Her Last Flight(28)

“Was this the same birdie that told you where to find Sam’s wreckage?”

I zip my lips. “Enough about me and my birdies. I’m here, that’s all. I tracked you down, and frankly I’m surprised I was the first. It was all there, once you knew where to look. Spain to Paris to Newfoundland. Across Canada. Once the trail went cold in Vancouver, why, I just had to use my intuition.”

“And your intuition said Hawai’i?”

I held up my hand and ticked off the fingers. “It’s remote. It’s got some of the best surfing in the world. And it’s got sentimental value for you, doesn’t it? Your first flight together. Hawai’i’s where it all began.”

“My flying career, you mean.”

“Not just your flying career. You and Sam.” I reach for the ashtray, and her eyes follow me keenly. “Am I right?”

Lindquist sets down her coffee cup and rises from the chair. She walks to the edge of the lanai and holds her hand up to her brow, as if she’s looking for something out to sea. Her hair is dry now, curling softly around her ears. She sticks her other hand in her pocket and says, “You know, I never did understand why people cared more about this idea of romance between me and Sam than about the flight itself.”

“Don’t be na?ve. Of course they did. Sex is what makes the world go round. The human species wouldn’t survive without it. And when one of the parties happens to be already married . . . well. You can bet those newspaper editors were rubbing their hands with glee.”

She turns and moves her hand to the side of her face, fingering the scar. “Well, they were all wrong. I wasn’t in that airplane because I was in love with Sam. I was in that airplane because I wanted to fly, and Sam was the best pilot in the world.”

I stub out the cigarette, even though it’s only half finished. “You’re fooling yourself, sister. I’ve seen the photographs of the two of you. You’re goofy for each other.”

“Of course we had feelings for each other. We had a partnership, a friendship. But he was already married. He had a family. I understood that.”

“You might have understood that,” I say, “but I don’t believe Mallory did. He was always a bit of a ladies’ man, wasn’t he? That poor wife of his.”

Lindquist props her hands on the railing behind her and crosses her ankles. “Yes,” she says flatly. “His poor wife.”

“You don’t agree?”

She looks out to sea again and back. “Miss Everett, I wasn’t the only one who showed a different face to the world than the one I showed in private. Sam Mallory hid more of himself than I ever did. He gave more of himself, until he lost who he was, and I will never forgive myself that I cared so much about what the world thought, I let him go. I let him go to wander alone, right when he needed me most.”

Again she puts her hand to that scar on her face. Finally, I think. Finally we’re getting somewhere.

“But first, there was Hawai’i,” I suggest.

Lindquist pushes herself off the railing and walks back to me, except this time she plops herself right down on the wicker sofa, so close our knees knock together. I stare in horror at this point of incidental contact.

“I am going to tell you a story,” she says. “A story about a man and a woman who both married the wrong people.”





Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)





July 1928: California



In summer, the ocean current was considerably warmer, and dawn tumbled over the distant San Bernardino Mountains at about half past five o’clock. Irene liked to arrive at the beach before Sam did, though it took some discipline. Sam was an early riser, and he lived only a short way up the coast, in a tiny house overlooking the water.

But on the morning of the thirtieth of July, when Irene pulled over onto the shoulder of the road next to the beach, there was no yellow Nash parked there before her. When she emerged from the wooden shack in her surfing costume, it still hadn’t appeared. Nor did Sam arrive down the cliff path while she rode the waves, or when she came off the water and headed back up the hill into the full force of the sun, and Irene understood that he wasn’t coming this morning. Sometimes he didn’t. Some days he rose and drove straight for the airfield. Still, she would have liked to have a private moment with him, on this particular morning. She loitered another minute or two before she changed back into her dress and drove home.

By six thirty she had turned off Wilshire Boulevard onto Selby Avenue, where she lived with her father—when he was around—in a modest bungalow that encompassed two bedrooms and a clipped, rectangular lawn of tough grass. Out front, there was a lemon tree, on which Irene lavished most of her love and care. The houses on Selby all looked alike to Irene, so she aimed for the lemon tree and turned left into the short drive so she could park the Model T in the lean-to garage she’d built with her father last year.

This morning, however, the garage was already occupied. Irene reached down for the brake lever just in time. She stared at the curved rump of the car in front of her and rattled her thumbs against the steering wheel, until the engine, starved of fuel, started to sputter and miss its beats. She shut off the ignition and climbed out. The surfboard she removed carefully from the back and set in its place at the back of the garage, next to the workbench.