Her Last Flight(40)
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Because she’s been through hell already, and she’s got the kindest heart in the world, and I know Mallory meant the world to her. I don’t want her having to relive all that. It’s in the past.”
“I appreciate your concern for her, Leo. I really do. But she agreed to speak to me. I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t. I told her exactly what I wanted from her, and she said yes. She wants the story told. She wants the truth told. And sure, sometimes it stings a little, when you bring up all the old memories. Like lancing a boil, as they say. But in the end, we all feel better when the truth is out there in plain sight. Nobody likes a secret.”
“That’s a cute speech, Janey. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t realize you’d asked one.”
“Can you promise me you won’t hurt her? And I don’t mean lancing some damn boil. You know what I mean. If you use her the way you used me—”
“Believe me, I won’t do that. Not unless she invites me, anyway.”
He brings his fist down on the table, hard enough that the wine sloshes in its glasses. “You tell her the truth and nothing but the truth. So help you God. That’s what I’m saying. You come to her clean. She gets to decide what she tells you and doesn’t tell you.”
I spit in my palm and hold it out to him. “Promise.”
He stands up and clasps my hand. “All right, then.”
His grip is strong. He doesn’t pull back, and neither do I. We stare at each other across the table. From somewhere upstairs comes the sound of a child calling Maaaama!
“You’re staying in the guest cottage, is that right?” Leo says.
“That’s right.”
He nods and releases my hand. “I’ll walk you back.”
If you’re thinking Leo has any designs on me, now that we’ve reached our little accord, you’d be wrong. We walk across the lawn in silence, though I’m crackling with electricity. When we reach the door, he stops. He must have gone home first before he came to dinner, because he’s changed out of his sea uniform and now wears a white shirt and pressed trousers, a navy blazer, a plain blue tie, none of which I can make out in the darkness. Just the reflection in his eyes of the lights from the main house.
I touch his fingers. “I don’t suppose you had time to stop at the drugstore, while you were in Honolulu?”
He pulls the hand away and gathers it inside the palm of the other one, behind his back. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time. Good night, Janey.”
He turns and starts to walk back across the lawn.
“You were lying, then,” I call after him. “You do have hard feelings.”
He stops and turns back to me. “I wasn’t lying to you, Janey. I understand you better than you think. I just think it’s best if I stand back a little, from now on. Sometimes you have to keep watch from a distance or you don’t see things as clear as you should.”
So he walks away, and it’s strange to see. It wasn’t supposed to hurt.
Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett
July 1928: Honolulu
We forget, don’t we? We are seduced by the ease of airliners today, the punctilious way they make their rounds, like milkmen. We forget what a feat it was to cross the Pacific from California to Hawai’i, what a test of equipment and ingenuity, of mechanical skill and navigational skill, of pure luck, of courage most of all. We forget how dazzled we were by those with the guts and the ability to make these flights. How we worshiped them as heroes, and by worshiping warped them into something else. Poor Irene. Poor Sam. By the time the Centauri’s wheels kissed the Hawaiian ground and rolled to a stop, it was already too late. They could not turn back. They could not foretell that in that instant, their old lives had been picked up, side by side, by a giant wave that was hurtling them onto an uncharted shore.
Two known photographs still exist of the gala dinner in Honolulu on the night of July 31, 1928, celebrating the safe arrival of Sam Mallory and Irene Foster on the first leg of their landmark flight to Australia.
In the first photo, Sam hands Irene out of the rear seat of the Hispano-Suiza limousine that delivered them from the Moana Hotel. He’s wearing a tuxedo, she’s wearing the evening gown provided for her by George Morrow, a long, pale, gauzy confection made especially by a Hollywood costume designer, whose name is now lost to history. Sam’s left hand holds her left hand, and his right hand disappears at the small of her back. Despite this physical contact, there seems to be no particular intimacy between them. Their faces point toward the crowd, to the various municipal officials and local business bigwigs, not toward each other. Sam Mallory is simply a gentleman helping a lady from the back of an automobile. This photograph was reprinted in hundreds of newspapers across the United States and even around the world, and nobody had the nerve to suggest—at least in print—that there was anything untoward about their association.
In the second photo, which was recently discovered in the archives of the Associated Press, Irene stands at the podium, flanked by the territorial governor on one side and Sam on the other. She speaks into the giant microphone. Her expression is both passionate and exhausted. Her eyebrows form sharp, eager peaks. Her hands grip the lectern on each side. To her left, Sam Mallory stares up at her with an absorption that might be interpreted as surprise, or rapture, or merely an intense interest in what his flying partner had to say that evening. Whatever this expression meant, however, it wasn’t indifference. It was not gentlemanly concern. If you were Mrs. Sam Mallory and opened up your early-edition newspaper on August first to find this photograph instead of the one that actually appeared there, the one taken outside the Hispano-Suiza, you would have excellent cause to drop your cup of morning joe and say to yourself, Uh oh.