19

 

Amelia

January 5 1980

 

WHEN THE SUBWAY doors opened, Amelia saw a man crouched by a wall. He was drawing with chalk. There were strange looking animals and a crude airship with flame spurting from its tail. It was the beginning of the story, but she wasn’t going to get to see the end. The doors shut, and they lurched off.

At one hundred and sixteenth street, she exited the train and walked upstairs to find the campus gates. They were much as she remembered them but other things had changed. New buildings dotted the quad. Still, Alma Mater ruled, gripping her staff. And there was Winston Barry, standing in front of the library. The woman with him wore quite a coat. Was it made of horsehide? Possibly. It was piebald, brown spots on a white background, and cut short to reveal her legs. Her bright red hair completed whatever this look was.

They went inside. Amelia followed at a distance. Luckily she was cautious, pulling back at the entrance when she saw them huddling together. She overheard an older woman chiding the pair. “Can’t you ever get anywhere on time?” The woman’s hair was dyed an unearthly orange, and her skin was the same hue. Still, Amelia recognized her. This was his Katherine. Industrialist’s heir weds society beauty the headline had read. A beauty no more, there was that.

“Let’s go,” Katherine Manning said sternly.

“And so it begins,” the woman with Winston, clearly her daughter, said, sotto voce.

Families. As always, they were a mystery.

The former almost child bride, Katherine, wore an elegant black dress and high heels. She was dressed for a soiree.

Amelia had devoured the stories; the new Mrs. Manning’s sublime figure, her mane of red hair, her peaches and cream complexion. Winston Manning’s choice had been purposeful. The girl was the opposite of Amelia in every possible way.

At the front of the room Winston hugged a young girl. She had to be his sister, Samantha. There was Muriel, shaking Katherine Manning’s hand. The plot thickens, Amelia thought, and then, the game’s afoot. She smiled.

 

AT THAT READING long ago when he’d handed her, her own book to sign, Winston Manning requested Amelia write something personal. She’d complied.

For Winston, may your life always be a grand adventure, AE.

Later that night, in their room at the Hotel St. Georges, he’d claimed he’d never stopping loving her.

“You’re married,” she’d said. “What’s that about then?”

“I made a mistake,” he said. “At least I can admit it.”

She didn’t respond. He couldn’t expect her to give up everything now. She was Miss Earhart. She’d gotten more attention than she’d ever dreamed of. But it wasn’t the attention that counted, it was what came with it, she could finally be who she wanted to be.

Within reason.

Sadly, there was always a catch.

Winston Manning had run his hands down her body and pushed her lightly backward onto the bed. Then he lay down and set his mouth against the tip of her nose. His hand caressed her cheek. “It is you,” he kept saying as his fingers unbuttoned the top button of her dress, then the next and the next. He smelled of aftershave and under that, the musky scent that was only his. Her dress was removed. His clothing. They were fully exposed. Years had passed but it seemed like nothing. He’d barely aged; a few more laugh lines in the corners of his eyes, but physically not much else had changed. Yet everything else was different. They were married to other people. Still, he was able to do what he’d been able to do before, stop her thinking, bringing her here, right here, into the urgency of now. And that was when she accepted that she was starving for him. They fell onto and into each other.

You’re lucky if you have one great passion in life, Amelia thought. But I got greedy. I wanted to have two.

 

THE MAN AT the front of the room leaned into the microphone. In response there was an ear splitting shriek.

Samantha Barry ran up to adjust it. She bore little resemblance to her brother. Her eyes were brown, his blue; her complexion tawny, almost Semitic, his pale, lily white.

The speaker thanked her a little too profusely. He wore corduroy trousers, a cardigan sweater, and an ardent moustache. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dr. Fabian Price. As chairman of Barnard’s Biology Department it is my great pleasure and privilege to be your host on this banner day. Today we give out our very first Amelia Earhart Award. This wonderful and prestigious scholarship is being given to one outstanding female undergraduate who has chosen to complete her pre-medical training here at Barnard. I know some of you may be as ignorant as I was about that part of Miss Earhart’s life. Most of us know of her exploits as a pilot. But before she conquered the air, she was a student right here at Columbia. She wished to go on to medical school and become a doctor. Miss Rachel Morrow, our generous benefactress, is a keen scholar of all that is Earhart, as well as a Barnard alumnae. It is her generosity that has made this award possible. Miss Morrow, would you stand?”

A woman with gray hair and a no-nonsense demeanor acceded to his demand. Amelia didn’t know her. There was a round of applause.

As it died down, he continued. “We are extremely lucky to launch this scholarship with a lecture. Amelia Earhart’s own sister has graciously agreed to come all the way from her home in Medford, Massachusetts, to be with us today. So without any further ado, our speaker, Mrs. Muriel Earhart Morrissey.”

Muriel took over at the podium. Amelia leaned back against the far wall, wondering what subject she’d finally settled on. Was it the story of the rat and the rifle, subtitled Murder Most Foul? Or the one that exposed her supposed bad behavior here at Barnard, or rather, above their heads on the roof? I’m likely in for it now, Amelia thought.

Muriel’s eyes swept the room without settling on any one person. Amelia recognized her own trick to calm the nerves. “Let me begin by congratulating the recipient of this award, Miss Samantha Barry.” There was a round of applause and a war whoop from the front. Amelia was positive Winston was the culprit. “I also wish to thank Professor Price for extending this most unexpected invitation. I’m most grateful to be here today. Finally, I want to give thanks to Miss Morrow, for her most generous support.” More applause.

Muriel paused to sip water. This was another way to still the panic. It was a sizable crowd, the room well past capacity, listeners spilling out into the hallway.

Muriel cleared her throat and finally launched in. “My sister Amelia would be pleased to have her name linked to this particular scholarship. Although she chose not to pursue a medical career, she had a keenly inquisitive mind. A scientific mind, really. Some of you may know about her project in our backyard. Amelia wanted to construct a working roller coaster. Unfortunately, she got only one good fast ride of it before our mother shut the project down. My older sister was also an amateur paleontologist. During an extended summer vacation, she found pieces of a cow’s skeleton bleaching in the sun and set herself the task of finding all the rest. By summer’s end, the entire animal was complete. Plus she’d discovered the cause of death, a broken neck. Amelia theorized wolves had chased it down. It made for a colorful story, but she was clear in her rationale. She always wanted to get to the truth of the matter. That was always Amelia’s goal. To figure out the why, and of course, the how.”

Amelia remembered that cow. Or what remained of it. She’d found stray bones in the field miles from their rented rooms on Lake Okabena. But she hadn’t flown solo during the reconstruction. Pidge was right beside her, working just as hard. It was Pidge who’d found the femurs and a tibia. But now she was talking about Toronto.

“I attended St. Margaret’s College in Toronto, Canada, for a year,” Muriel was saying. “Amelia arrived to spend Christmas vacation. It was at the end of the First World War. Wounded veterans filled the city. There was so much desperation, so much need. When there was someone in need, my sister’s first response was to try and help. Amelia enrolled in a Red Cross course and volunteered at a local hospital. This set her on the track that led to her year spent here, fulfilling pre-med requirements at Columbia.

“Unfortunately, there were financial considerations that made it impossible for her to complete her training and become a doctor. Amelia eventually settled on social work, a career she could work at without an expensive course of graduate study. She might have done that her whole life, but of course she would have deprived you of something marvelous. Luckily for you Amelia was never afraid of taking a risk. When she was offered an opportunity to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, she was well aware of the danger. She had better than even odds of crashing at sea. But Amelia knew it was a chance worth taking to make history. To lead, by example.”

Muriel was making it sound quite heroic. It had been in one way, and of course, wholly selfish in another. She’d left Muriel and Mother behind, telling herself they would learn how to cope if she plummeted to her death. She’d left Winston Manning, too, lying, to extricate herself, lying to get free.

Four years later in that hotel room, he’d demanded an answer. “Why did you marry that man? I hear from everyone he’s impossible. You can’t love him.”

“It’s complicated. And you’re one to talk. You with your child bride.”

“For one thing, she was twenty. That’s not a child. For another, you broke it off with me, not the other way round. I was well within my rights. Why didn’t you tell me? I would never have tried to stop you from going. I would have been thrilled for you. It was the kind of adventure we always talked of having. How could you underestimate me so badly?”

“I might have died,” she tried.

“We’ll all die,” Winston told her. “It’s how we live that matters, isn’t that what we both said?”

He was certain he was right, that he would have urged her to get into that plane and go. He had loved her passion, he argued, loved her for herself, never wanting some outdated notion of what a woman should be. Now they would start again, he insisted. He’d get a divorce. His wife wasn’t able to conceive. There were be no children. Katherine would let him go. She was unhappy, too.

“I doubt your wife would divorce you. She’s a strict Catholic.”

“I can’t go on like this,” he said. “Can you?”

She said the publicity would ruin him. He said, “I don’t care. But apparently you do.”

But she was never really afraid of that. It was what she couldn’t tell him, what she didn’t tell him. Amelia promised she would think about it and so they went on illicitly, meeting when they could and torturing each other when they couldn’t. He pushed her and pushed her and finally she promised that when she got back from the round the world flight they would get the divorces and be together.

Come live with me and be my love.

She’d lied. Or maybe she would have done it. Maybe she would have left G.P. and married him, after all. If he would have had her, once she told him the truth. Lucky I never got back, Amelia thought.  As kind a man as he was, it was hard to predict whether he would have forgiven her. The devil was always in the details. She’d been carrying his child when she got into that plane. And she’d known as much.

They say you only live once. That life is a gift. One was true while the other? It was grand, strolling down a city street, reading the faces of the passersby. Just being able to imagine their anonymous lives unfolding, the rooms they lived in, the dreams they clung to. Gazing into a shop window and seeing a mannequin dressed to the nines. There was so much pleasure to be gotten from something so simple. To listen. To touch. To be in awe of the mystery at the heart of this magnificent thing called life.

Courage is the price. Muriel had been right to ask her what it meant. To be honest, she wasn’t sure herself. She’d thought it sounded swell. That was the kind of word she’d used back then, swell. She’d been so young. The public saw her as courageous, risking her life whenever she flew. But it seemed such a small thing when she compared it to what Muriel had lived through, losing a father, a mother, a sister, a husband, a son, and finding a reason to go on. That took real courage.

Winston had lived on without her, too. Amelia winced, thinking of how the news might have come over the radio when her plane vanished. Then came the futile search and ultimately, acceptance that she was gone for good. He’d let her go. He’d let that part of himself go. But of course, there was a child. He’d held a baby in his arms and loved her and raised her. How could he have done anything else? He’d been a lovely man. A decent man. The sun rose every day in Medford, and in New York, and on an island in the Pacific, unnamed and unknown, where red tendrils of heat touched everything and made the air glow red, then orange, then a clean crystalline blue.

“There are a host of theories about Amelia’s last flight,” Muriel said. “I have no patience with most of them. My sister was neither a spy, nor a traitor. And she certainly didn’t use her round the world excursion as an excuse to escape her marriage, to disguise herself and live in sin in some other country. Nor is she living under an assumed name up in my attic.”

Amelia smiled. You’d be surprised.

“As a sister she was always with me whenever I needed her to be,” Muriel said. “My closest ally, my dearest friend.”

That was a stretch. She hadn’t been a good sister. She’d kept the most important thing from Muriel. And that horrible conversation they had. At Christmas, Amelia swept in, bearing gifts. Mother pulled her aside, whispering the less than happy news. Muriel was pregnant; how could they have a child? They had no money to spare to raise it with. Besides, their young marriage was already rocky. “Talk to your sister.  She’ll listen to you.”

Don’t ask me to do this, Amelia begged, but silently. She did as she was told and went into the kitchen.

Muriel turned. “Meely! How wonderful to see you. I didn’t think you could make it. Look at you.” She took a step back from the hug to give her a once over, “So stylish.”

“You look pretty great yourself.”

Muriel shrugged. They both knew she didn’t. She was worn down, worn out. She and Albert fought over everything. He didn’t want her to work. He didn’t want a career woman. He wanted the opposite of what he’d married, someone demure and predictable.

“I’ve heard your news,” Amelia said, rolling up her own sleeves to help. “That was fast.”

“That’s how it is sometimes,” Muriel said softly.

Amelia had no idea how to broach the subject politely. But it was her job. She’d been pressed into service. Or so she told herself.

“I thought you and Albert weren’t speaking to each other.”

“Do you have to be speaking?” Muriel let a rueful laugh slip out.

“You wrote you wanted to leave him. That you were going to come out and stay with me in California.”

Muriel shrugged. “I never liked California. I couldn’t wait to get out of there the first time.”

“But Mother says you haven’t told Albert you’re pregnant.”

Muriel shook her head. Amelia still could have held back. Could have let it go. But no, she plowed right ahead.

“It’s not for him you’re keeping the secret,” Amelia said. “It’s for you.”

“That’s not it.” Muriel lowered her voice. “I just thought it would be better to talk about the baby after we got through the holidays.”

Their heads were close. Passing secrets. “You don’t have to go through with this,” Amelia advised her.

Muriel pulled away and put her hands over her stomach, instinctually.

“I can arrange for it, if you want.”

The expression on Muriel’s face stung. She shook her head, hard.

Yet Amelia continued to press her. “I’m just trying to be practical,” she said.

“I couldn’t do that, Meely. I’ve thought it over. It’s fine in theory, but it’s not for me. Please, don’t bring it up again.” And Muriel swept out of the room.

It was awkward between them all the rest of the day. Only when Amelia was back in her car, driving to the plane, did she let herself break down. And cry. She wiped away the tears, angrily. Yes, she was a little jealous, which was absurd. What had it been anyway, just a mass of cells at that point, nothing more.

On the train to New York, on her way to that pivotal interview with G.P.  Amelia felt nauseated. She put it down to nerves. Then, once they’d chosen her, there was so much to prepare for. She could hardly draw breath. It took her ten full days to realize how late she was and note the changes in her body. That was when she used an assumed name and had a test. Yes, she was pregnant. How could it be? She’d been so careful. What bad luck it was. What horrendous timing.

Amelia thought of Winston Manning, and of what he might say. She came up with a thousand different ways of framing it, running through it again and again in her head. And then took the coward’s way out by breaking it off with him and not telling him she was pregnant. It was easier than arguing about it. And she told herself she would quite likely die at sea. He would never be the wiser. If she survived, she’d make up with him. She’d explain everything to him then. If she told him, she was afraid that he’d convince her. That he’d somehow prevent her from going.

When no one really could have done that.

Still, it was the story she told herself. And then she got into that plane. Flew across the ocean. Became “their” Amelia.

You have to make choices. You have to be savage about them sometimes. She’d gambled, and look at all she’d won. Once famous, she couldn’t find her way back. Maybe she didn’t really want to. She couldn’t have a baby and do all the things she suddenly was able to do. She couldn’t get into a plane and fly off when everything that having a child would be, would pull her back to earth. Maybe later on she would see her way clear to doing that, but not yet. She couldn’t do it yet. Not now when she was suddenly their Amelia.

She had to confide in someone. So she told G.P. He knew a doctor. Amelia would come up to his estate in Rye afterwards to recuperate. They’d say she was working on the book about her flight. Sharing that secret was likely part of why she gave in to him and married him. In one way, he did know her better than anyone. He knew what she was willing to do. What she’d given up to do it.

The Park Avenue doctor explained the procedure. How he would use dilation and curettage. She knew what that meant. He said there would be bleeding afterward. She should keep an eye on things. “I’ll be fine,” she said to him. And she was. What was done was done.

But then there was that horrible conversation with Muriel. Muriel was only defending herself. Muriel who could never understand why it had hurt so much, hearing her own sister say those words.