place, and I’ve only spent five minutes. But isn’t that the point? To make me comfortable. To make me woozy with contentment. She’s no fool, Irene Lindquist. She brought me here for a reason, just as I’ve come here for a reason, and the question is, who will find out the other one’s secrets first?
Lindquist stands and watches me with those stiletto eyes. Her silvery hair is still damp from the sea. The scar is on the shadowed side of her face, and the other side is taut and perfect. She glances at her watch, then the window. “Well, make yourself at home. Should be breakfast in the kitchen still, just ask Lani to make you up a plate. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Are you heading back out on your surfboard or something?”
She smiles and reaches for the doorknob. “No. Just a very important errand. And when I get back, you’d better be ready to answer some questions.”
As soon as the door closes, I jump from the bed and head for the window. Irene strides across the grass, all long legs and purpose, to greet a pair of towheaded children in prim school uniforms, streaking toward her from some back door, dragging their satchels. One is a boy, one a girl. I suppose they’re about seven or eight years old, but then I’m not all that familiar with children. Lindquist kisses their blond heads and takes each little hand. She appears to be answering questions as she leads them to the Buick in the driveway. Children do ask questions, I know that much.
How nice, I think. A new brother and sister for Leo.
Another thing nobody bothered to mention to me.
Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
March 1928: California
During the drive back to Santa Monica, Irene asked Sam Mallory question after question. She wanted to know about the mechanics of flight, how it was possible that so heavy an object as an airplane could get itself aloft and stay there.
“It’s called lift,” he said. “If you look at a wing sideways, it’s not flat, is it? It’s shaped like—well, like a teardrop. A teardrop, all stretched out. The wind flowing over it has to go faster than the wind underneath. So if you’re going forward fast enough—pushing enough air around your wings—you get this force called lift.”
He was driving with his left hand, which held a cigarette, and gestured with the right hand, curving his fingers and thumb to demonstrate the sideways shape of an airplane wing. Irene stared at the hand but also at Sam’s face behind it, his animated eyebrows, his blunt nose, his hair whipping about in the draft.
“And then what?” she said
“Why, then you keep on flying. You keep on pushing against that edge.”
“Which edge?”
“Between lift and gravity.”
“Which pulls you back to earth.”
He laughed. “Does it ever.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“All the time. If you’re not scared, you’re not really alive, are you?”
“You’re not dead, either.”
“I don’t know. There are a lot of ways to be dead,” said Sam.
On Irene’s lap, Sandy curled in a ball, purring so loudly that the vibration tickled her legs. They were coasting down Laurel Canyon all by themselves, and the air smelled of cigarettes and gasoline. Already the sun was dropping behind the hills. Irene thought maybe she should ask him about the war, about the various ways you could be dead, the various things that could kill you. But that wasn’t what he meant, was it? Anyway, he didn’t want to talk about the war. He didn’t want to talk about the past, his or hers. So she asked about the future.
“And that’s it? You’re just going to fly stunts all your life, to keep yourself from getting bored?”
He crushed out the cigarette against the side of the car. “Until something better turns up. I guess I am.”
For the rest of the drive, he was silent, or almost silent, answering Irene’s questions with such a minimum of words, she gave up and played with Sandy instead, until they pulled up along the stretch of road where Irene’s Model T had sat all day. The surfboard was still there, tethered to the roof, too heavy to steal. Sam asked if she needed any help with the spark plug, and she said no thanks, she’d changed a hundred spark plugs. But he stood by anyway, propped against the side of the car, playing with Sandy. The kitten had found a loose button on his shirt. When Irene straightened from the engine, Sam straightened too. She wiped her hands on a rag and said that about does it.
Sam took his handkerchief and wiped at some smudge on her cheek. “You’re a real grease monkey, aren’t you?”
“When I have to be. Thanks for all your trouble. And the spark plug.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said gravely.
“No, it was mine. It was—it was something else.”
Over Sam’s shoulder, the sun melted into the ocean. He tucked the kitten into the crook of his elbow and took Irene’s hand. “I want to show you something.”
He led her right to the edge of the ridge, so that the dunes piled up at their feet and the ocean spread wide. A couple of surfers met the waves that tumbled over and crashed into the continent.
“That,” he said.
“That what?”
“That’s what I want to do.”
For an instant, she doubted him. She glanced sideways at his profile, which reminded her of a bird, the oceangoing kind, except that it was colored by the gold of the melting sun. Then she understood. “You mean Hawai’i again?”
“Farther than that.”
“Australia?”
He nodded. “California to Sydney.”
“You’d have to stop along the way.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve got it all mapped out. All I need is the airplane and the dough.”
“How do you get your hands on those?”
“Why do you think I keep flying stunts, Foster? Take up thrill seekers at five bucks each? Teach all those dumb accountants which way is up?” He set the kitten into the dune grass and lit a cigarette. “I’ve been testing Rofrano’s new ship. It’s just what I need. I mean, it needs some modifications, but it’s the right ship, all right. The only problem is, it’s going to cost thirty-five thousand dollars. Then you need the fuel and the equipment and all the permissions. So I need a sponsor.”
“You mean somebody like George Morrow.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Somebody like Morrow.”
“You know, I’d have thought Morrow would jump at the chance. You’re a national hero, aren’t you? He said it himself, it’s the publicity he wants, that money follows publicity.”
“But it’s got to be the right kind of publicity,” he said. “I didn’t make it to Hawai’i. I washed up. Anyway, the public wants something new. That’s what Morrow said to me, anyway.”
Together they stared at the settling sun. Irene’s palms were damp. She knotted her fingers together.
“I guess your wife will be wanting you home,” she said.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of the ocean, crashing below them. A couple of screeches from a diving seagull. When Sam finally spoke, he seemed to pick the words with care.
“My wife lives up in Oakland. She hates Los Angeles.”
“Oh.”
“It’s what she wants.”
“Well, what do you want?”
Sam finished his cigarette, dropped it in the sand, and turned to her. “I want to see more of my daughter, I guess.”
Irene stared at those serious blue eyes and thought, Sam Mallory. But it didn’t match, this face and that one, the one in the newspapers last summer. She tried to remember what Mrs. Sam Mallory had said in those interviews. Irene was pretty sure it had been something fulsome. She remembered thinking that Mrs. Sam Mallory rather liked being Mrs. Sam Mallory, mother of Sam Mallory’s small child, and played that role to its fullest. Something tickled her ankle. Tiny sharp teeth. The kitten. She thought of the white walls of Dr. Walsh’s office where she worked as a receptionist, the air that smelled of antiseptic, the way the doctor brushed up against her in the dispensary. She thought of Sam’s airplane rising to the sun.
She shaded her eyes and said, “I’ll tell you what would be new.”
“What?” he said.
“A woman.”
II
I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary lifetime.
—Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis