The Secrets of Flight Read Online Free Page B

Hyman says that girls don’t belong in the cockpit of an aircraft. The path of my life has been laid out for me with the precision of a hemline: I’ll live in the house on Beacon Street, and work in the family shop mending and making dresses. No one seems to care that I don’t know how to sew.
    â€œThere are savings.” Mama stops pacing to study her hand for a moment—at the chip of a diamond on her finger, which I realize she must be intending to hock. When she looks over at me, I’m surprised to notice the new wisps of white and gray in her dark hair that frames her face. “Just not enough for both of you girls.”
    â€œBut then that won’t be fair.” Sarah is nearly twenty to my sixteen. If anyone should get the chance to go, she should be first.
    â€œSarah never cared about school. She spends her pocket money on clothe s,” Mama says with disdain, which is ironic considering our family livelihood depends on such consumerism, albeit cheaper frocks than the ones Sarah saves for. “She’s a dreamer, ” Mama adds. “She picked a starving artist.”
    I think of Elias, with his equal penchant for scotch and comedy, particularly that of the Marx Brothers. “Emily, I have a little confession to make,” he likes to say, being Hackenbush from A Day at the Races, as he wraps an arm around my giggling sister. “I’m actually a horse doctor. But marry me, and I’ll never look at any other horse.” His eyes are cerulean, his smile devilish, and he’s nothing like the type of man we imagined, specifically Dickon from The Secret Garden, charmer of animals and healer of the lame, a character whom we both adored as girls. “He seems to really love her,” I offer.
    â€œLove!” Mama scoffs, throwing up a hand. “What do they know about love? They have no money and no education.”
    As my mother resumes her pacing again, I imagine starring in my own real-life version of a Kitson Career Series novel, the ones Sarah and I check out from the library where the young woman always moves to a new city to start a career, only in my story, it’s not a man who’s going to sweep me off my feet when I arrive. It’ll be an airplane.
    I’ VE WANTED TO FLY SINCE WE LIVED BACK IN F REELAND, SINCE A pilot dropped into our backyard and stayed for dinner ten years ago. It was a Friday, which meant Mama was preparing for Shabbat, and Sarah was cooking up an adventure. “Meet me outside, by the tree. And don’t let them see you!” Sarah opened our bedroom door a crack before inching it wider. Then she gave me a smile and slipped away.
    Cradling my doll Molly and peering out the window, I waited in our room until, eventually, Sarah ran across the backyard in the fog. I saw her scrambling up the planks Papa had nailed to the twisty trunk of the apple tree. Then she climbed higher and her long legs disappeared inside the branches. I put Molly on the night table next to Sarah’s copy of The Secret Garden and tiptoed downstairs. Unlike the workaday week, when Papa was out peddling crops from our half-acre garden, he was reading in the front room and smoking his pipe. I loved the smell of his pipe and just knowing he was home, relaxing—unlike Mama, who hit him with a dish towel and yelled, “Up! Up!” if she found him in his chair too long.
    In the kitchen, Mama was braiding the challah on the counter. I could smell the meaty cholent in the oven. Whenher head whipped around, I was already crouched under the table. “Sarah?” Mama called. “It’s time to help! Miri, come and set the table!” she added, yelling over her shoulder. Then she walked out of the kitchen with an exasperated sigh.
    As soon as she was gone, I ran out the door and into the backyard. By then it was so foggy that I could barely see the apple tree on the edge of the yard. I thought of the evening when the mist rolled in so