The Aviator's Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

  My skin flushed with pride, with accomplishment. That was my favorite memory of the entire trip; maybe of our entire marriage. For in that moment, everyone knew with certainty that we were truly partners; I was his equal, the equal of every man in that room.

  But then Charles and his friends turned back to the maps, and I found myself surrounded by bright, gilded matrons in evening gowns, their hair elegantly coiffed. I was in a limp frock still wrinkled from being packed in the pontoon, and my hair, newly bobbed, was a mass of unkempt curls about my face. My moment of triumph was over as soon as it had begun, and I retreated back in the uncertain shadows of my life here on earth, neither pilot nor matron.

  I knew that I would be looking for that proud glance; that feeling of belonging, of knowing who I was, that I mattered, for the rest of my life.

  THERE WERE OTHER less jubilant moments on that trip. Moments when the fog was so thick around us as we flew over the Arctic, we couldn’t see where to land. Moments when we almost ran out of fuel, because we had to navigate around capricious storms that caused our plane to buck and heave like a bronco, and I didn’t know if we’d land miles beyond civilization and the nearest refueling station or simply fall out of the sky.

  Moments when I angrily cursed myself for believing Charles when he said he was the best pilot he knew, that he would always protect me; for believing him when he said we would see the baby again. Moments when, my eyes shut against the fog, the white blindness, the only image I could see was that of my son’s face, so clearly I wanted to cry out; the shy, sweet smile, the cleft chin, the round blue eyes always trusting—trusting me to come back to him.

  Moments when I feared I wouldn’t.

  After every storm, every menacing fog, every teeth-jarring landing on a narrow strait, the wings of the plane just barely missing rocks and cliffs, my hands would shake when I undid my harness.

  But Charles—Every time! Every single time!—would bound up out of his cockpit, turn around to me with a grin, and exclaim, “Well, that was fun, wasn’t it!” And he would insist that we’d never really been in any danger; he would insist it was all in my head, and that I worried too much, and had I remembered to pack the sandwiches for dinner?

  What could I do, in those times? What could I do but nod, and marvel, and chide myself for not being as strong as him, after all? For not acting worthy; worthy of his crew?

  And so we traveled on, mapping routes, spreading goodwill across the globe, dispatching letters home when possible. We reached China in late September, where our mission became one of mercy. The Yangtze River had flooded so awesomely that tens of thousands of people were displaced, starving, or drowned. I piloted countless hours over its path, as Charles mapped out areas for possible flood relief, and we delivered much-needed medicine to isolated villages. We were about to leave on one last mission when the Sirius overturned in the Yangtze.

  Charles and I were rescued by sailors and brought aboard the British aircraft carrier Hermes, which had tried to launch us in the first place. Somehow they managed to lift the plane out of the water. But as I watched on deck, wrapped in a musty blanket, I saw that there were huge holes in one of the wings and the fuselage.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned, sickened by the damage done to our plane; the plane that I had trusted to bring me back to my son, and now I knew that it wouldn’t.

  “I can fix it,” Charles promised, that terrifyingly certain set to his jaw. “We’ll have the Hermes take us up to Shanghai, where I can probably get the right parts. I won’t let this be the end of our trip.”

  “No, no, of course not,” I replied, too quickly. I couldn’t prevent my entire body from shuddering with cold and, I suddenly realized—heartbreaking disappointment. He would fix it, of course he would. And we would soon be winging our way across the rest of the globe; winging our way to some fresh danger, some impossible situation that no mere mortal could be expected to survive. How many of them could we cheat? How long before even Lucky Lindy’s luck ran out?

  I walked away from Charles, my stomach queasy from the water I’d swallowed; I ran my tongue over my teeth and found grit there. I hurried over to the side of the deck and spat frantically over the railing, desperate to get some of the filth out of my mouth; I shivered even though the air was quite warm. Behind me, I heard my husband barking out orders to some of the ship’s crew, as they tried to do something to our plane.

  So the ship changed course toward Shanghai, where we’d have to stay; how many days I had no idea, but each one a nail in my heart, hammered in by the knowledge that it would be that much longer before I saw my son, held him in my arms, felt his fingers curl warmly around mine.

  It was growing dark, and I was still covered in mud; now I was desperate to get to our little shipboard cabin. If only I could shut the door and take a hot shower, wash the filth and despair off me, look at the photographs of little Charlie that, thank God, were still in my stateroom, safe and dry. My legs weak with exhaustion, I was halfway down the deck when an officer came running toward me.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh? Mrs. Lindbergh?” He waved a yellow piece of paper. A telegram, I knew in an instant. I froze, unable to take another step. “Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, I’m sorry—”

  “What? The baby? Oh, the baby!”

  Charles came running up behind me. “Anne. Let me see what this is.”

  He snatched the telegram out of the man’s hands, and read it. As he did, I thought of all the things I would say to him if something had happened to my child. All the blame, all the recrimination; words, sentences—angry, bitter, accusing—flew through my mind and were almost on my lips when I heard my husband say, very gently, “It’s your father.”

  “What—Daddy?”

  “Yes. He’s—he’s dead, Anne. A stroke. This morning, apparently.”

  “Oh.” And I smiled.

  Charles looked at me oddly, but then put his arm about my shoulders. He made some kind of apology or statement to the always present newsmen on board the ship, and ushered me quickly down the deck to the telegraph room. He wired my mother to say we would be returning home right away.

  Through it all, my husband watched me with grave concern, and I knew he was wondering when, not if, I would collapse or give way to my emotions, those emotions he always despised because he did not understand them. But this time, even Charles understood the sadness of losing a parent. Of course, I must be distraught.

  How to explain, then, that all I felt was relief? Relief that little Charlie was fine, that we hadn’t drowned in the Yangtze after all. Relief that it was only my father.

  For I would see my baby. Sooner, much sooner, than I had thought. Because my father had died, I was released from my duty as my husband’s crew. At that moment I couldn’t feel grief about the reason.

  I only knew the pure happiness of one who has been relieved of a great, crushing burden. I could hardly sleep that night, I was so eager for the morning.

  We took a ship back to San Francisco, where we borrowed a plane and flew across the country. We did not encounter any storms or mishaps. And three weeks later, when the car finally pulled up to Next Day Hill, I ran ahead of my husband. I brushed past my grieving mother, my stricken sisters, my silent brother; I ran upstairs on feet that fairly flew.

  And I grabbed my child out of the arms of his surprised nurse. Dancing around the sunny, light-filled nursery with Charlie in my arms, I whispered that I would never leave him again.

  1974

  WE HAVE REACHED THIS ISLAND, this place he has chosen as his home, finally, once and for all. The far side of Maui, a place called Hana; a jungle, really—screeching birds, jumping fish, the roar of the ocean so loud that it can’t be called restful. These last few years, Charles has turned his back on technology, the modern age. Instead, he devoted his fierce attention to environmental causes—saving rain forests, hugging trees, preserving indigenous tribes. He fell in love with Hawaii; he even built a two-room hut, ostensibly for us but really for him. He knew that I would nev
er consent to live permanently so far from everything we’ve known, so far from our children and grandchildren, our memories—and perhaps that was the point.

  Here is where he is preparing himself to die.

  The hut is too far from the closest clinic, so we have borrowed someone else’s home, and it grieves me that he will have to die within a stranger’s walls. But he seems content with the arrangement; a hospital bed is in the front room, positioned so that the ocean, yards away, is in full view. Charles is propped up in it, but there are no tubes attached to him, no noisy machines, no one checking his pulse every five minutes; all are banished, at his command. He has spent these last couple of days calmly making lists between naps of startlingly deep nature; there has been more than one moment when I was sure he had slipped away, only to be startled and relieved to hear him take a wrenching, crackling breath. These lists outline, in his usual exhaustive detail, the steps we are to take as soon as he breathes his last.

  Farther from the beach, in another small hut, a man is crafting a long, narrow casket out of native eucalyptus to Charles’s specifications. Deep in the jungle, about a mile in from the ocean, two other men are digging a grave. It is on a plot of land big enough to hold two caskets; Charles has already informed me where I am to lie, when my time comes. Far, far away from the world, with only him for company; the precise thing I once longed for; the reason I abandoned my baby forty-three years ago.

  Scott, having had a last, healing talk with his father, has left; his wife and child are in France, and he has been away from them long enough. Jon, too, had to return to Seattle to his family. Land remains, drifting in and out as I sit vigil, offering to relieve me. But I say no, rather snappishly. I want him to leave for now. I don’t want him to go far; I just want my son away from the house. I must talk to Charles, and I’m terrified that time is slipping away alarmingly. With every ragged breath he takes, Charles loses a little ground.

  Finally, I instruct Land to visit the grave site to make sure it’s progressing. And I wait, and I watch, and at last Charles snorts, and groans, and wakes up with a wrenching start, blinking as if surprised to find himself still living.

  “What time is it?” Out of habit, he tries to raise his left arm, but his wrist is far too thin for a watch.

  “Two o’clock in the afternoon.” I hand him a glass of water to sip. He can’t hold it himself, so I do it for him; I want to cry to see him so helpless, so wasted.

  But then I remember the letters in my handbag. And I place the glass back down on a small teak table and return to his side, standing over him so that he can see me.

  I have no time to reconsider; I plunge into it now, before he slips away again.

  “The nurse gave me your letters,” I say.

  He is tired, and sick, and his eyes look more gray than blue now, almost milky. “What letters?” he asks. And I realize he truly doesn’t understand.

  “The letters you wrote.” I answer with the patience of a teacher, helping him to remember because I desperately need him to remember, so I can have this long-delayed moment of absolute honesty with him. “All three of them. To those women.”

  “Oh.” He blinks as if trying to focus his eyes. Then he turns to gaze at the rolling, crashing waves outside his window.

  “The letters to your—lovers, I suppose I should call them? Your mistresses?” I take a tremulous breath; I have been rehearsing this for forty-eight hours straight, even in my sleep. I will not stumble and cry and shout; I’ve done those things already today, walking along the beach before dawn, the pounding surf the only thing more stupendous than my rage. “Those women you hid away, all these years. Even more thoroughly than you hid me.”

  “I didn’t hide you. I told you that, once.”

  “I need to know why. I need to know how—how could you do this to me? To your children, especially? How could you hurt us all so?” Despite my vow, I feel the sting of angry tears.

  I turn away, and so I can’t see his face when he whispers, “I never wanted to hurt you, Anne. But I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did!” I wheel around, prepared to continue this, but he interrupts: “No. Not now. But then. Back then, in ’thirty-two. The baby.”

  The blow, as always, is visceral but not as devastating as it used to be. Time, as everyone told me then, does soften the pain.

  “You? What do you mean, you hurt me? Charles, no, don’t you remember, they found the man who—”

  “No. It was me. It was always me.”

  Every muscle tensed against the onslaught of memory, I wait. Is this it? Is this all?

  But he begins to breathe raspily, steadily. And I know that he’s fallen back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  March 1932

  “BETTY, DO YOU THINK we ought to give him a bath tonight?”

  “I don’t know. He’s still sniffling so, Mrs. Lindbergh. I think not.”

  “You’re right, Betty, as usual.” I smiled at her, and she blushed, looking, for just a moment, like a young girl. Pretty, with red hair, a quick smile, Betty Gow normally exuded such authority in the nursery that I felt the difference in our ages acutely. I was only twenty-five to her twenty-nine. This always made me feel as if our roles should be reversed; that she should be the mother, and I the nursemaid. She simply knew so much more than did I.

  “I suppose just change him and put him in a new sleep shirt?” I winced at the question mark in my voice. “I’ll be downstairs, seeing to dinner for the colonel. I’ll come up before you put him to bed. I wish we had brought more clothing with us this weekend, though. I’ll be happy once we’re all moved in.” I glanced around the airy nursery, freshly painted and papered; the only room of our new home that was completely furnished. So far we came down only on weekends, without Betty; playing family, I thought of it. Just the three of us, and I cared for the baby myself, almost as if it were a game. Knowing that I couldn’t do that much damage, for come Monday, Betty would be there to undo it.

  But when Charlie woke up this past Monday sniffling and feverish, I’d decided to stay put until he was better. This morning, Tuesday, I’d rung up Next Day Hill and asked Betty to come out; I wasn’t feeling well myself. Taking care of a sick baby full-time was more work than I’d anticipated, and I felt my inexperience keenly. In short, I needed her help, especially since Charles had gone into the city as usual yesterday morning.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” I told Betty again. “I hope you didn’t have any plans tonight?”

  “Oh, Red and I were going to see a movie, but I called him and told him I couldn’t go, and he could either like it or lump it.” She winked at me, so assured; I had never been that assured of a man and even after being married for almost three years, I still wasn’t.

  Standing there so competent, complete with my baby in her arms, Betty didn’t seem like a woman in love, and I fervently hoped she wasn’t. Her boyfriend, Red Johnson, was a nice enough man. But I relied too much on Betty; I didn’t want her to marry and leave me. Us.

  “Was he—was he angry?” I hated to pry, but Betty and I had so little to talk about, usually. Other than the baby.

  “Oh, he’ll get over it,” she replied tartly. “He knows our Charlie comes first.”

  I smiled, even as I was in awe. I was the baby’s mother, and I couldn’t imagine saying that to Charles.

  “Well, that’s good,” I said, suddenly shy; I’d pried too much. “I’d better go see about dinner.”

  Betty nodded and brought little Charlie over to me for a quick kiss. His nose was crusty, and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. He didn’t act as if he were sick, however; he smiled up at me with a gay little wave before being borne off by Betty to be changed.

  FIVE MONTHS HAD PASSED since Daddy died. Five months of sorrow on the surface, but pure contentment underneath as finally, after two years of delays caused by Charles’s meddling with first one architect, then another, our home outside of Hopewell, New Jersey—about sixty miles from Manhatt
an—was almost completed. With no plans for future flights on the horizon, I disregarded, once and for all, Mr. Watson’s parenting advice and gave myself over to the pure joy of being with my child. I smothered him with kisses and spent entire afternoons in the nursery, knitting or mending while he played contentedly at my feet, Betty bustling about in the background with her Scottish competence and humor. Spoiling him; I freely admitted it. I had to, while I could, for I was expecting another child. Soon little Charlie would have a sibling to contend with, and my attention would naturally be divided. So I showered him with it now.

  Of course I missed my father. But with my own family to care for, I missed him less than I would have before; I understood that, and knew that he would have, too. So while I mourned him; mourned, once and for all, the end of the family I had thought I’d known as a child, I saw it as a natural progression. My father had died, and I was expecting a new life. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?

  I wanted to worry about Mother, but she wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to be doing surprisingly well; she’d packed up the Washington townhouse with no regrets.

  “It killed him,” she said bluntly, the day she moved back to Next Day Hill for good. “Washington. Politics. He hadn’t the heart for it, and he couldn’t say no.”

  “What will you do?” I couldn’t imagine my mother’s future without my father, so seamlessly had they always worked together for the same common goal—his career. She had so much energy. So much determination. What on earth would she do with it now?

  “Don’t worry about me,” she answered, quite mysteriously. “Worry about your husband instead.”

  “Charles? Why would I worry about him? Of all the people in the world, Charles doesn’t need anyone to worry about him!”

  “Things are changing—the world is changing. You’re changing. Even if you don’t know it yet.”