An Impossible Distance to Fall

by Miriam McNamara

  A second parachute bloomed above him, so close to the ground, but far enough away that it sucked the speed out of his fall and he hit the sand at a run, stumbling slightly, but remaining upright.

  Birdie struggled to catch her breath as he paraded in front of the crowd, beaming and pumping his fist. Everyone was cheering and fanning themselves, incredulous looks on their faces.

  It wasn’t Dad, of course—it was “Air Devil” Charlie again—but for that moment, she was so happy to see he was alive that it may as well have been her father.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BIRDIE HAD SEEN A GIRL DANCE IN THE SKY. SHE’D SEEN PLANES FLYING upside down. She’d seen loop-de-loops and barrel rolls and that incredible parachute jump. She’d seen the two Jennys engaged in a mock-dogfight—“The Bird and the Bee!” She’d seen a fascinating fire show performed by the tattooed girl and the young man with the striped socks and floppy black hair, smoking whips and hoops and swords of fire undulating around their bodies and disappearing into their mouths in mesmerizing rhythms.

  But she had not seen Dad.

  The sky was starting to pink as the sun approached the horizon. She wouldn’t be home in time for rehearsal. Mikhail would have kittens; not only did she have a solo in the recital two weeks from tomorrow, Birdie danced a big role in several of the group numbers. At least school was out, so she hadn’t worried about missing class today.

  Izzy would notice she was missing from rehearsal, and wonder where she was.

  Birdie folded her arms on the railing and rested her chin, staring into nothing. The crowd on the boardwalk had thinned, but people still bumped her as they walked past. A boy skimmed her leg with his paper airplane as he zoomed by. She didn’t move. The rush of the show was fading. She felt sick, the air quickly turning cold.

  She should be headed home, but she could hardly stand the thought. It wasn’t just that her beau, her best friend, and everyone else in town was shunning her. She’d caught Mom that morning packing suitcases, and when Birdie had demanded to know what was going on Mom told her that a new bank was taking over the assets from Dad’s bank, including their house mortgage—and that they were foreclosing on it. Birdie wasn’t sure what “foreclosing” meant, and Mom told her the house didn’t belong to them anymore. They had nowhere to live. “But I’ve got a plan for us.” Mom pulled another dress off a hanger, not meeting Birdie’s eyes. The table next to her was beginning to dull with dust, lint collecting around its legs on the oriental rug since the maid had been let go soon after Dad disappeared. “Annie’s in Dover, and she didn’t waste her money like I did. She says she’d be happy to have us.”

  When Mom’s parents died, Dad had used her inheritance to buy their house, open the bank, and buy his Jenny. Aunt Annie was an old maid who could do as she pleased, and of all things, she’d moved with her piles of books and her two West Highland terriers halfway round the world, to the gloomy British countryside.

  Birdie sank into the green velvet settee. “I’m not going to England,” she choked out. “Dad could be back any moment. He could walk through that door right now!”

  “I thought you might be resistant,” her mom said. “If it’s your preference, Bobby’s parents said they’d be happy to have you for as long as you want. They haven’t heard anything from him, but they’re still holding out hope like you. Once you’re tired of that, of course, me and Annie can send for you.”

  Birdie had never been to Granny and Grandpa Williams’s house. From what she’d gathered from Dad and Mom’s jokes, they lived a decidedly unglamorous, middle-class life near the Catskills. Dad gave them money when they came to visit for Christmas. They were small, gray people that seemed bewildered that their strapping, smooth-talking son had done so well for himself. “I’m not going anywhere,” said Birdie, fists curling. “Izzy’s here, and David, and Dad knows this is where we’ll be—” She stopped short and stared at Mom’s hand. Her wedding ring was gone. Dad’s ring.

  Birdie looked up, venom in her mouth. “You’re going to give up on him, just like that?” she spat.

  Mom’s jaw tightened as she folded another dress over her arm, then set it in a pink-and-white-striped valise. “He’s dead, Birdie. He’s been gone for almost two months now, and he isn’t coming back.”

  Mom had been like this, blank and flat and not meeting her eyes, ever since the bank failed, and it made Birdie want to scream. “Dad isn’t dead,” she hissed. “You know he isn’t.”

  “Birdie, please,” Mom said. “So what if he isn’t? Then he ran off and left us with nothing. Worse than nothing.”

  “If you loved Dad, you wouldn’t do this.” Birdie’s voice was rising.

  “If your father loved me, he wouldn’t have left!” Mom banged a fist into the wardrobe door, a bobby-pinned curl shaking loose.

  It was very quiet. Birdie felt like she would explode, her whole skin humming. She knew Dad loved them, it was just that everything had gone wrong so suddenly, and he’d panicked. She was mad at him, too, but she couldn’t give up on him until she found him and—

  Found him. She’d almost forgotten!

  “Oh!” Birdie fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the flyer she’d found earlier that day. She unfolded it, flattening it against her thighs. “Look what I found!” She’d run all the way home to show it to her mother, but since Mom was being so dreadful it had almost slipped her mind.

  Mom stared at the picture, her face softening a little. She looked at Birdie with tenderness—or pity. “Oh, Birdie. There’s a thousand planes like his, you know that. They made a million of them, and sold them cheap after the war.”

  Birdie knew Mom would say exactly that. “It’s Dad’s. It has the same name, Mom.” She stabbed it with her finger. “It’s the exact same. You must not want to believe it. You must want him to be gone.”

  “Birdie.” A warning.

  “You’re glad he’s gone. You’re happy to go live with Aunt Annie, and I have to go live in the awful Catskills because it’s the only way Dad will find me and I’ll be trapped there for God knows how long!” Birdie pushed off from the settee and stood.

  Mom turned abruptly and their faces came close. Mom’s eyes were sky-blue clear for what felt like the first time since the bank failed. “Bobby left me. He left us.” She cupped Birdie’s cheek, her palm cool. “If he’s dead, he’s never coming back, and there’s no use fussing over it. If he’s alive, and he just left us like this—he doesn’t deserve for you to wait around for him, hoping he’ll appear one day.”

  “How can you say that?” Birdie flung Mom’s hand away. “You know how terrible it’s been, how everyone hates him since the bank failed!”

  “It’s been terrible for us, Birdie,” Mom said, her voice rising. “How can you not see it? How can you not blame him for what he’s done to us?”

  Birdie snatched the flyer off the table and clutched it to her chest. “You’re not even giving him a chance.” She whirled and stomped out of the room.

  “I’ve given him plenty of chances!” Mom yelled after her.

  Birdie slammed the door shut as she left the house. She’d as good as lost Izzy, David, school at Finch’s in the fall, her pretty things, her adoring friends, her glamorous future.

  There was no way she was giving up on Dad without a fight.

  But all she’d found was his stupid plane.

  She’d go back home with no clues as to where he had gone. Coming here hadn’t changed anything and she couldn’t bear it.

  Her eyes went to Dad’s Jenny again, and something sparked inside her. There might be a clue she couldn’t see from here, some note from Dad, some secret code. She didn’t want to ask any of the circus people, after tattoo-girl had been so unhelpful. There might be something she could say that would convince them to let her poke around, but right now she couldn’t think of what it was.

  A flight of steps led down to the beach to her left. Birdie straightened up and studied the distance between her and the Jenny.

  Circus p
eople stood in a ring in the sand at the bottom of the stairs, smoking and gesturing. Tattoo-girl sulked on the bottom steps, a cigarette dangling from her fingers—Birdie would have to get by her first. The boy in the striped socks chatted with the girl, twirling the now-unlit chains he had spun in the show. The big man in the suspenders absentmindedly shuffled a deck of cards, hands undulating near his waist. Merriwether puffed on a pipe, as tall as the men (although Birdie was sure she was a woman now), talking intensely with “Air Devil” Charlie.

  Close by, a sandy-haired fellow waved his cigarette and pointed at the sky, talking to two identical-looking younger boys. He nudged one of the boys with his shoulder and laughed, and got shoved back. He lunged for the boy’s middle, his abandoned cigarette rolling in the sand, the other boy heckling them as they wrestled. The lot of them didn’t seem like they would pay her any mind. After she was past them, she had a clear shot at the Jenny, which was on the far side of the other planes. She could snoop around without being noticed.

  The wingwalking girl, Darlena, was nowhere to be seen.

  As Birdie approached the top of the steps she saw another person sitting cross-legged in the sand facing the bottom step, holding a small white paper. The person dipped her fingers into a pouch that rested on the bottom step and pinched a small amount of mossy tobacco, dropping it carefully onto the center of the paper. A long bob brushed her shoulders unevenly, like she’d chopped her hair off at the chin and then let it grow back. Her hair was dark and straight, and a dun-colored flight suit showed off a lean, tall figure. Birdie remembered now—she was the pilot who had flown Charlie up for his parachute drop.

  Birdie had known women could fly planes—Amelia Earhart, after all, and Louise Thaden. She’d even heard of a Negro woman pilot, who had had to go to France to learn how to fly because no one in America would teach her. There had been a whole air race for women last year, officially called the Women’s National Air Derby, although some guy on the radio had nicknamed it the Powder Puff Derby and that name had stuck. Birdie had listened to him narrate the race in an indulgent tone and pictured women in puffy pink dresses daintily flying planes painted like cupcakes and teacups. She’d never actually seen a woman fly a plane.

  Powder puff definitely did not describe this girl or the way she’d flown her plane.

  Birdie took a step down. She watched the girl pilot massage the paper and tobacco, then bring the cigarette to her mouth and run the paper along her tongue. Birdie took another step down. She watched the girl pilot pull the cigarette away, pick a piece of stray tobacco from her tongue, and flick it into the sand.

  As she got closer to tattoo-girl, who sat on the steps just above the girl pilot, Birdie heard snatches of their conversation. “—could have come with us till we were through with the tryout, at least!” Tattoo-girl sucked on her cigarette, the cherry glowing an angry red. She mumbled something Birdie couldn’t catch.

  The boy in the striped socks swirled the chains in a figure-eight pattern. “Love makes you do crazy things.” He had creamy brown skin, and when he paused to push his hair back Birdie glimpsed dark eyes, arresting lashes, and heavy brows.

  The lanky girl pilot snorted. “Maybe it’s love, maybe not. There’s plenty of people telling girls they’ve gotta settle down before it’s too late, and you know what—” She tipped up on one hip and pulled a book of matches out of her pocket. Birdie couldn’t hear what she said next, as she put the cigarette between her teeth to strike a match. She took another step.

  “I just knew that cake-eater was gonna propose. I just knew he was gonna pull something like this,” muttered Merriwether. “She’s worth ten of him, and I’ve a mind to tell her.”

  “The tryout’s still a go, right?” suspenders-man asked Merriwether, left hand stacking cards into his right.

  “Of course we’re still doing it!” snapped Merriwether. “We’ve still got a hell of a show. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Here, Bennie,” said tattoo-girl. “Give me a card. I’ll tell us what we should do.”

  Bennie’s calloused hands stilled, and he plucked a card from the deck and handed it to the girl. She studied it for a moment, brow furrowed. She frowned and passed it back.

  It says you should all go away, thought Birdie, trying telepathy, and clear the way for me.

  “What did it tell you?” asked striped-socks boy.

  Tattoo-girl swiveled and looked up the steps. Birdie fixed her gaze on a swirl of gulls flying past, dark silhouettes against the sky. Tattoo-girl would probably charge Birdie twenty-five cents again if she caught her watching them, so Birdie ambled down the steps, admiring the horizon and the birds as they turned to specks against the sea. She avoided eye contact, too busy being nonchalant to listen to their conversation anymore.

  She couldn’t help glancing down as she passed the girl pilot—and their eyes met. The girl had tan, smooth skin, but the skin around her eyes was startlingly pale. Dad’s skin did the same thing after he wore flight goggles for hours on a sunny day, although his face always turned lobster red first. The girl smiled at Birdie with dark eyes. “Hey there,” she drawled. Her accent smacked of something Deep South, like Georgia or Alabama—as Southern as it got. The tips of her hair grazed the shoulders of her khaki duster.

  Birdie smiled back too eagerly, her pulse pounding though she wasn’t doing anything suspicious. But the pilot’s eyes skimmed past her as Merriwether asked her something, and she turned away to answer.

  And then Birdie was past them, and then the wrestling boys, and Dad’s Jenny sat before Birdie on the beach, unguarded.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE GIRL PILOT’S DIRECT ADDRESS HAD UNNERVED HER. BIRDIE MEANDERED down to the water’s edge before she circled back to the Jenny from the far side, but her heart rate refused to slow. A hurried glance backward proved that she was hidden, the red-and-silver plane blocking the line of sight to the circus folks.

  The Jenny roosted as serenely on the open beach as it had in its cozy hangar back home. Wheels and tail skid rested in the sand, the upper wing a curved awning above her head. Birdie put her hand to the painted canvas and traced the swirling black Pretty Bird with her fingers. Even without the name she’d know it was his. She wouldn’t feel so hopeless and so happy when she looked at it, if it wasn’t. She recognized the scuff marks here and there, little creases in the fabric where canvas showed through the paint. The stink of oil and grease. The stiff black leather seats in the cockpits, the same stick and gauges.

  Birdie grabbed a strut and pulled herself up on the wing. The canvas was rough beneath her heels—something, maybe gravel or sand, had been painted into the wing of the plane since she’d last seen it. It had texture, not the smoothness she was used to. She was short enough that she could just stand up straight, her hair brushing the upper wing. She touched her fingers to it. The bars between the wings were straight, the wires taut.

  Careful to step over the wires and onto the ribby supports, she crossed the wing and climbed into the rear cockpit. This cockpit was her favorite. Although she’d always been a passenger up front when they flew, it was the rear cockpit she hid in to read, to study, to dream, to imagine she was flying away. She settled into the seat and put her hands on the stick, ran a finger over the tachometer. She pretended she was pushing the throttle in, about to take off. She knew exactly what the plane felt like lifting off and setting down. She knew it like an inhale and exhale of breath.

  Where would she be now if she’d been the one who’d flown away from home and left it in the care of strangers? She closed her eyes.

  Immediately her mind went to the flask of bootleg gin Dad kept under the seat. She reached beneath her, and her fingers brushed what felt like the round metal lid. She curled and looked between her legs, but it was hard to see through the shadows. She reached again, as far back as she could go, and her fingers closed around flat curves. As she withdrew her hand, something paper fluttered to the floor between her feet.

  It was his flask, sterlin
g silver. Dad sometimes allowed her a burning nip; he always got a kick out of her disgusted expression, which always happened no matter how she tried to steel herself. The flask often poked out of his back pocket as he ambled out to the hangar to tinker with the engine, or rested on top of the mess on the desk in his study.

  The flask, the plane—these things belonged to him so much that they were almost part of him. So where was he?

  All the air left her in a whoosh, and suddenly she was shaking. She pressed her forehead into her hands, swallowing back tears. Was she really going to have to go upstate and just wait? She didn’t think she could do it, but it was just as unbearable to imagine getting on that steamer and heading across the ocean, giving up on him completely like Mom already had.

  Her gaze fell upon the thing that had slid out with the flask, and she squinted into the dimness. It was a photograph, dirty and creased.

  Birdie snatched it up. The way the light hit the crinkled bit of glossy paper made it hard to make out. She flattened the image against her thigh, smoothing it with her palms, and her pulse accelerated.

  The face was instantly recognizable. Birdie’s mind colored her curved, seductively pouting lips a bright, slick vermilion, her puppy eyes dark brown, the thick lashes and tumbled curls a warm chestnut gloss. Gilda Deveaux, the Chicago jazz singer that Dad had hired to sing at Birdie’s sixteenth birthday party. Dad sure loved the way she sang, her clear voice carrying just a hint of throaty accent. He loved the way she looked at him, lips painted into a perfect bow, as she sang “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Birdie had loved it, and Izzy, too. They’d run around the house, up and down the stairs, screaming the lyrics after the guests had left.

  Mom hadn’t loved their shrieking at all. Birdie had never heard her shout so loud.

  She shoved her hand under the seat again and fumbled around desperately, sure there must be something else there, something of her or Mom, something that said he’d be coming back for them—but she came up with nothing but dust.