The Aviator's Wife (46 page)

But he didn’t come when I invited him. He had some Pan Am conference in Germany. He would visit soon, though, he promised. Meanwhile, would I remember to clean out the utility room, as the last
time he was home he had noticed some old boxes of soap on a shelf in the corner?

No. No, I would not.

So I spent the first evening in my apartment alone, curled up on my new sofa nursing a solitary glass of wine as I gazed out
over the city: the lights, the traffic, the bustle, the verve. All day I had felt queasy, a bit drowsy and thick as a terrible feeling crept over me; the feeling that
I’d made a foolish, irreversible mistake. What right did I have, to strike out on my own at my age? What was I thinking? To live for oneself is a terrifying prospect; there is comfort in martyrdom, and for years, my hair shirt had been more comfortable than the silk brassiere I was currently wearing.

Then I heard voices outside my door, disappearing down the hall toward the elevator; the voices
of people going out for the evening. All of a sudden I couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—sit there feeling sorry for myself. So I picked up the phone and—knowing full well what would transpire next—I called Dana.

He came over, and we sat in the growing shadows of evening, neither one of us turning on the lamp; content to have the lights from the city illuminate us as we bent our heads together, for the first
time finding ourselves without words, only glances and touches.

Did I feel guilt? Shame? Regret?

Of course I did. I was married; he was married. We both had children that we vowed never to hurt; I couldn’t even bear to have pictures of mine in my apartment, after that night.

Oh, but I was
ready
. After a lifetime of being with a man who did not want to hear me speak unless I was mimicking his
own views or assuring him he was right, I was ready. More than that, I was desperate to share the parts of me that Charles never wanted to know were there. The
weak
parts: that was how he viewed them and it took me a very long time not to view sympathy, grief, doubt, the ability to be moved to tears by love and happiness and sadness and music—as weak, despicable traits.

Dana taught me that the
ability to grieve deeply also meant that a person had the capacity to love deeply, laugh deeply,
live
deeply—and that this was a capacity to be cherished. And that
was, finally, why I loved him—because he never complained when I had a headache or changed my mind about something. He never shut down when I revealed my fears, my worries. He never tried to make me feel less, weaker, than he was—because
he shared his own emotions with me, as well.

This honesty—this total freedom; it was as if I’d been living in one of those oxygen-deprived chambers that Charles used to test in the war. Until finally, I passed out. And when I awoke, it was to flowers and music and warm brown eyes—and all the air, all the space in the world; not just what was visible in the sky. I believed then that I could never
get enough of it.

We were discreet, and it helped that I’d made few adult friends since my marriage. It also helped that the children were far too absorbed in their own lives to imagine I had one of my own.

Dana and I began to gather around us a small circle of his trusted friends, those who understood the nature of his marriage. Although most were astonished to discover the nature of
mine
.
And I found, to my surprise and delight, that I was something of a literary star; I became a sought-after guest now suddenly available for dinner parties.

Of course, I knew my publisher was pleased with
Gift from the Sea
. It was continuing to go into extra printings, in both hardcover and paperback. I received lovely, warm letters from women all over the world. They wrote thanking me, asking
me how I knew what they had been going through, assuring me that I was a friend for life.

Tucked away in Connecticut, I had not had a chance to taste the literary life—the life I had imagined back at Smith, when I had fancied myself, perhaps, a second Edna St. Vincent Millay or a member of the Algonquin Round Table. So it was with some disbelief, but mainly pure joy, that I found myself invited
to speak at banquets and fund-raisers, or to give readings at libraries or
wonderfully dusty little bookshops in the Village. I was asked not because I was Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, the aviator’s wife; I was asked because I was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the latest literary sensation.

I rejoiced in every minute of it. And only occasionally did I wish that Charles was there to witness my triumph.

Dana rarely attended these events as my escort—I had other married male friends who were happy to step in—but he was always there as part of our circle of friends, and when the evening was over we’d all go back to my apartment, where Dana would sit in a special chair near the fireplace, and I would sit in my special chair opposite, and we all would talk and laugh and play games through the night. My
intellect, my wit—I’d forgotten I’d even possessed them, and they were dull and neglected, to be sure. But in the company of others who prized thought over action, laughter over brooding, they blossomed and sharpened. My tongue fairly tripped with sparkling phrases, insightful comments. Once, I looked in a mirror in the middle of a game of charades; I was smiling that carefree grin, the one that
used to look so unfamiliar in photographs. I laughed; finally, the face I presented to the public was the one I wore in private. Charles had done the same thing, only he had become a stone monument over time. I had become a real person. A
happy
person.

Sometimes, Dana would be the last of our friends to depart, and it would not be until after breakfast the next morning.

“You have no idea how
beautiful you are,” he breathed into my ear the first time we made love. I was terrified and transported, both; to be touched by another man’s hands, not Charles’s? To be looked at, examined, all my flaws—my too-round breasts, heavy with age; my pouchy stomach, after six pregnancies; my thighs, though lean, now dimpled with cellulite. And my scars—but of course he knew
those
better than anyone,
more intimately
than Charles, even, and it was that moment, when he ran his forefinger gently, teasingly, along the scar from my gallbladder operation, so close, so dangerously close, to the most tender part of me—

That was the moment I was transported. I stopped comparing him to Charles physically, because he could never compare, and it wasn’t fair to him, or to me. I simply gave myself up to
his loving, insistent examination of my entire body, and, frighteningly voracious, found myself unable to stop examining his. And it was the differences that excited me; different hands probing, different lips bruising, different sounds, different smells, different methods—

My body had been yearning for a change as desperately as my heart had. For I responded with a passion that first surprised,
then enflamed Dana; that night, two middle-aged people who had each, in their own way, thought themselves beyond the pleasures of the flesh discovered that they weren’t, after all.

That night, I slept in his arms. I had never slept in a man’s arms before. This was not something that my husband ever allowed me, not even early in our marriage.

I discovered that there is no pleasure sweeter than
timing your breath to match another’s until you both rose and fell at the same pace, drifting, drifting along together—finding peace, everlasting.

The only sadness I allowed myself was the realization that it had taken me over fifty years to find this out. And when at last I did, it wasn’t with my husband.

CHARLES NEVER SUSPECTED
—at least, that was what I told myself. How could he? He continued
to drop in and out of my life like an annoying mosquito, on his way to Washington or from the
West Coast or across to Europe—Pan Am business kept him going to Germany quite a lot—or, more puzzling, to places like the Philippines, the Galapagos Islands, the Australian outback. Occasionally he summoned me, declaring it was time we had a vacation together, and I went, keeping up, grinning for the
occasional photographers—fewer and fewer as the years went on; acting the role of the aviator’s wife once more. Counting the days until I could shrug it off and return to what was now my real life with Dana.

Occasionally the children accompanied us on one of Charles’s enforced family outings. These always happened to be in some Godforsaken jungle or rain forest where we had to sleep in tents
and use outhouses, and follow him on endless hikes through humidity and bugs as big as pigeons.

“It’s good to explore worlds different from our own,” he declared, even as sweat soaked through his khaki shirt and he slapped at mosquitoes. “Isn’t this wonderful, for us all to get away like this? This is how people should live!”

One by one, the children married—I almost thought out of desperation,
so they would have a good reason to excuse themselves from these miserable “vacations.” Charles and I showed up at weddings, playing the role of proud parents; he was more and more uncomfortable with any kind of spotlight, barely concealing a scowl when people fawned over him, even if those people were his new in-laws. I found myself soothing ruffled feathers as expertly as my mother once had.

Civilization
, Charles said, with a disgusted grunt, wanting no more of it. Once he had pored over scientific manuals; now he read Thoreau. If he hadn’t been Charles Lindbergh, most would have called him an eccentric old coot.

I had always issued a standing invitation for him to stay with
me in the apartment, just as he had asked, but he only took me up on it once, in the late fifties. His flight
overseas had been delayed and so, for once, we both found ourselves in the city. Absurdly, I was beside myself with excitement; he had never before seen it and, fool that I was, I still craved his approval in some stubborn, uncooperative—and childish—part of my heart. So I bustled about, feeling like a little girl playing house, ordering in a lovely dinner, arranging flowers, inviting some of my
most trusted friends, those who would be least likely to irritate Charles.

With only a shiver of shame—and anticipation—I included Dana.

Charles sat, stonily silent, throughout the evening as we all talked about music and theater and harmless gossip. Even after I deftly steered the conversation to airplanes and science—Sputnik had just been launched, using the same rocket science Charles had
championed with Robert Goddard—he barely contributed, his answers only a mumble, and he rubbed his eyes tiredly, like a small child forced to stay up past his bedtime.

My friends flashed me sad, sympathetic smiles behind his back. Dana was unusually tight-lipped, and unusually gallant, in the face of Charles’s sullen presence; he kept rising whenever I ran to the kitchen to refill drinks, and
offered repeatedly to help me find things I had misplaced, like the corkscrew, or the box of matches I used to light the fire.

“Didn’t you put them in the coffee table drawer?” Dana asked, before clamping his mouth shut and turning white.

Charles, however, did not appear to have heard, and I realized that I could have embraced Dana right in front of him, torn off his clothes and had him right
on the living room carpet, and Charles would not have noticed. Charles Lindbergh could never see himself as a cuckold, and I should have been relieved.

I was not. Shaking with barely suppressed rage, I didn’t even bother to frown at Dana, whose eyes were dark with guilt and fear.

Finally everyone left, far earlier than planned. My friends—all except Dana—kissed me on the cheek as they went out
the door. After they were gone, Charles finally came to life; leaping off the sofa, he sneered down at me.

“What a lot of orchids you’ve collected, Anne! What a bunch of nothings! Not a person of substance in the bunch, not even Dr. Atchley. I used to think he, at least, was someone sensible. But to hear him go on and on about the theater, of all things!”

“I enjoy spending time with them,” I
murmured, still livid. Charles had embarrassed me, he’d not even noticed my lover sitting next to him; he’d not said one nice thing about my apartment since arriving. I concentrated on extinguishing candles, gathering up glasses, as outwardly serene as Mamie Eisenhower herself. “They’re really quite interesting if you would only give them a chance. But of course, you wouldn’t.”

“You’ve changed,
Anne. I’m not sure I know you anymore.”

“Well, you read my book, didn’t you?” I laughed acidly. “That was rather the point.”

Charles snorted. “I don’t know why you’ve surrounded yourself with a bunch of New York society types,” he continued as he followed me around, watching me intently, frowning if I clanged a glass or dropped cigarette ash, but pointedly not offering to help. “Haven’t I always
told you you’re too fine for that? Too special?”

“Is that why you want me to live stuck out in the middle of nowhere? Is that why you only see me five times a year?” I asked, still smiling, determined not to let him see he had any effect on me. “What do you think I do for the rest of the time, Charles? Sit and wait for you to remember where you’ve stowed me away?”

Charles did not answer me that.
And after I had turned out the
last light, I led him down the hall to the bedrooms, although I hesitated in the door of mine. Now that he was here, finally here, I did not want him in my bed.
Our
bed.

“I’ll bunk in there.” Charles pointed to the guest room; he’d already thrown his old gray travel bag on the bed, his sole piece of luggage. “If you don’t mind. I need a good night’s sleep, as I’m
leaving for Brussels early in the morning.”

“No, not at all. Well, good night. There’s an extra towel in the guest bathroom.” Flush with relief now that I knew he would not intrude any further, I leaned up to him. With a grunt, he kissed me on the cheek; he gave no sign that he had missed my body any more than I had missed his. We both retreated inside our separate bedrooms, and shut the door
at the same time.

Charles was gone the next morning before I was up. He had stripped the sheets off his bed and folded them up neatly, like a good houseguest.