by Rand, Naomi;
The cashier held the bill up to the light. “Joe, take a look at this.”
One of the countermen came over and Amelia held her breath. What holdup now? Was she going to be charged with forgery? Was she going to be taken to jail, was that what this had been, a tease? First freedom, then sustenance snatched away?
“You sure you want to pay with this?” he asked Amelia.
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Look at the date.”
“It’s good,” she insisted, though really she had no way of knowing that.
“It just might be worth more money, that’s all.”
“Take it,” she said. She would have begged if it came to that.
He shrugged. The cashier made change. Amelia shoved it into her pants pocket and found a seat at the nearest table. She grabbed the knish and took a savage bite. Then another. The spinach and dough melded with the spiciness of the mustard. She moaned her gratitude. The top of the can of Coca Cola had an odd seam in it, a metal piece that pulled up to create an opening. Tilting the can back, she misjudged the angle. Soda fizzed up her nose. Coughing, she covered her face with the napkin. Glancing round instinctually, Amelia was relieved to find no one looking at her. She was anonymous. When was the last time that had happened? She couldn’t even recall. She might be in Timbuktu. Someone would still accost her. “Miss Earhart, you are my idol.” I would be your starving idol, actually. Thank god no one cares to know me. Thank God or whatever is responsible for this, whatever this is, because you’ve left me in peace. If someone tried to interrupt me, they’d be taking their own lives in their hands, she thought. I might eat them. That’s how hungry I am. I might gnaw an arm off.
Smiling at the absurdity of it, she lifted the first half of the sandwich. How lovely, the disparate elements, tart versus tangy. Pink liquid seeped out and ran over the webbing in the palm of her hand. Amelia hummed blissfully. She was the happiest of barbarians. The pickle was sliced into quarters. Brine sang in her mouth. Even the celery in the potato salad was crisp. And for dessert, the strudel’s crust proved light and flaky. There, she’d eaten every last bite.
Revived, Amelia turned her attention to the room. A young woman seated just to her right was staring. So it begins, she thought. Initially, after the Friendship flight, she’d been charmed by the devotion. Strangers wanted to touch her, reaching for her arm, even stroking her head like she was a good luck talisman. It was all so new, so exhilarating. They explained how they’d been at the parade in Boston or New York. “You changed my life,” they told her. Over time, the pleasure faded. Her smile atrophied. She never complained. She knew she was lucky, so much luckier than most, it would sound like petulance if she did, it would be unseemly and unattractive and ungrateful of her. Yes, it was trying. No, fame wasn’t something she’d courted but once it came, she wasn’t about to give it up. Here was another stranger, about to intrude on her privacy. Amelia would submit. It was the bargain she’d made to get free.
What would it be this time, she wondered? “Would you write your name on this napkin? I’ll treasure it always. Could you sign my arm? I won’t ever wash.” Amelia nodded to the young woman who took that as an invitation, stood, and came right over.
“I’m sorry about staring. I know it’s rude,” she said.
“That’s quite all right.”
“It’s just that your jacket is so fucking amazing. It’s got to be vintage, right? Can I ask where you bought it?”
“My jacket?” Amelia reflexively felt the worn out leather. “I purchased it in New York.”
“I should have known. They don’t sell anything that cool here in Boston. Was it expensive?”
Not if you consider what this meal cost. “Fifty dollars,” Amelia said. She’d been embarrassed by the extravagance at the time.
“No way. That’s incredible. Was it at Secondhand Rose? They have great stuff.”
Amelia shook her head. It had been custom made for her at De Palma Tailoring. The workshop was on the third floor of a building in midtown Manhattan. She went on Saturdays when the streets were deserted. Every pair of trousers, every button down shirt, every jacket she wore had been lovingly stitched by hand. “Worth every penny,” G.P. insisted. Vincente De Palma made all of his suits and after the Friendship landed and the accolades poured in, he brought her there. Now that they called her Lady Lindy, she had to look the part.
“Come on, Sally,” the man at the other table said to her interrogator. Off she went.
Amelia set her tray on the rack and found the ladies room. She stared at herself in the mirror. Yes, that was definitely her slightly shopworn face, looking back. After wetting her hair, she tamed it, and then pressed her thumb against the glass. It left behind a whorled print. Amelia used the paper towels, tugged from a metal canister that screwed into the wall, to wash up. She tore each one along the striated edge. She dried her hands and discarded the debris in the trash receptacle. Taking another look in the mirror, she realized she was quite tanned. Her skin was creased, crow’s feet tucked into the corners of her eyes. One did get older, didn’t one? Smiling broadly, she saw the gap in her top two teeth. It was her mouth, all right. G.P. had advised her to narrow her smile and hide this glaring imperfection.
Your public wants.
Your public expects.
Your public requires.
What if in this dream world, her public no longer existed? Was that so bad?
But of course they did. After all, there was Muriel. Her speech. That odd shrine she’d constructed. Muriel would know her.
Her heart sank, seeing the truth. She would have to go back to Mudford.
THE CASHIER TOLD her the T station was in Copley Square. Amelia was positive she knew the way. Hadn’t she strolled through these streets a hundred times? A block in, her confidence waned. Where there had surely been an empty lot, a private home now sprouted. A once great mansion was now a ten-story apartment house. And there was no corner grocery or livery. The styles the women wore distracted her. The skirts were cut incredibly short. A passerby let her coat flare open to expose her legs. Couples held hands or hooked arms. Some wore matching jackets with fur-fringed hoods. Women favored trousers over dresses or skirts. She was pleased with that trend.
At a red light, a city bus made a turn. It was huge, twice the size of the ones she used to ride to work at Denison House. There was no extra tire attached on the back in case of a blowout. Everything was incredibly different from what she recalled. Was it possible that her imagination was this fertile? She’d had trouble writing a decent poem.
The mind is a remarkably supple thing, she told herself. Still, there was the thrum of anxiety.
Amelia changed at North Station for the train to Medford. Once there, her memory served her better. She found her way. Here was her old house at 76 Brooks. In front, a plaque bore her name. The inscription read, “The famed flier lived here from 1925 until she left to make the first transatlantic flight by a woman on July 17,1928. Here she wrote the poem Courage.”
She was almost to Muriel’s. What would happen there? Would she be sucked inside by a tornado style vortex? The image of it happening stopped her in her tracks. And up in the sky, she watched a plane ascend. Its metal hull shimmered. “Courage is the price,” she’d written. It was with the hubris of youth. Still, she wasn’t about to turn tail and run. She’d come this far.
She’d see Muriel. Muriel would know her.
And then what?
But Amelia urged herself forward. Here was the block. Here, the brick faced walk. She rang the doorbell and heard the familiar, sonorous chimes. She imagined Muriel’s progress, blinking like an owl, as she made her way down that dimly lit hall.
“Who’s there?” the familiar voice inquired. Before she could find her tongue, the door extended to the length of the guard chain. Muriel peered out, dressed in that wretched paisley dressing gown. “Can I help you?”
“It’s me,” Amelia said.
Muriel frowned, looki
ng her over. Then understanding dawned. “Why Nora Morris. Look at you, all grown up.”
“Not Nora.” I should have said my name, she thought. Muriel imagined me dead.
“You girls do change so much.”
“I’m not actually a former student,” Amelia tried because, now faced with an explanation, she found she didn’t have one. Dead? Alive. Muriel eighty, she looking much like she did in those photographs of her plastered all over the study.
“No? Who then?” Muriel’s lips pursed, a sign she was thinking it over. Then comprehension came. “You’re one of those. Please, not today.” As she tried to shut the door, Amelia reflexively stuck her foot inside, jamming it open.
“You people never give up,” Muriel complained. “Why on earth do you think you need my blessing?”
“I don’t need your blessing,” she tried.
“But you want an opinion. Fine, here it is then.” Muriel gave her a long look. “You bear some slight resemblance to her. But your nose is too long, your chin far too weak. Your hair is completely wrong. And the way you’re dressed? Amelia was dapper. She knew how to present herself. You, on the other hand. . .”
“It might be hard to keep everything pressed,” Amelia interrupted, “and cleaned if you’ve been flying halfway round the world.”
“Is the play set in the cockpit, or rather, the monologue? You must be a monologist just like the rest. You all seem to imagine you’ve embodied her. There you go. I’ve done my part.”
“You clearly know everything about her,” Amelia said, piqued. It was hard not to be, considering Muriel’s tone.
“Why else come here?”
“Why indeed.” But she had to prove herself, especially now. “Resistless. It feels a little forced.”
Muriel stiffened. “What did you just say?”
“Resistless, it feels a little forced,” Amelia said, louder, stronger. “Wasn’t that your critique to me when I asked you to listen to a certain piece of poetry? I was so proud. I’d worked so hard on it. ‘No mean achievement’ is how you began, because you had a feeling that it was best to leave me totally defenseless. I assumed that meant the response was going to be positive. You paused just long enough for me to get comfortable and let down my guard. Then you went for the jugular. What did it mean, ‘courage is the price?’ The price of what, exactly? You said you were doing me a favor, showing me the error of my ways. You pointed out if I wanted this to be for public consumption, the editors would be similarly merciless. You were only trying to prepare me as best you could for my inevitable disappointment when I submitted it to the magazines. ‘You might make a decent writer someday.’ Isn’t that exactly what you said?”
Muriel paled. I’ve done it, Amelia thought. She knows me. Then she had a stab of conscience. Muriel was mourning. What was she thinking, confronting her like this? This was her sister! Amelia put out her hand and Muriel slapped it away.
“Don’t you dare, don’t try to touch me! Get away from here now. Go on. Get.” Amelia reeled back, and the door slammed in her face.
She stood there, stunned. She thought Pidge would open up to say she’d seen her mistake. She had to. How could she do anything else?
The door didn’t open. She went round to the living room window and peered inside. The room was empty. Muriel wasn’t coming back. Amelia knocked on the glass. There was no response. She went back to the door and buzzed. From inside, a voice yelled, “I’m calling the police.”
And have them do what, arrest me?
She rang again and stood there, waiting. Then she heard the wail of a siren. Muriel had actually done it. She’d turned her in.
Amelia hurried off.
Passing the plaque, she remembered her own excitement on the day she finished that first opus.
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace,
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold the resistless day
And count it fair.
She’d read it to Muriel. Her sister nodded as if to say, “good effort.” Then launched in. When she was done, Amelia had no words left. Which was, Amelia thought, the point. Muriel wanted to be a writer herself. Muriel tried her hand at poetry. Muriel had even written that book sitting directly above her desk titled Courage is the Price. “I’m trying to help,” she’d insisted when she saw Amelia was upset. “You always claim it’s most important to tell the truth.”
There were all kinds of truths, but you had to grow old to realize that. Young, you resisted the notion. You thought that your truth was clean and quick and sure and easy. That it wasn’t a piece of all that whirred inside of you, petty jealousies and slights and your own ambition. You couldn’t recognize me, Amelia thought. And I know why. You only see your version of me. You’re as bad as the rest of them.
AMELIA FELL ASLEEP on the T. The conductor roused her. “North Station. Last stop.” Outside, she used the public phone booth, finding the number for the YWCA at 140 Clarendon. A phone call was outrageously expensive, fifteen cents for three minutes. She punched in the numbers on the bas-relief squares and asked for a room. “We don’t have rooms here,” the woman said and gave her the hostel address at 40 Berkeley. The Orange Line went to Back Bay. A short while later, she paid the admission and then climbed the stairs to the room. She fell across a single bed, so exhausted she didn’t care if she slept forever.
Amelia woke, drenched in sweat. She’d been transported back to the tropics. Opening her eyes, she expected the listless palm fronds. And found a web of cracks radiating out from a hole in the plaster ceiling. Next to her, the radiator pumped steam. There was a bed, a broken down dresser, and a window that looked out to the street. She stood, pulled up the sash, and inhaled. The air was cool. The snow had melted. Only stray patches were left like remembrances on car roofs and tree limbs. Passersby hurried along. Cars swished by. Everyone had somewhere to get to.
Everyone but her, she wasn’t expected. Or wanted. Or needed. If a tree falls in a forest, she thought. I am that proverbial tree. My own sister doesn’t know me.
Yet I pretend to know myself.
I must be mad.
Amelia took a hot shower, luxuriating underneath the stream of water. She used her fingers to comb the knots from her hair. Now she was at least a little presentable. Her stomach growled. Mealtime.
At the Bravo Diner she ordered the Number 3 special; two eggs over easy, a side of bacon, rye toast, and all the refills you could handle. All this was a mere ninety-nine cents. Compared to yesterday’s meal, it was a bargain. The newspaper lay on the counter. She unfolded the first section and read the date, November 20th, 1980. In the context of her time spent at Muriel’s, this was undoubtedly correct. In the context of everything else, it seemed absurd. Yet here she was.
Amelia’s fingers slid under the seat. She felt the metal studs that kept the cover on. She spun round lazily, the way she used to at the Soda Stop in Des Moines. She and Muriel would spin faster and faster, till one got too dizzy and cried “uncle.”
Above her head a clock ticked away the minutes, nine seventeen, nine eighteen, nine nineteen.
It had been six forty two when she and Fred lifted off from Lae on July 2, 1937. Now it was forty-three years later and she was seated in a coffee shop, half a world away.
Amelia lifted her hand from the paper and saw the black smudge left by the newsprint. Behind the far counter, the red haired, short order cook flipped and fried and scrambled. He joked with the waitress. “Midge, you’re too much. You slay me.”
Her heart expanded. She loved him. She loved Midge.
She loved everyone in this coffee shop. They were her best, her dearest friends. The carrot topped cook was freckled and sly. He was surely Irish. The Irish were the backbone of Boston. He winked at Midge, who made a scornful face. Still, Amelia could tell she liked him.
She turned back to the newspaper. A Republican presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan promised that if he was elected, he would force every last “welfare bum” to find gainful employment. In local news, an eighteen-year old boy from Plymouth swore God had made him hack his father to death with a bread knife. The Boston Bruins, a local team, were hosting the Rangers, who they would surely obliterate. This writer held out high hopes for a winning season.
“Anything else I can get you?” Midge inquired.
Nothing she could think of, yet she wanted to linger. It was so perfect in here and so perfectly mundane. Their days unfolded the same way always. If she stayed put, maybe hers would, too.
Know thyself. That was Socrates advice. Father’s as well.
THE MAIN LIBRARY was exactly as Amelia remembered, the exterior an imposing white brick façade topped with a red slate roof. The research room had Windsor chairs and long wooden desks. Light poured in through huge, arched windows. She carried the books to a front table. Her life seemed to have spawned a veritable cottage industry. Muriel’s bookshelves had held only a part of the oeuvre. So many words expended on her, including Muriel’s own Courage is the Price. Among the books, The Search for Amelia Earhart; Last Flight; Winged Legend: The story of Amelia Earhart; Women of Courage: Profiles of five remarkable Americans; Soaring Wings: A Biography of Amelia Earhart; Amelia Earhart, First Lady of the Air; Amelia Earhart Lives. She heaved a sigh, cracking the top one. The biography began with their parent’s turbulent marriage. She’d been over this ground herself. But she’d treaded lightly, no need to pain Mother or embarrass Father. Enough that the four of them had had to live through the acrimony and messiness of a divorce; it was surely no one else’s business. Apparently it was. The writer glibly described Father as a drunk, a ne’er do well, a disappointment to both his wife and in-laws. This author drew conclusions from what he termed “historical fact.” Wasn’t that phrase redundant? “Amelia Earhart was shaped by her Father’s failures,” he opined. Who was he, Dr. Freud? Amelia seethed, slapping it shut and shoving it aside. “Idiot!” she hissed.
