The Aviator's Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

  Charles merely nodded, giving no indication he was proud of his country, nor that he even missed it.

  I noticed a group of young boys approaching Chancellor Hitler’s box. They were clad in the black shorts and brown shirts of the Hitler Youth organization, but their faces were so young. This group must have been about five or six. Feeling that familiar tug on my heart, I smiled as the smallest bowed, so solemnly.

  After more than four years, I still couldn’t look at a little boy without thinking of him.

  My husband did not notice them; he was absorbed in his single-minded way with the ceremony unfolding before us. He seemed so relaxed, happy, even; the way he’d been all week. He had responded to Germany by going back in time, I thought; he’d reacted to the polite yet adoring crowds with a gleam in his eye, a surprised, shyly pleased gleam. The same gleam I had first noticed in the newsreels I’d seen of him, after he landed in Paris. Back when his face was open, boyish; back when he did not know the dark side of fame.

  Back when I was just a girl in a movie theater, marveling at the hero on the screen.

  Stifling a sigh, I turned back to the crowd, many of whom were smiling and waving our way, occasionally tossing bouquets up at us. I wondered who they saw when they looked at me. The ambassador’s daughter? The aviator’s wife?

  Or the lost boy’s mother?

  Minister Göring finally seemed to register my presence; he had not spoken one word to me until now. He had not seemed to notice me much this entire visit; his attention was riveted on Charles, always. Even a man as important as Herr Göring behaved like an adoring acolyte around my husband.

  “You like Germany as well, Frau Lindbergh? You see how beloved we are by all the world! Of course, as an author, you might wish to write about us!”

  “You are an author?” his wife inquired, with a smirk to her rosy lips. “You?”

  “Mrs. Lindbergh is a famous author.” Kay Smith leaped to my defense. Despite her tiny size—she was even smaller than I was—she possessed fierce confidence, hyperarticulate certainty in her own beliefs. I was happy to let her speak for me; I admired and liked her tremendously, even after such a short acquaintance.

  “Oh. Famous?” Frau Göring purred. “I apologize. I did not know.”

  “Not really,” I corrected her. “I’ve written some articles, and a book about our flight to the Orient.”

  “Which became a best seller,” Charles interjected, looking at me sternly.

  I nodded but felt my face flush, and I buried it in the cool flowers in my hand; I wished I could claim my achievements with the pride of accomplishment, but I simply couldn’t. Everything I did now seemed shaded by a ghost or a shadow: the baby’s, or Charles’s.

  At Charles’s relentless urging—why had I ever confided my hopes to this man who did not believe in hopes, only action?—I had finally attempted to write. I tried to recapture my passion for language, for playing with words almost as if they were flowers to be constantly rearranged into beautiful bouquets. I tried to remember that once I had had dreams of my own; good dreams, not nightmares of empty cribs and open windows. It wasn’t easy; my youthful poems and attempts seemed silly to me now. Reality had so intruded in my life that flowery verse seemed fanciful, foolish, even.

  But Charles insisted that I do something with my life other than mourn our son; he insisted it would be good for me. I also suspected he thought it would be good for him; another trophy in the closet—an accomplished wife. First my pilot’s license; now a best seller. It was expected of me.

  I obeyed him, as always. My lone defiance of his authority was like a scar on our marriage, but it was a scar I thought only I could see. And I was eager to keep it that way.

  Working for months on an account of our trip to the Orient, in the end I still wasn’t satisfied with it; I had found it impossible to capture the innocence of that time before my baby’s death. It had done modestly well, and Charles was proud of it, although I couldn’t help but think that most people bought it out of morbid curiosity. The bereaved mother’s little book—could you read her tragedy between the lines? I’d imagined people paging feverishly through it, eager to find evidence of a splotched tear, a blurry word, a barely suppressed sob.

  “Germany is a country of poets and authors, of course,” Herr Göring continued. “Goethe, Schiller.”

  “Thomas Mann,” I added eagerly. “The Magic Mountain is one of my favorite books.”

  Kay inhaled sharply.

  “Ah.” Göring stared at me for a long moment, the genial farmer’s smile still on his face, even as his eyes glittered with some strange warning. “Mann. Yes. But what a pity he married a Jew.”

  My smile faded. “Surely that has nothing to do with his books and stories? They’re great literature.”

  “They are Jewish propaganda, deranged, and dangerous to the state. Mann is an exile. He is forbidden to return to Germany, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  I was not. I sat blinking at this fat man in a Nazi uniform, smiling dangerously in the bright sun, and I felt like a newborn chick just breaking out of her shell, trying to adjust her eyes to the confusing, blinding assault of life. Instinctively, I shrank back against the cold, hard stadium bench, touching Charles’s arm.

  “What?” He didn’t stop looking at the ceremonies, going on below.

  “Nothing,” Herr Göring said smoothly. “Frau Lindbergh, are you cold? You look pale.”

  “No.” Turning back to the smiling faces, the waving flags, I shrugged off the cool shadow I felt fall on me just then. I let go of Charles and tried to lose myself in the frenzied gaiety of the moment, the proud parade of nations filling the stadium grass, the flags waving, the Germans in the stands cheering lustily, calling out “Sieg Heil!” with military regularity. Everyone looked well fed, clean, and happy. Everyone looked tall, fair. So like my husband, I realized with a start; usually he stood out with his clean Nordic good looks, especially next to my small, dark self. Not here, though; with his Swedish heritage etched in every lean line of his body, every golden follicle of his hair, he would have blended into the crowd of Germans gaily waving those strange Nazi flags.

  No wonder he seemed so at home.

  HOME. It was a word I no longer recognized.

  Four years had passed. Four years, several houses, airplanes, countries, oceans, a passing array of acquaintances, none of whom was allowed to get too close—all were now between us and that gray, weeping spring. At times I felt it had been a lifetime ago; other times, usually as soon as I opened my eyes on a particularly gloomy morning, it was as if it had all happened yesterday.

  To Charles, the events of ’32 were firmly in the past, never to be spoken of again. That’s how he always referred to the kidnapping: “the events of ’32.” As if it were merely a page in a history book, and I supposed by now it probably was. Under the entry “Lindbergh, Charles.” After the paragraph about his historic flight, there it would be: the events of 1932, which culminated in the death of his son and namesake, Charles Lindbergh Junior, twenty months of age.

  One day, about a year after the baby was found dead, Charles came across me sobbing behind a tree outside Next Day Hill, missing my son so much I could feel it in every breath. I crept off like this every day, thinking he didn’t know. Yet suddenly he was there, looking down at me with one corner of his lip curled up in distaste. And he tore into me as if he had been hoping for this moment for months; he berated me, calling me weak, less; irretrievably broken.

  I am! I wanted to shout. I am broken! Because he’s gone!

  “What a terrible waste of time this is,” he continued, in that detached, superior tone of his. “Think of all you could be doing. Instead you’re still giving in to sorrow, letting it consume you, change you. What happened to that book about our trip? You wanted to write a great book, didn’t you? What have you done in the last few years, Anne? What?”

  I followed you wherever you went. I brought life into this world. And then I saw it stolen from me.
My tears wouldn’t stop; I kept weeping, my head bowed down with every scathing word, every woundingly honest phrase heaped upon it. He was right. I was unable to see past my own personal sorrow. I could never have accomplished what he had accomplished. I would have been too afraid, would have let others sway me as I was letting others sway me now—see how Elisabeth still coddled me, telling me I needed time to heal, to grieve?

  I despised myself for letting him talk to me like this, and I never would have, before the baby was taken from me. All the fury I had felt during the ordeal, when I had no problem acting on my own—it was gone, obliterated as thoroughly as my baby’s body had been.

  Charles never would have talked to me like this before, either. We were both changed, but at the time I couldn’t see what tragedy had done to him. All I knew was that it had wounded me so that always, I felt as if I was walking about on shattered limbs, held together by only the very wispiest of threads, too fragile to stand up to him.

  But I dried my tears, and assured him I would not cry in front of him again. Then I went upstairs to our bedroom and found a suitcase—a blue suitcase, I recall—and methodically, as if I were packing for one of our flights, I began to fill it. First my lingerie, then a few day dresses, a nice suit, three nightgowns. I could send for everything else later; later when I had found an apartment in the city big enough for Jon and myself; big enough for my grief. But too small for Charles.

  I would leave him. If fury had deserted me, calm rationality had taken its place. I would leave this cold man, this stranger who mocked my grief. I would start over with Jon, and maybe the two of us would have a chance. I would have a chance to mourn Charlie, which was my only chance to heal, I knew. And Jon would have a chance to live a life not darkened by his father’s shadow. I would find us a place near Central Park, so Jon could have somewhere to play. I would arrange everything myself, for I was a woman who had navigated by the stars; surely I could learn to navigate the subway. I would find just the right school for Jon, I would look up old friends, like Bacon, or make new ones. Friends who would want to know me, Anne; just Anne. I would cry whenever I wanted to. And laugh, as well.

  I changed my clothes, put on a pair of black suede pumps that always made me feel taller than I was, and walked out the bedroom door, down the stairs, toward the front door. I would phone Mother later, from the city, and tell her when to bring Jon to me.

  “Anne?”

  I stopped, my heart racing, my face already hot with guilt. Then I turned around. Charles was before me, a pad of paper and pencils in his hand.

  “What are you doing?” He looked at the suitcase.

  “I’m—I’m going to visit Con, in the city. Just for the weekend.”

  “Oh. I suppose that’s a good idea, to—get away for a little while.” But he frowned, not really understanding.

  “Yes, I think so. Would you tell Mother I’ll phone her later?”

  “Yes. Now, Anne, when you get back, I have a suggestion.” He held out the paper and pencils, like an offering. “I think you need to start over. I mean the book about our flight to the Orient—start that over again.” He smiled, a coaxing, almost bashful smile I hadn’t seen in years. “I can’t do justice to it, and it should be written about. You’re the only one who can do it. You’re the writer in the family, Anne. Not I.”

  Unable to meet his gaze, I looked out a window. Mother was pushing Jon in his pram, up and down a garden path. Even from this distance, I could see Jon’s expansive Viking forehead, his blond hair; just a shade darker than his father’s.

  “I’ll think about it,” I told Charles.

  “Good. Have a nice weekend.”

  “I will.” Turning to leave, I felt a hand upon my arm; Charles bent down to give me an unexpected peck on the cheek before taking my suitcase and following me down to the car. As I was driven away, I turned back; Charles was still standing with the paper and pencils in his hands, watching me. He didn’t wave. Neither did I.

  I was back on Monday morning, exhausted from two nights spent tossing and turning and not sleeping in Con’s guest room, the bed too big for just me. I was back, despite my certainty that never again would I be able to talk about our shared tragedy with my husband, and my uncertainty about what that would mean in the long run. I was back, knowing that I would never be able to look at my son without thinking of his father.

  I was back, because of a pad of paper and some pencils.

  I knew that Charles thought he was being supportive in his own way, providing me a path out of my maze of grief, and I was touched by that. It was the most he could do for me, and that had to be enough, for now. But it was never over for me; I never quite found my way out. Sorrow was my constant companion, even though I no longer wept. It was the shadow that followed me on sunny days, the weight pressing down upon my spirits on cloudy ones.

  I had even seen it, trailing after me while I walked down the gangplank the day we first arrived in England, almost a year ago, now. Jon was only three years old; Charles carried him in his arms while I pushed his pram toward the waiting reporters and photographers. My grief wasn’t the only thing chasing us down that narrow path; frustration, disgust, and horror pushed us across an ocean as well.

  Two months before we left America, an intruder had been caught outside Jon’s nursery window, ladder in hand.

  Two months before that, I had been besieged when, on a whim, I dashed, unaccompanied, into Macy’s after a doctor’s appointment. Silly, but I’d had a notion that a new hat might perk up my spirits. Just as I reached for a red felt model with a feather, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of shoppers, all staring intently at me, waiting for me to do something—break down, I supposed. Some began to murmur sympathy, others started squealing my name, and even in my fear—for they surged forward, trapping me against the glass counter—I envied them. Passionately. For these were women for whom a new hat—or the sight of a stranger whose face they recognized from the newspaper—might bring happiness. And as the police came to my rescue just as my coat was torn by grasping, seeking hands, I knew that I would never again be that kind of woman.

  The breaking point, though, occurred on a parkway just outside of Manhattan. Charles was driving Jon and me back from a pediatrician’s appointment in the city. Suddenly a car pulled up behind us, too close. And then another pulled alongside, before swerving in front of us. Cursing, Charles had no choice but to veer off the road. Our car hit a tree with enough force that I bit my tongue, tasting blood along with fear. The child on my lap was unhurt; Jon started to cry only when I hugged him to my chest, trying to protect him from the men surrounding our car.

  With a mad cry, Charles leaped out, swinging at them, and at that moment a flashing light went off just outside my window. Photographers, I realized, bending my head down over my child, and my relief that they weren’t kidnappers was swiftly eclipsed by my outrage at their reckless tactics. Charles shouted at them, asking them if they had no shame, no decency, but all he received in reply were more flashes, strident questions about how we were handling our grief, how we were raising our second child in the shadow of his brother’s death.

  All I could do was remain where I was, my arms so fiercely wrapped around Jon that they would have had to rip them off to get at him, while Charles warned that anyone who tried to get in the car would be shot, no questions asked. At one point our gazes locked through the car window, grimly acknowledging the truth; once again, it was the two of us against the world. If grief couldn’t bind us, self-preservation would.

  That night, we surrendered. We packed our bags and left in the dead of night for the Guggenheims’. There, we holed up, deep in the bowels of their enormous estate, deciding what to do next. Harry and Carol were sympathy itself, welcoming a squalling baby into their orderly world without a raised eyebrow or shrug. Carol delighted in pushing Jon about her manicured lawns in his pram, walking with me for hours without speaking, her undemanding companionship a balm to my soul.

  Despite the Gug
genheims’ endless kindness, we knew we couldn’t stay there forever. Finally we decided to sell the house in Hopewell to the state for a pittance. After that May we had tried, halfheartedly, to reclaim it as a home, but there were too many ghosts.

  We kissed the Guggenheims and my mother and Con goodbye; we gave Dwight control of our financial interests in the United States. And we booked passage on a freighter bound for England, the sole paying passengers. The night before we sailed, Charles wrote a letter to The New York Times explaining why we were leaving the country for which he had done so much. In measured words nevertheless tinged with anger, he decried the lack of morals, the depravity he saw becoming part of the character of every American. He blamed the press—and those behind it—for our son’s death. He expressed the desire to return to the nation that he loved, but only at such a time when he could once again call himself a proud citizen of a good and useful society.

  Now we were renting an estate just outside of London, Long Barn, where it seemed, finally, that we had found peace. Charles could walk the sooty streets of London, only occasionally garnering a startled look. No strangers ever showed themselves at our door; the village constables made it their business to know every car, every bicycle, within miles. I could put the baby to sleep upstairs with the two nannies and three guard dogs, and only feel the need to go up and check on him four times a night, instead of forty.

  Best of all, Charles and I took long walks outside in the garden at night, just like we had when we were first married, when he tried to teach me the stars. He didn’t try to teach me anything now, and I was no longer quite so willing to learn. We walked in silence, mostly; afraid, or unable, to share our thoughts but finding a measure of unity simply in breathing the same air, admiring the same moon.

  We were always at our best, together, when we were looking at the sky.

  His days were still filled with scientific endeavors—working with aviation experts to improve fuel efficiency and range, as well as his continuing work with Alexis Carrel, who followed us across the ocean with his wife, living on a small island in Brittany. And one day I read an article in a magazine about a man named Goddard, who was working on something called a rocket; I showed it to Charles, who was now corresponding with him and helping him find funding.