Maiden Flight (15 page)

That day is etched in my memory for good and always. I drove home from the laboratory, parked the Franklin beside the garage, and called out to Kate as I opened the kitchen door. It was a habit of ours to let each other know we were home safe and sound. Ordinarily Swes would call back, but not this time. The house was as still as a tomb. Thinking she might be taking a nap, I climbed the stairs and found her room empty, with the door wide open. Kate was nowhere to be seen. She had cleaned out her drawers and closet, taken her travel bags, and laid the key on her writing desk, where I'd be sure to spot it. She had insisted on locking our bedroom doors at night ever since we had that rash of robberies a few years ago.

Surely, I said to myself, my sister has just gone off unexpectedly to Oberlin or Cleveland. She'll be home in a few days and everything will return to normal. I didn't want to admit that she had walked out on me. It was Carrie who finally broke the news. Swes hadn't said a word. She hadn't even left me a note. The typewriter
was sitting empty on her desk. The photograph of Will and me that she hung on her wall, the engraving of the Greek dancers she brought from the old house on Hawthorn Street, the pocketknife we sent her for her birthday one year from Kitty Hawk—all were in their familiar places. Everywhere I turned there was some memento of her—Mr. Ogilvie's coffee cups in the alcove, Mr. Akeley's bronze elephants in the living room, the big sculpture in the reception hall. To this day I can't pass by it without thinking of Sterchens—our very own Muse of Aviation, spreading her wings over us.

The day of the wedding, the house seemed to echo with the sound of her voice: “Orv! Is that you, Little Brother?” I plugged my ears, tried to distract myself by reading the paper and doing little chores—but nothing worked. My thoughts kept circling back to the ceremony in Oberlin. The
Dayton Journal
had announced that Kate was to be married “in the deepest secrecy.” Pish-tush! She and Harry might as well have read the banns from the steps of city hall. Her face was splashed all over the papers from coast to coast. “Sister of Wright Brothers Weds College Mate—Her Sacrifices Helped to Conquer Air.”
Her
sacrifices, for pity's sake!
I'm
the one who passed up the chance to get married for her.
I'm
the one who built this house for her and gave her every blessed thing she asked for.
I'm
the one who sacrificed—and this is how she thanks me, by running off with her college sweetheart like a lovesick schoolgirl.

Well, if my devoted sister is determined to make a spectacle of herself, there is nothing I can do to prevent her, not with the rest of the family ganged up against me. At least Lorin had the decency not to speak to the reporters who came nosing around here after
the wedding. Isn't it enough that the whole world knows how Kate treated me, without adding insult to injury?

Off with the old, on with the new—isn't that what they say? If only life were as simple as a change of clothes. My wedding didn't feel a bit like a fresh beginning—it was more like the end of the life I had always known and loved. Harry was so sweet and considerate. He insisted on taking me to New York for a few days, so I could see a few of my old friends before going to live in Kansas City. Some honeymoon that was! I love Harry dearly—I never dreamed that such a romance could come to me at this time of life—but we were never alone, really and truly
alone
, for a minute. Little Brother was right there beside us, inside my head and heart, day and night. I had quaked at the thought of leaving Dayton without saying good-bye; now I had actually gone and done the awful deed. It wasn't only Orv I had left behind, it was my family, my friends, the world of science and aviation—everything and everybody that had ever meant anything to me.

No one can ever realize how heartbroken I was to do what I did—but it came finally to the place where I thought it was the only right thing to do. After all, Harry needs me at least as much as Orv ever did—to say nothing of my own feelings in the matter. I don't expect other people to agree with me. In fact, I s'pose pretty much everybody was offended by what I did—everybody except dear, sweet Leontine. Bless her for coming to the wedding and braving Little Brother's disapproval. And young Henry—if he can welcome me into
his
family, not to take his mother's place
but to be his friend, why can't Orv accept Harry into ours? Does he really hold Harry to account for stealing me away from him? Oh, if he only knew how little my darling boy is to blame! Or is it
me
he can't bear to lay eyes on—me, Sterchens, the loyal sister who abandoned him?

Listen! It will never do to dwell on hard realities when there is so much work to be done. Orv can sulk in his tent to his heart's content; I have a husband to provide for and a household to keep up, even if it's not as big a job as running Hawthorn Hill. From the get-go I made it my business to get on friendly terms with Ollie. She cooked all those years for Harry and Isabel and is as devoted to him as he is to her. Ollie has lots of nice dishes in her repertoire. I figured if she would let me give her some of my favorite recipes—my chicken-noodle-and-mushroom casserole, say, or my “famous” angel food cake—we could have a great collection. That's how it was back home with Carrie—share and share alike. Most cooks are touchy about taking tips from other people, but Carrie isn't a bit. She is always ready to pick up anything new and is grateful for suggestions from anybody.

Harry and I don't lack for creature comforts, and that's a fact. I don't suppose anyone could be so good to me as he has been. He is so concerned over having brought me away from all my family and friends—and life is very pleasant in Kansas City, in every way. There is always plenty of interest if one feels energetic, but I am not tied up in any real responsibility, as I was in Dayton. Our house is attractive and comfortable, and we have pretty much made it over inside. Our latest purchase was some lovely china—Spode-Copeland series plates, Minton's gold-band dinner plates, and Cauldon dessert plates, besides Minton's cream soup dishes. Harry has never had very nice dishes, and he is like a schoolboy about
them. He was as pleased as Punch to have the carving set I sent him for his birthday before we got married. Mella King's husband picked it out for me. He never knew, good soul, where it was going!

I took the plunge into married life without making a big splash about it—apart from some niggling qualms about changing my name. I was proud enough to have Harry's name, only—well, Katharine Wright had meant
me
for as long as I could remember. It was a little pull for me to give that up, and I could probably have gotten some advertising on it if I had cared to try. But of course it would have been silly for me to keep my maiden name. It would have embarrassed Harry continually—to say nothing of irritating Orv—and people in Kansas City never would have understood. The first time
I wrote a letter on my new stationery, with the initials K.W.H. woven into a neat little circle at the top, I thought they must belong to somebody else. If Little Brother is determined to disown me, I can get along just fine as Mrs. Henry J. Haskell. Nuff said!

The readjustment from a city where Katharine had lived all her life, and where her family and friends were, to a strange city where she knew almost no one would have been hard enough at best. But the circumstances have made it so unnecessarily and cruelly hard for her. There is not only the personal side, the intense personal affection and loyalty to Orville, there is the fact that aeronautics had become such an important part of her life. I am so dumb on all such subjects
that I can be of little help to her in talking about aviation developments. Orville's unreasonableness has cut her off
almost completely from one of her great permanent interests. His attitude is a calamity to Katharine, a calamity all around. But I see no way to change it. Orville is so kind and gentle and fine in his general relationships that his behavior toward Katharine is quite incomprehensible. The scientific mind is beyond me.

For as long as I've known her, Katharine's behavior—toward her brother and me both—has been above reproach. No one can accuse her of acting precipitately or without regard for the feelings of others. If anything, she has neglected her own feelings and needs. She gave Orville ample opportunity to come to terms with her engagement and get adjusted to the idea of living on his own. He refused. Finally, she felt she had a right to her own life and her own home. There never was any question of shutting Orville out. She made it clear to him that we both wanted her to spend as much time in Dayton as she could. That Orville was unwilling even to consider such an arrangement has been a bitter pill for her to swallow.

In spite of all the crosses she has to bear, Katharine has never complained about her life in Kansas City. No sooner had we returned from our excursion to New York than she was subjected to a grueling round of ladies' luncheons and teas, on top of which we had dinner invitations two or three times a week. Naturally, the fuss was all on Katharine's account. Now that I was no longer an eligible bachelor, the widows and matchmakers had lost interest in me. Katharine had been looking forward to fixing some of her favorite dishes for me on Ollie's nights off. As it turned out, she seldom set foot in the kitchen. We had talked about going out for a restaurant meal or eating at one of my clubs from time to time, but that didn't seem to be in the cards either.

My friends mean well, I have no doubt. They have been as generous and welcoming to Katharine as I could wish, every one of them. They are killing her with kindness, she says. But I have a notion that, in the beginning at least, there was more to their attentiveness than old-fashioned midwestern hospitality. People are naturally curious. I couldn't help feeling that my friends were looking Katharine over and sizing her up, almost as if she were some sort of exotic specimen in the laboratory—the one and only Wright sister,
Soror aviatrix
!

We were invited out a good deal at first—that was to be expected. All Harry's friends felt that they must make me feel at home, especially his colleagues at the paper. Orv and I had been introduced to a number of them over the years, so I wasn't exactly a stranger. Mr. Longan, the managing editor, lives just up the street. Mrs. Longan gave a lovely tea party for me shortly after I moved here, with delicious cakes and fresh roses and everything. If you can credit what you read in the society newspaper, I made quite a respectable impression too—“a real acquisition not only to society but to the
intelligentsia
as well.” Pretty hot stuff! The invitations have come so thick and fast that I've hardly had a moment to feel lonely, only a very few such social occasions go a very long way with me.

When you come right down to it, I am not accustomed to being the center of attention—and I am not at all sure I take to it naturally. I never had to think about such things back in Dayton. As a rule, people came to Hawthorn Hill to see Orv, not me—that goes for Harry and Stef too, when they were first getting to know us, anyway. Moving to Kansas City was a bit like traveling
in Europe with the boys before the war—all those important people wining and dining us, treating us like royalty, and fussing over
me
as if I were a world celebrity instead of a middle-aged schoolteacher who had scarcely set foot outside of her hometown. Some way everything seems so much more complicated now. The older you get, the harder it is to keep what you
are
separate from what you 
have
. As Orv's sister—and now as Harry's wife—it's much more difficult to tell who is liking me for my own sake than when I was just plain old Katie Wright, the Bishop's daughter.

Not that I had any worries about our first two visitors taking me just as I am. Griff and Stef both know me inside out. Was I ever glad to see Griff that first autumn in Kansas City—not least because he came straight from Dayton and brought us news of Little Brother. It felt almost like old times to be talking with someone who shared my interest in aviation, someone who worked with both Will and Orv and understood what we have been fighting for all these years. As for Stef, he was his usual incorrigible self. He waited until the very last minute to send a wire saying that he was coming to Kansas City to give a talk and that he would be staying downtown—at the Muehlebach Hotel, if you please! Of course, we insisted that he stay with us, but we were dining out that evening, so Harry had to make arrangements to leave the party and meet his train, at considerable inconvenience to both us and our hostess.

I hardly know what to think about Stef anymore. With that insatiable ambition of his, he seems to be dashing everlastingly from one speaking engagement to the next, writing book after book as if there were no tomorrow—always on the go, never settling down, never feeling truly satisfied with himself. And he
will
take after that vulgar crowd of “intellectuals” in Greenwich Village, no matter what Harry
or I or anyone else has to say about it. Yes, my illusions about Stef have been well and truly shattered. Someday I mean to find out if the rumors we've heard about a special friendship between him and Miss Fannie Hurst are true. I 'spect they
are
true—but what of it? If there's one lesson the trials and tribulations of the past few years have drummed into me, it's that people like Stef and Griff have to be taken for good and bad. None of us is an angel—certainly not me!

The only surefire way I know to take my mind off a problem is to bury myself in my work, so that's what I did after Katharine left. The 1903 flyer was still sitting in my shop, waiting to be brought back to its original condition before I let it go to London. Once the hullabaloo over the wedding died away, Miss Beck and I got down to covering the wings with new cloth. Day after day, she worked the sewing machine while I marked places that needed stitching. Will and I had the same routine on Hawthorn Street. He would spin the sewing machine wheel around by the hour while I squatted at his feet, marking the places to sew. We made a frightful racket, but no one complained. In fact, Kate told Pop it was lonesome not having us around after we transported the flying machine down to Kitty Hawk. Life would be a darned sight simpler if feelings were as easy to patch up as a piece of sailcloth.

It was just before Christmas that year that Senator Bingham introduced a bill for the erection of a Wright brothers monument in Kill Devil Hills. Hallelujah, I thought, Secretary Abbot and the Smithsonian can go to thunder now. No matter what propaganda they put out about the Langley machine, the United States
government has officially acknowledged that Will and I built the first man-carrying flying machine. Maybe there is some justice in the world after all. Griff Brewer was here when I got the news, and you can bet your bottom dollar I gave him an earful. There is no one but Kate with whom I would rather have shared the sweet taste of victory. I knew she would hear about it from Griff soon enough anyway, as he was going on to Kansas City directly from Dayton. I didn't begrudge Swes her right to celebrate. After all, it was always her fight as much as it was mine and Will's.