Her Last Flight(76)

“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—”

“Oh, George, no!”

“I’ve got to, Irene.” He unslung his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt. “I don’t think we’ve sold a quarter of the tickets. Something’s missing. We need something fresh, we need to do something to get everyone’s attention back. We had the derby, and then you crashed out—”

“Crackups happen, George. It’s part of the business.”

“Well, the timing wasn’t the greatest.”

“Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I should be quitting that game. Half my friends are dead or maimed. Sam’s going to get himself killed any minute—”

“His own damned fault. That fellow wants to get killed, if you ask me.”

“And why is that, do you think?” Irene snapped.

George was arranging his shoes in the dressing room. He kept them in neat, straight rows, polished, shaped by wooden shoe trees so the leather wouldn’t shrink. In an earlier age, he would have hired a valet to help maintain all this order, but these were modern times and George had this idea that an over-reliance on household staff was bad form. Still, the care and ordering of shoes was important and not to be rushed. Irene’s words hung in the air for a moment before George emerged from the dressing room. He spoke calmly, because he always spoke calmly, even when he had asked her to marry him, as if every word must be delivered in a speech.

“That was eight years ago, Irene. The problem’s not that Sam Mallory married an alcoholic bitch with a narcissism complex. The problem’s what I told you. He’s impulsive. He takes risks, and it’s only gotten worse as his career’s gone downhill, the way I said it would. It’s a terrible shame, I don’t take any joy in being proved right, but there you have it. He’s a lost soul, and there was nothing you could have done to save him, not eight years ago and not now, even if things had worked out between the two of you. You made the right choice, Irene. You wouldn’t have had this career if you’d spent the last decade hitched to Sam Mallory.” He made a gesture to the room around them. “You wouldn’t be Irene Foster anymore. You’d be Irene Mallory.”

“Irene Foster is your invention, not mine,” she said.

George stood in his underwear in the middle of the room and stared at her in bewilderment. “My invention? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve devoted my life to your career.”

“Yes, you have. And sometimes I just want to be a wife, that’s all.”

Now he was astounded. “A wife? You? I thought that was the last thing you wanted. I thought you wanted to fly airplanes and make a life for yourself. Now you want to set all that aside and become a housewife?”

“Of course not. That’s not what I mean at all.”

George turned around and went back in the dressing room. He emerged a moment later in a pair of crisp blue and white striped pajamas.

“All right, we’re not dizzy in love like some couples,” he said. “But that’s what you wanted, remember? You yourself said not to expect kisses and hummingbirds all day long, that we were free to love other people if we wanted to, and haven’t I respected that? I understand about Sam. I don’t play the jealous husband.”

“Well, maybe I wish you would, once in a while.”

“I don’t get it. Aren’t you happy?”

“I don’t know if I’m happy. What’s happy, anyway? I just think I need a change, that’s all.”

“Look,” he said. “We’ve been planning this thing for years. If I can pull it off, this round the world flight, then we can sit down and decide what’s next. If you want to quit flying and start a family, why, we can do that. Just tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen.”

What Irene wanted to tell him was this. She wanted to tell him that she hated going on lecture tours and posing for magazines and manufacturing these so-called landmark flights, in which she was some kind of circus performer doing feats, and each feat had to be more daring and dangerous and record-breaking than the last or nobody cared.

She wanted to tell him that she had no idea what lay beyond this solo circumnavigation that had consumed them both since the very beginning of their professional association. She wanted to do it; there was no question about that. She longed to fly around the world by herself; it was the culmination of everything she’d worked for. But she also felt terrified of it. Because once she had accomplished this last, this greatest goal, what did she have left? What was the point of flying anymore?