An Impossible Distance to Fall Read online

  The burn of tears left her eyes. She felt empty, thin skin stretched over fragile supports. From the right angle the setting sunlight would shine right through her.

  Birdie pulled herself up slowly, stuffing the picture and the flask into her coat pocket. She levered herself out of the cockpit and onto the wing. She grasped the top of one of the bars and leaned away. Slowly, she let her weight swing her around the bar, ducking under one wire while stepping over the next. She caught the next strut and swung around that. Swooping one way, then the other. It was like waltzing, three little steps between each bar. Nothing calmed her like dancing. Nothing else made all the hard stuff fade away. Movement filled every pore of her body and corner of her mind and she could slip into that perfect joy when there was nothing else but that moment. For the past two months, dancing had been the only time she’d felt like herself. As she closed her eyes and imagined she was up in the air, just like Darlena, her sadness dropped away like she’d just lifted off. Dad was on the boardwalk below, applauding her pluck and charm. The struts were partners passing her back and forth. One-two- three, one-two-three—

  But Dad would prefer a song that Gilda-from-Chicago might sing, something fun and snappy, to a boring old waltz. Eyes still closed, Birdie changed the tune in her head to a Charleston beat. She did a couple of Jay-Bird steps, flipping her hands back and forth. She could feel the edge of the wing under her toes, but she kept her eyelids screwed shut. She tossed her hair like Darlena had done, imagining she was daring death way up in a bright sky.

  “DUN dun-da-dun, DUN dun-da-dun—” said a strange voice, singing a Charleston riff.

  Birdie opened her eyes with a gasp, her hand grasping for empty air as her toe caught a wire and she pitched off the wing. She landed heavily, sand stinging her palms and knees.

  The man—tattoo-girl had called him Bennie—grinned down at her. “Good thing the plane’s grounded, huh?” he said, offering her a hand.

  Birdie scrambled to her feet without taking it. “Good thing,” she said shortly, wiping her burning palms against her coat.

  Behind him, the dark-haired girl pilot was smiling. “I was just picturing what that woulda looked like a hundred feet up. Before the spill—pretty dang good, I’d imagine.”

  Birdie couldn’t tell if the girl was complimenting or mocking her, but the empty space inside her filled up with embarrassment.

  “Keep your eyes open next time,” the man advised. “Should solve the issue.”

  Her hands and knees hurt. There was no way she could ask them anything without crying, her eyes watering just thinking about it. And that would not do. With everything that had happened the past three months she had never let on how much it hurt—but right now, in front of these strangers she cared nothing about, she couldn’t seem to compose herself.

  “You okay?” the girl asked, head tilting as she studied Birdie’s face. “You hurt yourself or something?”

  “I’m fine,” Birdie managed, turning away.

  “Hey, listen—” said the man, but Birdie shoved her scraped-up hands into her coat pockets and practically ran so they wouldn’t see her dashing the tears from her cheeks.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BIRDIE ALMOST GOT ON THE VERY LAST EVENING TRAIN THAT WOULD take her back to Long Island. But when it pulled away from the platform, she was still sitting on a wrought-iron bench in the middle of Flatbush Avenue Station.

  The big clock in the center of the station said almost midnight when a man in a uniform with a tired look on his face asked if she was all right.

  “I’m taking an early train,” she said confidently, her brave face back on. He gave up and went away. Janitors came and swept and emptied trash cans. Their movements and intermittent conversation echoed in the empty hall. They dimmed the lamps before they left.

  Birdie felt like she was the only one in the world. When she was a little kid she used to be terrified when she woke up in the middle of the night and everything was this still. She’d always loved the murmur of grown-up voices swirling downstairs—nothing comforted her more than the reminder that people were right there if she needed them, whether it was just Mom and Dad, or a whole cocktail party. But if she woke and it was dark and quiet she would cry until Dad stumbled in to comfort her, his head nodding above her as he petted her shoulder. Only then could she close her eyes and fall asleep again, trusting she was safe.

  She could cry all she wanted now, but he wasn’t coming back.

  Birdie touched the metal flask in her pocket. It was warm and solid. She did not touch the photograph of Gilda, but she could feel it smoldering there.

  She’d put the memory of Dad with Gilda at her sixteenth birthday party out of her mind, which hadn’t been hard—she’d been pretty tipsy when it happened. She and Izzy had snuck out to the hangar with a bottle of champagne while the party swirled inside. Izzy stood in the rear cockpit while Birdie straddled the front of the plane, sitting backwards to face her.

  “Ugh, I can’t wait to go to Finch’s with you in the fall,” said Birdie, passing Izzy the bottle. They had it all planned out, how they were going to the same prestigious finishing school together.

  Izzy squealed uncharacteristically. “Me too!”

  “And David and Monty will be practically right around the corner, at Columbia,” Birdie said. “We’ll visit them every weekend.”

  “They’ll fall more in love with us each time they set eyes on us,” said Izzy, continuing the litany they knew by heart.

  “We’ll get perfect marks.”

  “Then we graduate.”

  “And they ask us to marry them,” said Birdie, grabbing Izzy’s shoulders and shaking them.

  “And we’ll move to the city!” Izzy crowed, falling against her.

  Birdie squeezed her in a hug. “And we’ll go dancing every weekend together!”

  ‘And we’ll have perfect babies, and summer homes in the Hamptons!” Izzy collapsed into the seat laughing, one hand extended with the bottle.

  Birdie grasped for it, giggling, but missed and fell forward, catching herself on the edge of the cockpit. Babies, marriage, all of that would sound terribly boring if it wasn’t for Izzy. She had a way of making everything glamorous and exciting, ten times more fun. Izzy grinned up at Birdie from the seat, picture-perfect. The bottom of the cockpit was a pool of darkness that Izzy’s pale skin glowed against. Big, dark-brown eyes, slim limbs, stick- straight shiny hair—Birdie had to look away. The champagne was making her goofy.

  The corrugated metal of the hangar door rattled, startlingly loud. Birdie gasped, scrambling for cover. Her only hiding spot was the back cockpit, and she dropped down into it. She heard Izzy giggle, then stifle it.

  That someone at the hangar door was cursing, laughing, and coming in—

  Dad.

  Birdie exhaled quietly and listened. Dad’s voice sounded jovial. He’d been unfailingly cheerful all winter, despite all the dreadful news coming in since early fall. Black Monday. Black Tuesday. Bankers like Dad throwing themselves out of twenty-story windows, or shooting themselves in their offices when they got the news. But all of that was far away in Manhattan. Out here on Long Island everything seemed to be going on as it always did.

  “There she is, my Curtiss Jenny. Pretty, ain’t she?” Dad loved to show off his plane when he drank. Birdie could hear the scotch husking his voice.

  Birdie heard the murmur of a woman’s voice, exclaiming, “You flew that in the war, sir?” then dipping, saying something low.

  Gilda Deveaux. The jazz singer he had hired for the party. She had thin, highly arched, penciled brows, hair mussed and curling around her face. Birdie pictured her red mouth, her red curves in an unfashionably tight dress. Her mouth open wide to sing. The look of almost-pain she had, like ecstasy and hurt mixed together. She sang better than Mom, all her emotion on the outside. Mom’s mouth had been a tight line as Gilda crooned. Mom looked at Birdie and Dad like that, when she wasn’t happy with them.

  “I flew it damn
well, too—that’s why it’s in mint condition. The Germans didn’t have a chance,” Dad was saying. Liar. He only flew it in training—he never made it to the front lines in Europe—but he liked to stretch the truth to make the story better.

  It was stifling, hunched down in the tiny space. Birdie remembered she was still holding the champagne, and tipped the bottle back. She gulped. Burning down her throat, fizzing in her stomach. There was more in the bottle than she thought, but what the heck. She finished it off.

  Birdie listened to Dad’s voice, murmuring low, Gilda laughing in response. They’d leave soon, back to Birdie’s big birthday bash inside the house. Suddenly she was very ready to go back to the party. Back to David and Monty, and the rest of her friends and family. Why were they taking so long? Leave, she thought.

  She wondered what Izzy was thinking, listening to Dad sweet-talk the jazz singer out here, when he thought they were all alone.

  Dad’s voice had gone quiet, and Gilda’s, too. Birdie imagined them standing next to each other with nothing to say. Or maybe they had left, so quietly that Birdie hadn’t heard them.

  Or maybe they were kissing.

  Birdie heard, breathless: “Mr. Williams, please, I really don’t think—” And a rattle as someone bumped into the metal wall of the hangar.

  Birdie jerked to standing. The champagne bottle in her hand caught the edge of the open cockpit—she lost her grip on it, though she fumbled after it—

  The bottle slammed into the concrete floor, shattering spectacularly into little twinkling shards. Gilda screamed.

  “Oh!” said Birdie. She and Gilda clapped their hands over their mouths with mirrored expressions of surprise and horror.

  “Pretty bird!” Dad said, instantly jovial. “Ah, I was just taking Miss Gilda out here, to give her a look at my Jenny.”

  Izzy cursed, then slowly stood up next to Birdie. Birdie couldn’t stand that Izzy was seeing Dad act like such a fool.

  “The boys are probably wondering where I am,” Gilda said, giving Dad an accusing look. “We’ll be starting that next set here in un moment … excuse moi, Mr. Williams …” Gilda nodded curtly and walked toward the door, hands smoothing her skirt. The seductive demeanor she’d exuded on stage had evaporated, her shoulders tense.

  Dad’s gaze trailed after Gilda as she slipped out the door. He swirled the scotch in his glass and turned back, eyeing the broken bottle. “Does your mother know you girls finished that off, just the two of you?” he asked Birdie.

  Mom would definitely disapprove of Dad taking Gilda out here to see the plane, but she wouldn’t like Birdie and Izzy drinking, either. “Aww, come on, Dad,” Birdie said, pouting. “You never care if I sneak wine! And it’s my birthday.”

  Izzy looked bored, which was how she always looked when she was anxious. She didn’t say anything.

  “You both should know better,” said Dad.

  “You won’t tell Mom,” Birdie said. She was drunk, she could feel it now. Her head was so light, it was hard to think. “Pretty please?”

  Dad finally smiled. With his tall stature and broad shoulders, it was easy to believe he had been a war hero. With his friendly smile, it was easy to trust him. “It’s all right, pretty bird. None of us has to mention anything about this. It’ll be our little secret, what do you say?”

  Birdie nodded. Really, she hadn’t seen anything from her hiding spot in the Jenny. She knew Dad hadn’t been guiltless—but she had no evidence that he had been doing something wrong.

  And now she’d found a picture of Gilda, the beautiful jazz singer from Chicago, in Dad’s cockpit, but no hint of anything that should have mattered to him.

  One of the circus folks must have met Dad, to buy the plane from him. Birdie had run off too quickly. If she got on a train back to Long Island without finding out if they knew anything first, she’d never get a chance to ask them again.

  A woman in sensible shoes came and turned up the lamps and opened the ticket window. Birdie did not buy a ticket.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BIRDIE SHIVERED, THE EARLY MORNING AIR CHILLY AND DAMP ON HER face. She shaded her eyes against the sun and watched the circus folk as they shuffled around the planes, smoking and holding steaming cups. She’d stopped for coffee and a pastry, but she was too anxious to eat and the coffee had burned her tongue. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her jitters. The man who had offered her a hand last night was closest to her, wearing striped overalls and tinkering behind the propeller of the cardinal-red plane. She fixed a smile on her face and strode toward him.

  The man glanced up. “Figured you’d be back.” He smiled as he wiped his hands on a grease-streaked rag. “Seemed like you had some unfinished business.”

  Birdie crumbled the pastry in her fingers, buttery dough flaking into the sand. “It’s Bennie, right?” She was pleased that her voice sounded confident. “I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”

  “Ask away.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, grease fingerprints streaking his overalls as he stuffed the rag into his back pocket.

  “I’m Birdie Williams, Bobby Williams’s daughter. The man who used to own that Jenny, there.” She pointed with as steady a hand as she could manage.

  “I remember that guy,” he said, nodding. “Sounded like he’d hit a rough patch of luck. Responded quick to our ad, thank the Lord. Oscar, the dang idiot, left his Jenny too far down on the beach and the tide pulled it into the water. It was totally wrecked. We needed a replacement in a real hurry, and your daddy gave us a great deal.”

  Birdie’s heart was pounding. “Did he say anything to you? Anything about why he was selling it?”

  Bennie shrugged. “He said the bank was coming for his stuff, so he had to sell it cheap and quick. Common enough, these days. Let me see … oh! He mentioned Chicago.”

  Chicago. Birdie’s fist tightened in her pocket, and Gilda’s picture crumpled in her palm.

  The man continued. “I remember that ’cuz we’re headed that way for this audition we have. Offered him a ride, actually, but he was in a hurry, and we were here for another while yet.” A line creased the man’s forehead. “This guy—he’s your pop, you said?”

  Birdie nodded distractedly. “You’re going that way? You mean to Chicago?” She vaguely remembered Merriwether announcing that over the megaphone during the show yesterday.

  “You!” someone exclaimed behind her. Birdie turned to see the girl pilot running up, her dark hair whipping in the morning breeze. “I can’t believe it! We were just talking about you!”

  “This is June,” Bennie said. “June, Birdie.”

  “You were talking about—” Birdie’s cheeks heated, remembering how ridiculous she must have looked last night. Dancing around like a child. Falling flat on her face.

  June flushed, too. Her eyes had looked very dark yesterday evening, but the morning light turned them more of a mossy green color. “About how you looked real nice up there dancing,” she said. “With the sun setting, and all.”

  Birdie’s face just got hotter. “Oh, well. Thank you.” This girl was so flattering, and Bennie seemed so kind, and they were part of a barnstorming circus that was traveling to Chicago—not gray England, not boring upstate New York. She bet every day in their troupe was as exciting and glamorous as living in Manhattan and going to Finch’s with Izzy. Maybe even more so.

  And Dad had gone to Chicago.

  June tucked her hair behind her ear. Her lashes were dark and straight and slanted down. “I’m serious.”

  Yesterday had been very discouraging, but today things were different.

  “I’d like to join your show,” Birdie blurted. “I really am a good dancer. A principal dancer, in fact, at my studio back home. Mikhail says I pick up every move faster than anyone he’s ever worked with, and he used to work with professionals.” For most of her life she’d been absolutely sure she was going to be a ballerina when she grew up, until she hit a scant five feet at fourteen, stopped growing, and had to swallow the p
ainful fact that it was impossible—Mikhail had lamented a thousand times that she was too short to meet the minimum height requirements for professional troupes. “I’ll be really careful, and Darlena could give me some pointers before we leave? I’m quite sure you won’t find anyone more qualified to take her place, in fact, than me!”

  June raised her eyebrows. “Come again?”

  Birdie’s stomach dropped, but she heard herself saying, “I’ll make an amazing wingwalker, and you should take me on.”

  She could do it. She’d just have to wing it, like she did when she got put on stage as a replacement for someone who was throwing up backstage or didn’t show up. It happened every other year, practically, and Mikhail had learned to go to her. The girls would mark the steps for Birdie behind the curtains, right before the piece, and then—she’d slap on the costume and remember enough and make up the rest so that the audience never knew she wasn’t part of the group.

  “Merriwether’s pretty picky about who she lets on,” said Bennie, giving her a measured look. “But I gotta say, we are sorely in need of somebody like you.”

  “This could work out!” said June. “You’d be perfect, so long as Merriwether goes for it.”

  “We’ll see,” said Bennie. “She had an argument with Darlena last night, and it’s got her in a bit of mood this morning.”

  “I think this is just the thing to sweeten her attitude,” said June, motioning for Birdie to follow her.

  Merriwether ignored Birdie and June’s approach as she put a cigarette between her lips and pulled a match out of her pocket. Merriwether was tall and broad-shouldered, her very short hair pushed off her forehead by goggles, but she wasn’t ugly. She had full lips and a lean figure under her duster.

  Merriwether leaned down and cocked one foot across her knee, striking the match on the sole of her boot. Birdie stopped a few feet away as June bounded up and slung an arm around the woman.