Her Last Flight

by Beatriz Williams

  Irene didn’t speak, and George—for once—didn’t press her. She whipped the Hudson around the hills, faster and faster, relishing all the wind and speed and thunder, while George’s white knuckles gripped the door handle and his eyes darted to the speedometer. She made a final ascent around a last bend and reached their home, nestled into the shoulder of a mountain. The windows blinded her. They had positioned the house to capture the view of the Pacific Ocean as it crashed spectacularly into the continent some twenty miles to the west-southwest, and the setting sun now struck every pane of glass, so that she had to avert her eyes and didn’t notice all the cars parked outside until she came up the last of the drive and stopped the car in front of the garage.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Who are these people?”

  “Just a few friends I’ve invited for dinner. To welcome you back.”

  “I don’t want to see anybody. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to eat and go to bed.”

  “It’s just a few hours,” he said, in the same tone he had earlier said It’s just a few miles. Nothing at all, dear, you can do it. You’re Irene Foster, you have a public, you simply have to do these things whether you enjoy them or not, it’s part of your job.

  George got out of the car and lifted her kit bag from the back seat. Irene sat and stared through the windshield at the garage door, washed in orange. Her hands still gripped the steering wheel. George came around and opened the door.

  “Can I at least bathe and change before saying hello?” she said, and somehow George missed the irony in her voice.

  “Of course you can, darling. I’ll keep everyone happy with cocktails.”

  So Irene went around back with her kit bag while George came in the front door and played host to these guests he’d invited over. The master bedroom opened out to its own patio, and Irene let herself in through the French doors. George had filled the bedroom and sitting room with flowers, vases and vases of them, roses and fragrant stargazer lilies, her favorites. He was good at gestures like that. Irene bent to sniff a bouquet on her nightstand. There was a note beneath in George’s elegant handwriting. You’re home safe, and that’s all that matters. Love, G.

  She thought about that note as she bathed in the giant white porcelain bathtub, taking care not to dislodge the sling provided for her by the doctor in Fort Worth, who had asked for her autograph afterward. That’s all that matters. Was it really? Because she also remembered George’s words on the way to the airfield, the morning of the start of the derby. You’ve got to win this, darling. Not second or third. We need another victory, or the new lecture tour is going to bust. So the state of her health was important, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered, not by a long shot, at least to George. Flying was expensive. They had to fill those lecture halls next month, and to fill lecture halls you needed the public’s fascination, you needed to be on the cover of twelve different magazines, looking dashing and triumphant, and gorgeous didn’t hurt, either. You needed rapturous column inches and newsreel footage of you roaring down an airfield driveway behind the wheel of a Hudson roadster.

  Most of all, though, you needed a photograph in which you waved triumphantly from the cockpit of your silvery Rofrano Sirius, having just beaten the boys to win the 1936 Coast-to-Coast Air Derby.

  The bath was heaven, but Irene didn’t deserve heaven. She’d taken a risk when she saw the squall moving in over the Fort Worth sky, and it hadn’t paid off. Now her beautiful airplane was on a train in Arizona somewhere, on its way back to Burbank for repair, which would cost a stack of money she didn’t have, wouldn’t have, unless this next lecture tour was a smashing success. And how was she going to fill fifty-nine lecture halls across America when she wasn’t news anymore, when she hadn’t won an air race in two years, when everybody had already forgotten about her solo flights to Europe and to Hawai’i and Rio de Janeiro, her circumnavigation of the globe?

  Well, George would figure something out, wouldn’t he? George always figured something out.

  Irene rose from the bath after four and a half minutes, dried herself off, dressed awkwardly in a rose chiffon dress that flattered her height and her angular body, her sunstreaked curls and the freckles she hated and Sam had loved. She added a little lipstick, a little powder, a pair of low-heeled sandals. She could hear the noise and laughter of the guests down the hallway and through the sitting room, George’s voice above all, relaxed and confident among all those human beings as Irene could never be. But that was one of the reasons she’d married him, wasn’t it? He could do these things she could not. He could manage all that for her, so she could fly.

  As she passed through the sitting room, Irene spotted a folded newspaper on the lamp table. She tried to avert her eyes, but the headline caught her. MALLORY PULLED ALIVE it said, before the rest of the sentence disappeared around the fold.

  Irene stood still and stared at the black letters. Her pulse rang in her ears. For a second or two, she thought she would faint.

  When she could breathe again, she picked up the newspaper and unfolded it.

  MALLORY PULLED ALIVE FROM WRECKAGE.

  San Diego Air Show Ends in Disaster.

  Flier Taken to La Jolla Hospital, Condition Remains Unknown

  George and Irene had chosen a young, rising architect to create their home in Burbank, shortly after their marriage four years earlier, and he had designed the house in an open, modern style that made use of the light and color of the California landscape. At the center of the building, the living room had the feel of a baronial great hall, although shorn of any historical froufrou, as George called it. It was twenty-two feet high with giant metal beams and a wall of French doors that seemed to open out right over the edge of the hill and into the sky above the ocean, although in fact they opened out to a stone terrace and a swimming pool. It was here that George and Irene held most of their parties. The doors had already been thrown open and the air was fragrant with cigarettes and perfume. Irene slipped in quietly and tapped George on the shoulder. He turned and took her elbow.

  “There you are! What’s the matter? You’re pale.”

  Irene said, in a low voice, “Why didn’t you tell me about Sam?”

  “About Sam? Sam Mallory?”

  “I saw the newspaper. What happened?”

  He swirled the ice cubes around the inside of his glass. “I don’t know any more than you do. I read the article, that’s all, right before I went to meet you at the airfield.”

  “Is Sophie here?”

  “Darling, let me get you a drink.”

  “I don’t want a drink. I want to know what’s happened to Sam.”

  “Sophie won’t know any more than—”

  But Irene was already beetling across the room, searching for Sophie Rofrano’s blond head and pregnant belly. She found them on a sofa, positioned in earnest conversation with somebody’s wife. Sophie saw her and lurched to her feet.

  “Don’t do that,” said Irene.

  “Oh, I’m all right. But you! How’s your arm? Or are you just absolutely sick and tired of people asking?” Sophie said all this while embracing Irene, kissing her cheek, and Irene felt the strange intrusion of this big lump between them, the baby to which Sophie was due to give birth in a few more weeks, her fifth.

  “Sam!” Irene pulled away. “What’s happened to Sam?”

  Sophie’s face fell. “I don’t know for certain. You know how he does all these ridiculous stunts at air shows. Octavian was on the telephone with a few people he knows in San Diego. They think it was a mechanical fault.”

  “Of course it’s a mechanical fault. Sam would never—he’s the best pilot—”

  “Oh, darling, stop.” Sophie steered her to the wall of windows and pulled out a handkerchief. “He’ll be all right. You know he’s broken just about every bone in his body by now, and every time he bounces right back. He’s indestructible.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just tired, that’s all, and nobody told me about it,
I just happened to see a newspaper on my way in—”

  “He’ll be just fine, don’t worry. Octavian says he’s awake, he’s moving and talking.”

  “What else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Irene stared furiously out the window. She couldn’t turn away and face the room, not with her eyes all red like this, her cheeks damp. Sophie’s handkerchief was now a ball in her fist.

  Sophie said gently, “There’s nothing you can do, Irene. You have to let it be.”

  “I realize that. It’s not like a light bulb you can switch on and off, that’s all.”

  “Of course not,” said Sophie. “Of course it isn’t. Hello, George.”

  Irene’s husband appeared at her elbow, blocking the sunset. “Nice glass of lemonade for you.”

  “Thank you.” Irene took the lemonade and sipped. Her eyes were dry now. It was just the shock, that was all. With Sam, you expected some terrible accident every day, and yet when the news came, as it regularly did, you still felt that somebody had hit you with a sledgehammer. Sometimes Irene wondered if Sam felt the same way about her. If, when she experienced a crackup somewhere, broke a bone or just strained a tendon as she had in Fort Worth, Sam Mallory felt as if somebody had hit him with a sledgehammer.

  It was now eight years since that historic flight to Australia, eight years since Irene and Sam had sat together under the coolibah tree; six years since Irene had set a coast-to-coast record flying from New York to Los Angeles in her own Rofrano Centauri and then flown solo from Boston to Paris a month later; five years since she had stumbled into a love affair with her business manager, George Morrow, and accepted his marriage proposal with certain conditions. She had been George’s wife for four years, and in that time she had set countless records for airspeed and endurance and distance, had flown solo to various points around the world, had circumnavigated the globe with a copilot and a navigator, had cracked up more times than she could count and been hospitalized in eleven of those instances, had gone on eight lecture tours and made one thousand six hundred and fourteen speeches, had designed her own clothing line, had appeared on a hundred and twelve magazine covers and in six motion pictures.

  In all that time she had seen Sam Mallory exactly four times. The last time was seven months ago, at a restaurant in Burbank. Irene was having dinner with George and the Rofranos; Sam was there with a film actress in a sequined dress. They saw each other at exactly the same moment, as Irene and George walked past his table to join the Rofranos at the back of the restaurant, and the sight of his horrified face still wounded her. Later he’d come over to say hello, and it was clear he’d had a drink or two to fortify himself. He laughed and joked harshly, and he introduced the film actress, who was beautiful beyond description and didn’t seem to know the history of Sam and Irene. She just appeared girlishly starstruck to meet the legendary aviatrix and babbled on about how scared she was to fly in an airplane, how brave Irene must be. Irene replied graciously, without meeting Sam’s eyes once. She watched him walk away though, a little unsteady, the actress’s arm looped through his. What little she’d seen of his face seemed gaunt. Those ravishing good looks had been hollowed out by misery.

  “Poor fellow,” said George. “A wife like his.”

  Octavian said, “Not anymore. They called it quits a year or two ago, didn’t you hear?”

  Under the table, Sophie had kicked him, and he’d cleared his throat and changed the subject. But it didn’t matter. Irene had already heard that news. Of course she had.

  Among the guests at the party, besides the Rofranos, were a couple of movie executives, the mayor of Burbank, the president of the Lockheed Aviation Company, and the editor of the Los Angeles Times. George was nothing if not methodical about his guest lists. They were all sympathetic to Irene. She had to explain the accident five times, had to describe the injury to her arm, had to express enthusiasm for the upcoming lecture tour, had to chitchat over four courses served in the dining room by the housekeeper.

  She was used to all this. George and Irene entertained guests three or four nights a week when they were home, and of course a lecture tour meant countless fried chicken dinners with mayors and aviation enthusiasts and the ladies of the town lecture committees and their curious banker husbands. In response, Irene had invented a character named Irene Foster, Aviatrix, who could make patient, polite conversation with all these people and win glowing reviews for her All-American character wherever she went. Irene played this character night after night, like an actress in a long-running Broadway play. She played it now, even though she was exhausted and sick with worry about a man she had loved eight years before.

  Only Sophie Rofrano knew the effort it cost her. But then Sophie Rofrano was eight and a half months pregnant and her husband was extremely protective of her. They sat next to each other at the other end of the table, where Irene cast envious glances. She had always envied the Rofranos. Without being attached at the hip or anything like that, they were deeply and affectionately in love. Octavian Rofrano was a reserved man, not easy to talk to. His face, as he made conversation with the woman on his left, crinkled earnestly, as if he were in pain. But when his wife asked him a question from his other side, his expression changed. He turned to her and bent his head—Sophie Rofrano was a small woman—and it was obvious that the rest of the room, the rest of the world maybe, held not the slightest pinprick of interest next to what his wife was saying, at that moment.

  Then his expression changed again. He stood and walked around the table to murmur something in George’s ear, and George jumped up and said Of course! Irene looked at Sophie and Sophie looked at her and pointed, smiling, to her middle. Irene rose and went to Sophie, reached her just as Octavian reached her, and together they helped Sophie from her chair, though she tried to brush them away, laughing that she had done this before, she was perfectly capable of walking to the car. The news rippled around the room. Luckily they were just finishing dessert, and the party ended by everyone waving off the Rofranos on their way to the hospital to have their baby, just like they were newlyweds.

  It made Irene think of her own marriage, which took place in the town clerk’s office, and how she and George had flown away on their honeymoon from Rofrano’s Airfield in Irene’s airplane, while half the city’s press waved them off. Irene had been furious at this publicity stunt and George had promised not to do anything like that again without asking her first. They had spent their wedding night in Yosemite and started a lecture tour the next day, flying together from city to city to make the most of the newspaper coverage, and Irene had been so busy with flying and speeches and George had been so busy with the logistics and the glad-handing that they were bemused to realize, on the sixth day of the tour, that they hadn’t yet consummated the union.

  After the Rofranos left, Irene made her excuses and went to bed with the newspaper. She read the article about Sam three times and learned that the accident had occurred on landing, just as hers had, although the cause could not yet be determined. The engine had gone up in flame and Sam had been burned, but not seriously because they had been able to pull him free within minutes of the crash. He was unconscious but had woken up in the ambulance. He remained at the hospital in a serious condition. That was all, except that it seemed he was now seeing some other film actress, a brunette, who gave a tearful statement to the press before going to the hospital to comfort him. Irene set the newspaper aside and reached for the lamp, just as George walked in, removing his necktie. He took off his jacket too and came to sit on Irene’s bed in his shirtsleeves. He laid his hand on her leg.

  “I thought you’d gone to sleep by now,” he said.

  “I was reading about Sam.”

  “Terrible thing. We’ll send flowers.”

  “Any news about Sophie?”

  “Not yet.” He shook his head and whistled. “Five kids. That’s something. A real handful. I guess it’s a good thing you’re not the maternal type.”

  “
What’s that supposed to mean? Who says I’m not the maternal type?”

  “You?” He laughed. “Anyway, you don’t have the time for babies. You’re Irene Foster, remember? You’re leaving on a lecture tour in less than two weeks, and after that it’s back to flying. Planning the big one, that’s next. We’ve been planning that for years, the solo circumnavigation.”

  Irene sat up. “What if I’m sick of it all, George? The whole circus. The lectures and the derbies and the stunt flights.”

  He stared at her. His hand remained on her leg, just above the knee. He had unbuttoned his shirt an inch or two, and unlike Sam he looked fresh and unlined, enthusiastic for life. George had never minded being Mr. Irene Foster. Why, he’d relished it! A few days after the wedding, when the Los Angeles Times had referred to Irene as Mrs. George Morrow, he had telephoned the editor personally and corrected him. Irene would be keeping her name. She would be keeping her career. She’d gotten married, that was all, and her new husband had thrown himself into the business of burnishing her image, arranging her lecture tours and her flying schedule, her books and articles, her promotional contracts, her everything.

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean,” he said slowly.

  “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking I want a break, that’s all. I’m getting too old to be spending every night in a new city. What does it mean? What am I doing here?”

  “You’re inspiring a generation of American girls, that’s what.”

  “Am I? You’ve seen the crowds, what’s left of them. Aviation’s old news. All the frontiers have been conquered. The future lies the other way. Making flying ordinary, as commonplace as driving an automobile or riding a bus.”

  “You’ve already tried starting an airline. That was an expensive bust, as I recall.”

  “Well, we could try again, with a new team.”

  He sprang from the bed and started to pace. “But not yet. Let’s get through this lecture tour first. I’m headed out to New York tomorrow, drum up some publicity—”