The Aviator's Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

  “Kind? What do you mean?”

  “Mobsters, Anne. Men like—Al Capone offered his services. There, now you know. And some New York men. They offered to act as go-betweens, instead of the police, and I believe that’s the best course. I prefer not to tell you more. You mustn’t worry. Your job is to remain hopeful.”

  “You keep telling me this, but I do worry!” I was shaking with fury. “Of course I do—and so do you! But you won’t tell me, you won’t talk to me, and I don’t understand why. Charles, I was your crew! I was baptized in the Yangtze and let you push me off the top of a mountain in a glider—but now you think I’m too weak to understand or help? Too frail? Charlie is my son, too!” I pushed myself away from the table in disgust. “How can you imagine that I’d care whom you deal with? Deal with the devil himself if you have to! But stop thinking you can protect me from this. You can’t protect any of us anymore, so stop trying to.”

  Charles winced, but I didn’t care.

  “Don’t you see?” I asked hoarsely. “It’s already happened. Now we need to get him back. They’ll have to give him back to us, once we pay. Won’t they?”

  “Of course they will.” Charles picked up the note and studied it again. “It’s simply a matter of communication and trust. Spitale—one of the New York men—is certain he knows who is responsible. I’ll respond through him—I’ll give him this letter as proof, and my reply. I don’t know why the colonel wants to make it into something else—like an army invasion! Does he really think he can post men all over Brooklyn and no one will notice?”

  “You’re going to give this—character—this letter? The actual letter? But—that identifying mark, should you let anyone else see it?”

  “Anne, as I said, it’s a matter of trust. I may not like these men, but there is a certain honor among thieves.”

  “What does Colonel Schwarzkopf think about this? Are you going to tell him you’re releasing the letter?”

  Charles’s face flushed. “I’m in charge, Anne. I’ve told you.”

  “And I’m your wife, and Charlie’s mother. I’m telling you to run this by Colonel Schwarzkopf.”

  Charles didn’t reply. His fury was different than mine; it was coiled, so tightly wound you might miss it until it sprang out, cutting deeply. I didn’t often see it. But I sensed it now, and while once it might have terrified me, today I had no fear to spare for my husband. Only for my son.

  When finally Charles spoke, his words were measured, precise. “Anne, I believe I’ll include the baby’s diet with our response. Would you write it out now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I got to my feet, then I paused behind his chair. Leaning over, I kissed Charles on the cheek. He didn’t respond. As I pulled away, hurt, he put his hand on my cheek for a moment, drawing me close before releasing me.

  Then he returned to his study of the note, as if he might see something in those crudely written letters that the rest of us could not.

  I started up the stairs; Colonel Schwarzkopf was seated on the landing, his head in his hands. He looked up. And suddenly I knew what I must do.

  “Colonel! You can’t stop him!” The colonel rose in alarm. “Listen to me. You can’t stop Charles in this. He must do this his way—he always has, and it’s always been the right way before. That’s what he can’t understand now—that he’s wrong, that this is too big for him. But please, I beg of you. Do whatever you have to do.”

  “Behind his back?”

  “If possible, yes, but Colonel, I am serious. I’ll answer to Charles. I’m not afraid, like the rest of you.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “Colonel, listen carefully. I’m saying my husband has no idea how to proceed, but he will never admit that. So I’m admitting it for him. I’m saying that I authorize you to do whatever you have to do. Interview the servants. Post men at mailboxes. He wants to release the latest letter to those New York men, and I believe that’s a terrible mistake. Just—do whatever you have to do to bring my boy back home.”

  The colonel stared at me. Then he cocked his huge head—like a bulldog’s, square and jowly—toward Betty’s closed door at the end of the hall. Her light was on; it spilled out from beneath the door. When had I last seen her? I couldn’t remember. “Can I question Miss Gow again? Colonel Lindbergh said—”

  “Ask her anything,” I instructed Colonel Schwarzkopf. “Give her the polygraph. Betty loves the baby, but maybe someone near her doesn’t. Ask her about Red. Then talk to Elsie and Ollie. Ask them anything. Anything you need to. All of the servants. Here and at Next Day Hill. Start with Violet Sharpe—she’s the one I spoke with on the phone that day. She knew we would be staying here.”

  He studied me skeptically, perhaps looking for the hysterical mother. Then, to my surprise, he cupped his big hands around mine and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Lindbergh. I know this wasn’t easy for you.”

  I let my breath out in a surprised laugh. Oh, men! How little they knew, after all. “No, Colonel, you’re wrong. This is my child we’re talking about. It was very easy.”

  ONE WEEK PASSED. Eight days. Ten. Fourteen.

  Two weeks since that terrible night. Two weeks with only one additional communication, increasing the ransom amount again.

  The house had taken on a rhythm now, a busy, purposeful hum, although it was not even close to being back to normal; I couldn’t remember what normal felt like. The switchboard was still in the garage, ringing with tips and cranks and people hoping to hear my voice, or Charles’s. Our lawn was churned to mud. Colonel Schwarzkopf still showed up every morning, his men still camped out in droves, and I never knew at what hour I might be asked to leave my bedroom for yet another conference between detectives or policemen. Politicians drove up our drive simply to have their photographs taken on a broken ladder they’d found lying outside my child’s empty nursery.

  Only the baby’s room remained untouched, after that first frenzied night of searching. A fine layer of dust had settled on every surface, undisturbed save for whenever I went inside. I did so once a day, at the time he would normally be put to bed. It was habit, it was routine—and I would not relinquish it. If I did, I was terrified that I’d never get a chance to resume it.

  Surprisingly, I did not mind the chaos. The constant activity meant hope—all these people were working to bring my Charlie home because they believed there was a chance.

  As the days dragged on, my surroundings grew more bizarre; cloistered in my new home, I was aware that, at the end of my driveway, people sold photographs of my missing son as souvenirs. Planes flew low overhead, full of eager onlookers. Sightseeing tours launched from a nearby airfield.

  But nothing could have prepared me for the headline I saw one frigid afternoon, when a few late-season snowflakes fell halfheartedly outside my window. “Spurned Sister Suspected in Lindbergh Baby’s Disappearance. Why Hasn’t Miss Morrow Been to Comfort Mrs. Lindbergh?” And next to it was a jarring photograph of Elisabeth taken years ago; uncharacteristically, she was not smiling. Instead, the ink so smudged and dark, she looked almost malignant.

  Oh, Elisabeth! How had she been dragged into my nightmare? All of a sudden the months fell away; I forgot the awkwardness between us, forgot how sick and frail she had been lately. I remembered, instead, the sister who had always been there to laugh with me, coax me, pull me into the bright sunlight constantly surrounding her, even when I insisted I was happier in the shadows. She was the one who urged me to try to stand up to Mother when I wanted to go to Vassar instead of Smith. She was the one who insisted, when I was ten and wanted to put lemon juice on my hair so that it would look more like hers, that brown hair was prettier than blond.

  She was the one who was supposed to marry the hero, not me. I needed to tell her that I understood why she hadn’t, now.

  I started toward the telephone in the front hall, but when confronted with its black, solid efficiency, I wavered; I couldn’t pick up the receiver. Fortunately, my mother chose that mom
ent to bustle around a corner with a pile of blankets in her arms.

  “Mother, I was thinking. Could you—do you think Elisabeth could come down? Is she strong enough for all this, do you think?”

  “You saw the newspaper.” It wasn’t a question, and I realized I still was gripping it in my hand.

  “Yes. But that’s not the reason, truly. I miss her, and I want her here with me. I need her.”

  Mother put the blankets on a bench and sank down next to them. She rubbed her eyes until they were red, and the lines around them carved themselves even deeper into her skin. I realized suddenly how selfish I had been. So many people’s lives, not just mine—all tainted forever. Like the ripples on a pond when you toss a pebble in; the aftershocks kept moving farther and farther away from the center.

  “Anne, I know something happened between you two. I’ve never asked what it is.”

  I couldn’t reply. What on earth could I tell her?

  “So I think you should call her yourself. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, Mother, I—” But even as I protested, Mother had dialed the number and handed me the telephone receiver. “Next Day Hill,” a wary voice answered. Violet Sharpe’s.

  “This is Anne—”

  “Oh, mercy!” And with a strangled sob, she put me through to Elisabeth’s bedroom.

  “Anne? Is there any news?” Elisabeth’s voice was panicked.

  “No—no, nothing. I only wanted to—I want to ask you to come out here. To stay for a while. To stay with me, I mean. For a while.”

  “Oh, Anne! My poor darling! Of course. I’ll come at once.”

  “You don’t mind? After all this—”

  “Anne, stop it.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too, dearest. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, as if Mother could hear, in those two words, the reason why we’d been estranged.

  “Shhh,” my sister murmured into my ear. “Shhh. Now go lie down, Anne.”

  “Stop telling me what to do,” I protested, just as stubbornly as when I was ten and she was twelve.

  “Never!” As she hung up, she was laughing. And the years and distance between us disappeared.

  Mother took the telephone and placed it back in the wall nook. “Sweetheart, you must get some rest. You look dreadful. Where’s Charles gone off to?”

  I shook my head and rubbed the small of my back. “He wouldn’t tell me. He takes phone calls at all hours, he meets late at night with men he won’t let me see. He’s—he’s having a difficult time.”

  Colonel Schwarzkopf, while still respectful, careful never to contradict Charles in public or in the press, no longer asked Charles for permission to proceed. The colonel conducted rigorous interviews with our household staff every day, and he no longer hid them from Charles. He seemed particularly interested in the staff of Next Day Hill; he was paying special attention to Violet Sharpe. Mother was very upset at the questioning; she felt protective of Violet, as the girl was so excitable and simple. I liked Violet; despite her occasional hysterics, she had always been sweet and loyal, given to happy tears whenever she received a present or a bonus or even an unexpected day off.

  But I couldn’t forget that she was the one who had answered the phone when I called to have Betty come down to us that fateful Tuesday. Violet was the most logical person to have alerted someone to our change in plans. Charles was furious at having his authority and his judgment questioned. He never knew that I was the one responsible for it. I wouldn’t have denied it if he’d asked, but he never did. Perhaps he didn’t want to know.

  His fury couldn’t disguise his despair, however. I pretended I didn’t see the smudge of exhaustion under his eyes, the way his clothes hung off him now, the exhausted blinking that overcame him at times.

  This morning, Charles had mumbled something about a new lead before rushing off to meet another stranger. I nodded trustfully and, as I had every day since my child had gone missing, told my husband that I believed in him. Then I went into the cold, empty nursery and stared out the window as Charles started up the car and roared down the drive, all the policemen standing respectfully at attention.

  At times like that, I missed believing in my husband almost more than I missed my child.

  “You go upstairs,” Mother insisted again, taking the newspaper with that awful headline out of my hand. “Rest. Take care of that baby you’re carrying.”

  I nodded. I was so weary of people telling me what to do. Yet I went upstairs, intending not to rest but to write. In these last weeks, I’d started writing poetry again. Dark poems, hopeless poems. Poems of loss and despair; sonnets of impending grief I prayed I would one day find and laugh at for their absurdity.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh?”

  I looked up, startled; Betty was standing outside my open door. Still in a denim nurse’s dress, a white apron around her waist. But I looked at her now through new eyes; our roles were finally as they should be. I was the mother. My loss, my grief, was so much more monumental than hers, and I felt, finally, older. Ancient, actually; every day my child was missing seemed to add years to my life so that I was surprised, when I saw my reflection, that I was not stoop-shouldered and arthritic. Surprised to find my hair still dark brown, and not turned white overnight.

  Betty, on the other hand, seemed much younger; uncertain, finally, for the first time I’d known her. Uncertain of her role in a childless home; uncertain of her grief; how much to show, how much to hide. Uncertain of our loyalty, Charles’s and mine. And although I did not blame her, I could not look at her without anger and recrimination.

  She had held him, been privileged to care for him, far more often than I had. For so much of his life, I’d been gone, and I resented her bitterly for it. But I was most angry at myself. For following Charles whenever he snapped his fingers at me; for abandoning my son, over and over and over.

  “Mrs. Lindbergh, I must talk to you,” Betty whispered, shutting the door behind her. I motioned to a chair just by the window, and I took the one opposite. The woods that surrounded our house were still stripped, naked; spring seemed an eternity away. And I hoped it would remain so; I couldn’t bear to see the world come back to life if my child wasn’t with me to share it.

  “What is it, Betty?”

  She moved her chair closer to me and took my hand; startled, I drew back. She’d never touched me before; she, who had showered my baby with kisses and hugs, had never even shaken my hand.

  “Please, please, forgive me, Mrs. Lindbergh!”

  “Forgive you? Forgive you for what?”

  “For not checking in on him enough that night. For not making sure the shutters closed. For—”

  “For telling Red that we’d be here? For telling someone else?”

  “No! No, I don’t think—you don’t believe Red is involved, do you? Or anyone else at Next Day Hill? Mrs. Lindbergh, of all people, you don’t believe—why, the colonel doesn’t believe any of us is involved! How can you?”

  “Because I’m Charlie’s mother! Because I don’t know what to believe anymore! No one knew we stayed here at the house that night except you, and Elsie and Ollie, and the people at Next Day Hill. No one else knew! If anyone had been planning this, they would never have planned it for a Tuesday night, because we’d never been here on a Tuesday before!” Unleashing all my darkest suspicions, I lunged toward Betty. “But you knew. You told Red. Who else did you tell? Who?” Now I was shaking her, and she was crying, “No one, no one!” over and over again, but still I shook her, demanding an answer.

  “Anne!”

  Betty and I jumped apart; she whirled away from me, weeping; I spun toward the window as Charles charged into the room, a package in his hands.

  “Anne!”

  Still breathing raggedly, I clenched my fists, which still itched to lash out at someone—my fury, smothered for so long, was blazing. My husband ran toward me.

  “Anne, you remember J
ames Condon?”

  “Ma’am,” Mr. Condon said with an absurd bow. “Mrs. Lindbergh, it is my privilege to greet you again.”

  “Yes,” I said, as I retreated a few steps, my mind whirling, still reworking the conversation with Betty while now forced to absorb a stranger in my bedroom. And then I glared at Charles. What else was he going to put me through? How many crackpots was he going to bring me?

  Last week, he’d presented to me a psychic, a woman clad in perfumed scarves and cheap jewelry, who grabbed my palm with her dirty hand and told me that it foretold a great joy sometime soon. The week before, he’d introduced me to a medium who proposed holding a séance in the baby’s room.

  Condon was just the latest in a series of shysters and charlatans, an obsequious person who had gallantly (his own word) volunteered to serve as go-between between “the hero of our age” and the “odious kidnappers.” Last week Charles had brought him here to meet me, even allowed him to sleep in the nursery and take one of the baby’s toys with him, in case he had a chance to meet with the kidnappers in person.

  “Anne, you remember, I told you this morning about a new lead. Condon here put an ad in the paper, and what do you think? They contacted him! He met with them!”

  “It is my patriotic duty, madam.” Another bow. “I am just a citizen, a private citizen. The kidnappers, however, must feel my sincerity, for they did indeed meet with me.”

  “Anne, sit down,” Charles said breathlessly. I’d never seen him so excited; his eyes were wide, his face flushed. “This is it, the break we’ve been looking for. The kidnappers did not want to speak with the mob, but for some reason they do want to communicate with this man.”

  “How do we know it’s them? After—after your contact sold the ransom note?” Just as Schwarzkopf had feared, Charles’s underworld contact had sold the ransom note with the authentic signature to the newspapers. Now we received notes by the bushel with that odd three-hole signature. It was impossible to know which were real and which were not.