The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [44]
“Flight school?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t stop her grin.
“Oh, Janine, your head’s in the clouds.”
“I can’t wait to have my head in the clouds,” she said.
“You’re going to be surrounded by other guys,” he said, and she suddenly saw one of the central reasons for his disapproval. He’d always had a jealous streak.
“That’s not why I’m doing it.”
“So…when is this supposed to start?” he asked.
She felt a little afraid of what she had to tell him. “I’ll leave in September,” she replied. “I’ll have to go to basic training, like I said, in Fort Rucker. That’s in Alabama. That’ll take about a year, and—”
“A year!”
“And then I’ll stay there for flight school, and then I’ll be a Warrant Officer.” That sounded so much better than “bank teller”!
“And then what?”
She knew that tight look on his face; he was struggling to hold his anger in.
“Then I’ll come home and I’ll be able to fly with my reserve unit at Fort Belvoir. Once I’m with the reserve unit, I can have another job. I’ll just need to be able to take off one weekend a—”
He threw his book on the coffee table, knocking over his soup. “This is insane!” he said. “I want a woman for a wife. Not a soldier.” He stomped across the room to the phone.
“Who are you calling?” she asked.
“Your parents. Maybe they can talk some sense into you.”
She could feel her strength and resolve slipping away from her, and she was once again the little girl, always under her parents’ disapproving thumbs.
Within minutes, her parents had arrived at the apartment, where they attempted to talk Janine out of her “wild plan.” They thought she had grown up in the last year, they told her. They thought she was more stable and responsible. She was being unbelievably selfish. She wasn’t thinking of Joe or their marriage at all, only of herself and her crazy ideas. Sitting perfectly still, not saying a word, she let them have their say. She was going to do this, even if it cost her the love of her parents. Even if it cost her the love of her husband.
Her mother stopped talking to her that night, and her silence lasted for years. Janine went to Fort Rucker, tucking her family’s disdain for her decision in the back of her mind as she learned to fly a helicopter. Her flight instructor called her a “natural pilot,” and she knew she had found her passion. Yes, some of the guys badgered her, and others hit on her, but that was not what she was there for. She was in faithful contact with Joe, reassuring him that she would be home soon and how truly happy she was. She told him she couldn’t wait to take him up in a helicopter someday. When she finally came home from flight school, she was a happier young woman. And she was, remarkably, a soldier.
As much as she adored flying, Joe loved his chosen career: working with money. He graduated from college soon after her return and took an accounting job with a large, well-respected firm. He was a hard worker, and he became even more serious and sober as he threw himself into his career.
It wasn’t until Janine took a job as a helicopter pilot for Omega-Flight, an aircraft leasing company, that she discovered Joe’s fear of flying.
She’d received permission from Omega-Flight to take her husband up in the helicopter one weekend, and only then did Joe admit to his fear. She thought back to the few times they had been scheduled to fly somewhere, and how he always decided to drive or take the train instead, making up some excuse about wanting to see the countryside. She had known about his father’s accident and chastised herself for her insensitivity. He admitted then how much it upset him that her major passion in life was the one thing he could take no part in. She’d felt sorry for him and held him close to her as he talked about his fear. He rarely let her see vulnerability in him, and it touched her. Yet he was right. Flying was indeed her passion.
Although her mother began