Her Last Flight

by Beatriz Williams

  Morrow rose from his chair. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. Mr. Mallory, might I have a moment of your time?”

  Sam wiped his mouth and rose. “Certainly.”

  At this point, Morrow had said nothing about the matter of the Waikiki photographs. He would later explain to Irene that he was protecting the two of them from unnecessary distraction, that he was using his influence behind the scenes to discredit the images, to shame the publications that printed them, to contain and quench the firestorm all by himself. Reporters were given strict instructions not to ask the pilots about the photographs or face eviction from any further events or interviews; guests and officials were warned not to mention the matter. Newspapers, magazines, all were held discreetly out of sight, and Morrow kept the two pilots so busy with engagements, they didn’t even notice.

  So Irene had no inkling something was wrong until Morrow read that telegram at breakfast. She saw it in his face—a flash of shock, then dismay, then calculation. His gaze had flicked back and forth, Irene and Sam and Irene again. When he rose and asked to speak privately to Sam, she felt a tremor of foreboding. But she never imagined why; in a month of guessing, she never would have predicted the contents of that telegram, and how it would change her life. Later, she found herself wishing that somebody would invent some kind of warning light, like in an airplane cockpit, that flashed on when a great catastrophe was imminent.

  Irene never remembered the substance of her conversation with Mr. Hounslow and the prime minister of Australia over breakfast that morning. She has some vague recollection of the Olympics, which had concluded while she and Sam were marooned on Howland, so it’s possible the two men brought her up to date on who had won and lost, which countries had made a good showing. Her mind, of course, was elsewhere. Her mind had followed Morrow and Sam, wherever they had gone for their private conversation. After a decent interval, she excused herself and went looking for them.

  The house wasn’t especially large, but she found no sign of either man, Morrow or Mallory. She went outside for a walk, thinking that would pass the time or that she might encounter them outside, but the landscape around her remained bare and empty, the wide Australian countryside containing nothing but what God had created Himself. The sun grew hot, and Irene returned to the house. She heard voices in the library, but they turned out to be Mr. Hounslow and Stanley Bruce, so she climbed the stairs and went down the corridor to Sam’s bedroom. Before she reached his door, however, George Morrow appeared around a corner and stopped her.

  “Irene! There you are. I’ve been hoping to speak to you. Do you have a moment?”

  “Of course,” Irene said.

  She followed Morrow to his own room, which was larger than hers and had a sitting area, already laid for coffee. Morrow motioned her to the settee. There was no sign of Sam.

  “Coffee?” Morrow said, and Irene replied yes. By now, he knew how she took it, and added the single spoonful of sugar without asking first. When they were both settled, he spoke again. “What a circus, eh? I’m glad this offer of Bruce’s popped up. I think it’s just the thing for you. A few days of quiet.”

  “It’s been hectic, all right.” Irene sipped her coffee. “What were you and Sam talking about?”

  “A private matter. No doubt he’ll tell you all about it, when he can.”

  “When he can? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean when he’s able. It’s a private matter, as I said.”

  Irene was trying not to shake from nerves. Of course she couldn’t press Morrow. She couldn’t imply she had some right to know Sam’s personal affairs, that she was intimately involved in them. “I hope it’s nothing serious,” she said.

  Morrow replaced his cup in his saucer and spoke carefully. “As you know, Mallory has a family of his own, which requires his attention from time to time. A family’s a great responsibility.”

  “Of course it is. I hope—”

  “You, on the other hand, don’t have any such distractions. It’s a real advantage, when we consider your career.”

  “My career?”

  “You’ve got a bright future ahead, Irene. Your name, your face—why, you’re the most recognizable woman on the face of the earth. Better than some actress, even, because you’ve got credibility. You’ve got substance. Everybody admires you. I’ve got so many offers for you, I can’t even read them all. Books, syndicated columns, your own show on the radio. Chewing gum. Hair shampoo. Cigarettes.”

  Irene caught the last word. “But I don’t even smoke!”

  “Who cares? They’ll offer you a pile of money. Enough so you can buy your own airplane. You can fly solo, you can amaze the world, as you were born to do. And I’ll stand right by you, never fear. I won’t do a thing without your say-so.”

  “I fly with Sam. We’re a team.”

  Morrow set his coffee aside. “Irene, would you mind if I speak to you candidly?”

  Irene clutched the sides of her saucer. Morrow was leaning forward now, hands gathered in the gap between his knees, a pose that reminded her of Sam. “What are you getting at, Mr. Morrow?”

  “It’s just this. I like Sam Mallory. He’s a first-rate pilot, maybe the best pilot in America. Maybe the best pilot in the world. But he’s—well, I want to say this the right way. Impulsive. He’s a little impulsive, which is not a bad trait in itself, mind you, but as a business manager, you become anxious. You don’t know what he’s going to do next. You can’t count on him, to put it bluntly.”

  “I disagree. I’d say Sam Mallory’s the most trustworthy person I’ve ever met.”

  “And I’m sure you believe that, and I’m not saying he’s not. But you’ve led a sheltered life, Irene. I know you think you haven’t, but you have. I’ve got twenty years on you, twenty years spent in the business world, and Sam’s been to war and everything that means. He’s got a wife and a kid. He’s been around the block more than once.” Morrow paused and peered at her, expecting some response.

  “Just say what you mean, Mr. Morrow.”

  “Look, I’m only saying that you might want to reconsider this idea of partnership. On your own, flying solo, you could conquer the world. You don’t need a man flying the ship for you. You can be in charge. Look around you. Your time has come. You’re the future, Irene. You should show all those girls growing up out there what they’re capable of. You should give them something to look up to.”

  “I thought I was doing that. Anyway, I don’t see why I can’t do that with Sam. He’s an expert pilot with years and years of experience, and I’m still a novice. I’ve got a lot to learn from him.”

  “Irene. Irene.” Morrow stood up and walked across the room. He stood by the window and crossed his arms, looking out across the eternal landscape, and then he returned to sit next to her on the old-fashioned settee, with its lion feet and its Victorian humpback.

  Irene knew something was coming. Even if she didn’t feel the warp of her own instinct, she certainly noticed the signs of George Morrow’s own agitation. His thumbs circled each other. She noticed the whiteness of his cuffs against the tan of his wrists and hands. He was a fit man; he played tennis and swam and did all the fashionable new callisthenic exercises in a gymnasium he’d recently built at his own estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. Always Morrow gave off a racket of immense energy contained inside those well-tailored clothes, and maybe it was this energy that was so attractive, and maybe it was his attractiveness that made her hold him at a distance, made her fumble his first name whenever she tested it in her mouth.

  Anyway, she knew something was coming, all right. She thought she was ready. She screwed her thumbs together in her lap and lifted an eyebrow to Morrow, as if to say, Out with it, then.

  He made a movement of his hand, starting toward hers and then thinking better of it. “Now, what I’m about to tell you, I maybe should have said something earlier. I wanted to protect you. I thought the whole thing would blow over. But it hasn’t. And it’s time you know about s
ome photographs out there.”

  “Photographs? What kind of photographs?”

  “By any chance,” he said, staring up at the ceiling, “by any chance did you and Mr. Mallory spend some time on the beach, while you were staying over in Honolulu?”

  “Honolulu?”

  “Early in the morning, I think. Just the two of you.”

  Irene couldn’t speak. Morrow turned his attention from the ceiling to her face, and she saw that he was not kidding around, he was dead serious.

  “You should know that someone took a couple of photographs and sold them to a newspaper,” George Morrow said.

  She whispered, “It wasn’t how it looked. I was surfing, and Sam was on the beach, and he saw a shark out there. He thought it was going to get me. He was just relieved that I came in all right.”

  “Listen, Irene. I don’t care. I can only tell you what it looked like. It looked like the two of you were—well, that you were actually . . . in the act of . . .” He shifted a bit, glanced to the window, overcome by the Puritanism that was stamped in his bones. “Embracing,” he said.

  “But that’s not what happened. Not at all. Everyone’s got the wrong idea. I can make a statement—”

  “Not now, you can’t. Right now, you have got to remain absolutely silent. You have got to remain right here in this house and not speak to another soul outside it.”

  Irene stood up. “Where’s Sam? I want to talk to Sam.”

  “Sam’s gone, Irene.”

  “Gone? Where? Call him back. We’re a team. We—”

  “Irene.” Morrow stood up and grabbed her shoulders. “Get a hold of yourself. Listen to me. Sam’s gone back to Sydney.”

  She tried to pull away, to run for the door, but Morrow was stronger than she was and held her back, facing him, his eyes versus her eyes.

  “Listen! There’s been a terrible accident. He’s got to go home.”

  Irene stopped struggling and stared at Morrow’s kind, paternal face. She opened her mouth to say What’s happened, but the words remained stuck in her lungs somewhere, trapped and unable to rise.

  He answered anyway.

  “Mrs. Mallory’s in the hospital, Irene. She saw those photographs in the newspaper and tried to kill herself. Swallowed some pills and slit her wrists with a kitchen knife. The kid found her on the bathroom floor.”

  Hanalei, Hawai’i

  October 1947

  When Lindquist and I return to Coolibah, I do something I haven’t done since I was a child. I crawl into bed in the middle of the afternoon and fall asleep.

  A knock awakens me. It takes me some time to come to myself; I look around the darkened room and can’t quite remember where I am, or why I’m there, and the first thing I recall is the sea cliff and the picnic. Then the flight and the drive back to Coolibah, during which the cat unexpectedly curled on my lap, purring like one of those propeller engines on Lindquist’s airplane.

  The knock comes again, a little louder. “Janey? It’s Leo.”

  I swear and roll out of bed. The cat, which was apparently napping at the small of my back, startles and jumps. My shirt and trousers lie in a heap on the floor. I pull on the shirt and stagger to the door.

  “Everything all right?” he asks cautiously.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re kind of . . . rumpled.”

  “I was taking a nap.”

  He looks up at the sky. “Mama sent me to tell you it’s time for dinner.”

  “Oh, she did, did she? And did your sweet stepmother tell you what she did to me today?”

  “She told me you flew out to Ki’ilau together.”

  Some fur twines around my ankles. I nudge it away. “Is that what it’s called?”

  “One of my favorite spots. Used to sail out there as a kid and kick around on the beach all day.” He props one hand on the doorframe and tilts his head to one side. “If she took you there, she must really like you.”

  “If she does, she’s got a funny way of showing it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put some clothes on.”

  I shut the door in his face, and I have to tell you, it feels pretty good.

  After dinner, we play goddamn charades. It’s a Friday, so the children are allowed to stay up an hour late, and apparently this is what the little delinquents like to get up to for mischief. Lindquist makes cocoa. Leo pops popcorn. Because Olle’s still in Honolulu with Uncle Kaiko, Lani comes in from the kitchen to even the numbers. Lindquist, Lani, and Wesley make up one side; Leo, Doris, and yours truly make up the other.

  Leo hands me my mug of cocoa, which is piled high with whipped cream, and leans to my ear. “Added a shot of bourbon.”

  I lick myself a hole through the whipped cream in order to make sure he wasn’t kidding. (He wasn’t.) “Well, thank you kindly, bartender.”

  Now, apparently charades are big in the Lindquist household. They keep a big china bowl in the living room filled with scraps of paper, on which members of the family scribble down ideas throughout the week in preparation for Friday’s extravaganza. (I swear to God this is all true.) As guest of the house, I’m given the honor of drawing the first charade, which is

  PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH

  in a childish scrawl that surely belongs to Wesley.

  “Well, that’s easy,” I say. I stand up and mime spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread.

  “Bread and butter!” screams Doris.

  I fold my imaginary bread into a sandwich.

  “Book?” says Leo.

  I roll my eyes and take an imaginary bite from this mother-loving imaginary peanut butter sandwich, and as I chew my imaginary lunch, I wonder what sin I’ve committed that can possibly be so mortal as to condemn me to this purgatory.

  “Fried chicken?” says Doris, apparently forgetting about the spreading of the butter, and I may kill myself.

  “I know! I know!” Wesley jiggles up and down like he has to pee.

  “You’re not on our team, dummy!”

  “Doris, your brother is not a dummy,” Lindquist says.

  I look helplessly at Leo, begging for relief, and although I can just about read the words peanut butter sandwich on his face, he only shakes his head and smiles, the bastard.

  I set down my imaginary sandwich and unscrew an imaginary lid from an imaginary jar of peanut butter, and some fraught time later Doris screams out PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH! at goddamn last and I crumple to the ground.

  “I knew it! That was my charade!” Wesley says.

  Doris is sulky. “I don’t even like peanut butter sandwiches, that’s why.”

  Wesley jumps up and runs for the charades bowl. “My turn!”

  And so on and so on for another hour or two, until Wesley’s curled up asleep on my lap and my cocoa’s finished, and Leo bends down to lift the limp carcass and carry it upstairs. Careful, I mutter.

  Doris trips along after them, chattering about something. The bourbon’s gone to my head and I’m feeling a little reckless. When Lindquist stands to follow the ankle-biters upstairs, I say, “Not so fast.”

  “Oh? Haven’t you got enough out of me already?”

  “Just one question, really. I was mulling it all the way home.”

  She crosses her arms and frowns. “What, then?”

  “This thing you’ve told me about Mrs. Mallory. How she tried to kill herself. That wasn’t in the papers. I mean, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “George was always an expert about managing the press.”

  “But that didn’t matter, did it? Wouldn’t have changed what happened, if the newspapers knew all about it and made Mallory out to be some philandering daredevil who drove his wife to suicide. Because his goose was already cooked.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You had already eclipsed him. You were the star now. Morrow made sure of that, didn’t he?”

  She looks to the stairs and back again. “Yes. He wanted to make me a star, and he did.”

 
; “Because I’ve been thinking about what you said, the way he managed everything in Australia, and you know what? I think it was all part of his plan. He wanted to separate you and Mallory, so he could get control of your career, and Mrs. Mallory’s little temper tantrum just fell right in his lap, didn’t it?”

  “You could look at it that way. Or you could conclude that he was just doing what he thought was best for me. He thought Sam was reckless and impulsive, and I would be better off on my own.”

  “Not alone. With him. With Morrow.”

  Lindquist shrugs. “It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time. And we were happy. George took care of all the details and salesmanship I hated. He was considerate and faithful. You might say he was the ideal partner for me.”

  I climb from my chair—not altogether steady, you understand, on account of the bourbon—and walk right up to her. “You know something? I don’t believe you. I don’t believe for one moment you were in love with Morrow.”

  Lindquist glances at her watch. “I’m going to put the children to bed now. We’ll discuss all this in the morning.”

  She starts up the stairs in smooth, elastic movements. Even for dinner, she doesn’t wear dresses, just these long, flowing, wide-legged trousers made of silk or sometimes crepe de Chine, set off by some delicate blouse or another. She’s got style, Irene Lindquist, even if she pretends to be above such things.

  I call up after her. “One more thing?”

  She sighs and turns, one hand on the railing.

  “Was it true? Did the daughter find her like that?”

  Lindquist stares at her hand. The lamplight slants across the scar that blooms from underneath her blouse and over her neck.

  “Yes,” she says softly. “Poor thing. They say she was hysterical.”

  “How awful. How awful for her.”

  Lindquist turns and continues up the stairs. “It was awful for everybody,” she calls down behind her.