The Aviator's Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

  Then I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hall, wholly unprepared for the chaos outside. Men were running in and out of my son’s nursery. Even more were tramping mud all over the front hall carpets. There were tables set up in the hallway downstairs. As I hung over the upstairs railing and peered down through the open front door—shivering in the frigid air; had it stood open all night long?—I could see a small army of cars parked haphazardly, as if all had been driven in a great hurry and then urgently abandoned on the drive.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh?”

  I turned; a small man in a navy blue suit, his thin red hair plastered flat on his head, his eyes small and nervous, stood before me, holding his hat in his hands. He was barely taller than I was; next to my husband, he looked like a paper doll. He resembled an illustration in one of Charlie’s nursery books—a particularly sinister image of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with long, sharp, ratlike features. The only thing missing was the flute.

  “Yes?”

  “This is the man I was telling you about,” Charles exclaimed, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “Please, come into the bedroom.”

  He ushered this man—this stranger!—into our bedroom. Our house was being turned into a headquarters for evil, just as Charles had said—but couldn’t I keep one room untouched? Unsullied by the dirt and filth that had blown in through that open nursery window?

  “Please,” I said, turning my nose up, folding the corners of my mouth primly. I gestured for the man to sit on a footstool, while Charles and I sat, side by side, on our bed.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for seeing me. But I have information that I am certain you will want to hear.” The little man now crumpled his felt hat in his excitement; there was a gleam in his eyes that almost made his thin, watery face beautiful.

  My heart began to pound, and I reached for Charles’s hand. “Yes?”

  “Your child, he is safe.”

  “How? How do you know?” Charles asked, gripping my hand tightly.

  “He is safe because he is away from here.” The man rose and began to pace before us. “You do not know God, you worship at the feet of false idols. Man was not meant to fly, not meant to have wings. For God created him in His image, not the birds’. Your child has been taken from you as punishment. Whoever has him must have seen this, must have known this, and I feel it is my duty to make you aware of your sin, and to urge you to repent of your evil ways. If you do, surely God will see fit to return your child to you, but until then—”

  Charles gripped the man by the arm; I thought he was going to throw him out the window. Instead he lifted him up, carried him—feet dangling—across the room, and shoved him out the door, shouting, “Get this idiot out of here!” before slamming the door shut.

  I was trembling, sick; my skin was clammy, and I felt my stomach churn—or was it the baby kicking? Desperately, I wanted only to lie down and close my eyes—after first scrubbing every inch of this room, to rid it of that horrible stranger’s presence.

  “That was a mistake,” Charles said, and I had an absurd urge to laugh. It was such an understatement. “I shouldn’t have brought him up to you, Anne—it was my fault. I feel, however, that we must take every person seriously. We can’t possibly know at this point who might or might not have information. That said, I should have interrogated him further. But he did insist—he insisted on seeing you, not me. I thought—well, I thought. I was wrong. Forgive me.”

  “Oh, Charles, I don’t blame you!” Why was he being so distant and formal?

  “No, Anne. I am responsible for that. I am responsible for you, especially now, in your condition. I can protect you, at least—” He turned away, and cleared his throat several times before walking to the window.

  “Charles—” I moved toward him, aching to reassure him somehow, to remind him he was not alone in this. But before I could take another step, he turned to face me. “I arranged for your mother to come,” he said briskly. “I thought it best that she be here.”

  “Oh.” I, too, was lost; lost once again in my own terror as I looked out the window and saw strange men tramping over some bulbs I had planted last fall. Tulips, I remembered. Dutch tulips, white. Charlie had helped me; he had carried the knobby tubers in a basket before dumping them all out and arranging them in little patterns, gurgling happily, calling them “bubs.”

  “Have you heard from Elisabeth?” I asked Charles, dabbing at the tears on my cheek before turning around. “Dwight? Con?”

  “The police have been alerted, and they’re safe,” he replied, and somehow we faced each other while never once meeting each other’s gaze.

  “The police are talking to them?”

  “I allowed it; I thought they might be of help. Anne, Colonel Schwarzkopf would like to talk to you when you’re ready. He would like to talk to the servants, as well. Betty, in particular.”

  Betty! “How is she?” I asked, stricken with guilt—I’d forgotten all about her. I hadn’t seen her since last night—since she had run to her room, sobbing, after Charles called the police. She loved little Charlie so—oh, how could I have neglected her? She must be as frantic as I was. I must go to her at once.

  “Of course, it’s absurd,” Charles continued, as if he hadn’t heard my question. “The staff, naturally, is above suspicion. I told Schwarzkopf that. He agrees but still needs to ask basic questions in order to establish some kind of timeline—I’ll be present, regardless. But I refuse to let him administer a polygraph test on any of them, or the family. That would be unnecessary. And the press might get wind of it, and inflate it, as usual.”

  “Good,” I quietly agreed.

  “I’ll send some breakfast up,” Charles said. “Try not to wear yourself out. The important thing is to remain hopeful. For the baby’s sake.”

  “I know,” I said, and once more, I longed to reassure him, to be the strong one, for once. But I felt that if I were suddenly to move, to make any unexpected, careless gesture, I would fly apart. Molecules and cells and bones would fragment, splintering all about the room—Humpty Dumpty, indeed.

  Oh, why could I not stop recalling nursery rhymes and fairy tales this morning? Everything reminded me of my child. Everything good, and everything bad.

  Charles stood for a moment, his back to me. Then his shoulders finally squared, his head snapped up, and he strode out of the room without another word—that famous Lindbergh discipline on full display once more. My husband, the father of my child, vanished before my eyes. Now he was the hero we all needed; that he needed, most of all. It was as if I was seeing him again for the first time, in a newsreel.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I sang to myself, walking slowly back to my bed, carrying my hope and terror both, one fragile, the other already so stolidly familiar I couldn’t remember life before it, within my heart. Within my womb, as well; next to my unborn child, who would have to make room for them now, and for the rest of his life.

  Could they put the Lindberghs together again?

  WAITING. WAITING. WAITING.

  That was all I could do. That was all that was expected of me.

  The next day, we received a postcard postmarked from Newark, addressed to Chas. Linberg, Princeton, N.J. The scrawled message read, Baby safe, instructions later, act accordingly. It did not have the same three-hole signature as the initial letter, but the handwriting was similar enough for the police to take it seriously. Baby safe—I repeated the words to myself, my mantra, as another day passed with no further communication from the kidnappers. Although it brought masses of communication from everyone else in the world—phone calls, telegrams, letters. The Boy Scouts of America were on full alert, every member pledging to scour roads and paths across the country in search of my child. Women’s institutes and other organizations, too, volunteered; they went door to door, looking for him.

  President Hoover—who had just lost reelection—offered the services of a new United States Bureau of
Investigation, headed by a man named J. Edgar Hoover. Colonel Schwarzkopf turned him down, which I thought wise (even though Mr. Hoover insisted on setting up some kind of headquarters in town, where he gave interviews to anyone who would listen). But I couldn’t imagine how more well-intentioned men, milling about my house, knocking things over and looking grim, could help the situation.

  The National Guard was called out. Our child’s photograph—the one that Charles had taken on his first birthday—appeared on the front page every single day, and every newspaper vowed to keep it there until he was found. Charlie was on the cover of Time magazine. Fliers were plastered on every telephone post in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Roadblocks were set up across three states as well. Anyone who looked remotely suspicious—although that description seemed to change by the minute—was pulled over, their vehicles searched.

  For the second time in five years, the name Charles Lindbergh was on everybody’s lips. For the second time in five years, everyone prayed for him, as special church services were called throughout the land.

  The same radio commentators who had broken the miraculous news of Charles’s 1927 landing now broke in every ten minutes with an urgent bulletin about the kidnapping of his son. No reporters were allowed on our property after that first horrific morning, but that didn’t stop them from writing as if they were. Every day, I insisted on reading what I had worn on my walk the day before (dresses I had never owned in my life), what I had thought, what I had eaten, if I had napped. I read columns and columns of purple prose praising my “Madonna-like patience” as I “awaited the safe return of my little Eaglet.”

  Was I patient? I suppose I appeared that way, compliant in my stone jail, leaving only for short walks in the gray March weather, always shielded by a respectfully silent contingent of police. It was numbness, though, more than patience. I could not believe that this circus—people were selling photographs of my child as if they were souvenirs, right at the end of our driveway!—had anything to do with my precious baby. Or my husband. Or my life. So I removed myself, mentally. To participate fully would have endangered the child I was carrying—of that, I had no doubt. And I couldn’t bear to lose both of my children; I couldn’t bear to do that to Charles.

  Who was trying, so valiantly, to remain in control of a situation that grew more fantastic and bizarre with every telegram, phone call, letter. Mediums offered to come hold séances, in order to determine if the baby was “in the spirit world.” Crazed zealots wanted to cast off the evil spirits in our home; one even managed to get past the security, and painted a strange symbol with a bucket of pig’s blood on our front door before she was taken away.

  The most bewildering were the offers from other mothers to give me their children. How could any mother be willing to part with her child voluntarily? And the notion that my son could simply be replaced by another—I shook with rage at the thought. Yet we received dozens of such letters and telegrams.

  Charles was trying to oversee everything; trying, in vain, to shelter me from the worst of it, constantly reassuring me that it was only a matter of time before he returned Charlie to me. He barely ate, fitfully slept. He spent most nights seated upright in a chair in our bedroom, watching me, as if he was terrified I might disappear, too. But when I was awake, he could hardly look me in the eye.

  To Colonel Schwarzkopf, to the hordes of policemen, detectives, working on the case—to the world at large, holding its suspended breath—he remained the calm, cool aviator in total control. He allowed Schwarzkopf and his men to sort through the thousands of letters delivered three times a day by a special mail truck, to follow up the vaguest of anonymous tips, to continue to tramp about our property in search of clues. But he made it clear that he, and he alone, would communicate with the kidnappers, and I heard Colonel Schwarzkopf express his first doubts about Charles’s leadership the next night in the kitchen, when I padded downstairs to get a glass of warm milk.

  “You can’t be serious?” I heard the colonel ask in his blunt way; I stopped just outside the doorway. “You’re really going it alone? Colonel Lindbergh, you have the entire police force of New Jersey and New York at your disposal.”

  “I am perfectly serious. They need to trust me. That’s the only way we’ll get him home, don’t you see? Once I can establish that trust, I do not intend to betray it. I will make a statement declaring that no police will ever be involved in our communication, and that I alone will meet with them, no questions asked.”

  “You’re a man of honor, aren’t you, Colonel?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, whoever took your baby isn’t.” Schwarzkopf slammed outside, so furious that he didn’t see me standing in the hallway. Through a window, I watched as he kicked a stone, drew a deep breath, then took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, angry face raised to the moon.

  Peering around the corner, I saw Charles slump down in his chair, hiding his face within his hands. I knew I mustn’t go to him; I couldn’t let him know I had seen him like this. He needed me to be hopeful; I needed him to be strong. These were the roles we had assigned each other.

  But for the first time, I understood that they were just that—roles.

  MOTHER ARRIVED ON SATURDAY; by then, my baby had slept somewhere else for four nights. Was he crying out for me? Or was he, so used to me being gone as I flew away with his father, already trusting his kidnappers? Could he be bestowing on them one of his sweet, serious smiles? My heart could not withstand such questions—but still they came, as relentless as that shutter that still beat itself against the house.

  “I don’t know what to say to you!” Mother blurted the moment she saw me. “I have no idea what you’re going through. I can’t even imagine.”

  So I found myself comforting her instead; I had just led her to the study when Charles burst into the room.

  “Anne! Come. There’s another note.”

  My heart started to thunder; I leaped to my feet and followed Charles into the kitchen. There, once again, an army of men stood round our table, gaping at a thin white note as if it might jump up and bite them.

  We have warned you not to make anyding Public also notify the Police.

  I felt sick; I closed my eyes, but not in time to stifle an image of my child lying cold and still, sacrificed because we had done what any parents would do under the circumstances. But then I heard Charles, reading the rest of the letter out loud, say, “Don’t be afraid about the baby,” and my nausea disappeared. I opened my eyes and saw for myself the three-hole signature, just like the original.

  “He says don’t be afraid!”

  “Yes, he does. He also says he increased the ransom to seventy thousand.” Colonel Schwarzkopf picked up the note.

  “But that’s wonderful, right? It means the baby is unharmed!” I scanned his face, desperate for confirmation.

  “Yes, of course, it’s a positive thing,” Charles said, with such authority it banished the tiny, imperceptible fear worrying my heart. “Colonel, where was the letter postmarked?”

  “Brooklyn. We’ve already brushed it for fingerprints, but there’s nothing to pull. It was in the mail, and probably touched by a hundred hands along the way. I suggest, then, that we post lookouts at every mailbox in the borough.”

  “No.” Charles shook his head. “That will scare them off.”

  “Colonel, we can do it in such a way no one would notice—”

  “No.” Charles’s voice rose; it silenced Colonel Schwarzkopf. “I said no police. Didn’t you read the letter? I think we need to contact Spitale and Bitz.”

  “I urge you to reconsider—”

  “Spitale and Bitz,” my husband repeated, his voice a low growl.

  Schwarzkopf pulled at his lower lip, glaring at my husband. Charles glared back.

  “As you wish, Colonel Lindbergh,” Schwarzkopf muttered; he then looked at his men, nodded, and strode out of the kitchen. One by one, his men followed him—each mumbling, “Ma’am,” to me
as they left.

  Don’t be afraid about the baby. I knew that I would repeat that phrase, over and over, through this endless day.

  “Charles, who are Spitale and Bitz?” They sounded like a vaudeville act to me. I sat down at the empty table. My kitchen was no longer a warm, inviting place; there were cigarette butts in saucers, stacks of empty coffee cups on the counter in an assortment of mismatched china patterns. Elsie must have had to send away for extras. Newspapers were piled in corners: “Lindbergh Baby Kidnapped!” “Little Lindy Vanishes!” “The Crime of the Century—Will Lucky Lindy’s Baby Ever Be Found?”

  “Who are they? Why is the colonel so upset?” I asked my husband again.

  “Anne, I ask you to trust me. These men have never been involved in a case like this. They may be well intentioned, but I don’t want this bungled. Do you?” Charles met my gaze warily. We were both on an uncharted trip to a land we never even saw as we flew so high, untouchable—or so we had once believed. And just as he had needed me to navigate his path before, he needed my trust now; without it, he might never find his way back to himself, the man who had never been lost, not even while crossing an ocean alone.

  “So what do you plan next? What is your—our—next move?”

  “Harry Guggenheim has been helping me come up with the money. I’ll have to wire him about this new sum. Anne, that is all I’m going to discuss with you at the moment. I don’t want you to know more.”

  “Why? What possibly can be worse than what I already know?”

  “There are some rather—unsavory characters that I’m dealing with. But they can be very helpful, even if I detest having them touch my son—even if I would prefer not to associate with their kind.”