“Not yet.” He shook his head and whistled. “Five kids. That’s something. A real handful. I guess it’s a good thing you’re not the maternal type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Who says I’m not the maternal type?”

“You?” He laughed. “Anyway, you don’t have the time for babies. You’re Irene Foster, remember? You’re leaving on a lecture tour in less than two weeks, and after that it’s back to flying. Planning the big one, that’s next. We’ve been planning that for years, the solo circumnavigation.”

Irene sat up. “What if I’m sick of it all, George? The whole circus. The lectures and the derbies and the stunt flights.”

He stared at her. His hand remained on her leg, just above the knee. He had unbuttoned his shirt an inch or two, and unlike Sam he looked fresh and unlined, enthusiastic for life. George had never minded being Mr. Irene Foster. Why, he’d relished it! A few days after the wedding, when the Los Angeles Times had referred to Irene as Mrs. George Morrow, he had telephoned the editor personally and corrected him. Irene would be keeping her name. She would be keeping her career. She’d gotten married, that was all, and her new husband had thrown himself into the business of burnishing her image, arranging her lecture tours and her flying schedule, her books and articles, her promotional contracts, her everything.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean,” he said slowly.

“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking I want a break, that’s all. I’m getting too old to be spending every night in a new city. What does it mean? What am I doing here?”

“You’re inspiring a generation of American girls, that’s what.”

“Am I? You’ve seen the crowds, what’s left of them. Aviation’s old news. All the frontiers have been conquered. The future lies the other way. Making flying ordinary, as commonplace as driving an automobile or riding a bus.”

“You’ve already tried starting an airline. That was an expensive bust, as I recall.”

“Well, we could try again, with a new team.”

He sprang from the bed and started to pace. “But not yet. Let’s get through this lecture tour first. I’m headed out to New York tomorrow, drum up some publicity—”

“Oh, George, no!”

“I’ve got to, Irene.” He unslung his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt. “I don’t think we’ve sold a quarter of the tickets. Something’s missing. We need something fresh, we need to do something to get everyone’s attention back. We had the derby, and then you crashed out—”

“Crackups happen, George. It’s part of the business.”

“Well, the timing wasn’t the greatest.”

“Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I should be quitting that game. Half my friends are dead or maimed. Sam’s going to get himself killed any minute—”

“His own damned fault. That fellow wants to get killed, if you ask me.”

“And why is that, do you think?” Irene snapped.

George was arranging his shoes in the dressing room. He kept them in neat, straight rows, polished, shaped by wooden shoe trees so the leather wouldn’t shrink. In an earlier age, he would have hired a valet to help maintain all this order, but these were modern times and George had this idea that an over-reliance on household staff was bad form. Still, the care and ordering of shoes was important and not to be rushed. Irene’s words hung in the air for a moment before George emerged from the dressing room. He spoke calmly, because he always spoke calmly, even when he had asked her to marry him, as if every word must be delivered in a speech.

“That was eight years ago, Irene. The problem’s not that Sam Mallory married an alcoholic bitch with a narcissism complex. The problem’s what I told you. He’s impulsive. He takes risks, and it’s only gotten worse as his career’s gone downhill, the way I said it would. It’s a terrible shame, I don’t take any joy in being proved right, but there you have it. He’s a lost soul, and there was nothing you could have done to save him, not eight years ago and not now, even if things had worked out between the two of you. You made the right choice, Irene. You wouldn’t have had this career if you’d spent the last decade hitched to Sam Mallory.” He made a gesture to the room around them. “You wouldn’t be Irene Foster anymore. You’d be Irene Mallory.”

“Irene Foster is your invention, not mine,” she said.

George stood in his underwear in the middle of the room and stared at her in bewilderment. “My invention? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve devoted my life to your career.”

“Yes, you have. And sometimes I just want to be a wife, that’s all.”

Now he was astounded. “A wife? You? I thought that was the last thing you wanted. I thought you wanted to fly airplanes and make a life for yourself. Now you want to set all that aside and become a housewife?”

“Of course not. That’s not what I mean at all.”

George turned around and went back in the dressing room. He emerged a moment later in a pair of crisp blue and white striped pajamas.

“All right, we’re not dizzy in love like some couples,” he said. “But that’s what you wanted, remember? You yourself said not to expect kisses and hummingbirds all day long, that we were free to love other people if we wanted to, and haven’t I respected that? I understand about Sam. I don’t play the jealous husband.”

“Well, maybe I wish you would, once in a while.”

“I don’t get it. Aren’t you happy?”

“I don’t know if I’m happy. What’s happy, anyway? I just think I need a change, that’s all.”

“Look,” he said. “We’ve been planning this thing for years. If I can pull it off, this round the world flight, then we can sit down and decide what’s next. If you want to quit flying and start a family, why, we can do that. Just tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen.”

What Irene wanted to tell him was this. She wanted to tell him that she hated going on lecture tours and posing for magazines and manufacturing these so-called landmark flights, in which she was some kind of circus performer doing feats, and each feat had to be more daring and dangerous and record-breaking than the last or nobody cared.

She wanted to tell him that she had no idea what lay beyond this solo circumnavigation that had consumed them both since the very beginning of their professional association. She wanted to do it; there was no question about that. She longed to fly around the world by herself; it was the culmination of everything she’d worked for. But she also felt terrified of it. Because once she had accomplished this last, this greatest goal, what did she have left? What was the point of flying anymore?

She wanted to tell him that this business of being the Aviatrix had become so thorough, the moments of just being Irene so seldom, that she was beginning to feel that the Aviatrix had taken over the rest of her, like she had been painted over and could no longer find the original soul inside, and that even to her own husband—the person whom she should turn to in relief, the person who above all others should see her as a woman, as a person, as her true self—she was the Aviatrix and not Irene.

But George would just say that this was all nonsense, that she wasn’t being logical, that she was doing exactly what she had dreamed of doing, that she was doing what other women could only dream of. That this endeavor was too important and too historic to give up now, when it was finally within sight.

So Irene reached for the lamp and turned off the light, and George, probably thinking about what she’d said, thinking maybe his wife just needed some reassurance after a harrowing few days, some tenderness, sat back down on her bed and asked her if she wanted him to make love to her.

Irene stared at the paleness of his pajamas in the darkness. George had always been a good, considerate lover, and he was certainly attractive. But she did not want to make love to her husband tonight. She wanted something else. She wanted to feel close to another human being, but not like this, and she couldn’t explain how.

“I’m sorry, I’m too worn out tonight, George,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow I’m leaving for New York.”

“When you get back, then.”

He leaned forward and kissed her and said that he loved her, that he admired her more than anybody he’d ever met, man or woman, and then he rose from Irene’s bed and went to his bed, and they both fell asleep.

By the time Irene woke up the next morning, George had already left for New York. He had to drum up publicity for her lecture tour before it turned into a disaster.

Hanalei, Hawai’i

October 1947