Her Last Flight

by Beatriz Williams

  Now there remained only the final hop to Casablanca, where George waited for her in a suite at the Anfa Hotel. He had cabled her an hour ago to congratulate her on her safe arrival, her expected victory. The telegram slip lay before her now, on the desk in her hotel room, fluttering a little in the draft from the ceiling fan.

  Irene rose from the chair and walked to the balcony, which overlooked some market square. At this early hour, just before dawn, the streets were empty and dark. Still, she sensed the echoes of the noontime bustle, the dust and heat and the smell of manure and hot, spicy meat, and it awakened all her curiosity. That was the trouble with these races, these stunt flights, with barnstorming generally. You sped along from point to point without any regard for what lay between. You cared only about the destination, about reaching some point on a map in the shortest possible time, and never about this vast, fascinating globe you sought to shrink.

  At precisely five o’clock, a set of knuckles rapped on the door. Breakfast. Irene was specific about this meal: two eggs poached firm—you did not want to fall sick on a flight like this—served on buttered toast with a large pot of coffee. In some of the more exotic ports of call, these eggs might not necessarily come from what you’d call a chicken, but that was all right with Irene. The nutritional properties of the egg were more important than its lineage. She took the tray from the waiter at the door and handed him a tip, and then she settled to eat. She didn’t rush. She knew this was her last moment of peace until she went aloft.

  As she crossed the hotel lobby to meet Mr. Fish, the American ambassador in Egypt who would accompany her to the airport, the desk clerk called her name respectfully.

  “Another telegram has just arrived for you, Miss Foster,” he said.

  Irene opened the telegram envelope with the tip of her fountain pen, which she kept in her pocket in case of autographs. It was from George.

  GALA DINNER TONIGHT FRENCH AND AMERICAN OFFICIALS STOP FLY TO PARIS TOMORROW THEN RETURN HOME SS NORMANDIE 2 MAY STOP POSSIBLE TICKER TAPE PARADE ON ARRIVAL NEW YORK STOP WILL ADVISE STOP LOVE ALWAYS GEORGE

  She stuffed the telegram back in its envelope and folded the envelope into her pocket. “Let’s go,” she said to Mr. Fish.

  In her last known photograph, Irene Foster stands at the door of her Rofrano Sirius and waves to the crowd below, all of whom had risen before dawn to watch her depart. She wears her usual uniform, a loose, shapeless flight suit that looks gray in the monochrome print but was actually khaki, covered by a leather jacket. Knee-high boots like a cavalry officer. A leather cap covering her famous sand-colored curls. Two rows of small, even white teeth gleam from between her smiling lips. Of all the photographs taken of Irene, this one is perhaps the most famous, because it’s the last moment anybody could say for sure where Irene Foster was and what she was doing. And everybody loves a mystery, don’t they? Everybody wants to look into those pale, thrilled eyes and imagine what happened next.

  Hanalei, Hawai’i

  November 1947

  The last time I saw Velázquez before he rejoined his squadron in The Netherlands, we went for a walk in the darkened Paris streets after dinner. He had tried to obtain an overnight pass but could not, so we had only a few hours before he was required to report to the airfield. We ate at the Ritz, because it was one of the few places you could get a decent meal if you were willing to pay enough money, and Velázquez seemed to think that some ceremony should attach to our last evening together. I drank glass after glass of expensive wine, and Velázquez said I should walk it off for a bit before we returned to my hotel. He took my arm and steered me carefully around the various hazards. It was still quite early, because of the curfew, and I remember thinking it was strange to be so drunk so early in the evening.

  To pass the time, he told me more about his childhood. I asked him about this girl he was supposed to marry, and at first he was reticent, saying it was not right to speak of his previous love at such a moment, but at last he admitted that he had met her while visiting some Basque friends from university, that she was the daughter of a lawyer, beautiful and also very clever (maybe not quite so clever as you, my beloved, but just as beautiful), and his Castilian parents were not pleased that he had fallen in love with a girl so decidedly bourgeois. Her parents, meanwhile, were too intimidated to press the case for true love, because Iberia as a whole retained strong notions of caste in those days. Velázquez solved this impasse by getting her pregnant, but by then the war had already started and he hurried down to train at the fighter school in El Carmoli, in the south, because he had always wanted to fly and felt a duty to come to the defense of democracy. He promised he would return north to marry her before the baby came.

  “Then what happened?” I asked.

  His face turned bleak. “Guernica,” he said.

  “Something’s wrong with the cat,” I tell Lindquist, when I come in to breakfast. “It doesn’t want to get out of bed.”

  Lindquist shrugs over her newspaper. “She’s old. She’ll get up when she’s ready.”

  “I don’t know. I think you should take a look.”

  As I said, the cat’s grown attached to me, and it’s now taken to sleeping on my bed at night, observing my darkroom rituals with an air of disgust such as only a cat can affect. Over the past week or so, I’ve noticed that it moves a little more slowly and deliberately, hopping down by degrees; that it stays curled for hours in a snug ball in one corner. At first I figured, as Lindquist did, that this was just regular old age, and no wonder. But when I rose this morning, the cat didn’t stir. I checked that it was still breathing but I thought maybe it should go to the vet, just to be sure, because Irene thought the sun rose and set on that cat.

  I explain all this to Lindquist as she crosses the lawn with me in giant, silent strides. I’m surprised by the tenderness with which she addresses the beast. She strokes its fur gently and bends down to ask it a question, and I don’t know what the little furball says to her in reply, but Lindquist lifts her head again with the same white, bleak expression I remember from Velázquez’s face, when he told me about Guernica.

  “Do you think you can hold her in your lap on the way to the veterinarian?”

  It turns out, there’s only one veterinarian on Kauai and his office is on the other side of the island, in Lihue, and because Kauai is essentially a volcano, we have to motor all the way around the perimeter instead of directly across. Lindquist drives the Buick like a racecar, which would scare me if she hasn’t always driven that way, guided by an intuition for her car and the road beneath. The cat sits in my lap, not complaining. The children are at school already.

  “Thank goodness,” says Lindquist. “They’d be devastated.”

  Now, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this is what the shrinks would call projection, although I don’t say so. Lindquist would rather die than admit sentimentality. I don’t say this to criticize; I’m the same way myself. To admit you are sentimental is to admit you are vulnerable, that you are susceptible to emotional excess, and we can’t have that in this modern age, can we? Lindquist pours out all her sentiment into the road, into the neat, quick curves and short stretches of pure speed, as we race toward the veterinarian in Lihue.

  As for me, I’m not worried one iota about the damned cat. It’s a nuisance, so far as I’m concerned. I don’t understand its affection for me, because I rarely offer food and my lap is not soft. The kids find it hilarious, the way this moggie follows me around and says miaow when I leave to visit the bathroom or something. It’s a jealous creature too. If Leo brings me a passionflower, as he sometimes does, that cat will shred the petals the instant my back’s turned, and more than once it’s stalked his hand or his foot when he settles down beside me on the sofa of an evening. Still, despite its distaste for the rituals of human courtship, the cat is an agreeable cat, and I go so far as to stroke its fur as we bend and twist along the Kauai highway, because I don’t want it to fret about its condition. The vet will fix whatever’s wro
ng. I repeat this thought aloud to Lindquist.

  “He’d better,” she says grimly.

  I consider delivering some nonsense about how the cat’s had a pretty long run, wouldn’t you say, I mean I’ve never heard of a cat living nineteen years. But that’s the last thing you want to hear about something you love. It doesn’t matter if it’s had a long life or a happy life; there’s never enough life.

  Instead, I say, “Didn’t you and Mallory find it together? On the beach or something?”

  “Yes. The day we met.”

  “That’s sweet. And who got custody?”

  “Mallory had her before Australia. Then I took her home with me after we returned. His wife didn’t like cats, and after she—after she came home from the hospital, he thought he should stick around his family more. He should try to be a good husband.”

  “Poor Mallory. It just wasn’t in him.” I brace myself around a particularly high-wire turn. “Say. Where did it stay when you were flying around the world?”

  “Oh, the Rofranos used to take her for us. They had all these children to lavish attention on her. She loved stowing aboard, but she was better off with them. Especially in Spain.”

  The puss stirs in my lap. I give it a reassuring scratch between the ears, so it won’t get any dangerous ideas. “Spain was no place for a cat, was it?”

  She doesn’t answer. She won’t talk about Spain. Believe me, I’ve tried every trick. She says it’s a topic she won’t discuss. I ask her how I’m supposed to write a biography of Mallory if I can’t explain his final weeks, and she says I should go to Spain and ask around. I say I’ve already tried, and everybody’s dead. She shrugs and says maybe that should teach me to mind my own business. To which I reply that that minding your own beeswax goes against basic human nature, and besides, I’ve made a pretty decent living so far off of other people’s beeswax, and I can’t go back now.

  There is a certain smell to a veterinarian’s office, animal and medicinal both at once, and the Lihue Veterinary Hospital has it on thick. A man sits with a beagle in the waiting room. The beagle looks worried; the man looks annoyed. “I don’t see why we can’t go right in,” he tells the receptionist. “She’s very sick.”

  The beagle wags its tail and pleads silently.

  “I understand, sir,” says the receptionist. “Mrs. Lindquist, hello. Dr. Alba’s waiting for you. You can go right in with Sandy.”

  The man stands up. “Now wait just a minute—”

  Lindquist extracts the cat carefully from my arms and marches past the reception desk. One of the doors opens; a man appears in green scrubs, holding a clipboard. “Mrs. Lindquist! What seems to be the trouble with our miracle kitty?”

  “What in blazes is going on around here?” the man says. “I was here first! Look at her. She vomited twice this morning!”

  “The doctor will be ready for her soon, Mr. Caruthers. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”

  “This is ridiculous! Some damn cat gets in before my Mollie? We’ve been waiting half an hour already!”

  I crouch in front of the beagle, who wags at me and leans forward to plant a wet one on my left cheek. “Poor Mollie. Who’s a sweet, patient girl?”

  Mollie licks the right cheek.

  I look up at the man. He’s forty or forty-five, the kind of fellow who’s starting to look middle-aged and doesn’t quite realize it yet. He’s combed his thinning hair carefully over the bald spot on the crown, and his face is pink. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt in pastel plaid (if that’s the correct description for such a horror) and a pair of rumpled linen trousers. I give him my best smile. “I’m so awfully sorry to keep her waiting. I’m sure this won’t take long. It’s a pretty healthy cat for nineteen years. Probably just needs another pill or something.”

  “Nineteen?” The man looks back to the door in amazement.

  “Nineteen. Can you believe it? So of course the doctor wants to see it right away. We’ll just have to keep Mollie happy for a few more minutes.” I fondle the soft beagle ears. “Poor baby. Have we got an upset tummy?”

  “Vomited twice already this morning.”

  “Oh, dear! Does she have a temperature?”

  “Well, I don’t think so. But she’s a real sweetheart, our Mollie. I just hate to see her suffer.”

  I rise and sit on the bench next to Mr. Caruthers. Mollie follows me and lays her muzzle in my lap, God knows why. “Tell me about Mollie, Mr. Caruthers. How old is she?”

  “She was two years in August.”

  “Still a puppy, almost!”

  “She’ll eat anything, you know. That’s why I brought her in. Crazy dog. She’s taken a liking to you, though.”

  “Oh, she’s just a friendly little baby, that’s all. Does she bay?”

  “Does she!” He laughs. “She’ll just run right off after some rabbit, hollering and hollering. Comes back two hours later covered in mud and ashamed of herself. She’s terrific with the kids, though. Got a three-year-old wandered off a few months ago—you know how they are at that age, you turn your back for a second, we were frantic, I tell you—called the police, neighbors out searching, the worst thoughts going through your head.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Worst day of my life. Night came on. Couldn’t sleep. Went right out again as soon as dawn broke and what do you know. Found him in the brush, curled up asleep with Mollie. She just looked up at us and wagged her tail. As if to say, Don’t you worry, I would lay down my life for this child of yours.”

  “What a good girl you are, Mollie!” I scratch her forehead and she sighs, full of meaning. “A good big sister. You just go on taking care of those kids, do you hear? Give them a nice soft pillow to rest their heads on when life gets a little too much.”

  Mr. Caruthers leans forward on his knees and reaches out to pat Mollie on the back. He clears his throat. “This cat of yours? She’ll be all right?”

  “I hope so. Mrs. Lindquist’s had that cat so long, it’s like another child to her.”

  “Gosh. I’m sorry.”

  “You know how it is. People let you down all the time, they come and go, but she and that cat . . .” I stare into Mollie’s eyes, which are brown and soft with understanding. “I guess Mrs. Lindquist was practically a kid herself, when she got that cat. Now it’s just about all that’s left of the girl she was.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Mr. Caruthers says softly. “Do you know what’s wrong?”

  “She’s just old, I guess. She takes a pill for her liver and another one for her kidneys. But anything could go wrong, at that age.”

  Mr. Caruthers hesitates. “I hate to say this, but maybe she just figures she’s had enough. She’s done all she can and it’s time to go.”

  “Maybe that’s it.”

  Mollie gives my fingers a last swipe with her tongue and settles at Mr. Caruthers’s feet, leaning against his legs. From some distant room comes the bark of a forlorn dog in its cage. The receptionist looks up at us, then swiftly back to whatever’s lying on her desk.

  “You sound like you have a real affection for animals, miss,” says Mr. Caruthers. “You must’ve had a pet or two, when you were little.”

  “Me? No, I’m afraid not. Well, I brought home strays all the time, but my mother wouldn’t let me keep them.”

  “Why not?”

  I reach to straighten Mollie’s ear, which has flopped over the top of her head. “According to Mama, taking care of me was trouble enough.”

  Lindquist emerges alone from the examining room about fifteen minutes later, pale and dry-eyed.

  “Well?” I ask.

  She glances to Mr. Caruthers and back to me. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”

  We step outside, in the shade of a squat palm. She is all business. “I’m afraid there’s no hope. It’s heart failure. Dr. Alba wanted to put her down right away, but I’d like the children to say good-bye first.”

  “I can drive back and fetch them for you.”

&
nbsp; “Would you? Olle’s flying right now, and I wouldn’t let Kaiko inside my car to park it, even with the cast off.”

  I attempt a smile. “You’re sure you trust me behind the wheel?”

  “Oh, Janey. That’s the least of my worries, believe me. I’ll just wait here with Sandy.” She shades her eyes and glances to the door. “Make her as comfortable as I can. God knows she deserves that much from me.”

  Lindquist telephones ahead, so the children are waiting in the front office at school, satchels neat and hair askew. As I bustle them into the back of the car, I realize I haven’t the faintest idea what to say to them. Tadpoles are mysterious creatures to me. Innocent one second, worldly the next, so you never know what kind of tone to assume. Surely they are familiar with the concept of death, though? I start the engine and glance in the mirror at their taut little faces.

  “Everybody ready?” I say cheerfully. They nod.

  I let out the clutch, and we spurt from the driveway. Lindquist was right; I’m a crack driver, if I say so myself. I have an instinct for automobiles, the way some people have an instinct for horses; I guess it’s in my blood or something, the same element as in Lindquist’s blood. The kids don’t move as I turn this way and that, until we’re roaring down the main highway, ocean to the left of us. We motor through Kilauea, where I glance in the direction of the post office, though of course there’s no time to stop. We’ve traveled eight or nine miles before I open my mouth to address the small fry huddled in the back. Open it wide, since the engine makes a real racket at that speed.

  “I want you both to be very brave for your mother. You know how much she loves that cat.”

  They nod.

  Doris says, “Is she dead already?”