Her Last Flight(15)
“Well, now,” he said, “that’s admirable. Why nursing?”
And Irene found herself telling Sam things she hadn’t told anyone else at the hospital, or really anyone at all. She explained—or rather he dug from her, bit by bit—how she told her parents one evening when she was very young, when her mother was still alive and her father held down a respectable job, that she wanted to become a doctor. Her mother had smiled in that sarcastic way she had, but her father had nodded gravely and said she would make a good doctor, she had a calm head on her shoulders, and she should study very hard to make this dream a reality. How later that night, she’d overheard her mother telling her father that he shouldn’t indulge the girl like that, it was ridiculous to imagine that Irene could become a doctor. Why not? said her father. He’d seen plenty of women doctors, there were several medical colleges that now accepted female candidates. Because she will want a family one day, her mother said, and then all that education would go to waste; because children had a way of demanding your attention, of diverting this abundant river of female energy and ambition into themselves.
Irene didn’t remember how her father answered this, or whether she even really heard his response through the walls of the house. Possibly the conversation never even happened, she admitted to Sam, sipping her coffee, and this was only the way she remembered her parents’ reactions to her ambitions, like a composite drawing, a convenience of memory. Either way, she did study hard. She took all the difficult classes, algebra and trigonometry, chemistry and physics, and graduated at the top of the class of well-bred girls in the private school her grandparents had paid for. She had just finished her first year of premedical studies at Berkeley when her grandfather died, and his estate went into probate where it was entangled by lawsuits, and there was no more money for such frivolities as college. They ended up in Los Angeles instead, she and her father, because it seemed like a fresh start. That was a year and a half ago. Her father was still looking around for steady work, which was why he was away. As soon as they could afford it, she was going to start that nursing course.
She sat back. Her coffee cup was empty. Sam had also finished his breakfast and his coffee, and he leaned on the arm of his chair and stared at her in a peculiar way, made all the more peculiar because Sandy had fallen asleep on his shoulder, sort of wrapped around the base of his neck and held there by static, possibly.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Sam said at last. “You were just a kid.”
“She was sick a long time. It wasn’t a shock or anything.”
“Was that when your dad started drinking?”
“No,” Irene said. “He drank before. But after Mama died, he couldn’t stop.”
Sam nodded. “So everything was up to you.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Well,” Sam said, stroking the cat on his shoulder, staring gravely at Irene, “I guess I don’t have to ask why you go out surfing in the morning.”
Then they were back in the hangar, readying the Jenny for her flight. Already people were arriving for the exhibition, people in their dozens, men and also women in their shingled hair and dark lipstick, small hats nearly worthless against the sun, but that was fashion for you. Sam explained about the engine and the controls, ailerons and elevators, throttle and rudder. “It’s an old plane now,” he said. “I’m saving up to buy something newer. Faster. Rofrano’s designed this bird with aluminum skin and a pair of six-hundred-horsepower engines. If I had that ship I could fly anywhere.”
“How much does it cost?”
“She, Irene. An airplane’s not an it.”
“But why female?”
“Aw, now. I’m not walking into that one, believe me. Let’s just say it’s because a pilot falls a little in love with his airplane, after a while.”
They had stopped working and stood facing each other. Sam propped one elbow on the edge of the cockpit. Sandy was inside, wandering dangerously near the rudder pedal.
“What if the pilot’s a she?” asked Irene.
“Now that’s a good question. I’ll have to ask around.”
“Do you get any around here? Women pilots?”
“Course we do. I’ve taught a dozen women how to fly.”
“Any good ones?”
“A few. If they stick with it. Just like anybody, man or woman. You have to keep flying. The only thing that keeps you alive up there is experience. At all cost, you have to fly.”
Irene turned to lean her elbows on the fuselage so she could stare into the cockpit, the simple controls, the wood that Sam kept spotlessly varnished. Sandy leapt into the seat and stretched her paws against the side.
“When did you learn to fly?” she asked.
“Ten years ago. No, eleven.”
“You mean the war?”
“Joined the Army Air Service in the summer of 1917. Then—well, I guess you know the rest.”
By now, Irene had turned on her elbow to face him. Their arms were inches apart on the edge of the cockpit. Irene thought he didn’t look at all like the press photographs, the newsreels, where he grinned at the camera like the handsome daredevil he was supposed to be. Now he looked serious. He looked grim, like he was looking back on this career of his, as an inspiration to American manhood, and didn’t like what he found there.