“I could,” said Mr. Irish. ‘Would you like that?”
Rette nodded, although it would mean giving up her spot in the limelight. Not giving it up—sharing it, she told herself.
“It’s sort of an honor,” Rette explained to Stephen Irish. “I think Elise would get a kick out of it, and so would her dad.”
“O.K. It’s as good as done.”
“That was darned decent of you,” said Jeff Chandler’s voice at Rette’s elbow as the airport director turned away. He had removed the white apron he usually wore in the lunchroom and was rolling down the sleeves of his shirt.
Praise from a contemporary, and especially from a boy, was so rare that it embarrassed Rette. She shrugged off the compliment and walked to the office with quick steps, mumbling that she had her logbook to bring up to date, and that it was getting awfully late.
Late or not, Jeff was waiting for her in the parking area when Rette came for her bike. Elise had gone long since, driving her father’s car, yet of course it was Elise about whom Rette and Jeff thought and talked as they pedaled back toward town. They tried to put themselves in Elise’s place, and relived the cutting out of the motor and the forced landing.
“She’s got a head on her shoulders, all right,” Jeff said.
“You bet she has!” Rette agreed with such vigor that Jeff looked at her quizzically.
“I thought up until today, that you didn’t like Elise. Then, when we all thought she’d smashed up, I never saw anybody so scared. You were white as a sheet.”
“Up until today,” Rette said slowly, “I never let myself like her. I—I guess I was jealous.
“Why?”
“It would be hard for a boy to understand.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Rette rode in silence for a few seconds, then said: “It’s like this. All my life, practically, Elise has been held up to me as an example. ‘Elise is pretty. Elise is popular. Elise is a little lady!’” Rette made her voice prissy and precise. “I was—she hesitated, then forced herself to say it—I was a tomboy. I was all the wrong things, and Elise was all the right ones. At least that’s the way it seemed.”
Jeff laughed. “But there’s no comparison. You and Elise are as different as day is from night.”
Rette’s chin shot up. “That’s just it!”
Jeff braked, and slowed his bike so that he could row along with his feet on the ground. Rette slowed down too.
“Now don’t get jumpy,” Jeff cautioned, grinning. “You don’t want to be like Elise.” He hesitated. “Or do you?”
Rette looked surprised, then probed into her own past. “I guess, really, I always have,” she admitted slowly.
“Loretta Larkin, you ought to be spanked.” Jeff adopted an affectionate-uncle attitude and stopped dead in the middle of the road, looking at Rette directly, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“I don’t see why. You like Elise. Everybody does.”
“Sure,” Jeff admitted. “Sure! But, my gosh, one Elise is enough. I like you too. Just be yourself and you’ll be all right. You’ve got a fire and enthusiasm that Elise will never have. You’ll go places, Rette, someday.”
Rette could feel her heart flutter, for all the world like the wings of a fledgling sparrow she had once returned to its nest. Sitting there in the saddle of her bike, one foot on the macadam road, the other twirling a pedal slowly, she found herself breathing as though she had been running fast. She was full of gratitude to Jeff, although she couldn’t express it. In a few words he had given her something she needed badly—something that not even the winning of the flying prize had given her—self-esteem.
“I like you too.” The words sang themselves in Rette’s head. “You’ll go places someday.” She felt capable of great things. She was Amelia Earhart, Maureen Daly, Ingrid Bergman. But then she corrected herself. “I am Loretta Larkin,” she said aloud.
“What?” Jeff had ridden on, and he looked over his shoulder curiously.
“Nothing.” Rette laughed, because she was happy and at peace and because Jeff looked so completely puzzled. “I was just talking to myself.” Then she rode quickly to catch up with him and said, “Don’t let’s be serious any more. I’ll race you to the corner of Cherry Tree Road!”
They arrived breathless, Jeff in the lead. Rette didn’t stop to say good-by but kept right on riding, shouting a farewell over her shoulder and adding, “Stop in over the week end if you get a chance.”
The minute the words were out of her mouth she was astonished at her own temerity. But Jeff’s casual, “I’ll do that!” made everything all right.
Rette rode on home and found her mother pressing the dress she was planning to wear to Ellen’s party. She came up behind her at the ironing board and gave her a quick, affectionate hug.
“You know, Mommy,” she said, “I used to wish I was a boy—but desperately! I don’t any more. I think being a girl’s kind of fun.”
Her mother laughed. “It must be the red slippers.”
“Boy!” she said lustily, “I’d forgotten all about those!” Rette opened the cooky tin and helped herself to a handful of sand tarts.
But the next day Rette was very conscious of the high-heeled sandals when she dressed for Ellen’s party. They made her ankles look slim and her legs long and shapely. They gave her a sort of sensuous pleasure and made her feel very feminine.
Luncheon was laid for twelve at the oval table in the Aldens’ dining room, and the announcement of Ellen’s engagement to Tony was made simply with cards attached to the dewy fresh gardenias that lay at each place. Ellen looked appropriately starry-eyed, and she wore a ring of which Rette approved highly—a small, flawless, square-cut diamond set simply in yellow gold.
“It looks just like you!” Rette said sincerely as she admired it. And everyone else agreed.
Ellen’s friends were older, but they were charming to Tony’s sister, as they were to his mother, and Rette found herself talking and laughing with them as easily as though they were girls of her own age.
Mrs. Alden, a tall, rather queenly woman with upswept gray hair, sought Rette out after luncheon and asked her with interest about her flying lessons. Soon everyone was talking about flying and predicting that, with a husband like Tony Larkin, Ellen would soon be learning to fly. Word had already got around Avondale that Elise Wynn had distinguished herself on her solo flight, and Rette gladly repeated the story, giving Elise her unstinted praise.
“When will you solo, Rette?” someone asked.
“I don’t know, really. But soon now.”
“Soon now” proved to be the following Tuesday. Rette took the last of her exams—in algebra—in the morning and walked out of the mathematics room knowing that she had turned in a good paper. She had recently discovered that it was a satisfaction to be able to prove the problems, to be able to know when a solution was right.
Jeff was sitting on the school steps when she came out of the building. He was talking to another boy, but he reached out with one hand and caught Rette’s ankle as she was about to pass.
“Not bad, was it?” he asked.
“Not bad at all.”
“My star pupil.” With his thumb he indicated Rette to the other boy. Then he turned back and looked up at Loretta. “When you take navigation you’re going to be able to use that math, young’un!” he said.
“Navigation?”
“Sure. You don’t think that when you solo in that kite of yours you’re finished, do you? You’re just beginning to learn to fly,” he teased. Then he asked, quite seriously, “When do you go out to the airport again?”
“Right now. That is, as soon as I grab a sandwich and a glass of milk.”
Jeff rose. “Patronize the airport lunchroom!” he said. “I’ll escort you there myself.”
Daisies were unfolding across the fields as Rette and Jeff rode along the familiar highway. Summer was definitely in the air, and there was no breeze at all. Rette was unusually quiet, because she felt a li
ttle sad.
“I won’t be coming up here much more,” she said after a while. “My ten hours are almost up.”
Jeff looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,’ unquote.”
Rette smiled dreamily. “Maybe you’re right,” she said.
“Of course I’m right.” Jeff was abounding with energy, feeling very sure of himself, very blithe.
“Betcha something!” he burst out.
“What?”
“Betcha by the time we’re thirty we both have our own planes.”
“Thirty?” Rette was horrified. It seemed impossibly old.
Jeff, understanding, laughed uproariously, slapping the handle bar of his bike. “That’s not so ancient,” he said. “Gotta have a few years to make some dough.”
“I’ll tell you something more practical,” Rette replied. “We could start a flying club right here in Avondale. Get about a dozen people who like to fly and buy a plane as a group. After we get out of college, I mean.”
“You’ve got something there!” Jeff agreed, and they fell to discussing ways and means, planning ahead with the enthusiastic vigor of youth.
“There’s Elise, and you, and me, and maybe Tony and Ellen—”
They still had their heads in the clouds three quarters of an hour later, when Rette had finished her sandwich and the ice cream she had substituted for milk. Pat Creatore stood behind them, listening awhile, then tapped Rette’s shoulder.
“Time’s awasting,” she said. “I thought you came out here to fly, not to dream.”
“Can’t I do both?” Rette asked her.
“Not at the same time,” Pat shot back, “or you’ll be a dead duck.”
Rette laughed, loving the flip repartee of the airport. She followed Pat out of the lunchroom and over to the plane feeling relaxed and comfortable. As she gave the Cessna the routine pre-flight inspection she wondered, without urgency, whether Pat would solo her today. It should be today, but there might be some feeling that after Elise’s experience Rette might be shy.
“All set?” Pat asked. She glanced down the field toward the wind tee. “What breeze there is seems to be from the south.”
Rette took off and landed twice, then started to taxi back to the starting point again. About halfway down the field Pat pressed on the brakes and stopped the plane, then reached down and gave the trim-tab crank a couple of turns to change the flight balance.
“It’s all yours,” she said quietly, just as she must have said the same words to Elise. “There’s one thing to remember. Without my weight the plane will be lighter. It will take off more quickly, and it will hold off the ground longer when you come down.” She clicked the door shut, turned her back on Loretta, and walked away.
For a few seconds the “kerput” of the idling engine sounded very loud in Rette’s ears, and the seat next to her seemed more utterly empty than anything she could have imagined. Then, with the airplane feeling very light and irresponsible, she started to taxi on to the take-off point.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The seniors, capped and gowned, sat in orderly, dignified rows on the big stage of the high-school auditorium, listening to Corky Adams, their valedictorian, sail through his carefully memorized speech.
Rette sat with her hands tucked into the wide sleeves of her gown, comfortably hugging her elbows, and thinking of everything but the future of the socialistic system in America, in which Corky was apparently intensely interested.
She could see her mother in the fourth row, looking chic and alert in a new straw hat the color of burnt cork, with a black rose tucked enticingly under the brim. She could see her dad, on one side, looking grave but a little bored, and Gramp, on the other, frankly nodding.
Directly behind them were Tony and Ellen, sitting so that their shoulders touched and probably, Rette decided, holding hands. They looked abstracted but very happy, just as they should.
Ellen wore no hat. A lime-green band the color of her shantung dress bound her dark, shoulder-length hair, and her face looked smooth and calm.
She’s very pretty, Rette thought. She and Mother are lovely together—so different, yet both of them so feminine and smart. Tony and Ellen were talking about an October wedding, and Ellen had asked Rette to be in her bridal party, but Rette wasn’t sure she could manage it, for long ago she had settled on a New England college, and it would be a rather long trip home.
Loretta couldn’t imagine, now, that she had ever been even slightly resentful of Ellen. She was just the girl for Tony, the perfect balance wheel, and she fitted into the Larkin family group like a hand into a glove. Gramp was even teaching her to play pinochle, so that he’d have a partner when Rette went off to school.
But then, Rette’s feeling about Tony had changed considerably. She still adored him, but she didn’t concentrate on him, as she had in the past. To be truthful, she didn’t have time to concentrate exclusively on any one thing, not even on her flying. And maybe, she decided as she wriggled in her seat a little, it was just as well, because the flying lessons had, of course, stopped. From now on, she’d have to pay for any future hours in the air out of her own slender allowance.
Loretta saw Ellen lean toward Tony and whisper something. Tony grinned and nodded with a characteristic lift of his eyebrows, and Ellen settled back.
“And I repeat—” Corky Adams was squeaking a phrase that was meant to be thundered, but Rette never found out what he was repeating, for she had drifted off again.
After a few minutes she shifted slightly so that she could see Stephen Irish, who sat with the rest of the speakers and whose name and position were listed on the Commencement program, at once an honor and a stroke of publicity, Rette guessed. Mr. Irish looked very dressed-up, tonight, in a dark-blue pin-striped suit and a white shirt. Rette thought she liked him better in his old Army suntans, which he usually wore around the airport. They suited his bronzed, outdoor look.
She wondered whether Tony would get a kick out of the fact that she’d get a Wings diploma. He hadn’t asked much about her solo flight. It was just as well, perhaps, because even when she had tried to describe her sensations to Gramp, Rette hadn’t found much to say. The minute she had got into the air, the worst of her nervousness had disappeared. The plane had seemed very light, requiring only the slightest pressure on the stick to make it respond. She had watched her controls especially carefully, and had made sure to keep her nose on the horizon in the turns. Once she had glanced down toward the hangar, where mechanics were moving about their little jobs apparently unaware that a great event was taking place in the sky above their heads. Even Pat, standing in the grass near the landing strip seemed to be looking somewhere else.
Rette remembered most clearly the thump with which the wheels had hit the grass. It wasn’t a bad landing. She had made many much more bumpy ones with Pat in the plane to coach her. Apparently her instructor was pleased, because she ran over and called: “Good girl! Now go around and make two more landings, and we’ll call it a day.”
“...And meanwhile,” Corky was saying, his fist on the lectern, his eye on his notes, “we, the great middle class, are being slowly crushed between the upper and the nether millstones.”
Rette shifted slightly so that she could glance down the row on which she sat and see Jeff Chandler’s profile. Jeff was looking at Elise Wynn, on the curving front row of seniors, and Elise was apparently searching for someone in the audience. Her big eyes traveled over the auditorium, and her head moved in an inconspicuous quest. The hall was filled, and at the rear of the seats a few late-comers were standing. Rette found Eric before Elise did, standing a little apart from a sweet-faced elderly couple, looking a bit self-conscious and out of place.
A second later Elise smiled and seemed to relax, settling back in the straight chair. Rette’s glance shifted again to Jeff. Did she see his shoulders lift, ever so slightly? She couldn’t be sure.
Corky sat down, amid polite applause, and Loretta c
onsulted her program:
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS
PRESENTATION OF AWARDS
She adjusted her collar and tried to look non-committal, but in her heart she was glad that she would be called to come forward to get her flying diploma. It might be an extracurricular honor, but it could be counted an honor nevertheless. She wished desperately that she could give her family something really big to be proud of—something like the Tate Scholarship—but that was as far beyond her as the nearest star.
Mr. Martin was making one of his usual introductory speeches, clearing his throat and choosing his words with infinite care. Finally, laboriously, he got to the point of saying that it was his very great pleasure to present, in all, twelve awards, including six essay prizes, with which he would proceed first.
“The Dr. J. Will Cheyney prize, for an essay on Martin Luther, goes to Miss Margaret Lewis,” intoned the principal impressively, holding out an envelope to Margaret, who looked completely astonished as she stepped forward to take it from his hand.
Rette clapped vigorously. Margaret had worked hard on the essay, she knew. They had met in the reference room of the Avondale Library on several occasions. She was glad to see her come in for a share of Commencement glory, because during all her high-school career Margaret had been such a retiring sort of girl.
“...On ‘Homemaking as a Career’,” Mr. Martin was saying, “Miss Loretta Larkin.”
Rette started, hearing her own name, and not until she returned to her seat and consulted the envelope did she realize what prize she had received. Then she glanced toward her mother, who was undoubtedly chuckling behind a scrap of linen handkerchief. Rette wasn’t surprised. She’d be in for a lot of teasing from the family, who knew only too well that her interests lay elsewhere. Nevertheless the crackle of the five-dollar bill in the envelope was a very pleasing sound.
The D.A.R. medal for a historical essay went to John Hall, which was rather a surprise, as everyone had expected Corky to win it. Then Rette heard her own name again.
“For the essay on ‘Our Town,’ ten dollars goes to Miss Loretta Larkin, with the compliments of the Avondale Historical Society.” Feeling that she had come in for more than her share, Rette again walked to the front of the stage.
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