The Aviator's Wife: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  I could not imagine Charles Lindbergh failing to talk a mere military pilot into allowing him to tag along on a combat mission.

  Despite my fears, I rejoiced that we were now, truly, like every other wartime family. I worried, and waited for infrequent letters, and managed everything on my own—secretly sure that my husband was having the time of his life, while I was not.

  “This—the kidnapping—was mentioned in your history book, then?” Oh, how right I had been, all those years ago! Our personal tragedy was history now in every school textbook. Neither of us had thought of that when we sent our children off to be educated.

  “Yes,” Jon answered, settling beside me on the bed. “There was a picture, too, of the man they said did it.”

  “God.” I shuddered, remembering Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s blank, expressionless face when I testified while everyone else in the room was weeping.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about it? I might have been able to help!”

  “Oh, sweetheart!” I wanted to laugh and cry both; how innocent, how sturdy he was—truly the man of the house, like so many little boys during wartime! “You weren’t even born yet. There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done—not even Father, although you must believe me. He tried. He tried so very hard to find our baby, to bring him back to me. Charles Junior. That’s what we named him. Charles Junior. Charlie.”

  “Like Anne? Anne Junior?”

  “That’s right.” And I remembered my horror when Charles named her after me; he insisted, saying it was tradition. I’d felt it was inviting tragedy into our lives once more. But over time, this feeling had faded. Anne was a healthy three-and-a-half-year-old now, always chasing after her big brothers—and nearly always catching up. She was also a dutiful older sister to Scott, born in August 1942.

  “What was he like? Charles Junior?”

  “Oh, well—he was a baby, of course. Not even two, so we didn’t really get a chance to—to know him.” My voice caught on the jagged edges of my heart that had never healed, and I had to take a deep breath. “But he looked an awful lot like Father. More than you, even.” I smiled at my son, already tall and lean for his age, hair the same reddish-gold as Charles’s. But his forehead wasn’t quite as high as the baby’s had been, and his eyes were a darker blue.

  “Did you like him?”

  “Of course, Jon. Of course. We loved him. Just as much as we love you.”

  “Then you must have been very sad.”

  “Yes, I was. Very sad.”

  “Did you cry?”

  “Yes, I did cry. Sometimes—sometimes, I still do. Not very often, though.”

  “When you go outside by yourself at night? When you say you’re locking up the garage? I know you don’t really do that, because I always lock it after dinner. I’ve never missed a time.”

  I laid my cheek against my son’s head and sighed. “Yes, that’s when. But not for long.”

  “Did Father ever cry?”

  It was a blow—a punch in the stomach, this question. I inhaled sharply, and Jon looked at me in alarm. Biting my lip, I turned away from his innocent, searching gaze.

  What responsibility did I have to my children, regarding their father? He had been gone for several months, a long time in the lives of those so young. And even before he left for the Pacific, he was an infrequent guest in his own house with all the flying he had to do for his work.

  The children knew that he was famous, of course; his Paris flight was part of our family lore. Other families told a story about the time Father ran away to join the circus only to come home a week later, hungry and penitent; our family told the story about the time Father flew to Paris by himself, only to come home the most famous man in the world.

  Charles, of course, embodied the role of hero; a strict, somehow aloof parental presence, expecting his offspring to be miniature versions of his own ideal of himself. And I was left to try to make up for all the warmth and understanding he didn’t display; to make up for his absence, his focus, always, on something bigger, something more important, than his family.

  Now it was up to me to tell my son about his father, and I wasn’t sure how truthful I should be. Should I tell him how he had berated me for my tears, so long ago? Should I reveal how he had laughed and clapped when the man found guilty was electrocuted, while I excused myself and quietly vomited in the bathroom?

  Should I share with my son his father’s coldness, how he sometimes turned away from me at night if I had dared to question his judgment during the day?

  Should I tell him his father was anti-Semitic?

  But there were so many other things to tell as well—how comforting he could be, simply because of who he was, the bravest man in the world. How charming, when he forgot to be the hero, and remembered how to smile, truly smile, so the ice in his eyes melted into cloudless sky. How boyishly happy he was tinkering with anything mechanical, every limb loose, grease streaking his clothes. I’d long ago learned that those were the times I should ask him for something; the times he had a wrench or a hammer in his hand; the times when he was just a boy with a fascination for all things mechanical, and a curiosity that could not be sated.

  Should I reveal how utterly helpless I was on those nights when he turned to me first, or those rare days when he reached for me, just to hold my hand for no reason at all?

  No, I did not have to tell him, I decided. Not yet. There would be time enough for the children to learn who he was, firsthand, after the war; there would be time enough for them to decide who their father was, or was not.

  “No, Father didn’t cry,” I told Jon, even as I pulled him close to me in a hug. “But he was sad. Very sad. He loved the baby, just as he loves you.”

  “Have you ever seen Father cry?”

  “No, I haven’t, but I never saw my own father cry, either.” Which was the truth; the difference was I somehow always knew my father was capable of it.

  “I haven’t, either. I just can’t imagine it, can you? Father, crying?” And Jon laughed, shaking his head, as if he’d just been told a whopper of a lie. “Father simply isn’t the type!”

  “No, he isn’t,” I agreed, then let him go with a sloppy kiss.

  Jon wiped it off, very manfully, but with a sympathetic smile for me. Then he trotted over to the bedroom door, ready to go do his homework. I never had to remind him.

  “Make sure Land does his reading,” I called after him. Land, I did have to remind, for he was apt to be sitting on a stair step somewhere, fighting Nazis with just a stick, or wiping out Japs with the help of an old piece of wire and his imagination.

  “I will. Moms, you know what?” Jon paused, his hand on the doorknob.

  “What?”

  “I can’t wait until Father comes home, so I can figure out exactly what type he is!”

  I exhaled—as if I’d been holding my breath this entire time—and laughed.

  “Good luck with that, dear.”

  And then I waved him away, waiting until he had closed the door behind him to whisper, as I walked back to my desk to start another letter to my husband of fifteen years, “When you do find out what type he is, will you let me know? For I’m still not quite sure, myself.”

  SIX MONTHS AFTER HE LEFT, in September 1944, Charles came home.

  We had moved once more, back to the east coast, Connecticut. I had never felt as if we belonged in the Midwest; everything was on such an expansive scale there—the sky, the land, the lakes, the people—that it frightened me. I was glad to be closer to home, back in the world I had grown up in, even as I scolded myself for not being able to appreciate the experience we had been given in Detroit.

  But we had hardly settled in our new home, a rental once more—in fact, the children were still staying at Next Day Hill while I dealt with furniture and utilities and the chaos of unpacking—when I got the telegram from Charles saying that he was back in the States, safe and sound. In a comical dance of anticipation and dre
ad—I couldn’t wait to sleep next to him again; would he approve of the way I arranged the living room furniture; would he find me changed, older—I rushed to get the house in order.

  Two days later I heard the taxi pull up outside; I was running through the dining room with a table lamp in my hand. I froze, and stared as a tall brown figure came up the sidewalk, sure and confident, as if he had walked those steps every day. And then he was inside—not even a tentative knock on the door, he just came inside, already king of the castle, calling, “Anne? Anne?”

  And I was in his arms, he was picking me up and swinging me, burying his head in my hair. I thought I had never seen him before; I was knocked over, as I had been the very first day we met, by the startling clarity of his eyes, that suddenly bashful, boyish grin. But he was so tan! So handsome! Bronzed by the sun, lean, a few more crinkles edging his eyes, a few less sandy brown hairs on his head.

  “Oh, I missed you,” he whispered, and my heart couldn’t contain my joy; it overflowed, and my eyes brimmed over with tears.

  “I look a fright,” I sniffed, pushing myself away from him, suddenly shy; I cupped my hand over my nose, my horrid, horrid nose; I was sure it was red as a clown’s.

  “You look beautiful.” And he wouldn’t let me go; he pulled me back, claiming me and even though there was no one else to see, I glowed with pride and belonging. And love.

  We had one beautiful, sacred night together, before the children arrived.

  At first they were shy around him, asking polite questions like: “Did you have a very long journey?” “Was the train crowded?”

  But then Land asked, his eyes wide and hopeful, “Did you kill any Japs?” And the ice was broken; Charles laughed, a deep belly laugh, and ruffled Land’s hair, assuring him that he had. Then Charles picked up Scott and tossed him up to the ceiling—and my heart froze, overwhelmed with a memory. A memory of Charles doing the same thing to little Charlie, who had always called, “ ’Gen!”

  “ ’Gen!” Scott shrieked the same thing, and if I shut my eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to tell their voices apart, the one a ghost, the other a squirming, crowing reality in his father’s arms.

  “Now, Charles, be careful—”

  “Women!” Charles rolled his eyes, and Jon and Land laughed delightedly. Ansy, still bashful, stuck her finger in her mouth and clung to my skirt. “Let’s say we take this outside, okay, fellows?” And Charles sat Scott carefully on the floor before grabbing Land and Jon, tucking each beneath his strong arms. He rushed outside, the boys screaming with joy, and he tumbled around on the ground with them, a pack of young wolves.

  “He’s so big!” Ansy exclaimed. “Father is so big!”

  I laughed, and kissed the top of her head. “I suppose he is. It will take some getting used to, won’t it? For all of us?” I had never seen this Charles; this relaxed, embracing father, rough-housing with his boys. The war must have changed him.

  With a contented smile, and slightly loose limbs after a satisfying night of reconciliation, I moved around the house, pausing now and then in my tidying up to look out the window at my husband and sons. Ansy played quietly in a corner of the living room with her dolls. Scott cooed happily in his playpen, piling up blocks and knocking them down.

  And I thought, Yes. He’s home now, and we will be a family. A real family, for the first time since—

  Since our firstborn was taken.

  Finally at rest, his part in the war over, with growing children to keep him moored, Charles would be home for dinner every night now. He would teach the children things only a father can teach—how to play catch, how to make a radio out of crystal and wire. At night, he and I would talk about our days, just like we used to when we were first married. And we would share our thoughts, equally—for the war had changed me as well, although Charles did not yet know it.

  I had run the household. I had rotated the tires, kept the accounts, learned to make a meal out of a can of chipped beef, an egg, and stale bread. When there was a strange noise in the middle of the night, I had investigated it. I had cared for four children and not lost a one—I chuckled at this, and was surprised, and pleased, at myself for being able to make such a joke.

  I had accomplished this. All of it. I had steered my family through the war, and now it was over. It was all over—the kidnapping, the exile, the clumsy, stridently wrong years before the war, and then, the war itself—we were headed for better times. For the first time in years, I felt strong and confident, unafraid of the future. Charles’s equal, not his crew.

  With a happy little sigh, I continued my work. His regulation duffel bag was still in the hallway where he had dumped it last night, so I lugged it downstairs to the washer and dryer. Pulling out his dirty socks, his ragged T-shirts—even his old travel bag, which he’d somehow wedged in next to a bedroll—I came across a heavy vest, like an umpire’s. A flak jacket.

  “Did you kill any Japs?” Land had demanded.

  “Of course,” Charles had answered. And it finally hit me. He had been in danger. I’d known it, of course, but somehow hadn’t been able to imagine it. The heavy, sweat-stained flak jacket made it real, and I began to shake. Then laugh. Because he had been returned to me. My husband, my Charles; the one loss I knew from which I could never recover. I had been spared that loss, after all.

  I hugged the jacket—the untouched jacket, not a scratch, not a dent, was in it—to my heart. And I sang a prayer of thanksgiving, while my children and my husband played happily outside.

  1974

  GENTLY I SHAKE his arm, but he doesn’t awake. Holding my breath, I shake him harder; he’s so frail, and I don’t want to do anything to hasten the end. But I have to have the answers I seek. I have to at least try.

  “Charles,” I whisper, bending close to his ear. “Charles!”

  He opens his eyes with a gasp, and again I sense that he’s surprised to find himself here on earth. Was he dreaming of the sky? I don’t know what his concept of heaven is, but I suspect it’s not the same as mine.

  “Charles, I can’t wait any longer. I need to know. I need to know why. I deserve to know why we weren’t enough for you. Me, your children, the home I made for you, for us all. But you had to have these other women, too! Why?”

  “You weren’t supposed to find out,” he finally says, licking his lips, gesturing for more water, which I bring him. There’s a film over one of his eyes, clouding the blue.

  “Of course I wasn’t supposed to find out! But a nurse—a very kind, decent girl—felt differently, and she gave them to me, because she admired my book.”

  “That book.”

  “Yes, that book. My book.” Suddenly I crave a cigarette, so viscerally that I almost clap my hands as if to summon a genie to provide it. I rarely smoke, but I need something to do with my hands, and I desire something bad, something terrible and filthy, in my lungs just now. Something to mask the stench of death and betrayal that has filled this small, humid hut on the edge of the world.

  “I wrote a book,” Charles says, and he sounds drowsy, amused, his eyes half closed, and I’m afraid he’s drifting off again and as terrible, as horrible as it is, I won’t let him. I won’t let him slip peacefully away and die an untroubled death. Once, that was all I wished for him.

  Now I deny it. Because it is in my power to do so. Drunk with that power, I am demanding his explanation, his attention. At last.

  I shake him by his shoulders—his pitifully thin, shrunken shoulders—and ruthlessly ask, “Why? Why weren’t we enough? Why wasn’t I ever enough for you?”

  He blinks again, and looks straight into my eyes, my heart, and says, “Anne, I never meant to hurt you.”

  I laugh. I laugh because finally, Charles Lindbergh is like any man. Any stupid, flesh-and-blood, egotistical man. He is no better than any of them, even if it took him almost to his last breath to reveal this to me, and it fills me with triumph and joy.

  Which are followed, dizzyingly, by disappointment and despair.
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  CHAPTER 16

  1950

  “MOTHER!”

  “What is it, Reeve?”

  “You tell Father he must stay home. You go find him and bring him back and tell him he must stay this time!” She stamped her foot, shook her blond ringlets, and thrust her jaw out in perfect imitation of her father.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, dear. You tell him next time he comes home, all right?”

  “All right. But when is he coming home?”

  “I don’t know.” I pushed myself up off the kitchen floor; the drain was leaking beneath the sink again. Dropping the wrench down on the table, for a moment I couldn’t help but think, I have a trust fund. I could just go off and take the children to a nice hotel in the city, where we could have room service and go shopping, and see plays. Why am I on my hands and knees in a drafty old house in Connecticut, miles away from civilization?

  Too busy to answer my own question, I washed my hands, checked beneath the sink to make sure it wasn’t leaking anymore—it was—and shooed Reeve out of the kitchen.

  “Go tell your sister to please turn down her record player!” I was weary of hearing “Tennessee Waltz” played over and over, which was a shame, as I thought it was a very pretty song. The first hundred times I heard it, anyway.

  The phone rang in the front hall; I waited for the stampede of feet to run to it, the cries of, “I’ll get it!” But for once, no one did; the phone kept ringing, so I headed for it, picking my way over the piles of skates and cleats and Ansy’s field hockey stick that had all been tossed just inside the entryway in the usual after-school rush.