The Aviator's Wife (42 page)

And then the flight itself—Charles had built a masterpiece
of suspense, the reader perched on his shoulder, holding his breath even though, of course, the outcome was assured. And the landing, when it came—the explosion of joy, yet always this young boy standing in the midst, perplexed, still so focused on his flight that he wanted to stay with his plane, and had to be forcibly removed from it by the mayor of Paris.

His brilliance was in ending the narrative
there, in that moment—the moment before he understood that the world was now forever in his cockpit. The moment before he started to suspect that there were punishments for those who dared to dream so big, to fly so high.

I was stunned by his draft; stunned, and envious. Yet it was
still unpolished; there were gaps in the narrative, particularly before the flight began, and I had ideas of how
to fill them.

And so we began to work together, for the first time in years, even if we were seldom in the same space. He would be gone, I would read what he had left behind and make notes, filling in gaps; he would return, taking my notes with him when he left, and work while he traveled. He would deliver his next draft to me, and so forth, like a duet; we were writing in tandem, just as we
had flown, so long ago.

I saw his heart on the page, and wondered if he knew he had left it there. The plane—the
Spirit of St. Louis
—was his true mistress. He spoke of it almost sadly, with the regret of a long-lost lover, and I had to correct that, for it was the one part of his narrative that did not feel immediate. But he had trusted this machine in a way he had never trusted anything, or
anyone, ever again. Including, I knew, me.

I wondered why this memoir was written so much more clearly, straightforwardly, than anything else he had written, including his speeches before the war. And I had to conclude that it was because he was writing about a machine. But the others were about ideas, and people—and Charles had always had trouble understanding
them
.

The time we worked together
on what would be called, simply,
The Spirit of St. Louis;
the notes that flew back and forth, the evenings, toward the end, when we huddled together in my cabin, leaving the children to take care of themselves—it was the best time in our marriage since our early flights. He allowed himself to be guided. I allowed myself to hope, once more, that we could share space on this earth, share goals,
share happiness—and also tenderness, vulnerability.

He dedicated the book to me.
“To A.M.L.—Who will never know how much of this book she has written.”

My heart soared, just like the stars on the cover, when I read these words. Rarely did Charles ever speak of me in print, and when he did, it was almost always in answer to an interviewer’s question as to why he married me. Charles usually replied
that it was important to choose a spouse of good stock. Like a broodmare.

I was always furious, even though he insisted he meant it as a joke.

But this—this was truly the first time he allowed the world to see that I mattered to him. And that meant something to me; it meant more than it should have, more than it would have had he been a mere man. But he was
Charles Lindbergh
, still and always—and
I felt like an old biplane that had been left to rust in a barn; once useful—once the newest of technologies!—but forgotten as of late. Neglected.

But now that biplane had been remembered, dusted off, shined and tuned up. Old-fashioned, yes—but still able to brush the clouds.

The book sold a million copies in the first year; Hollywood bought the rights, and later, a too-old Jimmy Stewart played
Charles in the movie. (We took Reeve to a showing of it at Radio City Music Hall; halfway through, she turned to me with big eyes and whispered, “He makes it, doesn’t he?”)
Life
magazine visited our home, photographing the two of us, side by side on the sofa, reading the book;
Mrs. Lindbergh, ever devoted, approves of her husband’s newest endeavor
, the caption read. The success of the book opened
the floodgates to a deluge of awards and accolades; America, it seemed, needed heroes more than it needed villains, and was willing to let bygones be bygones. President Eisenhower presented Charles with a medal for his war work. Once again, almost every town had a Charles Lindbergh Elementary School;
many had changed their names during the war, only to revert back to them now.

I beamed for the
photographers beside Charles when he was notified he had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography/autobiography.

My beam diminished, however, when he neglected to thank me, thanking the Wright Brothers, instead.

It vanished completely when he was given a contract for another book, sight unseen.

JEALOUSY IS A TERRIBLE THING
. It keeps you up at night, it demands tremendous energy in order
to remain alive, and so you have to want to feed it, nurture it—and by so wanting, you have to acknowledge that you are a bitter, petty person. It changes you. It changes the way you view the world; minor irritations become major catastrophes; celebrations become trials.

I was proud of Charles. He had done this—it was his story to tell and he had told it, brilliantly. No matter how much I had
worked on it, it was, at its essence,
his
.

And I hid in the shadows once more, only this time I paced, finding no comfort in my invisibility. Wondering what was wrong with me, wondering what was keeping me there; keeping me from writing
my
story. Wondering if I’d ever have a story worth telling that was my own, and not merely reflected or borrowed from
him;
a story that had nothing to do with
our flights or his politics.

You’re the writer in the family
, Charles always said, and he’d even built me a cabin to prove it, when there was no real evidence of my ability other than long ago dreams, my classical education. And I had always clung to that, grateful that there was something
that he felt I could do better than him. I could no longer cling to that fiction.
He
was the writer in the
family, now.

So bitter was the constant taste of failure in my mouth, so narrow my vision, I fled. To a place that had always restored me to my best self.

I fled to Florida, to Captiva Island; a healing, nourishing wilderness that Charles and I had discovered before the war, when our friend Jim Newton urged us to come explore this untouched island off the Gulf Coast of Florida. I’d gone there
several times since, sometimes with Charles, sometimes with my sister Con.

Now I went there alone. I had to find my own courage, and stop borrowing his. I had to find my own voice, and stop echoing his. I had to find my own story. And tell it. And if I failed doing so, I still would be stronger for the attempt than if I continued to sit beside Charles on the dais.

I packed my bags, bought paper
and pencils, kissed the children, and let Charles drive me to the train station.

He sent me on my way with a handshake; the only sign of parting he could allow himself in public. But he told me, earnestly, that I was doing the right thing. He said it in the exact same way he had once told me that I could learn to fly a plane, master Morse code, figure out the stars.

And some of my jealousy melted
away right then, because I knew he meant it. He had always been certain I could do more than I thought I could do. He had always pushed me to try, even if sometimes he confused bullying with encouragement.

I thanked him, then boarded the train with a jaunty wave. I was off to Florida, to a ramshackle beach cottage. I did not know when I would return. I only knew that somehow, for both our sakes,
for the sake of our children, as well—

I needed to return with my own story to tell.

CHAPTER 17

O
NE DAY, WHEN SHE WAS ABOUT TEN
, Ansy came into the kitchen with an envelope in her hand.

It was one of those days when every appliance in the house decided to go on strike—the sink was backed up (again); the washing machine wasn’t draining right; the toaster was mysteriously burning one side of the toast and leaving the other limp and white. Even one of the clocks
was acting up, the chime suddenly tinny and flat.

So I was bustling about, calling repairmen, mopping up suds and water, and stopping in front of the clock every fifteen minutes, as if I could fix it with the power of my gaze. I was wearing a housedress, an apron, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. I hadn’t had time to go to the hairdresser in weeks. I had taken to simply shampooing my hair and gathering
it in a net, so that I resembled a truck stop waitress.

“Mother, is this you?” Ansy asked, thrusting the envelope out to me. On the outside was written
Anne Lindbergh
.

“Of course it is,” I answered, irritated. “You’re a big girl. You can read.”

“So this is yours, too?” She pulled out a small yellowing card and began to read.
“This certifies that Anne Lindbergh has successfully completed all tasks necessary to pilot an aircraft for personal use.”

“Where did you find that?” I put down the bucket I was carrying, heavy with sopping wet towels. I reached for the card, and saw that it was my pilot’s license. “I thought your father had put it away somewhere.”

“Oh, he did,” Ansy answered brightly. “In a file cabinet.”

“You know you’re not to look through his things. Anne, if he found
out he’d—”

“Don’t worry. I’m very careful not to leave any evidence behind, like fingerprints. See?” She held up her hands; she wore white cotton gloves, usually reserved for church.

I had to smile; my golden-braided daughter—the spitting image of Heidi—was going through a Nancy Drew phase. “Oh, I see. Well, please put it back and don’t go through his things again. Please. You know how he is.”

“I know. But, Mother, really, this is you?” And she laughed.

“Yes, really, it is. Why are you laughing?”

“Well, because—I mean, really! You, a pilot, just like Father?”

“No, not just like Father, because he’s—well, he’s Father. But after we were married, yes, I learned to fly. Oh, you know all that—the trips we made to the Orient, and so on!”

“No. No, Mother, I don’t.” Ansy’s eyes grew wide,
and she stopped laughing. “You never told me.”

“Well, you probably learned about them at school, anyway—didn’t you? When you learned about Father?”

“No, the books only talk about him.”

“Well, I was a pilot, too, and we made some very important flights together. I also happened to be the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States.” I pursed my mouth in that prickly way I had; not
sure with whom I was angrier, the
historians—or myself, for never sharing this part of me with my children.

“It’s just so strange, to think of you like that,” Ansy continued, laughing merrily. “I mean—look at you! You’re, well—you’re Mother. Father’s the pilot, the hero. You take care of us, and the house, but to think of you up in the air, in your own little airplane!”

“I had one—my own little
airplane. A little Curtiss. Your father bought it for me, although mostly we flew together in his plane, which was bigger. Mine was just a one-seater. We left it here when we moved to Europe.” I sat down on the metal kitchen chair, remembering. “Out at the Guggenheims’. I suppose it’s still there. When we moved back, somehow, I just never used it. I had the boys then, and soon you came along.
And then the war, and Scott, and Reeve, and—well.”

“When’s the last time you flew like that?” Ansy sat upon the floor, cross-legged, in that fluid, boneless way of the young, and looked up to me.

“I don’t recall. I really don’t. Your father rarely flies like that anymore, either—it’s all commercial airliners now, for the most part. Although I suppose he does some, for the Air Force, for testing,
and you know—sometimes he takes you children up. But it’s not like it used to be, back then, when we were the first. We flew all over the country, mapping out the routes that the commercial airliners all take. And we thought nothing of jumping into our plane to fly down to Washington, or up to New England—the way people jump into their cars today. It was what we did. We flew.”

“Yes, but I mean—when
did
you
last fly, alone?”

“Oh, goodness. I don’t know—probably sometime in England, I suppose. I think I did fly solo, once or twice, while we were there. England is beautiful from the air.” I remembered how
green, mossy green and rolling, the land was; how sweet the neat little cottages were, the astonishing length of the hedgerows, seeming to cover the entire island in an orderly, if slightly
serpentine, pattern.

“Do you think you could do it today? Do you think you’d remember?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the plane.”
Could I?
I shut my eyes, remembering the preflight checklist, recalling the pull of the stick against my hand as I eased the plane gently into the air; the little Curtiss was very sensitive, I remembered. Not like the big plane, the Sirius. It had been
an instinct, at one time—the ability to feel the craft, understand its tendency to bank right or left, to know how to navigate the currents.