The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  ELYSE PAYS ME VISITS AS WELL, SOMETIMES WITH HER MOTHER and sometimes alone. Now that she’s running indoor track and volunteering at the hospital—“for real this time,” as she says—and going back and forth between her parents’ homes on the weekends, Elyse is a typical busy teenager, although she still, thankfully, likes to hear what I have to say—unless it has to do with my surgery; then she seems to think it’s her job to distract me. Whenever I say, “I just can’t figure out why on earth this happened to me,” she’ll change the subject: to her own novel, to her parents, to her new experiences as a member of a team. It’s the same way when she sees the scar in my neck: she always glances away. But the day she brings me lunch along with the last of the chapters I gave her to transcribe, Elyse looks me in the eye and says, “You know, my grandma was told you were dead.”

  “If I could go back and choose again . . .” But what would I have chosen, an entirely different life without Sol—or Dave? I shake my head and say, “I’m so sorry,” because that much is true.

  “I know you are,” she says, still watching me. “I’m glad it was just a lie—the ‘plane crash’ that took your life.”

  “Ah, heavens, as am I,” I say, realizing as I say the words that I actually mean them. “How lucky am I that it turns out you’re my great-niece?” I add.

  Elyse frowns. “I’d still be here even if we weren’t related,” she says, and then I feel even luckier.

  SELENA MARKMANN IS MY OTHER FREQUENT VISITOR. THE FIRST time she arrives at the rehab center, we stand there and hug and cry in each other’s arms like we were the old friends we should’ve been for the last ten years. Then she helps me get back into bed and sits on the side instead of on the chair, the way Jane and Elyse do. It’s very sisterly, and I’m grateful for it. Selena gathers herself back together and wipes her eyes and takes a deep breath and then tells me the bad news, that Gene is dead.

  “Gene?” I say, shocked. Just a few days before, he’d sent an orchid, and now he’s gone? “What happened to him?”

  “The other Jean. Jean Fester,” she says quickly. “A heart attack, they think. Her son found her.”

  “Good God. Jean,” I say, equally shocked. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, I never thought she’d really die but that her terrible stories would keep coming forever, and she would outlive us all.”

  Selena laughs, in spite of herself. “She wasn’t the best writer,“she admits, “but she was a good critic. She knew the right questions to ask of an author. And she meant well.”

  “She will be missed,” I say, and it’s actually, strangely, true.

  THESE DAYS, I HAVE A COMPULSION TO TELL THE TRUTH. I TELL Elyse that I won’t be contacting the president about my Congressional Gold Medal, because I’d burned all the records with my real name on it, and she doesn’t bat an eye. I tell Selena that there are no twins, and she just shrugs and says, “Oh, Mary, I wasn’t born yesterday.” I tell Gene, when he finally comes in person to show me his hangdog face, that it’s all right that he couldn’t do what I asked of him. The fact is, it was my own fault for not getting my affairs in order years ago, my own fault for putting him on the spot at the last minute. The real truth is, until the very moment of his confession in my apartment, I never noticed he wasn’t there.

  “But . . . I haven’t slept in months about this,” Gene says. “I went to confession to ask for forgiveness, and I’m not even Catholic, and then I had to be forgiven for that, too. Didn’t you wonder about my card?” he adds, meaning the card that arrived with his orchid, which read “I’m sorry, Mary,” instead of “Get Well.”

  “I assumed you were sorry that things had not gone according to plan,” I say.

  “Well, that, too,” he says, so glum that I have to reach over and pat his hand, and he looks grateful but unconvinced. “I almost forgot; I brought you a present . . .” He suddenly remembers, handing me a rather large, flat gift.

  I feel the raised, square edges through the paper and then unceremoniously tear it off. Inside the wrapping is a framed copy of the newspaper article from last July’s USA Today. Grace, Murphee, and I smile into the wind under the banner: “First women to fly American military aircraft served courageously, blazed trails during WWII.”

  “Oh my word. Gene,” I say.

  He taps on Miriam Lichtenstein, beaming at the center of the frame, and says, “A little birdie told me that this is you.” His use of the present tense brings tears to my eyes. He’s the president now, handing me my Congressional Gold Medal.

  “It is me,” I agree with a watery smile. “Gene. Thank you.”

  My eyes linger longer on Grace, lost to cancer years ago, and then Murphee of the bottle-red hair. Whatever happened to Murphee? I wonder, and then decide if anyone could track her down, it would be Toby. A project for tomorrow.

  “When are you coming back to group?” Gene asks.

  “As soon as the snow is over,” I tell him, and feel as if I’ve become another old woman, afraid of the winter.

  Andie’s visits may be the least frequent, but are often the most entertaining. She has a funny way about her, acting as if she has known me her whole life, while telling me random stories about people I’ve never met, with great animation, as if I’ve known them forever, too.

  “So, Gordon Palmer asked me out, at least I think he did; I mean, he really just invited me to have coffee in the cafeteria at work. He’s kind of a gloomy Gus, but I mean, wouldn’t you be if your daughter was on a reality TV show, and you had to sit in a dark room for a living looking at pictures of people’s insides? Mom would probably say I should give him a chance,” Andie says.

  “She’d probably say, ‘Thank goodness, you’re not marrying Blane,’” I add, having heard the whole story about the pillow salesman.

  Andie’s head snaps up to look at my smile, and then she bursts out laughing. “So true, Aunt Miri, so true,” she says, slapping her knee, and I find myself chuckling, too. How wonderfully odd it is to reclaim my old name—and yet somehow I am still Dave’s mother Mary, too. I am grateful to be both.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, ELYSE TURNS UP AT MY DOOR TO SAY THAT this is the warmest winter Pittsburgh has had in ages, and that she’s coming by next Tuesday to walk me to the writers’ group, so that I can see it for myself—the clean sidewalks, the green grass, the hints of spring, maybe even a crocus. I can tell that Elyse is afraid I’ve become a bit of a shut-in, which I have. If it weren’t for Selena Markmann’s steady stream of groceries, and Jane’s tuna casseroles, and Andie’s borscht, which she freezes in small portions for me, I may have actually had to sign up for Meals on Wheels. “Everyone agrees that you should pass something out next time,” Elyse adds. “What about the memoir? I can look and see where we left off.”

  “I think I want to write about when I got sick,” I say instead, realizing it all at once. Perhaps this is why Jean Fester had always felt the need to put the horror on paper—to get it out of her and to let it go. But then I remember how painful it was to take on her discomfort as a reader. “I just don’t want it to be . . .”

  “A downer?” Elyse suggested. “Just write like no one will ever read it.”

  “What good advice,” I say with a smile.

  And so, I begin to speak as Elyse types my words: I wake up the first time to an electric shock on my left lower leg—the sort police officers use to silence unruly college students. At least that’s what I imagine. I try to jerk my leg away, but my leg won’t move.

  THE GROUP IS ALL THERE FOR MY RETURN: HERB SHEPHERD, Victor Chenkovitch, Gene Rosskemp, Selena, and Elyse, and there are hugs all around. There’s even a “Welcome Back, Mary!” cake, and it feels like my birthday. When I hand out my first submission in ten years, Gene cheers.

  When I get back to my apartment that night, it looks different, more cramped, the apartment of an old lady with too much furniture in too small a space. I feel a strange sense of surrender these days, maybe even hopefulness, and I’m not sure if it’s because I am worn out fro
m what I’ve been through, or if it’s because after so many eras of regret, I finally got to apologize. Now when I climb into bed and shut my eyes and think about My End, my heart doesn’t flutter in panic. Instead, I think about my family, lost and found, and the grace of forgiveness. I remember my vision of the sky, and the way I sailed over the trees. Maybe tomorrow I will open my eyes and find myself here, where the windows won’t open and the radiator forces heat even as the weather begins to break. Or maybe I will unlock the door and fly.

  Acknowledgments

  I am so grateful to my agent, Brianne Johnson, an early champion of this novel back when it was over a hundred pages longer and every character had a point of view—thank you so much for believing in this story. I am equally grateful to Amanda Bergeron at HarperCollins for her enthusiasm and exquisite editorial advice. I couldn’t have hoped for a better editor.

  I am so thankful for my sister, Katherine Brown, who provided me with reading material, encouraged me after rounds of rejections, critiqued multiple drafts with complete insight into the characters, and basically made this a better book. Thanks also to my little brother, Brad Lincoln, who read and commented on the third draft, and to my brother Chris Leffler, for urging me to get the novel out there. Thanks to my stepsister, Sarah Carpenter, whose great name I borrowed for Miri’s sister.

  I’m incredibly fortunate to have spent the last decade of Tuesday nights dissecting fiction with an amazing group of writers: Cindy McKay, Mike Murray, Jennifer Bannan, Scott Smith, Anjali Sachdeva, Eric Ruka, and Joe Balaban whipped this manuscript into shape over bottles of wine (Snippets!). Let’s keep meeting forever.

  Thanks to my surrogate sisters, Shannon Perrine and Elizabeth Finan, along with Ellen Sarti, Dedee Wilson (my fellow night owl), Wendy McCorkle, Amy Nevin Martin (my pseudo-sister-in-law), Susie Hobbins, and Joy Lynn, as well as medical schoolmates Ernie Lau (the man, the myth) and Jay Lieberman for your friendship.

  Thanks to Women Airforce Service Pilots Lucile Wise, who answered all of my emails regarding the WASPs, and Florence Shutsy-Reynolds, for discussing her experiences during WWII, conversations that truly brought Miri’s story to life. “Shutsy” encouraged me to take a demo flight on an antique plane, a suggestion that did not mesh well with my fear of heights. Instead, I watched United States Navy training films: “Flying Sense” produced in 1944, as well as “Advance Flight Training with AT-6 SNJ, Take Offs, Approaches and Landings.” In addition, I read They Flew Proud, by Jane Gardner Birch, a history of the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which was where I came across the “Ten Commandments for Safe Flying” from the Piper Cub Owner’s Manual. Conversations with commercial pilot Grey Hobbins also helped tremendously. I’m sure I got things wrong, and the fault is entirely mine. Thanks also to Danielle Marcus, for sharing with me everything I needed to know about Jane’s career as an asbestos attorney.

  Portions of Mrs. Browning’s medical crisis were inspired by my own experience with anesthesia, which I wrote about in an essay for the inaugural issue of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine’s The Examined Life Journal, titled, “The Other Side of the Stethoscope.” Thanks also to Dr. Chris Bartels for making a reluctant patient better.

  My mother-in-law, Sue Martin, gave me a copy of an article written by Elmer Puchta, LTC AUS, a retired army Captain who commanded the 3360th Quartermaster Truck Company in 1944. The article included an intriguing paragraph about a convoy of trucks sent to Paris to obtain the French liquor that had been taken by the Germans. “The security for this convoy was greater than any cargo we carried,” Puchta wrote. He also mentions a surviving bottle of champagne drank on his wedding night. This anecdote, which is part of the Veterans History Project in the Library of Congress, inspired Gene’s writer’s group story about the captain of a truck company.

  The article “Tuberculosis sanitorium regimen in the 1940s: a patient’s personal diary,” was a fascinating account of life in a TB sanitorium written in 1944 by a young mother who had to be separated from her husband and baby after her diagnosis. Her diary, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2004 by Raymond Hurt, FRCS, DHMSA, inspired Sarah’s time spent battling TB in the pre-streptomycin era. Piero Scaruffi’s “A Time-Line of World War II” on the web was extremely helpful to my research as well.

  I am grateful for my mother, Dr. Martha Leffler Lincoln, whose spirit I have felt pushing me through this story, and my father, Dr. Allan “Ted” Leffler, who pulled an all-nighter many years ago to help Kristie Burke Murray and me construct the most aesthetically pleasing toothpick bridge in the history of Atholton High School. Thanks to my stepmother, Melissa Leffler, who has always kept the family together despite all of our losses.

  To my sons, Jacob Martin, a budding writer who thought of the title to this novel back when he was seven years old, and Owen Martin, who was two when I wrote the first chapter—thank you both for putting up with the writing of this book. I am so lucky to be your mother. Eternal gratitude to my husband, Tim Martin, without whom there would be no book. I love you more.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the author

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  Meet Maggie Leffler

  About the book

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  The Women Behind The Secrets of Flight: An Essay

  Reading Group Questions

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  Further Reading

  About the author

  Meet Maggie Leffler

  MAGGIE LEFFLER is an American novelist and a family medicine physician. A native of Columbia, Maryland, she graduated from the University of Delaware and volunteered with AmeriCorps before attending St. George’s University School of Medicine. She practices medicine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and sons. The Secrets of Flight is her third novel.

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  About the book

  The Women Behind The Secrets of Flight An Essay

  IN 2009, I set out to write a multigenerational saga about family, lost and found, envisioning a teenager, Elyse, inadvertently showing up to a senior citizens’ writers’ group and having an instant connection with a woman in the group. I already knew that the elderly woman, Mary, was hiding a distressing secret, and that it was up to Elyse to save her, but I wasn’t sure what Mary’s backstory was until I read an article about President Obama honoring the World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) with Congressional Gold Medals. Having been fascinated with flight since I was little (probably since I read Ballet Shoes, where Petrova Fossil becomes a pilot instead of a dancer), I knew then that that was part of Mary’s history—she’d left her family behind when she dared to go fly, fell in love, and made a life-altering decision she’d been haunted by ever since.

  I started learning about the Women Airforce Service Pilots at www.WingsAcrossAmerica.com, an amazingly helpful website with interviews, articles, photos, an interactive timeline, and everything a person might want to know about the contribution of these remarkable women. There was even a part of the website, “Contact a WASP,” where I could choose a former pilot to write to. With excitement, I emailed Lucile Wise and told her about my novel, and, over several emails, she graciously answered all of my questions. “I hope you will not portray us as glamorous,” Ms. Wise wrote. “We worked hard and had little time to worry about our hair or make-up.” (I’m sorry, Ms. Wise, but I just kept seeing Miri in that red dress.)

  Originally the novel had more points of view, including Elyse’s mother Jane’s as well as Aunt Andie’s, until I realized the story really belonged to Elyse and Mary, and that young Miri needed a voice of her own. I rewove letters between Miri and her sister Sarah from the 1940s into Miri’s first-person narrative. Four drafts had been completed, yet still something was missing—more details about a woman pilot’s life during the war. Just as I was coming to the conclusion that the chances of randomly bumping into a WASP to interview we
re slim to none, my friend Joe Balaban randomly bumped into a WASP to interview—at a work function honoring veterans. “I got her phone number,” he said with a smile. “She said you can call her.” It was kismet. Over several conversations and emails, Florence Shutsy-Reynolds generously answered all of my questions, and Miri’s time in the air force came alive.

  It was Shutsy (pronounced “shoot-see”) who told me her first impressions of flight, how she’d gotten to Texas in the first place—after learning to fly by competing with forty-five men in her class for a government flight scholarship—and what happened at Cochran’s Convent once she arrived. From the sleeves of the enormous flight suits, which would get caught on the seat belt levers and accidentally unbuckle them, to the captain who informed her that he hated women pilots just before her check ride—Shutsy shared detail after detail and invited me to use them all.

  She told me about the WASPs who, while away ferrying aircrafts, had arranged for the fueling of aircraft and were on their way to dinner when they were promptly arrested on charges of solicitation since it was after 9 P.M. and they were wearing slacks. “Eventually, they got a hold of Nancy Love, and she threatened the sheriff with court-martial if he didn’t let them go.” And it was Shutsy herself who had to land unexpectedly in a storm and stay at a hotel, where she and her fellow WASPs, in their leather jackets without insignias, were told to say they were a baseball team rather than admit to being pilots. “We were one of the best-kept secrets of the war,” Shutsy said to me.

  I read the account of WASP Lorraine (Zillner) Rodgers, whose rudder cables were cut, forcing her to have to eject from the plane before it crashed, and wondered if there were other forms of sabotage that, for purposes of my plot, would allow the plane to get up before the engine would fail. Both Shutsy-Reynolds and Wise separately told me about sugar in the gas tank as a means of sabotage. “You have to understand, this was a period of time when a cockpit of a military aircraft was a man’s sanctuary,” Shutsy explained. Each time there was a WASP crash, Jackie Cochran was sent to investigate, and more often than not it was written up as “pilot error” after she left, which Cochran usually did not contest. “We were on thin ice,” Shutsy said, even before the congressional hearings where they ruled to disband.