The Secrets of Flight (2 page)

“Having my chest cracked open wasn't exactly my cup of tea, either!”

“Remember, we're here to critique the writing, not you.” I smiled in the direction of her flaring nostrils and suggested that perhaps she'd rather read my suggestions. “I, for one, will be updating my living will to ‘do not resuscitate,'” I added, and the other Gene laughed, as Jean Fester collected all of her feedback into a pile with a harrumph.

“So, you want to be a writer?” I asked the girl afterward.

She lowered her eyes. “Yes, well . . . my grandmother says that if you love to write, then you already are a writer. I'm working on a novel.” I smiled, enjoying her quaky confidence. Looking up again, the girl glanced around the room. “Is this group just for . . .”

Those Not Long for This World?
I thought.

“. . . nonfiction writers?” she finished.

“We welcome all writers, including those of fiction. What is your name, my dear?”

“Elyse,” she said, shoving next week's submission into her backpack before zipping it shut.

Something caught in my chest. “Elyse.” I smiled again. She smiled. “I am Mrs. Browning,” I added.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Browning. And all of you,” she said to the rest of the group. The men were smiling at her a little dopily, but Selena looked smug, as if she'd handpicked the girl herself.

“I do hope you'll be back,” I said.

“Oh, I'll be back,” she said, sounding vaguely confident.

When I got home that night and settled into my recliner, I was still thinking about the girl with the braid. The TV was on, tuned to a commercial for the prescription that had been offered to me that same afternoon.
This medication could cause blindness, coma, or even death. If any of these side effects should occur, call your doctor immediately
. I aimed my remote to make the screen go black again.

When I climbed into bed later, my heart was skipping beats. I thought about Elyse again. Maybe she would come back next week. Maybe she would write something worth reading. Maybe she would make me a writer again. Maybe I could tell her the truth about me. I shut off the light and waited. Something filled up my chest again, an unfamiliar vibration, and I regretted how cavalierly I'd spoken about My End earlier that day. With one hand over my heart, I inhaled and exhaled, imagining
Sarah watching over me, coaching me to breathe. The fluttering passed. I felt my shoulders relax. Maybe my heart wasn't stopping but expecting—like the moment I held baby Dave in my arms and knew he was the one who would make it home. Maybe this was just my life, starting over.

By Elyse Strickler

   
1. When I was five, I wanted to be the first woman president of the United States, but my mother said the job was too stressful. “Oftentimes people will try to
assassinate
you—do you know what that means?” Mom said. So, I picked astronaut instead. “Oh,
sweetie
. Most of them blow up,” she said. So, I chose writer—of novels, but Mom said it was next to impossible to get published, and that I would need a day job. So, for my day job I chose scientist. She said the P
H.
D
.
programs could be surprisingly cutthroat, and it was hard to get tenure at places like the National Institutes of Health. When I asked if I could be a doctor like Daddy, Mom said, “Absolutely! Honey, you can be whatever you set your mind to!” and Daddy said, “That's my girl!”

   
2. My mother's favorite phrase is “the Worst Case Scenario” as in,
Let's try and imagine, if not expect, ultimate disaster so
that we might a) Never be disappointed when things go wrong and b) Occasionally experience the short-lived “pleasant surprise” when they go right
. You might think she's an insurance agent, but she actually makes a living as a lawyer, representing the asbestos companies who are always being sued by the millions of people who are riddled with cancer due to asbestos. When I asked if she had “considered the Pros and Cons” (her second favorite phrase) of defending a substance that kills people, Mom said she wasn't actually
defending
asbestos, she was just making sure the right people got paid. Then she sighed and said, “It's complicated.”

   
3. I have two little brothers, Toby and Hugh. Toby is two years younger than me and was selected to be in these Saturday classes at Carnegie Mellon for “Exceptionally Talented Youth” because he did better than I did on the PSATs, and he's only in middle school. My mother says that even if he's brighter than me, his social skills are lacking, and you can go farther in life with good social skills. I don't see how this is supposed to make me feel better.

   
4. I call baby Hugh “Huggie,” which drives my mother crazy because it reminds her of changing a diaper. Huggie is the only person in the world who still snuggles me, usually while I read him books. Daddy stopped snuggling me when my breasts came in, and Mom will give kisses, but never just wraps me in her arms and lets me melt into her lap. Huggie is five now and is learning to read by himself, which means our Snuggling Days are numbered.

   
5. I've always wished I had a twin. One time, after Aunt Andie and I watched
The Parent Trap,
I told her my wish,
and she said, “You did have a twin. It died.” Then she saw my face and said, “Oh, wait, maybe I shouldn't have . . .” Later I asked Mom for the whole story, and she said there wasn't much to tell: she had a miscarriage at twenty weeks. Daddy was the one who told me that my twin was a boy and his name was going to be Noah. Sometimes I like to imagine what my life would be like if Noah had lived. He'd probably play lacrosse. He'd introduce me to his friends and not let them date me. He'd tell me about sex instead of leaving pamphlets around the house—like Daddy and Mom did—with disgusting pictures of genitals falling off from sexually transmitted diseases.

   
6. Huggie almost didn't exist, either, because Daddy didn't want another child, he wanted to get a chocolate Lab, instead. When I was ten, I overheard them talking through the vent in my pink bedroom. My father was talking about how great things were with just two kids, one of each sex and disability-free. “But just imagine if something unspeakable happened to one of them—and then it would be too late for me to have another,” my mother said, which was all Daddy needed to hear. As a doctor, he is all about preparing for the Worst Case Scenario, which must've been the reason Mom married him. I was relieved when the new baby turned out to be a boy. I hoped it meant that God had intended for Toby to be replaced, and I would be spared.

   
7. My best friend Thea and I made a pact that we are not falling in love with Holden Saunders this year, like all the other girls in school. Even though we're not falling in love with him, I always choose my hallway route between classes based on Holden's class schedule—I know,
for example, that if I linger at my locker outside of French, I'll see him going into Spanish, and that he always buys a can of soda outside the Choir Room before his fifth period English. Thea heard that Holden Saunders is actually dating this cheerleader Karina Spencer—aka Adelaide in last year's
Guys and Dolls
—and that she blew him on the first date, which is another reason we're not falling in love with him. Now that he's in our physics class, we can see him up close, and it turns out he actually does have some acne on his forehead, and the other day his left ear had a little honey-colored wax at the rim. We're also not falling in love with him because of his name. His parents must've thought they were the first people in the world to love
The Catcher in the Rye
.

   
8. Thea and I love to shop at the Salvation Army, which gives my mom hives. Thea got her favorite camouflage jacket there, which she pairs with combat boots and a miniskirt, black eyeliner, and her nose ring. Since I'm not allowed to go Goth, my fallback look is a twinset from Anne Taylor from Mom and a kilt from the thrift store. Which is my way of saying that even if we
were
falling in love with Holden Saunders, he's not falling in love with us—yet. Everything might change this year, because in psychology, Mrs. Desmond just announced that during the next month-long unit, we'll be paired off, two by two, with mock marriages. All I have to do is convince her to marry Holden and me, and the first domino will fall.

   
9. My mother doesn't know what it's like to not have guys drooling all over her. One time, Aunt Andie and I were looking at an old photo album and she pointed to a pic
ture of an exotic-looking woman with full, dark eyebrows and long hair. “This is the woman who was almost your mother,” Aunt Andie said. It was like she had no basic grasp of human genetics. “Your dad was engaged to this woman, Natalia, when he met your mom at a party in med school,” she explained. “He called off the wedding to be with Jane.” Then she saw my face and went, “Hold on, maybe I wasn't supposed to . . .” Later, when I asked Daddy about it, he just laughed and said, “I saw your mom and
boom
. She blew me away.” That's how beautiful my mom was. She's still that beautiful now, when she smiles and laughs, which isn't so often anymore.

  
10. Two years ago, when I was thirteen, my parents called us into the living room for a Family Meeting. When Mom said they had big news, I thought they were getting a divorce. But then I remembered that they never fight, and that we don't have a housekeeper named Rocco with slicked-back hair and a hairless chest showing through his silk blouse, who would run away with Mom to California—like what happened to Thea's mother. So maybe it would be the Best Case Scenario for a change. “We're going to London?” I guessed, excited. And Mom said, “Daddy has cancer.” When Toby asked, “What exactly is cancer, Dad?” his eyes were squinting as if the information he was about to consume would be delivered at light speed. And Daddy said, “It's when a group of cells in your body mutates and then proliferates—or reproduces—at an abnormal rate.” My father held up a hand. “Hang on. Let me back up. Let's talk about normal cell death or
apoptosis
—” I interrupted to ask what the Worst Case Scenario was here. When Daddy
said, “I die,” I felt like an invisible Darth Vader had just held up his hand and was choking me. As my mother insisted brightly that that would never, ever happen, I imagined us kissing my father's coffin before we lowered it into the ground.

  
11. Later we learned that the Cancer was named Pancreatic Neuroendocrine—or, “the good kind,” if you ask Dr. Satinder Khaira—and after the surgery, it would make Daddy stay in his bathrobe and sweats and stop going to work for close to six months. But then Remission would move in, and Daddy would be known as a Living Miracle—at least by everyone at Fox Chapel United Methodist Church. Friends of the family just call him Really Lucky.

  
12. I still worry that something bad will happen to Daddy. And then I feel awful, because that means I have no faith or at least am part of the Ye with very little. When I told that to Mom she said she had no faith, either, but we had to pretend like we did. And I didn't know if she meant pretend for Daddy or for God, so that He'll keep giving us what we're begging him for.

  
13. Mom is petite, blond, and Jewish, and Daddy is tall, dark, and Protestant, and they decided to raise us with the holy days of both traditions so that one day, when we come of age, we'll be confused. I didn't grow up with Hebrew school, a Bat Mitzvah, or a church confirmation, but apparently, sometime after my birth, there was some sort of Baptism/Naming Ceremony involving a minister and a rabbi. It took a tumor to make Daddy want to go to church on ordinary Sundays, when it wasn't Christmas or Easter. One time after the service, I asked him if it was okay that
I felt like the minister was the Queen from
Alice in Wonderland
encouraging us to believe six impossible things before breakfast, and he sighed and said, almost to himself: “Maybe we should've picked one.”

  
14. Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I see people's faces in my head, faces I've never met, and I wonder who they are, and if I will ever meet them. Aunt Andie says maybe they're lost souls, looking for someone to tell their stories. Mom says this explanation is just one more example of Aunt Andie living “in a fantasy land.” Mom says Aunt Andie's lying to herself by thinking she's happy. When I said, “If she thinks she's happy, then isn't she?” Mom said, “It's a
deception,
” as if Aunt Andie's “happiness” were somehow sinister. “No one changes jobs, changes cities, changes apartments every year ‘just to try something new.'” Mom wants Aunt Andie to accept that she's actually
un
happy, so she can stop running away from herself.

  
15. I love that Aunt Andie only rents and never buys. I love that she calls herself an artist, even though she's never sold a single one of her weird paintings. I love that she still believes in Soul Mates even though she hasn't had a “viable boyfriend” (Mom's words) in years. Mom says if Aunt Andie would just lose thirty pounds, or maybe be willing to date “heavier” men, she wouldn't have had to borrow ten thousand dollars to freeze her eggs before her ovaries shrivel up. Mom lent Aunt Andie the money three years ago, and since then, the only conversations they have—when they speak at all—are about when Aunt Andie is going to pay her back. Mom doesn't know that I go to Aunt Andie's place after school sometimes or that we've met at
the mall for lunch. I don't care what Mom thinks: I still love hearing about Aunt Andie's hopeful First Encounters. She always says there's nothing more romantic than being able to look back at that initial meeting so you could figure out where it all began. It's the very reason I wanted to join the “Talent Not Necessary” Group.

  
16. My annoying brother Toby is the one who saw the ad in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
. “Hey, guys, check this out: ‘Writers Wanted—talent not necessary!' They're talking about you, Elyse!” Daddy said they sounded like a pretty desperate group of people, and my mom was worried about the part that said “Open to the public,” which she thought was a euphemism for “Potentially Violent Wack Jobs.” But I had this fantasy that maybe I'd open the door to the conference room and Holden Saunders would glance up and pause—mid-pencil-twirl—to tilt his head to the side, trying to place me. I'd be tempted to tell him that we've gone to school together for five years and that, in fact, when my family moved to the Regal Estates last summer, it actually made us neighbors. At the end of the session, before I could tell him any of this, he would walk up to me and say, half-squinting, “Elyse, right?”

  
17. Mom, as usual, wanted me to consider the Pros and Cons of attending the group. Such as, if I write more, then I will have more insomnia and then my grades might suffer. The only Con I could imagine was from that old movie,
Dead Poets Society
,
where one of us might be compelled to commit suicide for the sake of our art.

  
18. The reason I can't sleep at night is because I am working on a novel about a group of four sisters who don't know
they're sisters, who end up at the same boarding school in England. I have already finished writing one hundred pages, which means I'll definitely finish my first novel before my sixteenth birthday, and hopefully be published before I graduate from high school!

  
19. When my mother read the opening of my novel, she told me that I shouldn't have set it in the 1940s, because I've never lived in the 1940s, and that I shouldn't have set it in London because I've never been to London, and that it doesn't make sense that one woman would have four babies with four different men and leave them in four different countries. She couldn't “suspend her disbelief” that they would all end up together at the same school in London, even if it was touted as the best girls' school in the entire world. She said
maybe
she'd believe it if I kept it to two sisters who didn't know they were sisters, but not four. Like it was that easy to say sayonara to Anastasia and Eliona. She told me to “write what I know,” which would make a terrible story: here's me, going to school, and watching Holden in physics, and babysitting my brothers. The only way I would be able to have anything to write about is if I switched places with Thea, or if Daddy hadn't miraculously been healed.