The Secrets of Flight (6 page)

It was dusk and outside the pool was still, and the sky was turning from purple into night. I craned my neck to the far right to see if Holden was doing his homework or talking on his phone, but unfortunately the Regal Estate McMansions are too far apart for me to catch a glimpse of him doing more than parking his green MINI Cooper in the driveway.

Then I snooped around Mom's bookshelves for a bit, trying to find Grandma's novel. Mrs. Browning was right—a book written by a member of the family
should
be required reading—but there was only Mom's fancy collection instead, the leather-bound classics with gold lettering on the binding,
most of which she hadn't actually read. When I didn't see
The Secrets of Flight
wedged in her “used” book section—mostly law school texts and some paperback mysteries—I sat down and fished the old-fashioned Dictaphone from my pocket instead. After inserting one of the tiny tapes, I leaned back in Mom's swivel chair, put my feet up on her desk, and closed my eyes—until Mrs. Browning's voice crackled through the air, and I remembered I better get typing.

Half an hour later, I was fighting to stay on the home row while six-year-old Mary and her sister Sarah climbed an apple tree, when I heard the jangle of keys in the foyer and the beeping of the security system. Quickly, I turned off the Dictaphone, switched off the computer, and lunged for the light. The study went dark, except for the glow of Mom's bedside lamp from the other room.

Moments later, they were on the stairs. I heard Mom saying, “Lights out,” to Toby, and then Daddy coming into the bedroom and heading straight for the bathroom, followed by Mom's footsteps a moment later. I should've surprised them then—Mom would yell at me for invading her private office and threaten to ground me—but something made me pull my feet up off the floor and hug my knees. Thanks to the strategic location of the trench coat hanging on one of the French doors of the office, they couldn't see me, but if I tilted my head a little to the side, I could see Mom slipping off her blazer and tossing it over the back of the chair. I hoped they weren't going to start making out or having sex with each other, but it didn't seem like that was about to happen, because they weren't saying anything remotely sexy. They kept analyzing the meal, how the halibut was “disappointing” and “gummy” and the butternut squash
ravioli was missing “something vital—like more garlic or even a little cayenne to give it some life.” It was the most boring conversation I'd ever heard and they hadn't even started analyzing the wine yet.

My parents are scathing when it comes to food. They are the exact opposite of my grandma Margot, who loves to make a show out of calling the chef out from the kitchen, just so she can say, “This is the best steak I've ever had!” which always embarrasses my mom. “You've said that about the last two steaks you've had, Mother,” Mom always says, wincing.

Tonight, when I was in the fetal position in my mother's chair, I was hoping they wouldn't find me but this little part of me was kind of wishing they'd think to search—I mean did they really think I was already asleep by eleven? But Mom was asking Daddy why he hadn't finished his lamb, and Daddy was saying he had a big lunch, and just as I let go of my legs to give myself up, I heard Daddy say, “You'll never guess who I saw today. Remember Natalia?”

I hadn't forgotten Natalia—the “woman who was almost my mother,” according to Aunt Andie—so I was sure Mom hadn't, either.

“Natalia?” Mom sounded puzzled. “From when we met?”

And Daddy came out of the bathroom and said that she's a widow now that her husband died of pancreatic cancer. Mom said, “That's tragic,” and Daddy said, “I think you mean ironic.”

“So, where did you run into Natalia?” Mom asked, unbuttoning her blouse. “Wasn't she in L.A. for a while, selling Viagra or something?”

“Well . . . that's the funny part.” Daddy gave a heh-heh kind of laugh and swung his arms. “She's still out in L.A. but
she came to town for a Pfizer conference and wanted to get together. She found me on Facebook. We've exchanged some emails.”

My mom stood there in her full-length slip staring at Daddy. Then she asked, “When were you planning on telling me this?” the same line she always gives me when I make her sign a permission slip for a field trip to Boston that's going to cost five hundred dollars and I was supposed to have raised the money myself selling candy bars, but I forgot.

“Right now!” Daddy said, sounding a lot like me.

Mom wanted to know what exactly this woman wanted, and Daddy said, “To see me again,” and Mom's voice got so low that to hear her I had to lean forward in my seat, almost exposing my head around the trench coat. I could see Daddy sitting on the bed in his boxers and undershirt, and I could see Mom facing him and I heard her ask him in a quiet voice what exactly he wanted from her, and Dad said, “To see her again.”

I wasn't sure what was more awful about this moment: that Daddy wanted to see his old girlfriend or that I was trapped, eavesdropping. My heart was running so fast, it was hard to breathe.

“I see,” Mom said, nodding vigorously. Then she asked if there were plans for other cross-country lunch dates? “Because—just for the record—I have a real problem with that.”

“I knew you would,” Daddy said, and then Mom laughed sort of bitterly and asked if he blamed her. Then Daddy looked up from his hands and said he didn't know what he wanted anymore. That he didn't know if he wanted to still be married. And then Mom exploded, “Must've been some fucking lunch!”

I pulled up my feet again and hugged my knees and decided I'd just wait for my parents to go to sleep and then maybe I'd crawl across the floor in the darkness. Tomorrow I would call Grandma and ask her what to do, just like I did when Daddy got cancer. Would Daddy want to move to L.A. where Natalia lived? California was so far away, although, relatively speaking, so much closer than heaven. Would he invite me to go with him? Could we take Huggie, too?

The conversation didn't seem like it was ending. Daddy was saying that it wasn't about Natalia. That he'd been thinking about it ever since he'd gotten sick. Mom said, “The cancer is gone!” and Daddy answered, “Yes. The cancer is gone.” When I peeked around the coat again, Daddy was staring at Mom like she was a tumor still clinging to him. Daddy said since he had another chance at life, he wanted something different. He wanted a chance to be happy again. And Mom asked if he'd slept with her. Daddy looked sort of miserable when he shook his head and said, “I wanted to talk to you.” And Mom asked, “To get my permission?” Daddy got mad then and said he wanted credit for being honest, and Mom said emailing your ex-girlfriend isn't honest, and Daddy said, “I think we should try some time apart.” When Mom shouted, “So you can fuck other people and see how that feels?” I hid my face in my knees like a plane had just crashed into our house.

“You want everything to stay the same! You want the same job! Same life! Same restaurants! Same bottle of wine every time!” His voice was a furious hiss of a whisper, and I could feel all the exclamation points. “Life is short, Jane! And you're intent on living like it's a sentence.”

“How long has her husband been dead—ten minutes?” Mom asked.

On the desk in Mom's office, the phone suddenly rang. I held my breath, afraid to move, as my heart drilled a hole in my chest. Two more rings went by. Downstairs, I could hear the machine pick up and Grandma's voice asking my mother
please
pick up, because she finally went to the doctor about that itch. “Jane? Please? It's important.” After a long pause, she finally hung up.

Just then, Huggie started to cry—loudly—which meant that he had to pee. Huggie doesn't wet the bed anymore, but he gets deliriously pissed at the inconvenience of getting up to pee when he's trying to sleep. Sometimes my mom quietly guides him to the bathroom, other times we can hear her shouting, “Damn it, Hugh, we all have to pee sometimes!”

“I'll go,” Daddy said, as the crying got more insistent.

“No, I'll go!” Mom snapped.

As soon as I heard her leave the room, my shoulders dropped. But Daddy just sat there on the bed, not moving. It almost looked like he was staring in the direction of the French doors, and I wondered if he'd heard me exhale. Finally, he got up with a noisy sigh and went into the bathroom. Once I heard water running in the sink, I uncurled my legs, slowly stood up, and softly unlatched the French door to Mom's office. As soon as I could see the bedroom was definitely empty, I flew across the rug, past the bed, past the dressing table, past the rocking chair, and kept going into the hallway, where, down at the far end, the kids' bathroom door was open. Mom was swaying slightly and hugging herself, while Huggie howled and peed
into the toilet. Just as she glanced up at me, I turned the other way and ran, telling myself not to look back, thinking of the one line I'd seen on Mrs. Browning's instructions for night flying that she'd shown me earlier: “While solo do not look back at Runway before first turn is made.” Back in my room, I collapsed on the bed, trying to erase my mom's blue eyes from the inside of my own lids. Her face may have been angry, her brows chiseled into a terrifying V, but her eyes were soft and vulnerable and heartbroken and . . . wet. And, now, so were mine. I couldn't really move to California and leave her alone. I couldn't really leave her ever.

April 1941

Y
ou ready for this?” my instructor Jim Newman asks as we sit tandem in the cockpit of the Piper J-3—or “the cub,” as Jim calls it—waiting for one of the line boys to prop the plane for my first flight. It's been thirteen years since the pilot fell into my yard, three whole years since FDR announced the initiation of the Civilian Pilot Training Program, and six months since I matriculated at the University of Pittsburgh. Since only one in ten spots is available for a woman, I had to wait until this spring for a space in the program. It's been nine days since I finished first in ground school, beating out eighteen men, and another forty-five minutes since we walked outside the ready room and started inspecting the plane before takeoff.

“I've been ready forever,” I say, and he laughs.

At twenty-five, Jim is six years my senior, but since he's taught me everything about how to ready a parachute and read
a tachometer and altimeter, how to transition the plane from taxi to liftoff, how to listen to the sound of the engine to determine the tilt of the plane, and how to anticipate the landing, he may as well be sixty. I am so full of giddy anticipation that I haven't slept all week.

“Where's your wind coming from?” Jim asks now, and as I point north, I can't help smiling, thinking,
The wind is mine
.

At last, Hurly Stevens, blond and seventeen, arrives to get the propeller going. At his call, I turn the gas valve on and open up the throttle, while outside the plane, Hurly pulls the prop. The needles inside the dashboard dials spring to life as the engine catches. I shift my goggles down over my eyes, and Hurly backs away from the plane with a thumbs-up.

“Let's go, kid,” Jim says, and I push forward the throttle and feel my heart, along with the engine, rattling harder as we barrel down the runway, gathering speed. The vibrations are so intense and the noise so loud that I can't help wondering if the whole plane might fall apart before we reach the end of the runway. Gently, I pull back on the stick.

“Not too fast or we'll stall out,” Jim says, over my left shoulder, right in my ear. “Now feel the tail lift up,” he adds, and I feel it swinging up, as I simultaneously pull back.
Bingo,
we're rising, climbing higher and higher into the dazzlingly blue sky—rare for Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. Glancing down, I catch sight of my gloved fingers clutching the stick and something inside me gives a little lurch. I am holding my own life—and Jim's life, too—in my hands. A terrifying realization until I remember Jim can put his own hands on mine at any time, and he can talk me through anything.

Finally, we level out at three thousand feet. The wind howls
and the engine roars in my ears, while the rushing inside me grows quiet.

I'm doing it, Papa. I'm really flying
.

From up here, Pittsburgh is a beautifully detailed, luxuriously green, topographical map of hills and valleys. Coal trains chug along the Allegheny River, the incline crawls up Mount Washington, and factories pour out black plumes of smoke that shift rapidly to the west in the wind. From this distance, even the steel mills are inspiring. We are making something: steel for planes, steel for tanks, steel for the war we're hoping desperately to avoid. I can see it all. And even though I've never been anywhere in my life, I've finally left home.

Once we've landed back at the airfield, and Hurly has arrived to service the plane, Jim and I unpack our chutes and sit in the lounge for a while, chatting about what to do in the event of an engine failure. Later, I'm marking my hours in the logbook when I notice the clock on the wall and gasp. “It's not really four o'clock, is it?” I ask.

“Nope,” Jim says, checking his own watch. “It's more like four thirty.”

I thank him and take off.

Half an hour later, after running all the way from the trolley, I'm nearly home when my knapsack breaks, spilling books across the sidewalk just in front of the house on Beacon Street. Frantically, I scoop them up, when a tall man in a tweed jacket stoops down to help me collect them, handing me first my math book, then geography, meteorology and navigation, and the Theory of Flight.

“You are very smart,” he says with a thick accent, handing
me the last text, and for a moment I study the stranger with his angular cheekbones and slightly receding hairline.

“Wait—are you—‘Cousin Tzadok'?” I say, remembering all at once that Mama said Hyman's newly emigrated second cousin would be joining us for Shabbat. I'm still juggling the books and the broken bag while trying to extend my hand. One paperback slips and hits the ground.

“Or ‘Jack,' if you like. The name they chose for me at Ellis Island,” he says, picking up the fallen manual. “
Civil Air Regulations?
” he adds, raising an eyebrow as he hands it back to me.

“Right. Thank you—I'm—so late,” I say breathlessly.

“That makes two of us,” he says with a smile.

Moments later, Mama turns from the stove, which is laden with simmering pots, and stares at me when I slip in through the back door. “You were supposed to be here hours ago! Tzadok will be here any moment.” I don't tell her that he
is
here, that we decided I would go around the back, and he would ring the doorbell and pretend we hadn't already met.

“Your dress is black,” she adds, as though I can control the emissions from the local steel mills. Although I suppose I could be more like Sarah, who lays out two outfits every day: one for the morning and one for later in the day, after the steel mills cover the first dress with soot. Squinting, Mama moves toward me. “What's that on your face? Dirt?” She licks her finger and rubs at the skin on my cheeks and forehead.

“Is it coming off?” I ask.

“Have you been wearing something on your eyes? There are marks . . .” she says, reaching for a wet dish towel instead. “And is this
grease
on your blouse? Miriam! Where have you
been? Don't you dare let Uncle Hyman see you,” she adds, before I can answer.

“Maybe I can sneak upstairs and take a bath . . .” I suggest, just as the doorbell rings.

“You have five minutes to wash your face, comb your hair, and change your clothes—then get back down here,” Mama hisses, throwing the dish towel into the sink before moving out into the front hall to answer the door. I slip out behind her and head for the stairs.

O
NCE
I'
VE SPLASHED WATER ON MY FACE, AND COMBED MY HAIR,
and changed my frock, I rush back downstairs, where my uncle is introducing Tzadok to Sarah, who is back just for the occasion of his visit. Noticing me, Tzadok tips his head with a smile, before Uncle Hyman urges us all to take our seats. Then Mama waves the flames toward herself, welcoming in the Sabbath, and covers her eyes with her hands and begins to sing. In the flickering candlelight, I try to summon up my own quiet prayer.
Please let me do good things with the gifts You've given me
. I feel grateful for the warmth in the pumpkin-colored dining room, grateful for the bread we will soon be eating, and maybe even for the tight ball of anxiety inside my chest that released as soon as we sat down. I close my eyes and listen to the blessings, made even more holy to me by the fact that Sarah is home, and everything is better when my sister is here. Sneaking a peek at her to my right, I catch her peeking at me, and, heads bowed, we exchange secret smiles.

Later, after we've been to services and gathered around the table once again for Uncle Hyman to say the Kiddush and bless the challah, Mama emerges with the main course, chicken and
roasted vegetables, and dinner digresses into conversations. I learn that Tzadok is eleven years my senior, that he left Germany in 1936 to stay with relatives in Belgium and then moved to England for further education. “Now that the Nazis are closing in on the English Channel,” he explains, looking directly at me, “it seemed like a good time to leave while I could.”

I can't help noticing that Tzadok frequently directs his remarks toward me, as if it's me, not Uncle Hyman, asking the questions. I may be a woman now, but I'm not used to the kind of attention usually reserved for my sister, who has always been striking, with her chiseled jaw and a regal nose, even before she cut off her braid for a stylish bob. Besides, at twenty-two, Sarah is closer in age to Tzadok than I am, although I suppose, as she is currently seven months pregnant with another man's baby, that might make her slightly less intriguing.

“What were you studying at the London School of Economics?” Sarah asks, spooning more potatoes onto her plate.

“Economics,” Tzadok says, and I laugh.

“He was studying acting at the London School of Economics,” I say, and Sarah gives me a good-natured shove.

“And you, Miriam?” Once again, Tzadok directs his gaze toward me. “What are you training for?”

My heart skips, thinking of the books he handed me back on the sidewalk, hoping he won't give me away.

“She's getting her secretarial degree,” Mama says.

“How fast can you type now?” Sarah says, oh so innocently, and I glare at her.

“Yes, Miri, how fast can you type?” Uncle Hyman asks, turning red again.

“Thirty words per minute . . . ?” I guess, and this time Sarah's the one who cackles.

“Goodness, that's terrible.”

“Perhaps Miriam has other things on her mind,” Tzadok says, smiling at me, and I realize then that he's going to keep my secret.

“What about your family, Tzadok?” Uncle Hyman asks, passing the plate of
kneydlekh
and
meyrn tsimes,
my favorite honey carrots. “How are they?”

“I cannot say,” Tzadok says, growing sober. “I encouraged them to leave when the restrictions against the Jews were starting, but my parents and brother wouldn't listen. They thought the Nazis would go away. Then there was Kristallnacht . . .”

I remember reading about it in the Jewish paper when I was sixteen: the night the Nazi mobs in Germany burned the synagogues and destroyed the Jewish shops.

“They took prisoners that night. My brother Oskar was captured and sent to a camp to do labor, and no one has heard from him since.”

“But this was before the war?” I ask, and Tzadok nods, morosely. “What do you think happened to him?” I add, and Mama shakes her head almost unperceptively, a vibration of admonition.

“I fear that he's dead, Miriam.”

T
HAT NIGHT,
S
ARAH SLEEPS IN HER TWIN BED ACROSS FROM
mine, just like old times since Elias has a show—a sin, according to my mother. “Performing on the Sabbath?” I heard her kvetching earlier. I watch Sarah tiptoe across the small pink
rug, her white nightgown clinging to her pregnant belly, before she settles into the clean sheets that Mama is so particular about washing, even the weeks Sarah doesn't come home. Mama also irons the curtains, scrubs the floors, and airs out the mattresses every Thursday, making me certain I'll never be able to keep house one day, nor would I aspire to.

After Sarah blows out the candle, I ask, in the darkness, “Do you think Hitler will come here?”

“It's just a matter of time,” she says.

I think of Roosevelt saying in his radio address that there are those who won't admit the possibility of the approaching storm. “So, what are we waiting for?”

“Everyone's scared. No one wants to go to war for the Jews. Something has to happen.”

I imagine the Nazis marching through the streets, smashing the windows, setting fire to our synagogue, and burning down Uncle Hyman's shop, with my mother and sister inside. “If the Germans land here, we should hide. Or pretend we're not Jewish,” I say.

I wait for her to tell me that they keep lists, they know who's who, they will ferret us out from under the floorboards and behind curtains in attics and that pretending to be something we're not is just wishful thinking. But instead her voice goes cold. “You can't turn your back on your own people, Miri.”

“I just mean—if the Nazis were going to kill us . . .” I say, and the bed creaks as she rolls away from me and faces the wall.

“You're learning to fly for a reason,” Sarah finally says, and it's only then that I realize she's been keeping my secret because taking flight is a responsibility—the power for change—and not just a whim.

I close my eyes, trying to push the images of Kristallnacht out of my mind and put myself back in the sky instead, flying high over Pittsburgh and beyond, across the ocean, farther than my fuel tank could carry me. I imagine myself piloting a B-26, dropping bombs on the Germans, the eruptions of light and fire below, while prisoners tear down the barbed wire, a flood of humanity escaping to freedom.

I have no idea that in just a few months, in June 1941, right after I've gotten my pilot's license and logged two hundred hours in the air, women will be banned from participating in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, and I'll have to wait three whole years to be given another chance to fly.