The Secrets of Flight by Maggie Leffler Read Free Book Online Page B

pestering Jean Fester to join the class to “get healthy,” to which Jean would reply, full of venom, “Do you know what it feels like to have your internal defibrillator go off when you’re not even having a cardiac arrest?” Selena eyed my Apple bag and said, “Well, well. Look who’s joining the twenty-first century and going online after all. Mary Browning, the others won’t believe it.”
    â€œOh, this? It’s for my great-granddaughter’s birthday. My grandson Tyler and my son Dave are visiting with Hazel and Josie next week. Dave hates to fly and insists on driving all the way from Seattle,” I added with an exasperated sigh. Selena’s eyes turned to slits, reminding me of a very perceptive cat.
    â€œWhere are they staying?” she asked.
    â€œThe Sunny Ledge.” The bus had zipped by the quaint little bed-and-breakfast that afternoon.
    â€œThe Sunny Ledge? They let children stay there?”
    â€œWell, the twins are very well behaved. It’s not as if anyone has to worry that they’ll wreck the place. Josie’s the only twelve-year-old I know who actually likes to sew, ” I added.
    Selena brought a finger to her lips and screwed up her eyes again, as if contemplating other preteens with an interest in thread. “How on earth did I forget that they were twins? Because I had twins, you know,” she finally said, as if I could’ve forgotten the tale of how Selena had single-handedly breastfed two babies, one on each side, when nursing was not the fashion, when, in fact, it was usually a sign of poverty. The only person who enjoyed that story was Gene Rosskemp, who said he never minded imagining Selena’s “gazoongas.”
    â€œYou should bring them to the group next Tuesday night,” Selena suggested.
    â€œThey’ll be gone before then. I really must go.” Oh, how I wished that Dave had forgiven me, and that they really were coming.
    â€œWhat was the name of that publishing house you worked for in New York?” she called after me. “I was trying to search for it online, and—”
    â€œI already told you,” I said, stepping onto the elevator, “it went out of business years ago.” When the doors finally shut, I shut my eyes and exhaled.
    Back inside my apartment, I set the Apple bag gently on the floor and fell into my recliner with a sigh, thinking that I used to be a better friend, back when I used to have friends, back when I was still Miriam Lichtenstein.
    Reaching over to my little bookshelf, my hand found its way to the picture in USA Today of the three women and the plane. Just looking at it again made the old impulse rise up—the one that made me want to take a black, permanent marker and blot out the name in the caption, Miriam Lichtenstein, keeping her safe in her anonymity.
    In the back of my bedroom closet, I pulled out an old shoe box before returning to the living room recliner once again. An hour passed as if a minute, as I rifled through the three-by-five photos inside: the one of Papa and Mama, leaning against his peddler’s fruit cart—Mama smiling in spite of herself, as if she can’t believe Papa’s laughing when disaster looms; Sarah and Elias, looking like Hollywood royalty after one of his performances; Sarah holding baby Rita on the front steps of the house on Beacon Street; and the one that takes my breath away: I amin my Santiago blue uniform standing with Thomas—the picture I mailed to my mother only months before she cut me off. Oh, Mama, did you have any regrets about me at the end? I wondered, a pointless question after all this time. Water under the bridge ; such a stupid cliché, I thought with a sigh. Especially in Pittsburgh, where the bridges are everywhere, each one arching over the water you thought you’d already left behind, your history always chasing you.
    At last, I found the one I was searching for: one of the