The Aviator's Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

  “You’re hysterical, Anne.” Still he remained unperturbed, giving outward evidence, once more, of his superiority; he actually picked up a magazine, settled into a chair, and began to read. As if I were simply an annoying fly, buzzing around his head.

  I yanked the magazine out of his hands.

  “No, I’m finally pushing back,” I hissed. “You told me to go find my voice—well, I did. I’m using it now, or can you not hear me, up on that pedestal of yours?”

  He didn’t respond; we glared at each other for what seemed like the entire length of our marriage, right there—spreading, like a noxious stain, between us, pushing us farther and farther apart. Once, we’d shared the same tiny cockpit for days on end, and he didn’t mind. He’d made room for me, even though it meant he had to sit cramped, his long legs twisted and bent. He never once complained.

  Now it seemed as if he had to keep entire continents between us. And I had no idea what had changed; I only knew I was the only one of us who seemed to care.

  Charles finally rose from his chair, still deliberate, untouchable, and went outside to the garage, where I knew he would remain all night. Lately, when he was home, that’s where he spent most of his time, working on some engine or another—something orderly, mechanical, full of gadgets and gears and springs and not emotions; something he could understand.

  I crumpled the magazine and threw it away, although I didn’t follow him. I nursed my hurt and honed it, just as I had as a child when my father called me “the disciplined one.” I carried my grievance about until I couldn’t even feel its weight; it felt as much a part of me as the old dirndl skirt I wore when I tramped about outside. I forgot what it was like to be near my husband and not seethe or grind my teeth, even as I couldn’t help but weep each time he left, wishing he’d ask me, just once, to come with him.

  But I suffered the most for my children, especially Scott. He withdrew even from me; during family celebrations he was there, but he wasn’t, sitting, watching; brooding so, you could almost see the tension radiating from him in cartoonish waves.

  When he left for school, I knew it would be a very long time before I saw him again. And I knew it was my fault, as well as Charles’s. Had I known more about my husband’s childhood—still cloaked in mystery, he never would tell me more than he had early in our marriage—would I have been able to protect my own children from his demons? Had I found my voice earlier, would I have been able to ask the right questions, speak up for them, too?

  It was too late now. We were all shattered into pieces, pierced by that unflinching steel gaze that judged us all and found us lacking. I could only hope my children would one day be able to reassemble themselves, as I had only begun to do, into the people they wanted to be. And not the people he wanted them to be.

  The girls were easier, although I despaired to see my own compliant nature so obvious in my daughters, especially Ansy.

  She had wanted to go to Paris, to the Sorbonne, but Charles wouldn’t hear of it. So she made do at Radcliffe, pointedly, but sweetly, not choosing Smith. She struggled so much to separate herself from me, but it was never a violent wrenching. It was gentler, more persistent; like the endless slapping of waves against a rock, wearing it down over time.

  Reeve, the easiest (and most spoiled, we all knew it, were all responsible for it, even Charles), followed her sister to Radcliffe. But even before she left for school, she was never home; the most social of my children, she was always vacationing with friends, sleeping over, going to parties.

  And I was alone. For the first time since before I married Charles. I’d thought marriage would mean I’d never be lonely. Now I knew: Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it’s far more cruel. You miss more, because you’ve known more.

  The calendar—once so full of dates and appointments and concerts and practices—was increasingly just row after row of empty white squares. One morning I picked up a pencil to write something in—a trip to the grocery store, maybe, so it didn’t look so dauntingly vacant, but then dropped it. Charles was away, as usual, and I had no idea when he would be back. The older boys were gone by then, Scott was at camp, Anne was spending the summer with her aunt Con, Reeve was vacationing with a friend. Determined not to feel sorry for myself, I decided to go for a walk. I left the tidy, orderly house—strange, how every sink and appliance decided to behave beautifully now that I had little use for them—and marched toward my cabin, far down the hill, in that little dip of land.

  But I paused in the middle of the yard and looked around. It was June, and I wore a blouse, dungarees, loafers. The saltwater spray from the ocean far below occasionally flew up and got caught by the wind, misting me gently. The leaves were full, canopies of green splintered with golden rays of sun. A couple of rusty bicycles leaned against a shed, my garden beckoned, a hammock, strewn with paperback novels, half-eaten apples, waved gently between two trees.

  This had been—still was—a good home in which to raise children, I decided, and allowed myself the warmth of satisfaction. I had raised these children, these two adults, three adolescents who never failed to astonish me with their opinions, their fully formed personalities, their rebellions large and small. There had been a time when I thought I could never love a child again; there had been a time when I couldn’t imagine how to raise one past the age of twenty months. Always, I had an image of a child, and a birthday cake with one candle, and then—someone whisking it away, out of my arms, and having to start all over again.

  But I had done it. I had seen them through teething and toddling and adolescence; heartache, tears, stupid jokes and silly laughter. Here, in this strip of land where Charles had hidden us away, only occasionally remembering to come and find us, I had raised a family. Me. By myself.

  I knew, finally, that Charles would never really come back to me here. Especially now that the din and racket of children were dwindling, not explosive enough to find its way up to the stratosphere, where he, and only he, resided. He was back to where he had started; the Lone Eagle, jettisoning anything that might weigh him down. Even me.

  So I began to build a life for myself. It wasn’t easy. I felt guilty—I, who had written a book that urged women to do just this! I, who had sounded so strong on the page; at times I couldn’t recognize my own words, because I was still so often afraid in my life. Afraid to anger my husband. Afraid to disappoint him.

  Afraid to recognize that he had disappointed me.

  My guilt at my success, my need to be his “good girl,” combined with my anger at no longer being invited to share his world, no longer being quite so necessary to my children; for a time I found solace in psychoanalysis with the doctor who was treating Dwight.

  Charles punished me by moving his belongings out of our bedroom before flying off again, leaving me behind.

  But the analysis helped; gradually I was able to release my anger, my grievances, setting them free in the wind that blew up from the sea outside my door. I also released any notions of us settling down in our golden years, or flying together once more, just the two of us.

  The next time he remembered to come home, he sat across from me at the dinner table, empty chairs on either side. When he asked me what was for dessert, I told him instead that I wanted to sell the place.

  “It’s too big for me, alone.”

  “You’re not alone.” He actually looked surprised.

  “Charles!” I had to laugh. Where did he think the children were? Hiding somewhere in the attic? “Of course I’m alone, more and more. Oh, yes, technically we have three teenagers still at home, but they’re never here. The older boys are gone for good now.”

  “They’ll be home for holidays.”

  “Yes, for a little while, but do I stay here, shut away from everything, until then? Just waiting for them—and for you?”

  He pursed his lips. “Anne, you know I have work to do.”

  “I know you say that, and I know you’re gone all the time. I wish I knew what you did
and where you went, but you never tell me.” I wasn’t goading him or accusing him, I was simply stating a fact.

  “Of course I do.”

  “No, you don’t. You say you have a meeting, or a conference, or a route to inspect. That’s all. You don’t give me your itinerary, you don’t tell me when you’ll be home, I have no way of contacting you except through Pan Am. But you expect me to be here, waiting for you, anyway.”

  “Did your psychiatrist tell you to say that?”

  “No, and don’t even try to pretend you know what a psychiatrist does. This is me talking. Anne. Your wife.”

  He continued to eat, and I had to wonder if he’d heard; he was growing deaf, after all those years of sitting in noisy airplanes. He had always looked down on those—like me—who put cotton in their ears. “It diminishes the experience,” he’d snort. But he was too proud now to admit he’d been wrong.

  “You don’t know what it means to me, to know that you’re here,” he said after a moment, his voice soft and unexpectedly appealing, and I knew that he had heard me, after all. He came around the table and pulled out the chair next to me, taking my hand in his, and I couldn’t prevent a gasp at the touch of flesh against my own. It had been so long since he had touched me; I hadn’t realized how long. Days, weeks, months; endless, yearning Arabian nights. It had been ages since anyone had touched me; I didn’t even get the halfhearted hugs of teenagers anymore.

  “It’s precisely because you’re here,” Charles continued, murmuring, low and throaty like a perfectly tuned engine, “and that you’ve always been here, running things, keeping us all going—that I can do the work I need to. I couldn’t accomplish half so much without you, Anne. I thought you knew that. You’re my crew.”

  Damn him! I retrieved my hand, pushed myself away from the table and stomped into the kitchen, where I stared out the window. Oh, he knew exactly what to say, and when to say it. Just when I wanted, needed, to believe that he didn’t understand the workings of my heart so I could take it back for good—he proved, once more, that he could master anything.

  I picked up a chocolate layer cake, store bought, even though I knew he didn’t like that. But I was used to simple eating these days; poached eggs, toast, soup. With so little to do, I no longer employed a full-time cook. Then I strode back to the dinner table; he had returned to his seat at the head. I plopped the cake in front of him. Charles frowned, but sliced into it, anyway.

  “What are we going to do, Charles?” I took my seat again, and carefully folded my napkin, placing it next to my coffee cup. “Realistically. Logistically—that, I know you understand. I don’t want to stay here alone. If you want me to remain at your beck and call, waiting for you occasionally to remember me, I can very well do that somewhere else.”

  “Anne, you’re being ridiculous. I fly—I work. That’s what I do.”

  “That’s what I used to do, too,” I reminded him. But what did I do now? I waited, fretted, longed, simmered. Meanwhile, I received letters from women envying me my perfect marriage—the one I had conjured up in the pages of my book. My prayer, which was, as yet, unanswered. Perhaps because I had wasted too many years praying to the wrong deity.

  “It’s different now.” Charles was warming up to one of his favorite themes: the Dangers of the Modern World. “The world is changing—too fast, I think. Someday, I’ll want to step back and simplify. I need to know that this place will be here, then. I need—” His voice faltered, and he took a sip of milk to disguise it. “I need to know where you are,” he continued, pushing at his cake with his fork. “I just need to know where you are, and I like to know that you are here, safe, where I put you. I would think that you, of all people, would understand that.”

  I opened my mouth, but my heart was suddenly in my throat, preventing speech. I slumped back in my seat, stunned.

  I’d never told him about having to explain to our children, one by one, about their murdered brother, after they first found out about him in school. I’d never told him about the box of pictures I still kept beneath my bed.

  But my husband had not moved on as thoroughly as he had tried to convince us both he had. And I hurt for him, just as I had hurt for my children at his hands; for the first time, I saw myself in the stronger role. Anger and resentment aside, I had healed; I shared my grief with others who wrote me to share theirs—countless women over the years, seeking my counsel. And I had loved our surviving children, fully participated in their lives, risking my heart over and over again for them.

  But Charles—

  The distance he put between himself and us; the pushing, the cajoling—was it his way of protecting himself? For so long I had wanted to believe that our baby’s death had not sundered us; I had thought it had drawn us together, made us rely upon each other, only. But now, I saw with eyes as clear as my husband’s, that it hadn’t.

  I couldn’t help him now, not even if he’d asked me to, which he never would. Once, maybe; once upon a long time ago. But not now.

  Sipping my coffee, I chose my next words very carefully.

  “We don’t have to sell,” I said. “I have money, of course, from Mother and Daddy. We can keep this place until Reeve has graduated, at least, and then—for the future, for holidays. I might like to rent an apartment in the city, though. I would like to be closer to people, to the theater, shopping—things like that.”

  “What on earth would you want to be closer to all that for?” He was genuinely surprised. He laid his fork down, peering at me as if he’d never seen me before—and I was reminded of how he used to look at me, back when we were courting. Clinically, scientifically; as if he needed to try to figure out the inner workings of my brain.

  I smiled at the memory, and his face flushed red as he looked away again, caught. “Charles, I am fifty years old. I was a city girl when you met me, remember? I have never lived in a home of my own choosing. You’ve always chosen. Your life, your fame, have always dictated where I live. I do think it’s time that I get to live for myself, don’t you? Choose my own friends, at least?”

  “You’ve read your own book, haven’t you?” He frowned, but I caught the admiring little gleam in his eyes, and now it was my turn to blush.

  To his credit, Charles had been nothing but proud—if slightly puzzled—by the success of Gift from the Sea. He’d even consented to pose for a pictorial for Time magazine when it came out. I’d only had to remind him once how I’d done the same thing for his book.

  “Perhaps,” I admitted. “I am serious, though.”

  “I know you are. I’ve never known you not to be that. Well, I suppose that sounds like a reasonable plan. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Yes, this is what I want.”

  He stared at me, hard; I stared back. Once, a lifetime ago, our gazes had met and it was immediately electric, powerful—so powerful that it frightened us both. There were times, even now, when our eyes would meet and I would feel a thrill jolt through me, shocking my entire being into overdrive.

  But this gaze was not like that; it was an assessment. An acknowledgment that I was taking a step that neither of us had ever thought I would, but that he had been pushing me toward, unconsciously, for years now. He’d trained me, he’d taught me—too well, I could almost hear him thinking.

  Finally, I was strong. I was able. Able to separate my life from his; able to separate myself, from him. Like all surgical procedures, it would not be without pain and regret.

  We continued to eat without talking. Silence, after all, had been the thing that brought us together, all those years ago; he’d said he’d never met a girl so comfortable not talking, as I was.

  But now that I had found my voice, I wanted to use it; I had the feeling that once I started talking, I might never shut up. And to that end, I wanted to find someone who wanted to listen to me as much as I wanted to talk to him.

  And I knew, sadly, finally, that that someone was never going to be my husband.

  CHAPTER 19


  1958

  I’D LEFT IT IN A STACK of mail on the table in the entryway. Later, I had to wonder if I’d done it on purpose, but then, that’s where I always left the mail. I’d glanced at the envelope, saw my name in the familiar handwriting, Anne Lindbergh, and smiled, then left it there—a treat for later, I supposed I thought. After Ansy and I returned from the city.

  My daughter was about to leave for Radcliffe and she needed a new wardrobe. Of my two daughters, she was the one who was the most feminine; she was tiny and blond, with eyes that looked mischievous because of the way they turned up at the ends. But she was not mischievous; she was the most solemn of my children, even more solemn than Jon.

  She was also the one who hated being a Lindbergh the most; the one who sobbed when a reporter wrote a story about her classroom picnic when she was ten, simply because she was Charles Lindbergh’s daughter. The one who, when she was a teenager, cut off her long blond braids because a newspaper article mentioned them. And because her name happened to be Anne Lindbergh, she got double the dose of unwanted, reflected glory; every Mother’s Day, some magazine wanted to interview the two of us, the “two Annes.”

  I wondered if that was why, when she got over her adolescent embarrassment, she made herself so determinedly fashionable, so delightedly girlish. Those were two traits I had never possessed, and these were ways she could establish her own identity, separate from mine.

  That afternoon we’d burst into the house, bags hanging from our arms, and went our separate ways until dinner; she, to try on everything all over again; me, to collapse for half an hour. Shopping was exhausting; I was too much my own mother’s daughter. I preferred to order five of the same kind of dress or sweater or skirt in different colors, and be done with it. But Ansy had tried on every outfit she saw, even if she had no intention of buying it, just for fun.

  I removed my hat, my gloves—my daughter had pronounced them so “terribly dowdy, Mother.” It was true that I hadn’t bought a new hat in years, although some of the ones I’d seen today—smaller, with darling wisps of veils, little in the way of flowers or feathers—had looked very tempting. Maybe I’d buy one next time I was in the city; next week he and I were going to the theater, then dinner after—