Her Last Flight(82)

The windows were open to the sea breeze, and the door to the little stone terrace. The same two deck chairs sat in the same proximity, like the promenade deck on an ocean liner, Sam asleep in one of them. As Irene cooked an omelet, she could see the top of his head from the kitchen window. She had laid a blanket over his legs while he dozed. She thought he had broken an ankle or something; he wore a cast over his foot that went halfway up his calf. When the omelet was finished, she divided it in half and put the halves on two plates; she poured a whiskey and soda for Sam and plain soda water for herself and brought everything out on the terrace, which was now dark beneath a black sky dazzling with stars.

Sam was already awake. The omelet and whiskey amazed him. “Just like we used to make,” he said.

Irene sat down in the other deck chair with her plate and her glass of soda.

“I don’t mean to imply anything untoward,” said Sam, cutting into his omelet, “but does your husband know you’re here?”

“He’s on his way to New York.”

“He didn’t get the news about Fort Worth?”

“No, it’s about publicity.” She hesitated and told him about the flight, the solo circumnavigation. He let out a low, slow whistle.

“That’s some flight. But then you always did have sand. More sand than anybody I ever met. Remember how you landed on Howland?”

“That was you,” she said. “You were the one who wouldn’t let me turn yellow.”

He finished his whiskey. “Why did I do that? I don’t know why I did that.”

Irene took his empty glass and hers and went to the liquor cabinet to refill them both. When she returned to the terrace, Sam had finished his omelet and lit a cigarette. The wind tufted his hair around the bandages. He looked a little bit like a bandit, and she told him so.

“A bandit? That’s funny.”

Irene said, “I heard about your wife.”

“You mean that she isn’t my wife? Years and years of refusing me a divorce, and then she splits for Reno with Pixie. Divorce papers arrive in the mail.”

“That must make it hard to see your daughter.”

“Irene,” he said, “Pixie hates me. Sends my letters back unopened. Not that I blame her. I was a chump. I wanted Bertha to hate me enough to kick me out, and I wound up hurting my own daughter instead.”

Irene thought of her father on his rocking chair. “You have to keep trying. You can’t give up.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m done.”

“Done with what?”

He took a long drag on his cigarette.

“Have you ever wondered if maybe you got it all wrong from the beginning? That you somehow started off in the wrong direction, and everything you did since, every step, it was all the opposite way from where you meant to go?”

The stars blinked sleepily above them. Irene turned to Sam, whose throat worked and worked. Irene tried to speak too. Sam got there first.

“It’s been coming on for a while. Bit by bit, ever since I got back from Australia. Bertha was still in the hospital. I’ll never forget the expression on her face. Like she’d won some game of chess or something. Trapped me in a tiger pit. And there was nothing I could do to escape, because of Pixie. Because she was Pixie’s mother. Whatever move I made to grasp some straw of joy, she would counter it. I thought, I can’t do this. I just can’t go on.”

“But you kept going. You kept on flying.”

“It was the only thing I knew how to do, the only way I could support my daughter. So I flew, because I had to fly, but when I got into an airplane I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. The only thing that kept me alive was Pixie, because she needed me.”

“Oh, Sam—”

“I just—I have nothing left, Irene. Nothing. Last weekend, in that air show, I went through my routine, you know, cut everything a little close. Gave them a good show for their money. About halfway through, I just knew. I was through. It was time to either break free or die. And I thought there was only one way to do it so I wouldn’t get the chance to back out.”

Irene put her face in her hands.

“Not to kill myself. Crash the ship, that was all, so I couldn’t go up again. I know how to crash, you know. Used to do it all the time for the movies. God knows the crowd loves it. That’s what they’re really there for, to watch somebody crack up. I did it right at the end, when I came in for the final landing.” He finished off the last ounce of whiskey and soda and made a motion with his hand. “Clipped the ground with my right wing, turned a nice cartwheel. Bang.”

Irene dropped her hands and stared at him. There was nothing to say, even if she could remember how to talk. Sam raised the cigarette to his mouth, and the end flared orange in the darkness.

“Irene,” he said, “it’s all right. I’m here, aren’t I?”

From the darkened beach came a scream of drunken laughter. Neither of them moved. Irene remembered her soda water. She lifted it to her lips and drank it all, and when she was finished she could speak again.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going away for a while.”

“Where?”

“Maybe Europe. They could use me in Spain, I’m thinking.”