“They didn’t take it seriously, Mattie—at least they didn’t when I mentioned it was my sister who came up with the idea. I don’t think the newspaper articles about the Flying Flappers have helped either.” Jake spoke so fast now Mattie was surprised his tongue wasn’t as tangled as her guts currently were.
“What were their precise words?” Mattie asked, even though she dreaded the response. The fact it involved the horrible articles about Vera’s circus only made it worse. She needed to know the truth, though. Needed her brother to stop mollycoddling her. Needed to face the height and breadth of the obstacles before her.
“That, um, dames can’t even tune a radio to save their lives, so there’s no way a doll could come up with a useful application involving the actual signal. Also there was some ribbing that my sister should stick to dressing up watermelons and toy dogs and stop trying to play with things best left to a man.”
“That’s absurd!” Mattie burst out as ire blazed through her. Furiously, she beat the sole of her shoe against the marble floor of Vera’s entrance hall and wished it were a certain reporter and his drunken friend instead. “I’m the one in the family who knows the most about radio!”
“I know that, Mattie.” Jake sighed, and she could just imagine him rubbing his forehead. “But they don’t, and I can’t convince them otherwise.”
“What if I had a functioning prototype? Would that convince them?” Mattie’s heart contracted almost painfully in anticipation. She’d planned to start building a working model this afternoon. Carrie was even bringing Mattie parts from Chicago today.
“Maybe?” Jake drew out the word dubiously. “But it would have to work perfectly. And even then, I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
“If I were a man, they’d be interested, wouldn’t they?” Mattie asked.
Jake sighed. “More so, but they’d still be skeptical, Mattie. It’s a new way of doing things.”
“You’d think aviators would be more open to change!” Mattie grabbed the entire candlestick telephone and marched as far as the cord allowed her, and then circled back. “After all, flying itself was considered impossible less than twenty years ago.”
“I agree, Mattie. But you know how things are. I wish I could tell you something different, but you wanted the truth.”
She had. And it was a fact she’d faced all too often. As much as a shiny, new future beckoned, the past always reached out to hold her back.
“What are we going to do about the flight school?” She felt like she had to press the question through a sieve, it was so hard to get out.
“Pa, Otto, Will, Leo, and I will figure it out, Mattie. We’ll make sure you’re provided for, no matter what.”
“Why is it that weallare in financial trouble, butI’mthe one who needs saving?” Mattie asked.
“You’re our little sister, Mattie. We’re always going to watch out for you,” Jake said, his tone matter of fact and eminently reasonable, as if his perspective were the only possible way of looking at things.
“Maybe I also take care of the family,” Mattie shot back, not exactly wanting to get in an argument on top of her current disappointment. But she was alsonotgoing to allow Jake’s statement to pass unchallenged.
“Of course you’re important to us, Mattie.” Jake misunderstood the extent of what she meant, seeing it only in domestic terms. “That’swhy you need to be careful. Let Leo look after you when we can’t, and stop going to speakeasies.”
Of course he’d think Leo was more capable of protecting her than she was herself.
“You do realize that the article in theLake Michigan Timesfailed to mention thatIwas the one who unmanned Crenshaw.”
Jake sounded not impressed but exasperated. “Then also stop punching former scout pilots.”
“I didn’t slug him. I kneed him in the groin.”
That got a good chuckle out of Jake at least. “Of course you did.”
“He had it coming.”
Jake sobered. “I’m sure he did, Mattie, and that’s why we worry about you. You’re our heart, little sis, especially now. Don’t forget that. Don’t try anything crazy in an attempt to earn more cash. You just stay safe.”
With that parting advice, Jake hung up, but Mattie didn’t.
She spoke into the disconnected line the words she so desperately wanted her brother to understand. “I don’t want to just be the heart of our family. I want to be part of its strength too.”
Suddenly, a great weariness rushed through her as she gently replaced the earpiece.“But you know how things are.”Jake’s statement seemed to embody the inertia dragging her down. She was so, so tired of fighting against what everyone perceived as irrefutable.
“Oh good, you’re here!” Carrie’s cheerful voice broke through Mattie’s glumness. “I was afraid I’d have to go searching through this giant house.”
Mattie turned to find her friend pushing open one of the massive front doors with her shoulder, her hands full of packages. Mattie immediately started forward to help, but a male servant materialized to hold open the door.
