“Never again,” she says.
They nod solemnly, and she doesn’t believe them for a moment. A smile erupts despite her best efforts to hide it. The look of alarm fades from Walter’s face, and she sees how relieved he is not to be the target of her wrath. The child wants to please. Almost as much as he wants to explore and destroy. And she can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a child of her own.
Emilie grimaces. This is the problem with being a widow. She knows exactly what she’s missing. There are biological desires that she can do nothing about. She likes children well enough. She has spent the better part of her adult life caring for them, in fact. But she never wanted one of her own—not when Hans was alive. Once the possibility evaporated, however, she found herself consumed with the thought. There is nothing logical to it. She knows the effort it takes to feed and care for the little miscreants. She simply wants a child because she can’t have one. So like human nature.
Emilie shakes the thought away. “Come along, children. We’ll wait for your parents in the reading room.”
They leave the dining room and circle around to the other side of the ship, through the lounge with its mural depicting the routes of the great explorers, toward the small area at the back. It’s quieter here, walled off from the lounge, and she settles all three children into aluminum tube chairs with orange upholstery situated around a small table. The springs squeak in protest as the boys rock back and forth.
She hands them postcards and pencils—she wouldn’t trust these boys with a pen if her life depended on it. God only knows the damage they could do with permanent ink. Emilie then removes herself a bit to offer them privacy to compose their thoughts. It has become something of a novelty to receive mail written and posted from the Hindenburg. A collector’s item. People place value on the strangest things, Emilie thinks.
Of all the public rooms on board the Hindenburg, the reading room is the most subdued. It has the quiet, genteel atmosphere of a library, and the children can feel it, for they settle down within a few minutes. No jostling. No poking one another with pencils or elbows. Here the fabric-covered walls are painted with murals depicting the history of postal delivery, starting with idyllic agrarian settings. Farms. Fields. Livestock. Children playing with sticks. A placid lake. A shallow stream. It speaks of contentment and simplicity. Irene stares at a small cottage with a dreamy smile, and Emilie knows she’s painting domestic fantasies in her mind. Emilie wonders if her own romantic yearnings started at such a young age. She thinks back to Frank Becker and his crass invitation in the butcher shop. Perhaps her own desires were not so innocent.
The airship passes through a cloud bank and into the bright sun for the first time that morning. The atmosphere changes in the time it takes Emilie to blink. Warm golden light spills through the observation windows and across the floor. Irene laughs at the change, her voice a delighted explosion of joy. She runs to look out the window, palms pressed against the glass.
“Look!” someone shouts from the promenade. “A rainbow!”
The boys shoot to their feet, scattering writing paraphernalia across the floor, and dart around the wall. Emilie follows behind, wiping pencil shavings from her skirt as she goes. The long, black shadow of the Hindenburg dances across the water below, warped by the movement of the waves. And circling the shadow is a 360-degree rainbow. A perfect areola of flaming color. All seven hues present. Emilie stands with the passengers in awe. She has never seen a rainbow like this, only bits and pieces of them broken by cloud or skyline or any myriad number of obstructions. But this is different. This is what every rainbow should be. Perfect. Unbroken. Exquisite. Each color pitched against the mirrored sea behind it. And huge. It must stretch hundreds of feet in diameter. To Emilie it looks like the promise of something better. Something more. She releases a single, reverence-laden breath.