Betty Cavanna Page 6

  Rette frowned, wadded the sheet of paper into a ball, and tossed it to settle in the wastebasket on top of a congregation of its fellows. Then she sighed again, quite audibly.

  The sound was like a signal to Gramp. Rette could hear his chair scrape back and a second later his feet began their halting shuffle across the hall.

  “Working?” His voice was full of invitation and his eyes were hopeful as he popped his head in at Rette’s door.

  “Sort of.” Rette leaned back in her chair. “I’m trying to start this essay on flying, Gramp.”

  “Flying?” Gramp’s memory was short these days.

  Rette explained, while Gramp leaned against the doorjamb. “You really want to learn to fly, Lark?” he asked.

  Loretta nodded. “More than ever, now that I’ve been out to the airport.”

  “Like Tony.”

  “I guess so,” Rette admitted. “Do you think it’s funny, for a girl?”

  “No,” said Gramp at once. “No, of course not Girls drive cars, don’t they? What’s funny about that?”

  Loretta grinned. “Gramp, you’re wonderful!” It was comforting to know that in the eyes of at least one person, she could do no wrong.

  The old man came in and sat down on the edge of Rette’s high-post bed. His granddaughter swung around, straddling her chair.

  “Now what is it you have to write about?” Gramp asked.

  “‘The Dream of Flying,’” Rette repeated.

  “And how many times have you been to the airport?” Gramp asked.

  “Once.”

  “Not enough,” he said immediately. “You ought to go out and hang around awhile. You can’t get ideas sitting here cooped up in your room.”

  “But—but wouldn’t I feel silly?” Gramp was a person to whom Rette could speak her thoughts.

  “What if you do? Though I don’t see why you should. Talk to the fellas out there, the mechanics and all of ‘em. That’s what I used to do, when I was a boy—hang around the automobiles.” His eyes looked back over the years and he made a confession. I was crazy as a young loon about cars.”

  But Rette was already looking out of the window. The weather had become gradually warmer all week, until now, on Saturday, there was a softness in the air that betokened a false spring before the winds of March blew winter back again.

  “Got to soak up a subject,” Gramp was saying. “Got to be full of it.” He was sounding the death knell to his hopes for a pinochle game, but he was doing it for his favorite grandchild.

  Rette took his advice. She made herself a couple of sandwiches and ate them standing at the kitchen table before she got out her bike and pedaled to the airport. If she saw Mr. Irish, she promised herself, she’d ask him what he meant by his advice to the contestants. But it wasn’t Mr. Irish she ran into as she rode along the edge of the landing field. It was Jeff Chandler, who was leaning against the wheel of his own bicycle, watching with great interest a plane that was just turning to take off.

  Rette would have ridden right on past him, but Jeff turned at the crunch of wheels on the gravel road and said, “Hi,” as though he were surprised to see her there.

  “Hi,” Rette replied, then made the sort of inane remark which she despised in others. “Feel’s like spring, doesn’t it?”

  Jeff mumbled something affirmative and said, “If you had your choice, what kind of plane would you like to fly?”

  “Why, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought,” Rette replied quite truthfully. One small plane looked much like another to her.

  But Jeff, at such an admission, looked grieved. He turned back to watching the plane, which was now in the air, and Rette, interpreting this action as dismissal, rode on.

  Around the airport buildings, Rette found a good deal of activity. Several light planes had been wheeled out of the hangars, and mechanics in coveralls were working on them. A couple of men were sitting on the office steps, smoking and talking. A Bellanca was being gassed up almost directly in front of them, and as Rette leaned her bike against the porch she could hear one of them comment on it.

  “That’s Charlie Kenton’s plane, isn’t it?”

  The other man considered. “Yep, think it is. The Kentons are flying up to Newburgh for a wedding this afternoon.” He glanced at his watch. “Ought to be leaving about now.”

  He glanced back toward the office door, which was just opening, then nodded affirmatively to his friend. Rette watched while a young woman in a tweed suit, with a fur coat over her arm and a traveling bag in one hand, came out on the porch and squinted into the sun at the plane.

  The men on the steps stood up, and the woman nodded and smiled. “Beautiful flying weather,” she said happily. A minute later she was joined by her husband and Stephen Irish, with whom she seemed to be on friendly terms. Rette could hear her say as they walked to the plane: “Charlie’s got his top hat and his skis. We’re going on up to Vermont for a couple of days if the weather holds.”

  They were starting off with no more ado than if they had been going by car. Rette felt as though she were standing agape, from the sheer wonder of it. It was interesting, she reflected, that she had seen the same sort of thing in the movies dozens of times and had not been in the least impressed. But this Mrs. Kenton looked so normal and unaffected. And she was real flesh and blood, a person Rette could have reached out and touched. It made a difference, enough difference to set a thrill of excitement chasing down her spine.

  She watched the plane taxiing in shallow S-turns to the take-off point, heard the distant swelling of the motor, and followed the ship with her eyes as it rose with the easy grace of a gull, climbing and turning, the wings catching the bright winter sunlight. She shaded her eyes with her hand and followed its flight until it was a pin point in the distance. When she brought her gaze back to earth, Mr. Irish was standing a few yards from her.

  He nodded, and jerked his head toward the disappearing plane. “Romantic, isn’t it?”

  Rette agreed, marveling at his apparent ability to read her mind.

  He looked at her more closely. “Weren’t you here with the high-school group?”

  “Yes,” Rette told him, “I was.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Loretta Larkin.”

  “Oh, yes. Your dad’s in the real-estate business in town.” Rette nodded.

  “And you have a brother who flew in the war. Let’s see—”

  “Tony,” Rette told him. “He was with the 82nd Airborne.” She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice.

  Mr. Irish snapped his fingers. “Sure! I was certain that name rang a bell. Is he still flying?”

  “Just with the Reserve. He’s got a job with an oil company, selling.” It seemed to Rette that she was always telling somebody or other this dismal fact.

  “You sound dismayed.” Mr. Irish was grinning now.

  “I guess I am, a little. It’s like you said—flying’s a romantic sort of business. Oil’s—well—dull.”

  Now the man laughed out loud. “Some of the boys in the West would be pretty surprised to hear you say that,” he told Rette. Then he started up the office steps. “I’d better get back to work or I’ll be fired,” he said over his shoulder. Then, at the door, he looked back again. “You out here picking up atmosphere?” he asked with amusement.

  Rette flushed. “Well, sort of.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Help yourself,” Stephen Irish told her. “Ramble around. Ask questions if you can find anybody to answer ‘em. Just saw another one of your gang back by the supply room. Nice-looking boy. Tall. I don’t know his name.”

  “That’s Jeff Chandler,” Rette told him, but he was already closing the door.

  Rette wandered around, but she didn’t ask questions. She just looked. When she saw Jeff in the distance, she deliberately avoided him, because she was sure that if they got into conversation again she’d say something else to give her away as an ignoramus. Jeff probably knew the names of planes the way some boys kn
ow the name of every car on the road.

  It was obvious that Jeff didn’t share Rette’s reluctance to talk to the mechanics. She saw him in conversation with several of the men, and more often than not he seemed to have his head poked into the cockpit or under the fuselage of a plane. She had a feeling that he was asking intelligent questions, and it rather worried her. After a while she decided to go home.

  It was so warm by now that she took off her mittens and tossed them into her bicycle basket. She even unbuttoned her reversible coat and let it hang loose, with the plaid lining a bright streak of color against her dark-green sweater and skirt. She pedaled along the road that led back to Avondale in a leisurely fashion, humming to herself and rather glad to be alone in the welcome sunshine. She was just turning into King Street when Jeff passed her, riding fast. He waved to her over his shoulder, seemed to brake as though he were about to pull in and wait for her, then apparently thought better of it and rode on.

  At the next corner, where Cherry Tree Road cut in at an angle, Rette caught up to Jeff again. He was walking now, balancing his bicycle with one hand as he talked to Elise and Judy, who were apparently headed downtown. Both girls were laughing, and Elise was nodding knowingly.

  “Apple-polishing! Isn’t that what they called it in the Army? A fine thing!” Rette heard her say.

  “Nothing of the sort!” Jeff retorted, not in the least daunted by Elise’s teasing. Then he caught sight of Rette out of the corner of his eye. “You can ask Rette Larkin! She’s the one who was making time with Irish. All he did when he saw me was grunt.”

  Rette pulled up, ready to contradict him with the best grace she could muster, but blushing in spite of herself.

  “Loretta!” Judy squealed before she could open her mouth. “You sly thing! Pretending you don’t like boys and then cottoning up to Mr. Irish!” She shook a remonstrative finger and struck a pose.

  Jeff, quite ready to pass the buck, winked with great meaning and said, “That’s right!”

  The girls were being absurd, and Rette knew it. They didn’t mean to be unkind, particularly, but on the other hand it didn’t concern them to sense that she was embarrassed. There was only one way to handle the situation cleverly. It was her cue to make a flip retort and laugh it off.

  “But naturally!” Elise would have said in her place. “Older men are just my dish!” She would have ridden away with a fillip and the echo of amused laughter in her ears.

  But Rette wasn’t Elise. With every passing second she felt less and less able to cope with such raillery. Everybody in Avondale High knew that the boys automatically passed Rette Larkin by. Even joking about a hypothetical crush on the glamorous Mr. Irish was, Rette felt, making her look ridiculous. While she sat on the saddle of her bike, rowing along with one foot on the curb and a grin frozen on her face, she could feel hot resentment rising in her throat until it threatened to choke her. Any chance to save the day was lost.

  “I don’t really blame her,” Elise was saying to Jeff and Judy in the same light, teasing tone. “Stephen Irish is just about the most attractive character in these-here parts. Give, Rette. What’s your technique? Do you go all soft and starry-eyed or do you treat him like a brother?”

  Rette was really on the defensive now. Fury was replacing resentment, and she knew that her eyes had hardened and her jaw had set.

  “Don’t be simple-minded,” she snapped, her husky voice sounding rough and boyish. “Mr. Irish doesn’t even know my first name.”

  “He does too!” Jeff crowed, goaded on because she had risen so beautifully to the bait. “I heard you tell him. I was walking right behind you, so I know!”

  Rette shot him a look of pure venom, while the girls burst into laughter.

  “Rette!” Judy chided, and waggled her finger again.

  But Rette was riding away.

  “O Rette, don’t be mad! We were just teasing,” Elise called after her, but she didn’t look back. She stood on her pedals and raced up Cherry Tree Road without dignity, hating herself for turning tail but hating Jeff and Elise and Judy even more.

  They were childish. They were stupid. They were deliberately turning a knife in the very spot they knew to be vulnerable. She gave them no benefit of the doubt, as a less intense person might have. Her cheeks beet red with shame and anger, she slammed her bike against the side of the garage and fled through the back door and up the kitchen stairs to the solace of her own room.

  Gramp, who had been dozing, heard her. He came to the closed door but refrained from opening it.

  “Lark,” he called, “you home?”

  Rette’s reply was affirmative but muffled.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Oh, swell fun!”

  Rette did her best to sound normal, and hoped that Gramp couldn’t detect the edge of bitterness in her voice.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For a week of nights Loretta worked as she had never worked before. She let her homework slide while she concentrated on the essay. She wrote and rewrote. In disgust she tore up what she had written and tried again.

  She outlined elaborately, trying to give her writing some structure. Then she worked with stern concentration on her phrasing, searching for just the right word to interpret a thought, spending precious half hours with the dictionary, doing her utmost to create a better than average job, a composition that would impress the judges, an essay that would win!

  Finally, she typed the completed manuscript laboriously on her father’s old portable Corona, making it look neat and professional, to Gramp’s delight.

  “At-a-girl, Lark!” he commended her. “Do it up brown.”

  Meanwhile, life at school and home slid past Loretta as water past a stone in a slow-flowing brook. She put the incident that had followed the excursion to the airport out of her mind, but she went to some pains to avoid Elise and Judy. Jeff she didn’t especially condemn.

  The closing date for the essay contest was March 15, and Rette still had ten days’ leeway when she typed, “Loretta Larkin, 120 Cherry Tree Road, Avondale,” at the top of her cover sheet. She wasn’t displeased with the manuscript. It was knowledgeable, almost erudite, for a girl of sixteen. Only one thing bothered her. It didn’t seem to have much life.

  She showed it to her mother, and Mrs. Larkin read it carefully. “You’ve certainly done a lot of research,” she said.

  She showed it to Gramp, who was keenly interested, but she didn’t get a very encouraging response. “I don’t know, Lark,” he said apologetically. “I’m an old fellow. It sounds very dressed-up and impressive, but there’s a lot that doesn’t really mean much to me.”

  Rette wanted to show it to Tony, but she was strangely bashful. Anything she could possibly write about flying seemed so trivial. She was afraid he’d laugh at her, or, worse yet, patronize her, although he never had.

  One thing continued to bother her. The phrase “within your own world” was like a haunting refrain in her mind. She didn’t think her carefully polished efforts quite met those specifications, but then she didn’t understand quite what the caution meant.

  On Sunday night, a week from the day Rette had started serious work on the essay, Ellen Alden came to supper as Tony’s guest.

  It was a night of storm, with snow spatting against the windows and the consequent sense of warmth and coziness within. Tony had built the fire in the living room himself, hauling in extra wood to bank in the basket that stood beside the brick hearth. The table was laid with green linen, and there were white candles in the Victorian, grape-wreathed candelabra. Gramp had put on his newest smoking jacket, a Christmas present from the family.

  “Got to do Tony proud,” he said, brushing at his lapels. “Means something, to be bringing home a girl.”

  Rette’s eyebrows lowered a little. “What does it mean?” She sounded so contentious that Gramp felt abashed.

  “In my day,” he said, “it meant you were introducing her to the family. But maybe times have changed.”

&n
bsp; Rette didn’t want to like Ellen Alden. She would have denied any feeling of jealousy, yet buried within her was a desire to keep Tony for the family, for herself, not to share him with some strange girl.

  Yet when Ellen came through the front door, smiling and clapping the snow from her white fur mittens, tugging at the cord that fastened her hooded coat, she was so alive and so winning that Rette could feel her truculence die.

  “Here,” she offered, holding out her hands for the coat, “let me take that.”

  Ellen captivated the entire family, Gramp included. There was a naturalness about her, as Tony had said, that put everyone at ease. It wasn’t until after supper that Rette happened to get into conversation with her alone. Then the two girls found themselves clearing the table together while Mrs. Larkin stacked dishes in the kitchen and Tony went out for more firewood.

  “Tell me,” Ellen said, “did Tony like the book?”

  “I think so,” Rette replied. “He’s been reading it, off and on. But I don’t think he has finished it yet.”

  Ellen nodded. “It’s a book to read slowly,” she said.

  “I’ve read parts of it,” Rette said. “It’s different.”

  Ellen turned back to the table from putting the silver salt dishes on the buffet. “It is,” she agreed. Then she smiled again. “I remember the day you came into the bookstore—and the wind blew the door out of your hand.”

  “Don’t remind me!”

  “You wanted so much to find just the right book. You were so earnest and so pretty, with your big dark eyes and that bright bandanna—” Ellen paused, “Why, what’s the matter?”

  Rette couldn’t explain that her mouth had dropped open from sheer astonishment. Nobody, except Gramp, had called her “pretty” for as long as she could recall.

  “Nothing,” she covered clumsily, picking up the candle snuffer. “I was just amazed that you’d remember me at all.”

  A few minutes later Ellen proposed, “Let’s us do the dishes, Rette,” and persuaded Mrs. Larkin out of the kitchen, so that Rette and she were alone again.