The Aviator's Wife: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  “Because there’s something else,” Charles said quietly. He placed the brown package in my lap, then reverently unwrapped it, revealing a piece of gray wool fabric. A gray Dr. Denton wool sleep suit. Size two.

  I lifted the fabric to my face; eyes squeezed tight, I inhaled it, wanting desperately to smell the innocence of my child, the downy hair, the apple scent of his shampoo, the grease of the Vicks I rubbed on his chest that night. I so wanted to smell these things that for a moment I did—and then I knew it was only the desire of memory. This fabric did not smell like any of those things; it actually had very little scent at all. Only a faint whiff of damp, as if it had been freshly laundered.

  But it had been so long; two weeks now. If Charlie had been disguised somehow, in different clothing, then they might have laundered his sleep suit—

  I handed the fabric back to Charles and looked at Betty, hard.

  “Is this his suit? What do you think? I need you to tell me the truth, Betty. Always.”

  “I think it is! I really do, Mrs. Lindbergh! I think I recognize it!” Betty’s cheeks were scarlet as she reached out a tentative hand to stroke the fabric.

  “Then it is it! We are on the right trail, at last!” Charles strode about, energized, nearly knocking over a lamp on the table. He crossed the room in one giant stride.

  “Anne, this is it,” he said to me—only to me; it was as if there was no one present but us, now. He knelt, and smoothed the fabric in my lap, speaking softly, urgently. “Betty recognized this right away. And you did, too—I saw it in your face. I know you want to be absolutely sure, Anne. I know what a strain this has all been, and how confused you must be—and how hard it must be, now, to hope, after everything. But Condon here spoke with the man who gave us this. He said this had been planned for a year, that the baby was in good health, was being taken care of on a boat by two women. Two women! Think of that! He seemed very sure of himself, and he had this.” Charles grasped my hands tightly, as if he could transfer all his confidence to me.

  I shook my head, still hesitant to believe. He was right. I was afraid to hope. Even though that’s all I had been told to do—the only job entrusted to me—deep in my heart, I hadn’t. But now—oh, Charles was so sure of himself! Finally, after weeks of dashing about, playing a desperate game of cloak and dagger, he looked like the old Charles. The clear-eyed boy. The best pilot he knew; the best there ever was.

  “Will you—if Colonel Schwarzkopf can verify this—” I took the fabric once more, slowly claiming it, allowing its worn folds to soften my heart. Charles paled at my mention of Colonel Schwarzkopf, but I didn’t care. As much as I wanted to believe him, I needed to hear Colonel Schwarzkopf’s opinion even more. My heart beat fast, my face flushed, as if he’d discovered me in an indiscretion—but I did not flinch from his gaze.

  “I understand. This has been such a strain. I understand.” And with those words, Charles allowed me to question his methods for the first time.

  “It has been such a strain. For both of us. But if Colonel Schwarzkopf agrees, well, then—” I nodded, coaxing myself into giving in, finally, to the luxury of hope. “I do think this is the baby’s, it really does seem like it. I do! So—now what? We know they have him. Do we just give them the money, then? Is that how it’s done? And then we’ll get him back?” My heart began to beat faster and faster with every word until I jumped out of the chair and grasped Mr. Condon’s hand. “Oh, thank you—bless you!” And I could have kissed him, right then, but I didn’t. The odd little man did bow, once more, and wiped a tear from his eye.

  My own eyes were dry, and I felt a sudden surge of energy, of optimism, race through my veins. For the first time in weeks, I was hungry. Ravenous! The child within me kicked, as if to remind me how starved he was, too, and I laughed out loud.

  “We have so much to do,” I told my husband, who nodded indulgently as time sped up, calendar pages fell away, and I began to recognize the world again. “The house is a wreck! I don’t want him to come home and see it like this, do you?” Charles shook his head, but I hardly even paused to register it. I continued to pace about, my mind full of plans—blissful, ordinary plans, plans that other families were making, too, right at this very moment! “We’ll have to get him some spring clothes, you know. We haven’t had a chance to buy anything new. Do you think he’s grown very much? Babies do grow so fast at this age. Charles, Charles, do you think Charlie will remember us?”

  “Of course, Anne,” my husband murmured, and suddenly I was aware that everyone in the room was staring at me as if they’d never seen me before. And I suppose they hadn’t; they hadn’t seen this happy, hopeful creature at all. Until now.

  “I’m sorry, I rather lost my head,” I said sheepishly, but no one seemed to mind. “Please, go on and do what you have to do. Please—go!” I took Charles’s arm and propelled him out the door—to his great surprise, and to everyone else’s. “Go talk to Colonel Schwarzkopf—show him the fabric, and then arrange it all! This is what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? Go!”

  Laughing, Charles allowed me to push him down the hall. Condon followed—again with an elaborate bow. Betty grabbed my hand, and the two of us embraced. Forgotten was the anger, the suspicion, the recrimination; now we were united in joy. Then she left, as well.

  I went to my desk and began to make a list of everything we would need for the baby’s homecoming. Charles had taught me so well! I had not been such a great list maker before we met; now, I found, I could make them easily. All because of my husband—one more miracle he had wrought!

  But before I began, I found myself writing one word. Just this one word, the word I had not allowed myself to write, to speak, until now—

  Hope!

  CHAPTER 11

  IT WAS MID-MAY. More than two months since my child was taken.

  The house was so quiet now. The switchboard was still operative, but we received only a hundred calls per day. Police and other strangers no longer camped out in the house; Elsie had had all the rugs cleaned, the floors polished, the camp beds removed.

  I was terrified by the silence, the orderliness. All those people had been working to bring my baby home because they thought there was a chance. It was impossible not to recognize the more sedate atmosphere as resignation.

  Colonel Schwarzkopf still maintained an office in the house, working independently of Charles, although Charles had listened to him in one matter; he had paid the ransom to Condon’s man in marked gold certificates, so they could be traced.

  But the colonel no longer believed my baby was alive. He hadn’t told me, and he certainly hadn’t told Charles, but I knew it, even as I didn’t quite register it. It was like a particularly difficult math equation from school: I could recognize the symbols and letters. But what they represented simply would not penetrate my understanding.

  Over the last month, the investigation had taken a grotesque turn. Without Colonel Schwarzkopf’s knowledge, the state police sent a man to inspect the incinerator in our basement. He had insisted that Charles and I accompany him. Eyes flickering suspiciously over us both as we stood beside the glowing furnace, he sifted through the ashes with a shovel. “Searching for fragments of bone,” he informed us icily. I recoiled, falling against my stony husband; neither of us spoke a word for hours after the man—reluctantly—left, empty-handed but still glaring our way, accusing us of the unthinkable.

  Another time, I heard a repeated thumping outside; looking out the dining room window, I saw several broken ladders on the ground, and an intact one leaning against the house, beneath the nursery window. A policeman was halfway down it, about five feet off the ground, carrying a flour sack the size of an eighteen-month-old child. With an ominous groan, the ladder split exactly where the original broken ladder had split; in three pieces. The policeman clung to one side of the ladder, held firmly by his compatriots on the ground.

  But the sack tumbled to the ground with a sickening thud, hitting the stone façade of the house on
its way down as the men whooped with accomplishment—“It’s broken like that every time, just like the ladder we found! That sack weighs what the kid weighed, right?”

  I crumpled to the floor, hitting my chest with my fists, shaking from the force of the unleashed scream that echoed furiously within.

  Spring had persisted in arriving, cruelly unaware of our desolation. On the walks I took about the house, accompanied by Elisabeth, I looked for meaning in everything. So did she.

  “Look, Anne, look at the new leaves! The tulips are coming up,” she said one afternoon, when the sun was healing and the wind was coaxing.

  “But they’re coming up wrong. All bent over.”

  “Only because all the policemen stepped on them,” she chided. “They’ll be all right next year.”

  “Next year.” I shook my head, unable to comprehend it. “Where will we all be next year?”

  “Charlie will be almost three, and the new baby will be crawling around!” Elisabeth laughed. “Can you imagine what a mess these flowers will be then?”

  I forced a smile, trying to picture it. But the new baby looked like Charlie in my mind. And Charlie at three—to my horror, I couldn’t see his face; the toddler in my imagination had his back to me, running away. Never coming back.

  “Oh!” I couldn’t help it; I stopped in my tracks, terrified to go any farther.

  “What? Anne, are you ill?”

  “No, it’s just—silly. But for a minute I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see him. Charlie. Oh, Elisabeth, what if—?”

  Unlike my husband, unlike my mother, both of whom were relentless in their refusal to allow me dark thoughts—my sister allowed me this question.

  “I don’t know, Anne. I don’t know. Somehow, you’ll go on, though. You’ll have to. But you won’t be alone. You’ll have Charles, and Mother, and Con and Dwight. You’ll have me.”

  “I know.” And I grasped her hand; her frail hand, the skin so thin I could feel her pulse. I prayed for her, right then; I needed God to spare her, because if she left me, there would be no one to talk to. How foolish we’d both been, before!

  “I have a secret to tell you,” she confided, as we began to stroll once more. “I’ve fallen in love. With Aubrey. Aubrey Morgan, you know him. We’re going to live in Wales, at his estate. After our—marriage.” She said it shyly, as if it were a wish that would vanish when spoken.

  “Elisabeth, are you sure? I mean, what about Connie? And it’s not easy, you know. Marriage. Even if you’re—uniquely suited—to it, like—”

  “Like you?”

  “I believe you did call me out on that once, if you recall. Although I think you used the word ‘sweet.’ ” I raised an eyebrow, and she grinned. “You know, I always thought when we were young that you would be the one to marry, but now—I suppose I’ve grown to think of you as above it, somehow. Are you really sure?”

  “Yes, Anne. Yes, this is what I want. That struggle, with Connie—I’m not strong enough for it, and so I released it. It’s simpler this way. And Aubrey is a kind man. He wants to make life easy for me. Not harder, like with Connie. But easier.”

  I glanced up at Elisabeth’s face; she looked radiant. Like a bride already.

  “Then I’m so happy,” I assured her. “Does Mother know?”

  “No. We—we’ve thought it best to wait until—until Charlie is back.”

  “Do you love Aubrey?” It was ridiculous to ask if he loved her; of course he did. Everyone loved Elisabeth.

  “Yes. Oh, Anne—yes! He’s always fussing over me, saying I have to listen to my doctors. But what do they know? They want me to live like an invalid, but I won’t do it. I’ve waited too long for this—this contentment.”

  I squeezed her hand, and didn’t lecture that I, too, wanted her to listen to the doctors. Or that contentment can be a prelude to tragedy. She allowed me my despair; I had to allow her happiness. So we continued to walk, arms linked; lost in our own, very different, thoughts.

  Perhaps because of Elisabeth and her perfect understanding, I had begun to write in my diary again. Finally, something unspooled within me and I had to release it on the page and I didn’t care what my husband said about it. When I married Charles, he had asked me to give my diary up, for fear someone would steal it and sell it to the newspapers. And I’d agreed.

  How laughable now, to remember a time when my thoughts were considered something to be guarded as closely as my child!

  Now, sitting prisoner in this unfinished building, I looked forward to taking up my pen once more. I could rage, cry, pray with it, as I could not allow myself to do in real life. Sometimes I was terrified by the emotions I released, for Charles did not escape my rage. Those pages I burned, a good little acolyte. The rest I kept hidden, not ever wanting to read them again but not wanting to destroy them, either. They represented something to me; some small triumph, some battle won.

  “Have you seen Colonel Schwarzkopf today?” I asked Mother the evening of May 12. I was in my room, writing in my diary; she brought me some tea.

  “He got a phone call about half an hour ago and went out.”

  “Maybe it was Charles?” I looked up.

  My mother smiled her sad smile and shook her head. “I don’t think so, dear.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t really disappointed. I was too full of disappointments to register any more. Every note that appeared in the paper from Condon, begging for further instruction from the kidnappers now that the ransom had been paid. Every week that went by without a reply. Every crackpot who said he had some new information. Every wild-goose chase that Charles followed, with that same determined, grim set to his jaw, the heartbreakingly resolute way he put his hat on as he left—a sharp bend to his elbow, a resigned pat on the top of his head, almost for good luck, I thought.

  He had been gone for several days now, piloting his plane off Cape May, searching for a boat that yet another man—this one named Curtis—with a craving for publicity had tipped him to. Why it was always a boat, I had no idea. But maybe, just maybe, this time—

  “Has Charles called at all today?” I asked, but this time I did not look at my poor mother’s face. She was kindness and patience and suffering and despair; she—along with Elisabeth—was everything to me these days. Everything my husband could not allow himself to be; not until he brought little Charlie back home.

  “No, dearest,” my mother said with a sigh. Then she bent to kiss my cheek, and left me alone.

  Taking the teacup, I picked up a book; a book I had been reading before: The Good Earth. I’d had to stop reading after O-Lan killed her daughter because of the famine. Now I wondered if I’d ever be able to finish it. I dropped it to the floor and grabbed something else, something mindless, frivolous. The Inimitable Jeeves.

  Stretching out on the bed, I tried to read. But after only a few minutes my eyes fluttered. Sleep was a refuge. Hours could pass and I wouldn’t have to know, wouldn’t have to feel. So I let the book fall off my lap, and I buried my head in the pillow, shutting out the world with eyes squeezed tight. But before I could fully surrender myself to unconsciousness, there was a knock on my door.

  “Charles?” I sat up clumsily, guiltily; he did not like me to nap so often. “Charles? Is it you?”

  The door opened, but Charles wasn’t there.

  Mother was in the doorway, and behind her stood Colonel Schwarzkopf. I didn’t even glance at Mother’s face—I looked right past her, my gaze drawn to the colonel. And I knew, before I could even catch my breath and prepare myself; before he said a word. With shaking hands, I grabbed a pillow and pressed it to my chest, as if it could shield me from what he had to say.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh,” he began, in a voice thick with unaccustomed emotion. “Mrs. Lindbergh, I am so sorry to have to tell you this.”

  “Anne, Anne,” Mother whispered, and she began to cry. I began to tremble, violently.

  “A body was found this morning,” the colonel continued. “By a driver. A truck driver,�
� he corrected himself, as if this detail was important. “Five miles away. The decompo—the body of an infant. Deceased. Approximately eighteen months of age—”

  “Anne, the baby. The baby—he’s with Daddy now.” My mother wept, and it was as if the two voices, one so clinical, the other so sympathetic, were a fugue, weaving in and out of my understanding; tearing apart my heart.

  “Oh—oh!” I looked to each of them for confirmation. It was there, in Colonel Schwarzkopf’s suddenly glistening eyes, his jaw working back and forth; in Mother’s terribly aged face, sadness pulling every feature down like a giant hand had erased everything good that had ever happened to her.

  My heart—it disappeared. Disappeared with my child; I knew I’d never know either of them again. I was simply an empty vessel, a shell, and my spirit was floating away from it. From somewhere near the ceiling, I saw myself sitting on that bed, my mother’s arms around me—

  And then, still floating, drifting above—but not quite flying—I saw the empty crib. The empty room. My empty arms. And my heart reminded me angrily, vengefully, that it would not disappear so easily as my child; it shattered, piercing my soul, the shards then splintering into diamonds with sharp, unpolished edges. “I knew,” I heard myself say, gasping for air, for reason. “I think I knew from the beginning—”

  He was gone. My golden child, my sweet, serious little man. Gone. No more on this earth, no more in my life. Taken.

  Taken. Taken. Taken. Dashed.

  “How—how did he—?” I was having trouble breathing. I fought to stay conscious—I fought to hurt, to feel. I had to do it, for my child. It was the only thing I could do for him now—or ever. Forever. It yawned ahead of me, a great abyss of darkness and sadness and I knew, in that moment, that forever I would be searching for him. Forever I would see an empty crib, an empty place at the table, an empty date on the calendar that should mark a birthday, a graduation, a wedding.