The Aviator's Wife: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  “Yes, he did. Elisabeth and Constance happened to be home, so they were able to entertain him.”

  “Ah.”

  “The colonel was as loquacious as ever,” Elisabeth said, with a wry smile for Connie, who returned it, wrinkling her broad, freckle-splattered nose.

  “I’ve never met a more boring man.” Connie sniffed disdainfully.

  “Oh, he’s not boring, he’s just—careful,” I said. Being very careful, myself.

  “There’s my girl!” Daddy ambled up; he had been detained by a crowd of admirers and a couple of members of the press. “We’re so proud of you, Anne!”

  “Yes, we are,” Mother assured me with another hug. Con, my little sister, took my two prize certificates and studied them. Then she sighed dramatically.

  “Marvelous. Yet another Morrow achievement I’ll have to live up to!”

  “I wish Dwight were here,” I blurted out, surprising us all. Naturally, we were not to mention my brother’s recent “troubles” in public. But Con’s little joke reminded me that there was at least one Morrow who was having difficulties living up to his heritage.

  Dwight had been hallucinating, delirious, at school. Daddy’s stern letters exhorting him to “buck up” had not helped; finally Mother arranged to place him in a rest home in South Carolina. It was merely a “temporary” situation, she reminded us all—but a necessary one.

  There was an awkward silence at the mention of my brother’s name; Mother fiddled with her gloves while Daddy tugged at his necktie.

  “We thought it best for him to remain—for him to get some strength back, before traveling,” Mother said, her eyes glazing over, giving her an odd, faraway air. She had turned away from my father, who suddenly seemed very interested in a clump of damp grass clinging to the top of his white shoe. Con and Elisabeth stared at the ground, while Connie Chilton retreated a few steps, as if unsure whether or not she should hear any of this.

  “You’re coddling him,” Daddy grumbled—but he would not look at my mother, and for the first time ever, I sensed a crack in their partnership. My parents’ overwhelming closeness was as much a part of my childhood as my beloved Roosevelt bear with its missing eye. My parents never argued or contradicted each other; they decided and spoke in one unified voice, and at times I had felt lonely in the face of it. Loved, always—yet sometimes lonely.

  But now—

  “We are not coddling him, Dwight. The boy is in pain,” Mother snapped—the first time I had ever heard her raise her voice to my father. Then she turned away, as if collecting herself, while Daddy strode off to the car, his cheeks scarlet, his shoulders pinched so that his suit coat appeared even baggier than usual. Con blinked away a few bright tears before trotting off behind Daddy.

  I turned to Elisabeth, to gauge her reaction to all this; she simply pressed her lips together and shrugged, then held out her hand to her friend. Connie Chilton looked as if she wanted to say something, but I saw Elisabeth squeeze her arm in warning.

  After a moment, I followed Mother.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” I whispered to her. “Dwight does need professional care. I’ve seen it. What can I do? I don’t care if Daddy doesn’t approve. I want to help.”

  “My daughter.” She smiled gratefully. “You’re such a rock sometimes, Anne, so quiet yet so steadfast. I don’t know if you’re aware of how much I rely on you.”

  I turned away, tears in my eyes; all my life, I’d wanted my mother to recognize me, alone; outside of Elisabeth’s shadow. Knowing that she had was my greatest graduation present, more precious to me than any awards.

  “Now, I know you probably have loads of plans.” Mother’s voice was back to its normal soothing tone. “But if you could stay in Englewood this summer to oversee the building of the new house, instead of coming back with us to Mexico City, it would be such a help, Anne. Elisabeth and Connie have their school plans, and I would feel better knowing you were home, so that Dwight might be able to—well, if he’s up to travel, I know he’d like to come home for a while. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I shook my head, grateful, actually, to have been asked. I still had no idea what I was going to do with myself. Watching over builders, helping my brother, even in his fragile state; both seemed a blessed alternative to sitting around, brooding and reading newspapers full of articles and photos of a certain Colonel Charles Lindbergh. And wondering what on earth I was going to do with the rest of my life.

  “Of course I don’t mind—I said I would help,” I assured my mother, and was surprised to see a tear in her eye. She blinked it away almost before I could convince myself it was there, and she called, gaily, to Elisabeth and Connie—who were walking so close together that their heads, both so blond, nearly touched—“Now, what are you two whispering about? Connie, is Elisabeth telling you secrets about the colonel?”

  Elisabeth and Connie sprang apart, laughing—too loudly, it seemed to me. As if my mother had accidentally touched a nerve.

  “Yes, Mrs. Morrow, that’s exactly what we were doing,” Connie called out brightly, as she squeezed my sister’s hand. And I couldn’t help but notice that Elisabeth’s face was suddenly scarlet, her eyes shining, as she squeezed Connie’s hand in return.

  Mother turned to me with a smile that suddenly crumbled, like a sand castle overwhelmed by an unexpected tide. She pretended to read my diploma, but then gave up and hugged it briefly to her chest, squeezing her eyes tight, and this time I knew there were tears.

  But when she opened them, her gaze was clear and bright as always; what was startling was how it was focused entirely on me. For once, I didn’t have the feeling she was thinking of someone or something else as she looked into my eyes. “Anne, dear, I really am very proud of you,” she said, so strangely earnest. “Very. I tried for the Jordan prize, you know, when I was a senior. But I didn’t win, and you did.”

  I smiled, touched and humbled by her confession. My mother didn’t often let slip a disappointment; it simply wasn’t in her nature to dwell on the past. She was changing, it seemed to me, almost before my very eyes. Maybe it was Dwight’s illness, forcing her to stop and reflect, consider, maybe even to blame.

  Or perhaps it was just my graduation; another childhood milestone over, my very last one. Maybe she felt older, more vulnerable, clutching my college diploma as if she could clutch all her children to her one more time before we all scattered and flew away.

  Whatever accounted for this rare vulnerability, I didn’t question her. I didn’t feel privy to know what was in my mother’s heart, despite my new college degree. I didn’t want that much knowledge just yet, and the responsibility that must come with it.

  But neither did I want to let go of her hand, for I sensed she needed someone strong to cling to; we held on to each other as we walked to the waiting car.

  “DWIGHT, DO YOU WANT ANYTHING special for dinner tonight?” I stood in the doorway of the study; my brother was sitting at my father’s empty desk, staring out the window.

  I didn’t like him staring in silence, but it was better than the strange, forced laughter that too often took its place these days. Since I had last seen him at Christmas, something had changed inside him, although on the outside he appeared much as usual. Still solidly built, low to the ground like a football player, with hair some indeterminate brown shade that was halfway between my dark tresses and Elisabeth’s blond. He dressed the same, groomed himself as ever, was interested in the same things—he followed the Yankees and would have argued the respective merits of Lou Gehrig versus Babe Ruth all day with me if I had even an ounce of knowledge about either.

  But his stutter was worse. That odd, strangled laughter burst out of him at the most inappropriate times—usually when he was in session with his tutor—and he sullenly stared out of windows far too often. Sometimes, I actually shook him; I told him to snap out of it or at least tell me what was wrong, for no one else seemed to be able to. The only thing he had said so far that was true, that wasn’t p
art of the typical Morrow family banter, had been, “It’s awful being Dwight Morrow Junior. You don’t know, Anne. It’s just too much for me.”

  I didn’t know. I was becoming painfully aware that there was so much I didn’t know. Now an adult, allowed a glimpse of these first cracks in my family’s perfect surface, I couldn’t help but wonder what else I didn’t understand about us all. My childhood had seemed charmed, privileged, and not only because our parents took pains to remind us that it was. We were always together, never farmed out like other children of wealth, although naturally, governesses and nurses took care of our everyday needs. Our parents, we understood from an early age, were dedicated to more important pursuits than ensuring that our teeth were brushed and our scraped knees bandaged.

  But Mother read to us an hour a day, every day, no matter how busy she was. Even when we were so small we had to sit on encyclopedias in order to reach the mahogany table, we children dined with our parents in the evening, and were expected to understand the politics and philosophies discussed. There were picnics on the sound and summers in Maine; travels abroad where Daddy read from Shakespeare in London, Voltaire in Paris. Somehow, though, we never were allowed to feel rich or special. Our money—how much? It never even occurred to me to ask; it was a cushion on which we could land, if necessary, once we reached for ourselves. But we were, always, expected to reach. Maybe that was the key to Dwight’s troubles; perhaps, being the son, he was expected to reach higher than Elisabeth or Con or me.

  “Dwight, I asked you what you wanted for dinner.” I repeated the safest question of all that I wanted to ask my brother, as he gazed at a robin hopping on the terrace, just outside the study window. At least he had the draperies open today; the room wasn’t quite so gloomy and stuffy with all its dark paneling.

  “Whatever you want, Anne.”

  “Isn’t it odd, just the two of us here?” I sat down on an overstuffed chair, picking up a pillow and holding it to my chest. “Like we’re playing house or something. How did we get so adult?”

  “You’d better get used to it—playing house. Once you’re married, that’s all you’ll be doing. Lucky.”

  “Oh, don’t say that—what’s lucky about it, anyway?”

  “That’s all you’re supposed to do, Annie. That’s all they expect.”

  “I don’t think that’s particularly lucky—even if it was true.” Although I knew, of course, that it was; already I had received five wedding invitations from my just-graduated classmates. “Anyway, I’m not going to get married.” I shook my head defiantly.

  “Nobody good enough for you?” Using his stocky legs, my brother propelled the swivel chair around so that he was facing me; there was a glint of his old, teasing smile on his face.

  “Nope. Not a soul. I’m far too rare a gem for any mere mortal man.”

  “You always wanted to marry a hero, Anne—don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, Dwight—that was just little-girl talk. Every little girl wants to marry someone heroic. It’s silly now. I couldn’t get a proposal from the milkman. But I don’t want to get married, I’ve decided. I’d much rather stay independent.”

  “You? Independent?” Dwight hooted, and it was only because of his strange, fragile state that I didn’t get up and leave in a huff. “As what? A teacher?”

  “Well, I could be, I suppose.” I didn’t like this line of questioning, because it was too much like the questions I asked myself at night, alone in my narrow girlhood bed. “Anyway, it’s Elisabeth who’ll marry the hero, not me.”

  “You mean Colonel Lindbergh?”

  My heart sank at how quickly he supplied my sister with her logical beau. But I nodded.

  “Well, Father’ll be pleased, anyway,” Dwight said, frowning. “He gave me the dickens when I was rude to the colonel over Christmas. He read me the riot act after that.” My brother’s face darkened; his eyes dulled.

  “Dwight, he loves you, you know.”

  “He’d rather have Colonel Lindbergh for a son.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. You’re being silly.”

  “Am I? When was the last time he was proud of me, Anne? When?”

  “When—when you—now, Dwight, stop it! There were plenty of times!”

  “Name one.” Dwight was so calm, not agitated at all; his voice didn’t rise and crack, his face didn’t turn from purple to scarlet and back again, like it usually did—and that was what frightened me the most.

  Yet at that moment, I could not recall the last time my father had said he was proud of his son. He told Elisabeth and me he was proud of us, all the time. Often for no reason other than that we looked especially pretty, or had written a particularly pleasing letter to him.

  “Dwight, I can’t suddenly be expected to come up with examples! Heavens, I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast this morning! All I know is that you’re wrong. Daddy loves you. We all love you.”

  “Well, sure, you do. What’s that matter? You’re only a girl.”

  “Only a girl? Dwight Morrow Junior, that’s a ridiculous thing to say!”

  “Oh, you know what I mean, Anne. It still doesn’t matter—you’ll go off and marry your hero some day, and then you won’t have any time for me, either. Just like Mother and Father.”

  “Dwight, you know they’d rather be up here. But this is Daddy’s job now. He has to be in Mexico City.”

  “Don’t I know it. ‘Dwight, you must remember, we have duties now, obligations.’ ”

  I had to laugh. My brother’s voice perfectly mimicked our father’s excited, breathless staccato.

  “ ‘You have duties,’ ” Dwight continued. “ ‘Your sisters have duties. Remember, young man, remember, education—’ ”

  “Education, education,” I chimed in—but then the phone on Daddy’s desk rang, startling us into silence. We both jumped, then giggled guiltily; had our father somehow heard us, all the way from Mexico? I don’t think either one of us would have been surprised.

  Dwight was the first to recover. Picking up the receiver and leaning toward the transmitter, he said, “Hello, Morrow residence,” still in that urgent, high-pitched voice that sounded just like Daddy’s. I giggled again, and Dwight rewarded me with a sly smile. Then my brother suddenly colored, sat up straight in his chair, and said, “Miss Morrow? No, she’s away. Oh—are you sure? Yes, she is,” and thrust the receiver and transmitter out to me.

  “It’s your hero, Anne,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  “Oh, sure, sure.” I stuck my tongue out at him, enjoying the teasing, wishing to prolong it for as long as possible. I pushed myself out of the chair with an exaggerated sigh. “It’s probably that milkman.” I sashayed to the desk, wiggling my hips just like Theda Bara, and took the receiver from him; holding it up to my ear, I leaned into the transmitter and crooned, in a deep, vampy tone, “Hello, this is Anne Morrow. Is this my hero?”

  There was a pause; static crackled down the line into my ear. Then I heard a reedy voice say, “Miss Morrow? This is Lindbergh himself. Charles Lindbergh.”

  I wanted to drop the phone; I wanted to hit my brother—who was leaning back in his chair, shaking with laughter. I wanted to do anything other than somehow think of a proper reply.

  “It—it is?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No—no! My brother—Dwight—you met him, remember? He was just teasing me. I’m so sorry—I mean, no, I’m glad you called. Very glad. That is—wait—this is Anne Morrow. Not Elisabeth. I’m Anne.”

  “Yes, I know. I had been led to believe that you would be at home today. I called yesterday, but you were out.”

  “You did?” By now my knees were shaking and I had to sit down on the edge of the desk; Jo, my mother’s secretary, had said that he had called. But she’d said he’d called for Elisabeth, not me.

  Finally Dwight had the good sense to get up and leave me alone in the room, his eyes still shining with merriment. For a moment I forgot all about his c
ondition; I stuck my tongue out at him, just like any big sister would.

  “Miss Morrow? You are still there?”

  “Yes—oh, yes, I am!”

  “I’m very sorry I could not make it to your graduation. It was nice of you to ask me. But I was afraid that if I came it would cause a stir, and that wouldn’t have been fair to you or your family.”

  “Oh.” How thoughtful of him! “That was very thoughtful of you,” I said, my tongue just a few beats behind my thoughts.

  There was a silence; I could hear him breathing, softly. Then he cleared his throat, and I was reminded, suddenly, of the engine of the plane that we flew in together, sputtering to life.

  “I understand that you’re home for the summer?” There was a hesitation—like the catch of that motor before it finally found its groove—in his voice.

  “Yes. I’m taking care of—I’m staying with Dwight while he’s home for the summer. Mother and Daddy are back in Mexico City.”

  “The reason I called,” he said hastily, as if he regretted having done so, “is to ask if you would like to go up again? I promised you I would take you back up in a plane, I’m not sure if you recall. I do not break my promises.”

  “Oh! Yes, I do remember—that is, I have some recollection of it.” Cradling the receiver between my cheek and my neck, I grasped the edge of Daddy’s walnut desk, grateful for its ballast; without it, I was certain I would have floated up to the ceiling.

  “Then it’s settled. I’ll call for you tomorrow at ten o’clock in the morning, if you don’t have other plans.”

  Of course, I had no other plans. Even if Mother had asked me to entertain the king of England, I would have canceled! But then I thought of how Elisabeth would have replied, and so I was able to say, coolly, “I believe I can rearrange things.”

  “Well, if it’s any bother …”

  “Oh, no! No bother at all! No, truly, there’s nothing I’d like more, if you really are sure you have the time.”

  “I said I did.” Did I detect annoyance now?