The Aviator's Wife (10 page)

Then I turned to my companion. Instead of the sure, carefree grin I expected to see, Charles’s mouth was set in a straight line, and those startling blue eyes were narrowed in steely concentration.

“We lost a wheel,” he shouted over the pulsating drone of the engine. I realized conversation was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

“What?” I shouted back.

“On takeoff. I thought I felt something. We left one of the wheels on the ground.”

“So?” We were up in the air now; what did we need wheels for?

“Landing. A bit challenging,” was all he said. Then he flicked some switches with his thumb, muttered something that sounded like a complicated mathematical equation, and nodded to himself.

I wanted to ask more but felt ridiculous,
shouting so.

“Loud!” I said instead, pointing to my ears.

Charles nodded. “Some people use cotton. In their ears.” He pointed to his. “I don’t. That’s not flying.”

I nodded, as if I understood.

We flew for a while in silence. Then he turned to me again, his brow wrinkled in concern, as if something had just occurred to him. “We should stay up awhile to burn off fuel so landing is safer,” he
shouted. “Do you have other plans today? I’m not keeping you from something?”

For some reason, this last question struck me as hilarious; he seemed more worried about my social schedule than he was about the plane! And so I surprised us both by laughing.

“No!”

“Good,” he said, his eyes widening and his grin deepening. “Although that means you’re stuck with me for a while.”

“I can’t think of
anyone else I’d rather be stuck with,” I replied. And although I said it flippantly, I meant it. Who else would I rather be with in this situation? No one.

Was I afraid at all? It’s incredible to believe now, but I was not. I had such confidence in Charles; as we flew on and on, the relentless clamor of the engine giving me a slight headache but nothing more, I honestly forgot about the “challenging”
landing coming up. Instead, I was almost grateful for the situation. We were trapped alone together in the sky for hours. We would have something remarkable to share; something to bind us to each other. I seized this realization greedily, and, hoarding it, forgot all about the danger.

“You take the controls,” he suddenly called, almost an impish gleam in his eyes.

“What?”

“Take the control
stick.”

“I—I can’t!”

“Why not? You want to learn, don’t you?”

Why he assumed this of me, I had no idea, but as soon as he said it I realized he was right. This, at last, was something I could
do
. Right now; before I had a chance to think about it and analyze it until I was no longer even sure what it meant.

“You fly,” Charles shouted. “Don’t be afraid. You can do it.”

So I leaned over, reaching
with my left hand. His hand was still on the stick, but I grasped it, just above his, and for a moment both our hands were flying the plane, we were steering our path together. And while we didn’t even glance at each other, I felt a charge jolt through me and knew that he felt it, too. His breathing quickened.

Then he let go. And I was flying the plane myself. At first smoothly—I was still thinking
of his hand, touching mine, unaware of what I was really doing. Then, however, I was aware—aware that I was actually, really, flying an airplane!—and I overcompensated by gripping the stick tighter, which caused it to jerk right. And so did the plane. Steeply, it began to bank, and as my entire body was blanketed in a cold sweat, my hand shaking, I overcorrected and it banked precipitously
left.

Charles didn’t exclaim, didn’t even suck in his breath. He simply sat with his arms folded across his chest, allowing me to find my own way, somehow confident that I would. And finally, my hands still clammy but my heart now steady, I did. We flew in a straight line, and I felt the plane tug against me, like a horse, and I remembered how sensitive a horse is to his bit, and that’s how I
finally learned to fly. As if I were holding reins instead of a stick; as if I were riding. Even the little pockets of air that we hit began to feel no more dangerous than jumping a horse over a gate.

I don’t know how long I flew; my shoulder began to pinch, however, and Charles flipped a switch on the dashboard, looked at his watch, and tapped his head. “I’ll take over now. Landing.”

“Oh.”
After he grasped the stick, I let go. Charles suggested, his voice so reasonable even as he had to shout, that I gather the
cushions from the two rear seats and place them on either side of me, which I did.

“I’m going to take us down over there.” He gestured to a field with a longer airstrip than the one we had taken off from. “We’ll need the extra space.”

“All right.” I was calm. So was he.
The air inside the plane suddenly felt heavy, pressing me into my seat, and our voices sounded deadened to my ears. Still, I was not afraid. I trusted Charles Lindbergh, the man who had conquered the sky, to bring me back safely to earth.

We circled the airstrip a couple of times, lower and lower. Several people ran out of a small shack and a neighboring house to look at us. They waved, and I
waved back.

“They’re telling us not to land.” Charles had a grim smile on his face. “They can see we’re missing a wheel.”

“They’re in for a treat, then!” I continued to wave at the figures, jumping wildly below.

“Brace yourself, and as soon as we stop I want you to unbuckle and exit the plane. If the door won’t budge, push the window and crawl out. Then run as far away as you can. Can you do
that for me?”

It was that last “for me” that stirred me from my eerie calm. It touched my heart; truly, as if the words wormed themselves into my flesh, between my ribs. I felt adrenaline tingling my every pore, and I nodded, holding on tight to the edges of the seat. As the ground came rushing up at us, I instinctively ducked my head, feeling, not seeing, the plane hit the ground. For a suspended
breath, I thought we were fine—but then I felt something break beneath us. “The wheel,” I said—or maybe it was Charles. It was the only word either one of us, or both of us, spoke.

And then I was upside down.

The plane had stopped, and I was upside down and then I wasn’t; I heard a crash and then a rip, and then I had pushed myself through a window and I was running, just as Charles had told
me to do, away from the plane. Which was upside down, the propeller still turning like a child’s whirligig.

Finally I stopped running, pain pinching my side, but I knew it was only because I was out of breath. I had done it! I had done what he had asked of me and I was all right, he was all right—

Wasn’t he? Where was he? I looked around, panicking; there were people—the same people to whom
I had just waved so carelessly—hurrying toward me, farmers with pitchforks just like in a motion picture—but there was no Charles. I shouted his name, heard nothing, and then started to run back to the plane when I felt a hand on my arm, pulling me back.

I spun around, and he was there. Disheveled, a bleeding scratch on his cheek, a huge grin on his face. We grinned stupidly at each other for
the longest time, until we were surrounded by people jostling us, asking if we were okay, and Charles was wincing. Only then did I see that he was cradling his left elbow with his right hand.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, wanting to touch him but strangely unable to take a step in his direction.

“I think I bruised it.” He shrugged, followed by a grimace. “But it’s nothing.”

“We should get you to
a doctor—” I began, but was interrupted by shouts of, “It’s him! It’s Charles Lindbergh himself! Lucky Lindy!”

And soon more people were running toward us; from where, I had no idea. They all wanted to touch him, shake him, ask if he was all right. A few men headed toward the plane, but Charles, in a startling, harsh voice, yelled for them not to. A few souls realized that I was there, too, and
asked me my name. “Miss
Morrow,” I replied, over and over, in a daze. I didn’t have a scratch on me, however—my clothing wasn’t even torn—and soon enough they turned back to Charles, who was trying to organize some men to help flip the plane back over, once the engine had cooled.

“How will we get home?” I shouted over the din, tugging on the sleeve of his good arm. It would soon be dusk, and
I suddenly remembered my brother. Dwight would be worried if I wasn’t home for dinner.

“I’ll call Harry,” Charles shouted back. “He’ll come pick us up. I hope that farmhouse has a telephone.”

I finally pushed my way through the crowd and sat down on a tree stump, so conveniently placed it was as if someone had cut the tree down just for me. No one followed, and so I felt strangely detached from
the entire scene. The plane, still upside down like a turtle on its back, didn’t even look familiar anymore. The only thing I did recognize, and couldn’t take my eyes off, was the slim, sandy-haired figure that moved to and fro, directing, controlling. And on the occasions when he stopped and looked my way, an anxious expression on his face as if he was afraid of misplacing me, my heart soared,
as it had the moment I first took flight.

After a time I began to get sleepy just sitting there, watching. I believe I actually did doze off, until I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake.

“Miss Morrow? Miss Morrow?”

I opened my eyes, yawned, and looked up to see a homely man about ten years older than Charles. He had the slicked-back hair of a banker but the earnest grin of a fellow
aviator.

“Come along with me,” he said, and I followed him obediently, because Charles had suddenly appeared and was doing the same. The man ushered us into a shiny black car, introducing himself to me as “Harry Guggenheim.”

“Of the mining Guggenheims?” I stifled a yawn.

“Yes, I believe I know your father.”

“Oh.” Then we drove away, all the farmers and their families waving goodbye as merrily
as if we had just dropped in for tea. Charles had fashioned a sling out of a scarf, and didn’t appear to be in any pain; in the front passenger seat, he happily filled Harry in on our adventure, while I sat in the back. I caught a glimpse of my face in the window; I was grinning again. Harry Guggenheim saw me looking at my own reflection, and he smiled, as well.

“Very nice to meet you, Miss Morrow,”
he said, when we pulled up to his estate, where Charles’s cream-colored Ford roadster awaited; had it been only this morning when he picked me up in it? “I hope we can meet again, under less exciting circumstances.”

“I hope so, too.” Charles opened the door for me, and I stepped out.

“Sorry about the plane, Harry,” Charles said, although he didn’t sound very sorry at all. “I’ll make it right.”

“Don’t worry, old man. I’m just happy you’re safe.” And the two shook hands with real affection.

Charles and I got into his car in silence, and we drove in silence through the gathering darkness. He turned the headlights on, and drove—somehow he was able to work the gearshift and steer the wheel, both, with only one hand—even more leisurely than he had earlier; suddenly neither of us was in a
hurry to reach our destination.

And we talked. For the first time, truly, we had a conversation; it was as if the adrenaline was still rushing through both of us, turning two shy people into chattering magpies.

Charles shared with me some of his hopes for aviation’s future; his feelings of obligation to ensure that future, to convince
the average American that flying was no more dangerous than
riding in an automobile, maybe even less so.

He also discussed some of the flights he was planning; he wanted to map out the shortest routes between not only cities but continents. “Can you imagine flying to Australia in less than a week’s time?” he asked, and I could only shake my head in wonder.

“But I do like ocean travel,” I confessed. “It’s very restful.”

“Oh, I do, as well. The best sleep
I got after landing in Paris was on the boat coming home. They wouldn’t let me fly back, although I wanted to. That was the first time I realized my life was no longer my own.”

“I can’t imagine how that felt.”

“It was quite surprising, of course. I hadn’t counted on that aspect; I was concerned with the flight only, for so long. And initially, all I felt was the kindness of many people—my backers,
the mechanics who built the plane. But almost as soon as I landed, I began to feel it—the awful realization that I’m never going to be left alone. People always want more from me, and I don’t know what I can give them. I already flew across the ocean.”

“How did you know you could do it—fly to Paris? When so many others had failed?”

He nodded, so earnest. “I did the calculations. I would never
take an unnecessary risk. See, no one else had ever thought of flying alone—it was a two-pilot job, everyone knew that, because of how long it would take. Well, I realized that if I flew alone, I could carry much more fuel and have a better chance, even if I went off course. And I’m the best flyer I know.”

His confidence was so sure, yet so understated, that all I could do was marvel at it. Unlike
men who needed approval, he didn’t speak loudly or use hyperbole. He simply
was
.

“Would you have done it, if you knew what lay ahead—all the attention, the press?”

“Yes. It was that important a thing to do. Still, I wish they would leave me alone.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Oh, the press, the people, old school chums, total strangers. All those people who put my name on everything from jackets to songs
to dances.”

I colored, grateful for the dusk that shielded me. I had earnestly learned the Lindy Hop at a dance, the fall of my senior year at Smith.

“Even movie men,” Charles continued eagerly, and it seemed to me he was almost grateful to have someone to say these things to. “William Randolph Hearst offered me what would have amounted to a million dollars to appear in a movie, which I turned
down. He couldn’t believe it when I said no—he said everyone has a price. But I don’t. And yet he keeps asking—they all keep asking, for so many things.”