On Wings Of The Morning

by Marie Bostwick

  For a moment I thought about Mama and Aunt Ruby, who were home baking cookies and trimming the tree. They were expecting me home, but I told myself I’d only be gone a little while.

  I ran around to the driver’s side and got in the car. Virginia scooted across the seat and sat near me, talking and laughing and lighting on my arm with butterfly hands as I steered the car toward the airfield.

  The Jenny set back down on the runway with barely a bump, a textbook-perfect landing. I taxied her toward the hangar, parked near it, and hopped out of the cockpit.

  The old invincible feeling had returned as soon as we were airborne. The flight had left me feeling reenergized—that, and the wide smile and compliments Virginia was throwing my way. I stood next to the wing, held up my arms, and she leaned into them, her body sliding close along mine as I lowered her down. Even after she had both feet on the ground, she stayed near me, her arms draped over my shoulders and her eyes looking into mine. She reached up with one hand and pulled off the helmet and goggles I’d lent her. Red-gold hair cascaded down her back in a beautiful tangle.

  She let the goggles drop from her hand onto the ground, then reached up and buried her hand deep into her curls and shook her head a little. “I must look a mess,” she said, laughing, meaning the opposite.

  “No. You’re beautiful. You look perfect.” And she did.

  My head moved lower. She rose up on her toes, and our lips met. I had kissed Virginia a couple of times before when I’d dropped her off at home after our high school dates, but those kisses had been quick and tentative, nothing like this. She opened her mouth and I let my tongue outline the rim of her lips, then pass beyond to explore the perfect ridges of her teeth and the depths of her mouth. Her body was pressed close to mine, but I pulled her even closer, every inch of her feeling every inch of me. Her heart was beating as fast as and frantically as my own. I lowered my hand to the curve of her hip where her sweater met her skirt and she covered it with her own, guiding my hand under the soft fabric of her sweater.

  Her head fell back, and her mouth opened in a soft sigh. I felt her hips rock toward me, and, without thinking, I pushed forward to meet her. For a long moment we moved together in an instinctive, ancient rhythm. Virginia reached her hand low and a sound came from me that was part moan, part gasp.

  “Where can we go?” she asked and leaned her head into my chest. The airfield was empty. The field was so small and removed that we didn’t even have a tower, and the few people who might have been around were home getting ready for their Christmas celebrations. Whitey Henderson had an office at the back of the hangar. He kept an old army cot there so he could catch a few winks when business was slow. I knew where he kept the key.

  There was no doubt in my mind what she was asking or exactly what would happen if I took her by the hand, took the key to Whitey’s office, brought her inside, and laid her down on top of the rough woolen blanket that covered the cot. I could see it in my mind, the image so clear it made me forget everything else—the roof that was bare of shingles, the bus ticket to boot camp that lay on the kitchen counter at home, and the look in Mama’s eyes that made me wonder if my courage would hold out. All I saw, all I wanted, was Virginia, and I knew she wanted me.

  Taking a step back, I moved to take her hand. She lifted her head from my chest and looked at me with those wide green eyes. She said, “I love you, Morgan,” and waited.

  Virginia’s eyes were the same shade of green as Mama’s, and suddenly I saw my mother twenty years younger, vulnerable, waiting for an answer to the same question Virginia’s eyes asked now: do you love me?

  Did I? That I wanted her was certain. That I had thought about her many, many times since I’d left Dillon was true, but was that the same as love? Maybe it was. I didn’t know. But until I did ...

  “It’s getting late, Virginia. I’ll take you home.”

  8

  Georgia

  Chicago, Illinois—August 1940

  On the third knock she finally answered. “Yes?” Delia drawled as she opened the door. Fourteen years in Chicago and she could still make “yes” into a three-syllable word.

  “Hello, Delia.” I picked up my overnight bag with one hand and opened the screen door with the other.

  “Georgia? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come for a visit. It’s nice to see you, too.” Her hair was messy, and she was wearing a robe with no belt that she kept closed by clutching the folds of fabric around her waist. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, but I was suddenly suspicious. I stood on the threshold and craned my neck, squinting through the gloom of the darkened apartment. “You don’t have anybody in here, do you?”

  “I most certainly do not!” Delia retorted, scandalized. “The very idea! It’s the middle of the afternoon, Georgia. Just what do you take me for.”

  I wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Instead I asked, “Why do you have all the shades drawn and the windows closed?”

  “I was taking a nap.”

  “Well, it must be ninety-five degrees in here. It’s summer in Chicago, Delia. Hadn’t you heard?” I dropped my bag next to the entry table, went into the living room, and started opening windows. “Let’s get a little breeze in here at least. Don’t you have a fan?” Delia pointed silently to the front hall closet. I took out the fan and plugged it in. “There. That’s better. That should get some air circulating.”

  I turned around. Delia was still standing there, clutching her robe even tighter. “Delia, what are you doing napping in the middle of the day? Why aren’t you at work?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Are you all right?”

  Delia drew herself up taller and looked as if she was going to speak, but instead her face crumpled. Her mouth opened in a silent cry, and tears seeped out from her closed eyelids. She released her grip on the robe, balled her hands into fists, and covered her face with them. I had never seen her like this.

  “Delia! What happened? Are you sick? What is it?”

  Her body quivered and was wrenched with tremendous, silent sobs. She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. For a minute the only sounds that escaped her were the gasping, openmouthed intakes of breath she made when trying to get some air between surges of heaving, silent weeping. Finally her sobbing subsided a little, just enough for her to choke out one word.

  “Barney!” she wailed.

  “Barney?” For a moment I was confused, but then I understood. “Are you talking about that Fuller Brush salesman you’ve been seeing? Is that what this is all about? You mean that Barney?”

  She nodded in response and burst into a fresh torrent of tears.

  I had been patting her on the back, trying to comfort her, but when I realized what she was crying about I let my hand drop. “Let me guess,” I said. “It turns out he’s married.”

  “He’s dead!” she cried.

  “Oh my gosh! That’s terrible! I had no idea, Delia. I’m so sorry.”

  “It was our six-month anniversary. We went dancing to celebrate, and he dropped dead right in the middle of a fox trot! His heart gave out on him, just like that.” She snapped her fingers, then reached into the pocket of her robe, fished out an already sodden handkerchief and fruitlessly started trying to dry her eyes with it.

  “He was going to ask me to marry him that night,” she continued, sniffing.

  “He was going to ask you? Did he tell you that?” It seemed odd to think of a man announcing his intention to propose without actually doing it. Delia shook her head. “Then how do you know he wanted to propose?”

  “Because he had the ring in the breast pocket of his coat. See?” She lifted up her left hand and I saw a small ruby solitaire gleaming dully on her fourth finger. “We were dancing, and he grabbed at his arm and his face turned all red. He dropped to the floor, and when he did, the box with the ring fell out of his pocket.” She started wailing again.

  “And you took it?” I asked, i
ncredulous. “He hadn’t given it to you yet, but you took the ring that fell from a dead man’s coat pocket, and you kept it? Delia, have you lost your mind?”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I have taken it?” Her tears subsiding, she lifted her chin in righteous indignation. “He meant for me to have it. If I’d have left it in his pocket anybody might have taken it—a dishonest policeman, somebody who worked in the coroner’s office, his wife ...”

  “His wife? He was married?” I threw up my hands. “What am I saying? Of course he was married. He was dating you.

  “Delia, for once in your life couldn’t you find an unattached male? How many people live in Chicago? About three million? Surely, in a population of three million people, there are at least one or two single men you could go around with.”

  Delia’s eyes narrowed. “Well, it’s not my fault. It’s not like I go out looking for married men. We met at the store. I sprayed a little White Shoulders on the inside of my wrist so he could see what it smelled like, and after he did, he wouldn’t let go of my hand until I said I’d have dinner with him. It was just one of those things. I couldn’t have known he was married.”

  “Delia, any man who is showing up at the Marshall Fields perfume counter is married! They’re buying the perfume for their wives. How is it you’ve never been able to figure that out?”

  Delia started sniffing again, and her eyes started tearing up. “Why do you always have to pick on me? What did I ever do to you besides feed you, clothe you, and work my fingers to the bone trying my best to take care of you? And this is how you repay me? My fiancé is dead and all you want to do is stand there and make fun of me.”

  “Delia,” I said, exasperated, “he wasn’t your fiancé. That ring might not even have been for you. Don’t you think if he’d been planning to give you an engagement ring it would have been a diamond? That’s a ruby on your finger. It was probably a gift for his wife.”

  “Oh! How can you say such an awful thing! He was going to leave her. He promised me. Barney would never have cheated on me. He was an honorable man,” she said, gathering her robe and dignity about her again.

  I started to point out that any man involved in an adulterous relationship with a woman he’s met at the perfume counter while buying a gift for his wife could be called a lot of things, but honorable wasn’t one of them, but I kept my opinions to myself. There wasn’t any point in arguing with her.

  She was crying again, but softly, without the frenzied grief she’d displayed before, and I knew these tears were about more than just losing Barney.

  She looked tired and discouraged. The light that poured in through the opened windows revealed a web of lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen her. Even in her moments of greatest despair, Delia had always been a stunning beauty, but not today. The light in her eyes was dimmer, and the vibrant bloom in her cheek was muted, like the dulled tones of a painting that has been left too long in a sunny window. The harsh afternoon sun had exposed the truth—Delia’s beauty was beginning to fade. Her courage had always been tied to her vanity. Now they were both failing her, and I could see fear in her eyes. I didn’t have the heart to argue with her anymore.

  “I’m sorry, Delia. Really, I am. Don’t cry. Can I do anything for you? Make you a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, thank you. That would be nice, but make it iced. It’s so hot.” She sniffed and touched the end of her nose with her balled-up handkerchief, then drew her eyebrows together as if suddenly remembering something she’d forgotten to do.

  “Georgia, what are you doing here? I’m glad to see you, but you didn’t say you were coming for a visit. Is something wrong?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Roger has asked me to marry him.”

  I sat at the dinette while Delia scurried around the kitchen making the tea, pouring boiling water over a half dozen bags of Luzianne tea and dumping a heaping cup of sugar into the mixture, her energy suddenly renewed. I was never completely sure, but I think Delia had that tea shipped up to her by Earl’s brother, the attorney from Alpharetta. It was probably part of her price for keeping quiet. You couldn’t get Luzianne in Chicago, but Delia insisted that a Southern lady would never make iced tea with anything else.

  I wanted to ask who kept her supplied in tea, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She peppered me with questions.

  “So how did it happen? What did he say? Did he give you a ring? Have you set a date? What about the ceremony? Church wedding or justice of the peace? You know, a church wedding is always so nice, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to save the money and go on a nice honeymoon instead. I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls,” she reflected dreamily as she ran a little cool water over a tray of ice cubes before lifting the metal lever to crack the cubes loose from the trays.

  “If you do decide on a church wedding I’m sure you’ll want to have your friend Fran as one of the attendants, but it is more traditional to have a close relative as the maid of honor. A sister perhaps ?” She smiled brightly as she poured the dark, sweet tea over two glasses of ice. The cubes made cracking sounds as they came into contact with the warm liquid. Delia garnished the glasses with sprigs of mint, brought them to the table, and sat down.

  “Yes, I’m sure that would be lovely,” I said. Delia’s smile spread even wider, and I was sure she was imagining how fetching she’d look holding a bouquet of sweetheart roses and wearing a wide-brimmed picture hat trimmed with ribbons. “If I had a sister. As it is, I’ll have to settle for Fran to stand as witness and you as mother of the bride.”

  Delia frowned. “You shouldn’t be so sassy, Georgia. Brides are supposed to be sweet.”

  I covered my face with my hands, trying to stifle a short squeal of frustration. “Oh! Will you just take a breath for a minute and let me talk! I’m not a bride. Roger asked me to marry him, but I told him I didn’t think it was a very good idea. That’s why I came here. I told him I needed a couple of days to get away and think.”

  “And you wanted to talk to me about it?”

  “Yes. I guess so,” I said reluctantly. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Oh, Georgia! That is just the sweetest thing! But, honey, I don’t understand what you need to think about. From everything you’ve told me, Roger is a lovely man. Why in the world didn’t you say yes right off?”

  “Because I don’t think I love him, that’s why. I like him. He’s very sweet, and what with our both loving flying so much, we have a lot in common, but I don’t think I love him.”

  Georgia smiled knowingly. “Have you been ...” She hesitated, searching for a word. “Intimate with him?”

  My face flushed as I caught her meaning and remembered Roger’s few attempts at romance and how I’d turned my head away after one or two clumsy kisses. “No. Not really.”

  “Well, there you go!” Delia exclaimed throwing up her hands in a gesture as if my answer had explained everything. “No wonder you aren’t sure how you feel about him.”

  “Because I haven’t been ... You think if I’d been romantic with Roger then I’d feel love for him?” Delia nodded. “But what if you’ve got it backward? What if the reason I haven’t been romantic with him is exactly because I’m not in love with him? Shouldn’t love come before romance?”

  Delia stirred her tea and sighed. “Georgia, can you give me one good reason you shouldn’t love Roger? You told me yourself that he’s nice-looking, that you like him, that you have a lot in common. He’s been kind to you—taught you to fly and everything. You could never have done that without his help. And even though I think the idea of a woman being a pilot is perfectly silly, he thinks it is just wonderful. There aren’t too many men who’d be interested in a girl who has such a ... well, such an unfeminine hobby. The fact that you fly airplanes would send most men running in the other direction.”

  “Well, then they can just run.” I retorted. “I can do just fine without them.”

  “Maybe,” Delia said doubtfully,
“but someday you’re going to want to have a man in your life—you’ll want to be somebody. It seems to me that Roger is your best bet. He’s got a nice little business. He can take care of you, and he loves you. Maybe you don’t love him now, but you can learn to love him. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with him, is there?”

  She took a ladylike sip of her tea, staring a question at me over the rim of her glass.

  I stayed in my old bedroom that night, but I didn’t sleep much, turning over all that Delia had said in my mind.

  A lot of what she’d said didn’t make sense to me, even though I knew it made perfect sense to Delia and a lot of the rest of the world. Delia had spent her whole life trying to become a wife—anyone’s wife—because that was what would turn her from a nobody into a somebody. That just didn’t seem right to me. It never had, but I knew most of my girlfriends would have said the same thing, maybe not in those exact words, but that was how they all felt. A woman who wasn’t a wife was no woman at all.

  Delia said that most men would turn away once they learned I was a pilot. I’d already seen enough to know that was true. Lots of men, even other pilots, looked at me like I was from Mars when they discovered I was learning to fly. Well, that was fine with me. Being a pilot was part of what made me somebody, and anyone who didn’t understand that would never understand me. But Roger did understand, and that was one of the reasons I liked him. We spoke the same language, at least when it came to flying.