The Secrets of Flight (22 page)

Sol shrugged. “Think about you. Unpack. Think about you some more.”

“I wish . . .” I'd said, shaking my head, and he'd reached over and squeezed my hand.

“I wish, too.”

“Miriam?” says a voice behind me, and I turn to find Tzadok stepping out onto the back porch. When I lean into his arms, he says, “Are you okay?” and I nod because now, finally, I'm crying on the outside, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world.
I wish, I wish, I wish
.

“The man who was here . . .” he starts.

“He's just an old friend from flight school,” I say, wiping my eyes. It's a good thing all the mirrors are covered; I don't even want to imagine how awful I look right now.

“He asked me to give you this,” Tzadok says, handing me an envelope.

I
WAIT UNTIL MUCH LATER, AFTER THE VISITORS HAVE GONE,
after we've put Rita to bed, when I'm lying in the room Sarah and I once shared, to rip open Sol's letter. Inside there's a short
note, along with a one-way train ticket to New York, a subway ticket, a map of the Bronx, and a key. I turn the gold key over in my palm and think about how tomorrow begins the
sheloshim,
the reentry into society. We may clean ourselves up and leave the house and return to work. I can take off my black dress with the tear over the heart, comb my hair and wear my nice shoes, even put on a little makeup if I feel like it. And I can walk.

Dear Miri,

I am so sorry about Sarah. I want you to be well and find happiness, and I hate to think of the pain you must be in right now. I know that your family needs you now more than ever, but if you ever need to fly away for a little while, here is all that you'll need to come find me in New York.

As I'm reading, I imagine myself packing up my suitcase, including my retired uniform and flight jacket, and leaving a note for Mama—promising that I'll be back for Rita—and one for Tzadok, too. I see myself waiting on the platform, and the light as the train pulls toward me in the station; I feel my feet as I step aboard and the flutter in my chest as I scurry to find a seat.

When you reach Grand Central Terminal, you'll have to transfer to the number 6 subway train for the Bronx and get off at East 143rd Street and St. Mary's. Then keep walking northeast on St. Ann's Avenue until you reach Westchester Avenue. My building is the third block down on the right.
Along the way, you might run into a woman, Mrs. Prospero—she's a yenta and runs into everyone. She'll call you Mary. Just go along with it. She thinks you're my wife and that I've just been waiting for you to join me for the last year, which is half true. I've never stopped wishing I could see you again, even after you told me to let you go.

I imagine saying hello to a complete stranger, this nosy old woman, and answering to a new name before making my way with my bags to the fifth-story walk-up. I let myself inside the apartment and then sit down on the sofa to wait for Sol, turning those two words over in my mind: “my wife.” How could ever I belong to anyone else, when we already belong to each other?

I know what you must be thinking—that if you come to New York, everything we say and everything we do will only be half true, but I promise you, Miri, this lie doesn't have to last forever, but my love for you will.

I picture him getting home from the library and dropping his books on the table when he sees me. “You're here,” he says, looking at me with such fondness and relief that I'm overwhelmed.

And then we're kissing, not like the chaste kisses in Sweetwater, but long, lingering, groping ones, where he presses me against the sofa cushions and runs his expert hands through my hair and over my breasts and back—and finally grabs me from behind to pull me closer. Suddenly, he stops and says maybe we should look for a justice of the peace, maybe we should do it before nightfall, so that he can take me to bed a married woman. But if I'm not Miri anymore, maybe it doesn't
matter whether I'm married or single, a Jew or a Christian or nothing at all.

After refolding the letter, I carefully place the tickets in the envelope along with the key. For the first time since I landed in Pittsburgh, the future exists, with a face and a destination. I lean back and close my eyes, knowing then that I'll go to him, no matter where we end up, no matter what name we're called.
I'll go.

T
he best part about a death in the family,” Mom said, “is that people are always a little nicer, at least for a little while.” We were in the cab on the way to Grandma's house from the Key West airport. The air was humid and the trees dripping with water, but at least the hard rain had temporarily stopped. I was squashed in the middle of Mom and Aunt Andie, who was turned in the direction of the flapping palm trees out the window. I wondered if she was even seeing them.

The plan, Mom had told me, was that we were going to bring Grandma back to Pittsburgh, where the funeral would be. There was going to be a service at the temple my grandparents belonged to, a processional out to the cemetery, followed by a nondenominational lunch with cocktails back at the country club for seventy-five of Grandma's “closest” friends. Dad was staying behind with Toby and Huggie, but I'd insisted on coming. It seemed like one of us should support Mom. Besides, I kept thinking that Grandma would've left me a message or a
clue that I was supposed to discover—some sort of sign to let me know that the world was not as chaotic and random as it seemed. But as we drove past the aftermath of Hurricane Claudette, I suddenly had second thoughts about coming. Power lines were tangled along the sidewalks, and mailboxes had been felled like trees. A row of familiar houseboats along Route 1 had been blown apart, and I stared at the shards, feeling like one of the pieces. If I'd stayed in Pittsburgh, I could pretend Grandma was still happily living in a little pink bungalow in Key West; now there was no imagining away the truth.

We turned up the palm-tree-lined street toward Grandma's, which Mom was already claiming dibs on as our vacation home.

“By the way, I talked to Rabbi Horowitz,” Mom said to Aunt Andie. Mom had been channeling her shock over Grandma's sudden death by making funeral arrangements with the precision of a party planner. “He said the eulogies should really go on no longer than twenty minutes. I've gotten in touch with a few of her friends from the old neighborhood, both of whom want to speak, so that's five minutes each—unless you don't want to get up there, in which case that'll be about seven a person—or maybe I'll take ten and both of them can have five.”

“What about Ray? What if he wants to speak?” I asked, and Mom kind of rolled her eyes at me.

Aunt Andie turned from the window and said, “Mom changed her mind about a funeral after all. She wants to be cremated and buried at sea.”

Startled, I looked from Aunt Andie to my mother, who blinked.

“She doesn't like eulogies because it's not an accurate portrayal of the person. ‘No one's perfect—until the funeral!'”
Aunt Andie added, quoting Grandma with the same la-dee-dah inflection.

“What the hell did she have in mind? We just dump her over the side of Ray's kayak?” Mom snapped.

“We'll go out on the powerboat and make a day of it.”

“Is there anything else I should know?” Mom asked.

Aunt Andie hesitated. “She made me the executor of the will.”

“
You?
Oh, that's just . . . why pick the lawyer?” Mom shouted at the ripped ceiling of the cab.

“And Ray gets the house.”

W
HEN
R
AY ANSWERED THE DOOR, HIS BLUE EYES IMMEDIATELY
welled at the sight of us, and he gave us all hugs. Mom hadn't wanted him to pick us up from the airport because she thought he'd sounded drunk when she'd called him from Miami to say our flight was delayed, but he seemed more sober than I'd ever seen him, even as he was offering us all strawberry-banana smoothies.

“Only if there's rum in it. That was one hell of a flight,” Aunt Andie said, setting down her bag.

“Jane? You look like you could use one,” Ray said, moving toward the blender. “Elyse? Smoothie?”

“Only if there's rum in it,” I echoed, which earned a chuckle from Ray and Aunt Andie.
Maybe that's why I've come,
I thought.

While Ray went to work in the kitchen, I glanced around the small living room, half-expecting to find Grandma curled up on the sofa. The furnishings always struck me as tacky: the rug was long and shaggy, the lamps were metal and an
gular, and the bar stools were covered in some kind of faux animal print—leopard, maybe. When Grandma lived in Pittsburgh with my grandfather, they'd had “a library” with built-in bookshelves holding hundreds of novels, but since moving here, she read everything on her Kindle. Why had I assumed she'd leave me a clue, when Grandma had “downsized” her secrets a long time ago?

“Here you go, kid, a virgin smoothie,” Ray said, handing me a drink moments later, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment just to hear an adult use the word
virgin
in front of me. It reminded me of Holden Saunders and his asshole friends, stuff I didn't really want to think about, so I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the back patio, where a speedboat was motoring past. From where I was standing, I couldn't see where the lawn dropped off into the canal, and with the backdrop of bushes, and the green grass in front, the boat looked like it was driving across the land.

I sat down on the patio furniture, realizing belatedly that the cushions were soaked, and now it would look like I wet my pants. I imagined Grandma sitting next to me, watching the boats zip by.
Was
she sitting next to me in some ethereal, invisible form? I sort of believed it, but at the same time, I sort of didn't.

I wondered what Mrs. Browning would say about the afterlife. Whenever I thought of her ditching her religion for love, it reminded me of Mom and Dad keeping up a few traditions for us kids and tossing out everything that required more commitment. “A lot of the time, I just . . . feel so lost,” I'd admitted to Grandma when we were in Miami.

“Oh, honey. You may be lost, but God knows exactly where you are,” she'd said, patting my knee. “He knows where I am, too.”

“But then why—” I'd said, and then stopped, because the question I was going to ask,
But then why are you suffering?
had made my throat constrict.

“You are one of God's chosen people, too. It's in your birthright.”

I blinked. “It is?”

“You already
are
one of us.”

“I am?” I'd wiped my eyes.

Grandma had smiled. “You are.”

I'd remember that moment forever, and it was all thanks to Mrs. Browning.

“Elyse,” Aunt Andie said, and I jerked my head up to see her beckon me to come back inside. I hurried back up the patio steps, startling a green gecko.

Inside Ray led the way across the hall to Grandma's bedroom, which had a queen-size bed, a dresser, and a little TV. Palm leaves were slapping against the window as the ceiling fan twirled overhead, but it took me a moment to get what he wanted the three of us to see: a box of ashes sitting on the dresser.
Grandma
.

“This is what she wanted,” Ray said, opening the box.

I stared into the wooden container, trying to comprehend that this gray dirt was the person who'd made jokes in the hallway of the hospital and said, “You remind me of me!” This dirt had given birth to my mother, who'd given birth to me.

“I'll let you three sort out the jewelry and the clothes later,” Ray said, nodding toward Grandma's open closet. It was strange
to see her scarves and dresses hanging there; her shoes neatly paired on the floor. I felt like she should walk in and ask us why we were sipping smoothies in her bedroom. “Don't you dare sit down on my bed, kiddo,” she'd say, pointing at my butt, which was still sopping from the patio furniture.

Aunt Andie crossed the room to Grandma's night table, which was littered with medicine bottles. “What about the pain medication? Can we divvy this up, too?” she asked, which made Ray smile, but Mom only scowled.

“Here, kiddo—from Grandma,” Ray said, handing me an old weathered book, whose fabric binding was embossed with the words
The Secrets of Flight
. “Your grandmother's novel.”

“I haven't seen that in ages,” Mom said, as I ran my fingers over the green letters.

“Mom wrote it about her aunt who died in the war. I think I lost my copy in one of the moves,” Aunt Andie said. “Can I reread it after you?”

I nodded slowly and opened up the front cover, where the name
Margarita Schiff
was on the title page. Schiff was my mother's maiden name, but “Margarita”? “Is that a pseudonym?”

“Yes and no,” Ray said. “Her parents named her after the actress Rita Hayworth, but later on, after they died, her grandmother changed her name to Margot—she thought Margarita sounded like a Mexican floozy.”

From between the pages, a black-and-white picture fluttered to the floor. Gingerly, I picked up the photo of a little girl, dark hair in braids, sitting on the front stoop of a house. Ray squinted at it and then flipped it over so we could decipher the handwritten smear on the back.

“‘Margarita, 1945,'” I sounded out.

“She must've been about four.” He passed the picture to Mom and Aunt Andie. “Margot was looking at a bunch of pictures just the other day,” Ray said. “She must've stuck this one in here for Elyse.”

“It's kind of blurry,” Aunt Andie said.

“It's disintegrating,” Mom said, curling her lip.

“Look closer,” Ray said, handing it back to me. “You might even recognize her smile.”

I
T RAINED THE WHOLE NEXT MORNING, SOME SORT OF REMNANT
of Claudette, and it wasn't until later afternoon that we packed a cooler of sandwiches and motored out toward the pinkish horizon for the burial at sea.

“Is there gonna be a storm?” I asked Ray, who followed my finger where the thunderheads were gathering in the distance.

“Nah. I checked the weather maps before we left. Might get a little wet, though.”

Once we'd cleared a succession of buoys and the island itself looked small and distant, Ray cut the motor, and we bobbed up and down on the whitecaps in the humid breeze. The sea was unexpectedly greenish rather than the usual aqua, and stingrays kept darting just below the surface like little black omens. It was hard to relax when the life preserver that Mom made me wear was chafing around my neck.

“I'm assuming you got the permits for this, Ray?” Mom asked right away.

“Permits?” he asked, wiping off an icy beer from the cooler with his hand.

“It's illegal to dump human waste, including dead bodies,
in the ocean. The Coast Guard may have a problem with us disposing of the ashes this way, if not the Key West boating authority,” Mom said.

Before I could ask if she was just making stuff up, Aunt Andie snapped, “Are you fucking—?”

“I got the permits, Jane,” Ray interrupted, putting a staying palm on my aunt's shoulder. “I got the permits.” Then he cracked open the Yuengling and handed it to Mom. “Now drink up.”

We ate our sandwiches in silence, save for the crunch of Ray's chips, as the warm wind scudded across the deck and the thunderclouds grew closer, like a gathering army. We sat on opposite sides: Mom and me facing Ray and Aunt Andie, the wooden box of Grandma perched between us. As waves slapped the side of the boat, I thought how Grandma always said she'd fallen in love with the ocean when she fell in love with Ray. “How is it possible that I grew up landlocked?” she'd asked me once, and I felt a little bit bad for Pittsburgh, as if its crisscrossing rivers and endless bridges didn't even count.

“Is this what Mom wanted?” my mother suddenly asked, jerking her head toward the ashes. “That we just sit here in silence?”

“I brought a poem,” I said, holding up a book with the one by W. H. Auden about stopping all the clocks and putting away the sun—we'd read it in Mrs. Kindlings's class earlier in the year. “And we could look for the green flash,” I added. One time Thea had told me about the crack of green on the horizon when the last of the sun melts away, and I wanted to see it now, wanted it to be a sign from Grandma that she'd crossed over to the other side.

“I don't think Margot would have a problem with you girls sharing some memories,” Ray said as he swigged some beer. “Hell, I'll start. I remember the night your mom and I met down on Duval Street. She was drunk as a skunk, and she was singing karaoke, and she had an unbelievable set of pipes, even if she always picked the most melancholy songs by Carole King.”

“I'm sorry. I'm just—trying to understand something,” Mom suddenly said to Aunt Andie, who glanced up from her sandwich. “Do you have a legal background that I wasn't aware of? Did Mom pay for a couple of ‘Intro to Law' courses at your community college? Because I can't figure out why she would've made you the executor of her will.”

“Margot figured it would be easier for Andie to help me out, since you're such a busy lady.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mom asked, and Ray shrugged as he swigged his beer.

“Did you ever call her back?”

“Maybe we should do this another day,” Aunt Andie said, setting down her sandwich. “It's not what I imagined . . .”

“That's funny, it's not what I imagined, either,” Mom snapped. “If I had known we were—scattering
Mom,
I would've brought the boys.”

Easy, people,
Grandma would be saying right about now.
It's my funeral. Can't you all just relax?
I stopped flipping through my book of poems. Trying to read on a lurching boat was making me queasy.

“Margot said she wanted to be scattered in Key West, and she didn't want to wait. She's Jewish,” Ray added with a shrug. “They bury their dead right away.”

“Yeah. We
bury
our dead. In the ground.”

I wished they would stop arguing almost as much as I wished the boat would stop rocking but neither seemed like it would be happening anytime soon. The sea kept rising up, threatening to swallow us, and soon the debate about what to do with Grandma would be pretty much beside the point after we'd drowned.