The Game of Love and Death(25)

The look she gave made it clear she’d brook no argument. Flora surrendered. She’d accept the money to make Nana feel better, but she’d never use it. She’d slip it back into the canister later, when Nana wasn’t looking. As much as she wanted to fly, she wouldn’t take a cent from her grandmother. She couldn’t. This wouldn’t be enough, anyway. She could hardly bear the thought of the many things that stood between her and her dream of flying around the world. First, she’d need enough money to enter the Bendix. Then, she’d need to persuade Captain Girard to lend her a plane. After that, she’d need to win, and even when she did, the purse still wouldn’t be enough money for a plane of her own, let alone fuel and a navigator’s salary for the grand trip. It was enough to make Flora want to yank out her own hair. She ate a few bites of breakfast, though she no longer had much stomach for it. Then she led Nana to a comfortable seat in the parlor, as far from the dishes as she could get.

“Bring me my quilt, lamb. I am so close to finishing,” Nana said.

While her grandmother hummed and sewed, Flora cleaned the kitchen. As she did, she remembered something she hadn’t thought of in years: that day Charles Lindbergh came to town. That boy who almost hit her with his bicycle. As she scrubbed the pan, she wondered what became of him. There was something so likable about the boy who’d walked her home when he didn’t need to, who was so happy to eat Nana’s gingerbread. And he was so eager to tell her what it was like to shake Mr. Lindbergh’s hand; it had given her the feeling that she’d done it too.

Though this boy was still a child in her memory, he’d be almost grown now. She tried to imagine what he’d look like, and the face that came to mind was Henry’s. No doubt because he’d watched her perform so often at the club, he was fresh in her mind. A bit irritated by his intrusion into the quiet of her mind, she turned her thoughts to other things: a thousand errands to run, a million things to do before work that evening.

She bathed and dressed, and on her way out, she took one last look at the ball of flame that had once been the biggest thing to ride the clouds — and then she put it out of her thoughts. It was a tragedy, but it was all the way across the country. Such a disaster wasn’t in the cards for her. She saw no reason to waste energy on worry.





AN apple. An apple that has been plundered by a worm. That’s what Ethan’s cousin Helen Strong thought of herself. There was something wrong with her, something on the inside. How had everyone else grown up clean and pure? she wondered. How dare they? This bewildering resentment made her prone to lash out at everyone around her. She did not want to be like this, but she could not figure out any other way to be.

And it had been a bad couple of weeks. Helen didn’t regret the incident at the debutante ball. Jarvis Bick deserved to be kneed in a certain trouser seam, particularly when he told her no one would marry her after he walked in on her kissing Myra Tompkins in the coat closet — just when the getting had started getting good. (Myra had the sweetest mouth. Like fresh cherries.)

Helen had never wanted to be married in the first place, but how dare he say such a thing. It was his fault she was being shipped west to be dangled like a piece of chocolate in front of icky old Ethan. Let’s just say there was a reason she’d intended to be blind drunk and irredeemably late for her train. She’d wait in the Kissing Room beneath the Biltmore Hotel in Grand Central Terminal until the last possible moment and see what happened.

“I’d rather be dead than doing this,” she muttered. She glanced up. Someone who looked exactly like her, right down to the polka-dot travel suit, looking altogether too pleased to see her. Helen took a drink from a pewter flask she kept in her pocketbook. She squinted and tried to fix whatever was wrong with her eyes.

Her second self didn’t scram like a good little hallucination. Instead, she sat next to Helen, removed her gloves, and held Helen’s hand. Something flowed out of her. Something heavy and awful she was glad to be rid of.

“Follow me,” the Other Helen said.

Helen was delighted to. It felt good, what had just happened. What had been troubling her before? She could not remember. They walked beneath Grand Central’s soaring turquoise ceiling with its strange backward constellations. A lone helium balloon pressed against the stars. The women approached the track, and the rumble of the approaching train shook the ground beneath their feet. It pushed a gust of cool wind toward them, stirring their hair, lifting their hems. Helen put a hand on her forehead and stumbled. Other Helen wrapped an arm around Helen’s waist.

“This,” Helen said. “I don’t … what?” It was all so confusing.

They stood at the edge of the track. The wheels of the oncoming train squealed in the distance. The woman turned to face her. It was strange, seeing herself in someone else like this. But it was also wonderful, almost as if she might finally be understood. She extended her hand to touch her reflection. They stood, palm to palm. Helen’s knees buckled and the woman, her eyes white, held her gaze. Helen felt her life drain away; she saw scenes from her own past travel through the eyes of this strange other.

And then she stood on the platform in numb confusion as a woman who looked like someone she ought to know boarded the train.

The girl — what was her name? — could not remember what she was doing there. Where she had meant to be going. She remembered nothing of her future plans, but also none of her past sorrows. Not even the look of her own face.