The Aviator's Wife (38 page)

Charles left the next morning, a blustery March day, and
drove straight through to Detroit on a special gas card issued to him by Ford; essential war
work, it declared. I rose at dawn to see him off, and I admit I felt relief at seeing him go, despite all the work ahead of me—closing up this house, packing, finding another in Detroit, moving the household, finding a new doctor for me, one for the children, dentists for us all, schools.…

But mostly, I felt relief. Not only at being parted—there was some of that, I had to admit; his presence
in the house had been oppressive these last few weeks, an annoying, spiteful shadow nipping at my heels wherever I went. But mainly, I rejoiced at the knowledge that for once, we were like everyone else. Not heroes, deified; not demons, vilified.

Just a man and wife saying goodbye because of the war, unsure when we’d see each other again, because housing was difficult to find in Detroit—and Charles
made it clear to Mr. Ford that we were to be given no special favors. We would exchange letters, call occasionally when we could get a long distance line. I would take photographs of the children so that he did not miss anything. I would encourage them to write to Daddy, and help them sign their names in cursive, even though they did not yet know how.

As I waved goodbye to Charles, I had tears
in my eyes. Tears of pure, soul-cleansing joy, for I felt an honest happiness in sending my husband off to war—as if this one small sacrifice could somehow make up for all the wrong I had done, in both our names. Yet at the same time, I also felt the lightness of anticipation, believing that somehow, the worst was behind us. And that from now on, Charles and I had only good times to look forward
to together. Strange, I know, to think that; to feel relief, not sadness; happiness, not horror.

Especially against the backdrop of a world split asunder by war.

CHAPTER 15

“M
OMS
?”

I looked up, startled. I was writing a letter to Charles, using the thin, small V-Mail sheet I abhorred; I always ran out of room before I ran out of things to say. Jon was standing in front of me, just home from school. He was neat and tidy as always; Land was the one who always had a slingshot in his pocket, a half-eaten apple in his hand. The only sign
that Jon was a normal eleven-year-old was his new vocabulary of slang that he sometimes tried out. “Hi-de-ho” for “hello,” “creep” for his brother, “Moms” for me. Although his father was never “Pops”; even to his children, there was something about Charles Augustus Lindbergh that did not lend itself to slang.

“Yes, dear?”

“The teacher was telling us about Father’s flight to Paris today. It’s
in our history books, you know.” He blushed; so scarlet you could see a rosy glow beneath his fine reddish hair. So this was why he had been uncommonly quiet in the car on the way home. “It was kind of embarrassing, because everyone looked at me. Even Polly Sanders.”

I stifled a smile; Polly Sanders had hit him in the school yard yesterday. A declaration of love if ever there was one.

“But then
the teacher started talking about a kidnapping. She
said that Father’s first baby was stolen and died. Charles Lindbergh Junior. And when I told her she was wrong, that I was the oldest, she got real quiet, then she shut the book and told me to go home and ask you about it.”

“Oh.” Without thinking, I tore up the letter I was writing to Charles. Writing to him was my lifeline, as it was his; I
often felt we were courting again through V-Mail, sharing our fears, our hopes—everything that we hadn’t been able to tell each other in person. Forced to live apart now, after so long huddled together against various storms, the war had given us a chance to tell each other who we were again. To reinvent ourselves, even. On the page, I sounded strong and resourceful.

He sounded reflective and
kind.

Even though I missed him so much that I had taken to sleeping on the chaise in my bedroom just so I didn’t have to see his pillow every night, I was suddenly, violently furious with my husband. Why was he not here to address this? After all, it was a situation of his own making;
Charles
had decided that we would never display our lost baby’s pictures, never tell his siblings about his existence.
“I don’t want any reminders,” he had declared, a lifetime ago, when we were packing up the house in Hopewell. And that was it. I gathered all the baby’s photos into one shoe box that I still kept beneath my bed. Now and then, when I was alone, I sat cross-legged on the floor and spread them all out before me, a jigsaw puzzle that would never be complete.

Baby
. I sighed. Of course, he would not
be a baby now. He would be two years older than Jon. A teenager.

“So, I’m asking you,” Jon said, ever patient—although I could see that he was shaken. He had a difficult time looking at me directly, and his hands, in his trouser pockets, were balled into fists. “Did I have—have a big brother, I guess? And he died?”

“Yes.” I pushed myself away from the desk and went to my bed; I patted the coverlet,
and Jon sat down next to me.

As I sorted through my tumbled emotions—anger at Charles; the tender sadness that any mention of “the events of ’32” still invoked; frustration at the teacher, for having introduced the subject in the first place—I glanced about the bedroom. It was a woman’s bedroom, not a man’s, with dainty lace curtains, dresses in the closet, lipstick on the vanity. No tie rack,
no shaving kit, very few suits, and those in the back of the closet. I wondered how many other wives lived in such a bedroom; how many other wives had subtly, over the last couple of years of war, remodeled their homes, their lives, around someone’s absence.

Most, probably. I was not remarkable enough to be the only one.

Our house here in Bloomfield Hills had not been exactly to either of our
tastes, but given the housing shortage, we leaped at it. Four bedrooms, three acres, only $300 a month in rent. It was decorated in an ornate, fussy style that I longed to change but couldn’t; our landlady, who was living with her sister for the duration, had a habit of popping over unannounced, just to make sure we hadn’t touched anything. The boys shared one room, Anne had another, and the new
baby had a separate nursery; and then the master bedroom, in which I slept alone. For Charles was now, finally, at the front.

During the past two years he had worked tirelessly for Henry Ford, insisting on being paid only what he would have earned in the army. He had made himself into something of a human laboratory rat. Volunteering for everything, Charles tested high-altitude chambers, oxygen-deprivation
chambers, sound chambers; he usually came home at night slightly ill, or with his ears ringing, but always with a satisfied smile. And as the war
marched on, and so did time, and memories, he crossed the country, testing bombers for other companies as well—North American Aviation, Curtiss-Wright, Douglas: all companies that had turned down his services after Pearl Harbor. Finally, he convinced
Lockheed to send him into the Pacific theater, where he used his experience to teach pilots how to fly at high altitudes in the P-38. Officially, he was not allowed into combat, which should have quelled my worries. But I knew my husband too well; I also knew how other pilots idolized him. Whenever we flew commercial—even during the worst of the America First ordeal—Charles was treated like a hero.
The pilots, grinning like schoolboys, always came back to shake his hand, stuttering that it was a privilege to fly him, of all people.

I could not imagine Charles Lindbergh failing to talk a mere military pilot into allowing him to tag along on a combat mission.

Despite my fears, I rejoiced that we were now, truly, like every other wartime family. I worried, and waited for infrequent letters,
and managed everything on my own—secretly sure that my husband was having the time of his life, while I was not.

“This—the kidnapping—was mentioned in your history book, then?” Oh, how right I had been, all those years ago! Our personal tragedy was history now in every school textbook. Neither of us had thought of
that
when we sent our children off to be educated.

“Yes,” Jon answered, settling
beside me on the bed. “There was a picture, too, of the man they said did it.”

“God.” I shuddered, remembering Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s blank, expressionless face when I testified while everyone else in the room was weeping.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about it? I might have been able to help!”

“Oh, sweetheart!” I wanted to laugh and cry both; how innocent,
how sturdy he was—truly the man
of the house, like so many little boys during wartime! “You weren’t even born yet. There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done—not even Father, although you must believe me. He tried. He tried so very hard to find our baby, to bring him back to me. Charles Junior. That’s what we named him. Charles Junior. Charlie.”

“Like Anne? Anne Junior?”

“That’s right.”
And I remembered my horror when Charles named her after me; he insisted, saying it was tradition. I’d felt it was inviting tragedy into our lives once more. But over time, this feeling had faded. Anne was a healthy three-and-a-half-year-old now, always chasing after her big brothers—and nearly always catching up. She was also a dutiful older sister to Scott, born in August 1942.

“What was he
like? Charles Junior?”

“Oh, well—he was a baby, of course. Not even two, so we didn’t really get a chance to—to know him.” My voice caught on the jagged edges of my heart that had never healed, and I had to take a deep breath. “But he looked an awful lot like Father. More than you, even.” I smiled at my son, already tall and lean for his age, hair the same reddish-gold as Charles’s. But his forehead
wasn’t quite as high as the baby’s had been, and his eyes were a darker blue.

“Did you like him?”

“Of course, Jon. Of course. We loved him. Just as much as we love you.”

“Then you must have been very sad.”

“Yes, I was. Very sad.”

“Did you cry?”

“Yes, I did cry. Sometimes—sometimes, I still do. Not very often, though.”

“When you go outside by yourself at night? When you say you’re locking
up the garage? I know you don’t really do that, because I always lock it after dinner. I’ve never missed a time.”

I laid my cheek against my son’s head and sighed. “Yes, that’s when. But not for long.”

“Did Father ever cry?”

It was a blow—a punch in the stomach, this question. I inhaled sharply, and Jon looked at me in alarm. Biting my lip, I turned away from his innocent, searching gaze.

What responsibility did I have to my children, regarding their father? He had been gone for several months, a long time in the lives of those so young. And even before he left for the Pacific, he was an infrequent guest in his own house with all the flying he had to do for his work.

The children knew that he was famous, of course; his Paris flight was part of our family lore. Other families told
a story about the time Father ran away to join the circus only to come home a week later, hungry and penitent; our family told the story about the time Father flew to Paris by himself, only to come home the most famous man in the world.

Charles, of course, embodied the role of hero; a strict, somehow aloof parental presence, expecting his offspring to be miniature versions of his own ideal of
himself. And I was left to try to make up for all the warmth and understanding he didn’t display; to make up for his absence, his focus, always, on something bigger, something more important, than his family.

Now it was up to me to tell my son about his father, and I wasn’t sure how truthful I should be. Should I tell him how he had berated me for my tears, so long ago? Should I reveal how he
had laughed and clapped when the man found guilty was electrocuted, while I excused myself and quietly vomited in the bathroom?

Should I share with my son his father’s coldness, how he sometimes turned away from me at night if I had dared to question his judgment during the day?

Should I tell him his father was anti-Semitic?

But there were so many other things to tell as well—how comforting
he could be, simply because of who he was, the bravest man in the world. How charming, when he forgot to be the hero, and remembered how to smile, truly smile, so the ice in his eyes melted into cloudless sky. How boyishly happy he was tinkering with anything mechanical, every limb loose, grease streaking his clothes. I’d long ago learned that those were the times I should ask him for something;
the times he had a wrench or a hammer in his hand; the times when he was just a boy with a fascination for all things mechanical, and a curiosity that could not be sated.

Should I reveal how utterly helpless I was on those nights when he turned to me first, or those rare days when he reached for me, just to hold my hand for no reason at all?

No, I did not have to tell him, I decided. Not yet.
There would be time enough for the children to learn who he was, firsthand, after the war; there would be time enough for them to decide who their father was, or was not.