Authors: Judy L. Mandel

Replacement Child (16 page)

Bob had brought the second mortgage papers to the hospital for me to sign, where I was recovering from a flare-up of Crohn’s disease just five months after Justin was born.

“I need you to sign these so we can put some more money into the house. It will increase the value. Trust me; it will be fine.”

From the moment I met him, I trusted Bob. His calm assurance, his easy good looks. His sensitive eyes.

But only a few months after signing those loan papers, Bob lost another job, and money was so tight that I had trouble paying for groceries.

For another two years I trusted that he could put our house of cards back together, Scotch-tape our credit, glue back together the shards of our security. But he gravitated to jobs that never quite worked out for him, like insurance sales and financial planning.

I was home alone most nights with the baby. When he was home, Bob busied himself in his workshop until I fell asleep. I was sure then that I was entirely unlovable, that this pattern of retreat was somehow my doing. I felt stranded on an island, distressed by our financial straits without the comfort of a loving relationship as a buffer.

We drifted further and further from the life I promised my son when I first held him.

“I don’t think I can do it,” Bob finally told me on the way home from a therapy session.

His face was stark honesty, his eyes revealing a finality that closed my heart.

We postponed the inevitable split, but when the foreclosure sign was posted on the bluegrass of our perfectly mowed lawn, I scooped up my baby and left.

On moving day, our house grew smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror until it disappeared behind me. Beside me in his car seat, Justin suddenly looked as serious as a three-year-old could get. His tiny brow furrowed in worry.

“When is Daddy coming?”

It was a long mile before I could speak, to give him my practiced answer. The cliff I had always feared was just ahead, and I was powerless to stop his fall, to stop his heart from breaking.

In a weird twist, this was one of the few times in my life that I did not feel guilty, that my life was somehow balanced with Linda’s. Linda seemed to always have a hard time, either financially or with men. When my life was going well, I felt like it wasn’t fair. During this period of time, my struggle to maintain three jobs and feed my child seemed to be my due and was what I deserved as the survivor, the one blessed—the replacement for the angel. I was determined, though, that Justin wouldn’t suffer for my failings. He truly was a force behind my landing a good job at a national insurance company and holding a stable career in corporate communications for many years. It enabled me to buy the house he deserved to grow up in, in a quiet suburban town, miles and miles from any airport.

N
O
, I
COULDN
’
T
stay with Justin’s father. I only hope I made up for it with stability and love.

Now, while Justin is running all over town with friends and working a part-time job this last summer before college, I am being more and more overtaken by the past. I’m spending more time these days sifting through documents and through my own memories.

I try to find someone or something to blame for the accident in the piles of notes and newspaper clippings, but nothing reveals itself. Apparently, the plane was working just fine. The pilot was stellar. The reports all said the engines had no malfunction. The
landing gear was down and both flaps were extended, and nothing else was found that failed structurally. Even the maintenance records for the plane showed it was in good shape.

It’s possible that some birds flew into the plane, but they didn’t find any bird remains in the engine parts. From twenty-six witness statements and the Civil Aeronautics Board Accident Investigation Report, I learn that the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 100–150 feet, just below the clouds, in a generally easterly direction, for a distance of about three city blocks before it went down. They all say it was flying level to the ground. Until it wasn’t.

Witnesses heard:
loud bangs, with a roar; rumbling as it passed over; the sound like a car when all the spark plugs are not working; when the noise stopped, the pilot speeded up the motors as much as he could.

My only hint is that the Investigation Report notes that carburetor icing could have been a factor. All but one of the pilots who landed just before and after the crash of Flight 6780 said they used carburetor heat during their approach to avert icing. They didn’t know if Captain Reid had used it or not.

The iffy weather seemed to affect only Flight 6780. During the two-hour period, one hour before and one hour after the crash, nineteen flights landed or took off safely at Newark Airport.

Underneath the Civil Aeronautics report, I find a faded newspaper clipping of Linda celebrating her third birthday in the hospital. She’s surrounded by my mother and father, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Linda is trying to smile. Her bottom eyelids are dragged toward her cheeks; her chin is soldered down to her little girl neck. Still, she smiles at the cake, the candles, her cousins standing with her. A defiant gleam in her eye.

chapter thirty-three

JANUARY 22, 1952
(DAY OF THE CRASH)

2:50
PM

L
INDEN
S
UFFEL WALKED
out of school with her friends to find her mother waiting for her in the car. Linden was on her way to my mother’s apartment to rehearse for a skit at their temple that evening.

“The weather is so bad, I didn’t want you walking to Mrs. Mandel’s and coming home late in the dark. She’ll understand. Just tell one of the girls to let her know you couldn’t make it,” Mrs. Suffel told her daughter and ushered her into the car.

Captain Reid was cleared by air traffic control to maintain seven thousand feet over Branchville.