The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  Citing the doctor’s advice, Uncle Hyman won’t allow Sarah to return home, and Mama busily pretends, despite all evidence to the contrary, that death is not upon us. In some ways, it’s easy to forget. One moment during visiting hours, Sarah and I are sharing a conspiratorial laugh over the way Uncle Hyman looks when carving a roast chicken—sweaty, red-faced, and vaguely short of breath, as if he’s actually killing it right there at the table—when Sarah suddenly asks, “You don’t believe it’s really happening, do you?” and I automatically shake my head, knowing that it’s her own end she’s talking about. “I don’t believe it, either,” she confesses. “I feel like me, but”—she holds up her arm, as thin as Rita’s—“I’m not me.” Two weeks later, on May 3, 1945, Sarah is gone.

  Shiva begins, seven days of mourning where we sit on tiny stools in the living room while the community files in to pay their respects and feed us. I’m not supposed to lift a finger, not to prepare foods or wrap up the leftovers or clean the dishes, or even myself, but just sit and be still and pray and receive. All I want to do is fly away, and Rita’s an easy excuse—someone has to run after her as she crashes about—except that Mama’s clucking friends quickly intercede anytime my niece needs a snack or a tear dried when she skins her knee. At nearly four, Rita’s too little to really understand what this means, that her mother, who’s been gone for almost ten months, is never coming back.

  Or maybe I’m the one who doesn’t get it. For the first day, I can’t even cry, not even when I’m sitting shemirah, reading psalms through the night next to her closed coffin in the living room. As a candle burns in the dark, we take turns—Mama, Uncle Hyman, and me—keeping watch over her body, but I can’t believe Sarah’s actually in there.

  It isn’t until the following evening, after the burial, that I notice Rita’s missing and find her on the floor of my closet—Sarah’s closet, too, I remember belatedly. Curled up in a pile of her mother’s clothes, the little girl isn’t crying, but her mouth is pulled into a wobbly frown, and I wonder then if Sarah taught her about the Spartans of Greece, too.

  “There you are,” I say, stooping down to crawl into the closet next to her. It’s musty inside, making me cough. I reach up to pull the cord on the lightbulb, which glows yellow and warm somewhere above us. Rita doesn’t move at first, until I reach over and rub her back and caress her hair, and then she crawls into my lap, still holding Sarah’s red sweater like a blanket. “Are you hungry?” I ask, channeling Mama, a firm believer in the power of comfort food. Rita shakes her head. “Can I . . . read you a book?” I offer, and slowly, she nods. “Well, go pick,” I say, and she crawls off my legs and over to the little bookshelf beside Sarah’s old bed. After retrieving one, Rita plops back down on my lap again. I know the light is better in the bedroom, but I don’t even suggest moving. It feels right to sit on the wood floor in our cocoon of clothes, the faint scent of Sarah wafting around us.

  Rita’s picked The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown, the story of a little bunny who wants to run away and his mother won’t let him. As soon as I begin reading, my voice begins to quake. At first it’s because I am the bunny, obligated to stay, but then I read the line “If you become a bird and fly away from me . . . I will be a tree that you come home to,” and then I can’t go on, for Sarah’s the tree, and she always has been. What am I going to do without you? How can you leave me here alone?

  “Want me to read?” Rita asks, and I nod, because my vocal cords are rebelling now; any sound I make is in danger of becoming a howl. So, I listen to her read—unless she’s just memorized the story—and realize that Rita’s the little bunny and Sarah’s the mother, turning herself into a fisherman, and a mountain climber, and a tightrope walker, and the wind. She will be hiding in every place, in every moment, only we’ll never see her again. And then, I do start to cry, noiselessly, with shuddering shakes and clenched stomach muscles, as Rita leans her head into the crook of my neck, and flips the pages of the book. I’m grateful to be holding her right now in our little cave from the world, and for her clear, high voice, which never wavers.

  ON THE SIXTH EVENING OF SHIVA, THE HOUSE IS BUSTLING WITH visitors offering condolences, and I am leaning against the kitchen doorframe, wearily watching my mother, wearing her keriah and shaking hands in the living room, when I straighten up and inhale sharply. Wearing a dark suit and his yarmulke, and holding a platter of meat and fish and dried fruits, Sol Rubinowicz is standing in the front room of the house on Beacon Street.

  Quickly, I weave through the throng of guests, until we’re face-to-face. His shoulders drop at the sight of me. “What are you doing here?” I ask, too flustered for hello. It’s been ten months since we’ve seen each other last—and five since his last correspondence.

  “I got your letter,” Sol says. “I wanted to pay my respects.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I say, rescuing the platter and then rushing off, knowing that he’ll follow me. Since the kitchen is full of my mother’s friends—big bosomed, big-voiced, middle-aged women in aprons, doing dishes, refilling the trays—I slip the food onto the table and then keep going, out onto the back porch with Sol on my heels. The cold air hits me like a splash of water in the face. As per the custom, I haven’t been outside in six days, and for a moment I’m taken aback by the weather. Is it really spring, when it’s thirty-five degrees and the magnolia blossoms are blowing off the trees? In the kitchen behind us, the ladies pause, mid-conversation, like a stunned Greek chorus.

  “Tzadok and I are engaged,” I whisper.

  “You can’t marry your own cousin,” he says, quickly slipping the yarmulke off his head, as if it’s a force of habit now, looking like a goy.

  “It’s—we’re—not related by blood,” I say, flushing.

  “Do you love him?” His earnest green eyes search mine, and my heart thuds painfully.

  “I . . .” I glance down, thinking. “Does it matter?”

  “Miriam?” Mama says from the doorway, and I startle and turn.

  “Oh, Mama, this is—”

  “Mrs. Lichtenstein, I’m Solomon Rubinowicz,” he says, stepping forward and extending his hand. “I’m a friend of Miriam’s from Texas—I’m so sorry,” he adds quickly, mashing the phrases together as if it’s meeting me he’s sorry about rather than the loss of my sister.

  “Thank you,” Mama says, shaking his hand so warily that for a moment I wonder if Sarah told her everything. But no, she wouldn’t have; there wouldn’t have been a reason, not when Sol and I had broken up months before I returned home.

  “Sol’s family was very nice to me in Texas. They took me to temple and had me over for Shabbat. He’s in medical school in New York now.”

  “You’re going to be a doctor,” Mama says, approval seeping into her voice. “Well. That’s wonderful. Has Miriam told you that she’s getting married next month?”

  “Next month? Oh.” The way Sol keeps twisting his yarmulke in his hands reminds me of a man wringing out his own heart.

  “I’ve already sewed her wedding gown,” Mama adds.

  I look at the broken floorboards of the porch thinking of the dress, the same one she married Papa in, which had to be hemmed just for me.

  “Miriam, you’re needed inside,” Mama says. “Rita has eaten an entire basket of rogalech and knocked over a pitcher of cream. She needs a fresh outfit,” she says, pushing me toward the back door, and I think, This is my life now. This is the promise I made. “Go on. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  I have no idea what she says to him after I’m gone, but one moment I look through the window and see Sol nodding solemnly while Mama’s head bobs and her finger points, and then I wrestle Rita into another outfit, and look up, and no one’s on the porch.

  “Please go be with our guests,” Mama says as she shuts the back door and pulls down the shade to the kitchen window, lest I keep searching for him through it.

  “You didn’t let me say goodbye,” I say, and she pushes past me into the living r
oom, into the throng of mourners. But I have to go look for myself. Cracking open the door to the back porch, I step outside and peek around. The backyard is still and cold, and, between the pockets of silence, there’s a strange swishing sound. I look up and realize it’s just the magnolia leaves falling around me, the sound of letting go. This is your life. This is the promise you made.

  I think of the last time I saw him, the day we agreed to say goodbye forever. “What’s the first thing you’ll do in New York?” I’d asked on the ride back to base.

  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.

  CHAPTER 22

  Burial at Sea

  The 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.”

  WHEN RAY 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 angular, 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.