by Rand, Naomi;
“Whatever you need,” she insisted.
“Will they let me restage it? Maybe they can cut the second part out. You can do that, right?”
“I can do anything you want,” Amelia said.
“My mom would die if she saw me on TV.” He paused, considering, then leaned into the car and requested something to write with and on. “This is pretty cool, I guess. I mean, where are they? I don’t even see them. You people are good.”
“We are,” she agreed. “We’re incredibly gifted.”
“Gifted. That’s a funny one.”
Then he got into the slope backed orange car and drove away.
She looked down at the paper. He was Winston, but a Winston Barry, who resided at 11 Willow Street, Brooklyn, New York. That street was literally around the corner from the Hotel St. Georges. The lighter, the same first name, the way his looks had tricked her, they all had to be clues. This was a bread crumb trail, she thought, and if so, she’d have to follow it.
It struck her, then, that this corner was all too familiar. It was where she’d said goodbye to Winston Manning, thinking it was for the last time. Of course, the room at the Hotel St. Georges was where they’d improperly said hello again.
Yet, she was years removed from both those events. That is, if she were to believe the newspapers.
At the edge of her peripheral vision, a plane sliced through the clouds; Amelia knew exactly what to do.
IT WAS NO longer Boston Airport, but Logan. No more metal hangars or mowed fields, either. Amelia emerged from a public bus, followed the lead of the man in front of her and stilled her surprise when the unmanned glass door swung open in front of them. Inside, she found a hive packed with worker bees, all dedicated to flight. A black board ticked off the names of the airlines, arrivals on one side and departures on the other. You could fly from Boston to Milwaukee, Los Angeles, even Juneau.
And of course, New York. The next flight left in forty minutes. Amelia walked down a long hallway to Gate 15 and the Eastern Air Line shuttle. Out the windows, planes were docked at other bays. They were sleek, massive, and most had no propellers. Their engines were soldered under the wing. If this was an act of imagination, it was truly remarkable. In her mind she’d apparently invented an airship where the engine’s thrust had to be great enough to achieve maximum acceleration without the use of propellers.
Then how, precisely, did it work?
Amelia walked by Continental, Northeast, and United Airlines to find Eastern. An advertisement touted it as the largest airline in the free world. Was the other half of the world enslaved? Her fellow passengers filled out slips of paper at stand up desks, pens tethered to them with metal chains. Amelia did her best to answer the questions as honestly as she could. Name. Address. Destination. They accepted payment in cash, by check or via a credit card. Credit card? She could credit her intelligence or her luck in having fifty-nine dollars in hand.
The covered walkway to the plane swayed underfoot. At the open cockpit door, a woman in uniform greeted them. “Welcome aboard the Eastern shuttle.”
Amelia tried to see into the cockpit but her view was obscured by the pilot and co-pilot, who stood in the doorway, chatting.
“Just take any seat,” the woman urged.
Halfway down the aisle, Amelia chose one next to the window. It was upholstered and quite comfortable. The right armrest hid an ashtray. As she looked out the window, a voice boomed from the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes we will be closing the cabin door.”
An Esso truck sat directly under the wing. A member of the ground crew unhooked the hose. It drove away, leaving behind iridescent puddles on the tarmac.
If only she could be in that cockpit during takeoff! Still, just to be inside a plane again was a treat. And to think, Winston had gotten her here.
Amelia thought back to the first time she’d met Winston. It was December 1927, at a Christmas party in Cambridge. She’d been engaged to Samuel and trying to figure out how to get out of it. Either Samuel had changed, or he’d let down his guard and shown his true self. He’d started off as a staunch supporter of all things progressive, including the Wobblies. But it turned out that he had very conservative ideas about the role of women, or rather, one woman in particular. His wife. They’d live in Medford, right near Muriel, Mother, and quite possibly Albert. No need for her to pursue a career, she’d be staying happy at home. They’d raise two point three children in their modest house. She would tie on an apron to cook him dinner every night.
“I can barely boil water,” Amelia had pointed out.
“Don’t be silly. Anyone can learn how to cook.”
“I have no interest.”
“When you’re married you will.”
He was in love with some other Amelia, the figment of his own parochial imagination.
“I don’t have a motherly bone in my body,” she’d said.
“That’s not true, you’re wonderful with children.”
“I’m a social worker,” she told him patiently. “That’s part of my job, not my life.”
“You’ll feel differently when they’re your own kids.”
“I won’t. Really I won’t. I don’t want children,” she tried.
“You don’t know what you want,” Samuel had insisted. “Look at how you change your mind. You were going to go to medical school a few years ago, remember?”
Her inconstancy should have been ample warning. Instead, Samuel thought that her progressive ideas had been a phase. That she, like he, was ready to put away such childish things. This, the same man who’d preached revolution . . . the new Samuel was stable, reliable, the sort of rock you could tie to your ankle before you leapt into the ocean and drowned.
At that party, she stepped out of the packed living room to find some air. An open window led to the fire escape. She slipped through it and was greeted by the winter constellations laid out above her head.
“There’s Orion,” a voice said. Its owner sat below her on the fire escape ladder. He was remarkably handsome, the sort of man who would routinely turn heads, with an aquiline nose, a strong chin, a thatch of blond hair and stalwart blue eyes. There was mischief in them.
“I see it,” she said.
“Canis Major and Minor.”
“I recognize those as well.”
“You’ve studied the stars,” he said.
“Enough to know the basics.”
“And well enough not to be taken in by a flirtatious remark from a man such as myself.”
“Exactly.”
“Still, on such a beautiful night, wouldn’t it be lovely to take a stroll?”
His smile was a dare. And she was in the mood to accept. She’d ditch him at the corner and head back to Medford. She would tell Samuel she’d had a headache and hadn’t wanted to ruin his fun.
Amelia dug her coat out of the pile in the bedroom and snuck downstairs. They walked through Harvard Yard and over to the Charles. She told herself there was nothing wrong with admiring the river or talking to him. It was a way to pass what had, up until that moment, been a dull evening.
His name was Winston Manning. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Harvard. She introduced herself in turn. She was Miss Amelia Earhart, a social worker at Denison House. He told her about his own ambitions and how they countered the ones his father held for him. His father believed he would fall to earth. “Not quite like Icarus did,” Winston said. “Though it feels that way to me. I so dislike business, he so believes I’ll come round to his view and run the company so he can retire.”
“You’re the only child?”
“I have two sisters.”
“He should pick one of them.”
“If only he would. Imagine? A woman sitting on the Stock Exchange.”
“Your father sits on the Stock Exchange?” She admired him from a knowing distance. He was rich. She was barely making ends meet.
“You think I’m made of money now.”
She
touched his arm. “No. Just the usual flesh and bone.”
He took that as an invitation and tried to kiss her. She pulled away from him, but didn’t slap his face.
“I’m engaged to be married,” she said, primly.
“Yet here you are with me.”
“Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“I thought I did,” she said. God, she’d told a perfect stranger the truth.
“Ah, so I’m to be your way out.”
This time when he tried to kiss her, she let him. What was unexpected was how pleasurable it was. What was even more surprising was how she let him continue the kiss, cupping her chin under his hand, tipping her face to his.
“I think I should go,” she said eventually.
But she didn’t mean it. There was no point in denying the animal attraction. It was impulsive, impractical, but that was how she lived. She flew into bad weather, knowing the forecast. She took all the precautions she could, then got into the cockpit and the engine turned over and she soared up. Amelia accepted the risks. That was what it was like that night, too.
THE LOUDSPEAKER CRACKLED again. A man’s voice this time. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. I’m Captain Laurence Miles. I want to welcome you to Eastern Flight 219. We are bound for our final destination, LaGuardia airport in New York City. Once aloft, our flying time should be approximately forty-seven minutes. Now, I’m going to turn you back over to our excellent cabin crew.”
Forty-seven minutes. It had taken half a day to make the same flight with a tail wind. How was it possible? The woman in the tailored uniform stood at the front and asked that passengers remove the safety card from their seat pockets. Amelia watched the man across the aisle pull something from the netting by his knees. She did the same. This was a Boeing 727 jetliner. What was a jetliner, exactly?
The plane lurched. They were leaving the gate. Up at the front, another woman was assisting the first, demonstrating how to strap on the oxygen mask that would apparently fall from the ceiling unit above them if cabin pressure dropped. She wore a flat orange vest.
If the flight went badly, none of it would matter. But let them pretend, Amelia thought. Let them coddle the passengers into believing there would be a way to save themselves. She and Fred had been lucky and skilled. Even then they’d only had seconds to get out before the plane sank, taking everything that could have helped them survive with it. If only there had been wreckage spread across the water, it would have been something to pinpoint their location. Then everything might have been different. The ships would have known where to look. That is, if you believed the books she’d read, if you believed that any of it happened the way they said it did.
And if it had, what was she doing here?
They were third in line for takeoff. Ahead of them a plane raced down the runway, its nose lifted, its body followed, it melded seamlessly with the air.
“I HAVE ANOTHER hobby,” Amelia had said to Winston Manning later that night.
“Not just astronomy?”
She’d been lying next to him in the double bed. They’d registered under assumed names at a less than upright establishment on the outskirts of Cambridge, Mass.
“Let me guess. You must be artistic. Do you paint? Or is it watercolors?”
“I do write poetry,” she admitted. “But I’m not very good. And that’s not what I meant. I’m a pilot.”
“You’re joking.” But he saw that she wasn’t. “I’ve fallen in love with an aviatrix.”
“You’re not in love with me. You barely know me.”
“I’m making you nervous.”
“It’s a stupid thing to say, that’s all,” she told him. “Bandying about that word, love.”
“Is this about your fiancé?” he asked. “Because he’s nothing compared to me.”
“Please. Don’t.”
“Don’t what? I am in love with you. But don’t panic. I don’t expect a thing in return. Funny, isn’t it? Usually it’s the man who thinks of an escape clause. I promise you, you won’t need one for me.”
“Why’s that?” she asked, playing along a little.
“I love you just as you are.”
“Again, you don’t even know me.” She was up on one elbow, staring at him.
“I do, and not just in the carnal sense. I know you better than you know yourself.”
There was something impressive in his insistence. And something insane. She didn’t believe he could know her. Not who she was inside. Not any of that. Yet he was oddly beguiling. In truth, his smile was a wonderfully, crinkly, curious thing. Amelia suddenly ached to reach out and smooth down the rough edges. She was Mrs. Jones that night, the desk clerk giving them a knowing look. They had no bags. They arrived in the clothing they’d worn to the party. What if this man was not just one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, but the one, she thought? Oh, that was absurd, impossible. There was no such thing. That was a romantic fantasy out of the Austen novels Muriel preferred to read. Amelia told herself that, when morning came, she would write a note and give him nothing to go on. She would leave and never see him again. She would use him as an excuse to break things off with Samuel. That was all this was, that was all this could ever be.
She meant to do it. Meant to leave surreptitiously, and leave him in her dust. But it turned out that breaking it off with Samuel was the easy part.
Winston Manning woke the next morning when she did. He insisted on accompanying her almost all the way home. He kissed her repeatedly in public view. She didn’t just let him. She wanted him to. In fact, she’d never felt so hungry for a man’s touch, never known what it could make you feel-between night and morning an entire universe carved out, with him at its core.
Winston Manning made love to her with such confidence, such passion. During the day when she remembered, she’d gasp aloud. The way he encircled her breast with his fingers, and then slowly moved his hand down, caressing her stomach, laying the palm flat, his fingers splaying out across her hip and toying with her, resting on the jutting bone, the osa coxae, waiting her out so that she was the one to direct him, to push his hand to the v between her thighs, to moan.
Time stopped ticking away when they were together. Hours later, he’d turn to her and say, “Well?” It was a one-word question that called up a host of answers. It turned out Winston Manning had been right after all. He did know who she was.
“You should take me up in that plane.”
“I should,” she agreed.
Amelia hadn’t been to the airfield in weeks. She’d lied to everyone, telling Muriel and Mother she was off on an overnight flight, telling the boys at the field she had too much work to do at Denison House. She was adept at making brilliant excuses; espionage would actually have suited her if her goal had been to protect this. It turned out if you told someone something with total conviction, they thought they were hearing the truth.
On weekends, the two of them drove away from Boston to smaller towns. She slid the gold ring on the ring finger of her left hand. They became newlyweds. Still, she insisted on paying her way with him, half the meal and half the spare accommodations.
“As you want.”
“You’re humoring me,” she said.
“I’m saving money.”
That made her laugh. “You?”
“Why not? Don’t try to make this something where you’ve bested me.”
Put like that, she saw her own trick. How had he known before she’d even guessed? Love with Samuel had seemed passionate, but it was a desert by comparison. That love was dependable, solid, a reaction to the endless acrimony that had been the meat of her parents’ miserable marriage. When she’d ended their engagement, Samuel had been so surprised.
“Have you met someone else?” Samuel asked.
She told him, “No.” Not the absolute truth. But then, she would have broken it off with him, either way. She knew that much.
Of course, she had met someone else. And with him, she could truly
be herself. Gone was any attachment to convention, however meager. They painted the ceiling of whatever place they’d come to for the night with their dreams and aspirations. Winston wanted nothing more than to travel the world. Why couldn’t they do it together? They would trek across Mongolia, home of the hordes. They would stand on the shore of Lake Victoria, watching the wildebeests throng.
His father thought his graduate degree impractical. His view was that the only thing that mattered at all in this world was making money. Winston would have to understand the nuts and bolts of their own business; his education was a frill, an intellectual pursuit, something you could do if you were born useless; an aristocratic notion. The Manning fortune was built on iron ore, and then steel, but it truly came of age during the First World War when Winston Manning Senior, his father, decided to retool and go into munitions. “The man believes it is the patriotic duty of every American to help this country kill with the greatest of ease,” Winston explained. “Blood money,” as he termed it, had made them richer than Croesus. It kept them rich right through the Great Depression. His father didn’t believe in something as ephemeral as a stock market. He thought anyone who did a fool. He thought Winston a fool, too.
“You’ve given me nerve,” Winston said to her. He would tell his father to go to hell. “Wait till he finds out I’m in love with a pacifist.”
Wait. They could wait forever. Their love would never end. Although deep down, Amelia knew it had to. She was afraid of meeting this father, this wolf of a man in his drawing room in that mansion on Upper Fifth. She, who was never intimidated by much, was intimidated by this, worrying that it would go wrong. That Winston would be disappointed. That she would fail him in some way.
In February, Winston said, “We’ll stay in Boston.”
“Here?”
“Absolutely. Normally I’d say we should get married, but I know you’d be angry. We can do whatever you want. We can live together or marry. Your choice.”
“This is how you propose to me?” She laughed carelessly, but inside everything was whirring round. It came to her that she wanted two things at once; both for him to get down on one knee and offer a ring, and for him to laugh, denying the seriousness of what he’d just said.
