The Aviator's Wife

baby.

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” she replied tartly. “He knows our Charlie comes first.”

I smiled, even as I was in awe. I was the baby’s mother, and I couldn’t imagine saying that to Charles.

“Well, that’s good,” I said, suddenly shy; I’d pried too much. “I’d better go see about dinner.”

Betty nodded and brought little Charlie over to me for a quick kiss. His nose was crusty, and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. He didn’t act as if he were sick, however; he smiled up at me with a gay little wave before being borne off by Betty to be changed.

FIVE MONTHS HAD PASSED since Daddy died. Five months of sorrow on the surface, but pure contentment underneath as finally, after two years of delays caused by Charles’s meddling with first one architect, then another, our home outside of Hopewell, New Jersey—about sixty miles from Manhattan—was almost completed. With no plans for future flights on the horizon, I disregarded, once and for all, Mr. Watson’s parenting advice and gave myself over to the pure joy of being with my child. I smothered him with kisses and spent entire afternoons in the nursery, knitting or mending while he played contentedly at my feet, Betty bustling about in the background with her Scottish competence and humor. Spoiling him; I freely admitted it. I had to, while I could, for I was expecting another child. Soon little Charlie would have a sibling to contend with, and my attention would naturally be divided. So I showered him with it now.

Of course I missed my father. But with my own family to care for, I missed him less than I would have before; I understood that, and knew that he would have, too. So while I mourned him; mourned, once and for all, the end of the family I had thought I’d known as a child, I saw it as a natural progression. My father had died, and I was expecting a new life. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?

I wanted to worry about Mother, but she wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to be doing surprisingly well; she’d packed up the Washington townhouse with no regrets.

“It killed him,” she said bluntly, the day she moved back to Next Day Hill for good. “Washington. Politics. He hadn’t the heart for it, and he couldn’t say no.”

“What will you do?” I couldn’t imagine my mother’s future without my father, so seamlessly had they always worked together for the same common goal—his career. She had so much energy. So much determination. What on earth would she do with it now?

“Don’t worry about me,” she answered, quite mysteriously. “Worry about your husband instead.”

“Charles? Why would I worry about him? Of all the people in the world, Charles doesn’t need anyone to worry about him!”

“Things are changing—the world is changing. You’re changing. Even if you don’t know it yet.”

“How silly! I’m the same as ever—plain old Anne.” I laughed at my own reflection in a mirror, and patted my stomach. I hadn’t yet started to show, but soon, I knew, I would be a dumpling once again.

“No, you’re not. You’re a mother, not just a wife; the second one really makes you understand that. There’s a difference—and I’m not entirely sure your husband will ever understand. Mine didn’t.”

I looked at my mother—my surprisingly wise mother—in astonishment. Why hadn’t she been so honest and straightforward when I was growing up? Then, her inner life was hidden not only from the world but from her children. All I ever saw was the perfection of my mother’s marriage, the impossibly shiny surface that reflected my own doubts and fears back to me a hundredfold. Daddy alone was allowed to have his faults; he was loved, indulged for them, while my mother stood smilingly, soothingly, supportively by.

Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands? I’d gone from college to the cockpit without a chance to decide who I was on my own, but so far, I was only grateful to Charles for saving me from that decision, for giving me direction when I had none. Even so, I suspected there were parts of me Charles didn’t understand; depths to my character he had no interest in discovering. I wasn’t resentful; he was so busy. I was so busy. We were young. We still had time to appreciate each other; we still had time to develop the marriage I’d only imagined my parents had had.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, before I could stop myself.

“Sorry? Whatever for?”

“Sorry for you, that Daddy died before he had a chance to know you like this—know you for yourself, not just his wife.”

“Oh, Anne.” Mother smiled, touching my cheek, ever so gently. “Don’t feel sorry for me. No one knows the truth behind a marriage except husband and wife. Especially not the children! We knew each other, darling. You can be sure of that. Like I said—don’t worry about me. Worry about your own marriage. We’re the caretakers, we women. Left on their own, men would let a marriage run itself out, like one of Charles’s old rusty airplane engines. It’s up to us to keep things going smoothly. And, my dear, life with Charles is never going to be easy. You have much more work ahead of you than I did.”

“How do I know I can manage it?”

“Because you can. Because you have to. Because you don’t have any other choice; no more choice than any wife. Now, hand me some of those towels to fold, will you?”

We busied ourselves with folding the towels and placing them in a basket, and I wanted to ask my mother, “At what cost? What did it cost you, all these years? What will it cost me?”

But I didn’t. She was right. Children didn’t need to know everything about their parents’ marriage. And my mother, for all her surprising attributes, was no fortune-teller.

“I do hope you won’t be lonely if we’re not here so much, now that the house is just about done,” I said instead.

“That’s the way it should be,” Mother said briskly. “Two captains of the same ship—it never works. You two need your own household, finally. And I still have Elisabeth and Dwight and Con, you know. My family still needs me, I should hope!”

“I know Elisabeth does.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No reason, just, you know—her health.”

“Well, doctors don’t always know what they’re talking about. Elisabeth will be fine. Perfectly fine.” Mother smiled, a bit too fiercely, and folded a towel with such vigor, I feared the crease might never come out.

I nodded and patted her hand—and was surprised when she clung to mine longer than was necessary. The shadow of losing her child was in my mother’s eyes; so frail, so fragile was Elisabeth these days, she didn’t seem a whole person anymore.

“We’re not quite out of your life yet,” I reminded my mother with a laugh. “We still don’t have all the furniture, and it’s easier to stay here during the week until we have a full staff. It is so nice here!” I admit, I rather thought of Next Day Hill as a luxurious hotel, a place where I could lounge around, have my meals brought to me, not worry about the details. I also knew my son was safest here, with all the guards, the dogs. The police in Englewood were almost our own private security detail. And, flattened with the nausea accompanying my new pregnancy, I enjoyed being cared for and pampered—instead of having to organize and run my own household.

“Well, of course you’re always welcome to stay, dear. I love having you! But do think about Charles. I don’t think he’s quite so content.”

“No, you’re right.” Charles was solicitous of my second pregnancy—although not quite so solicitous as he had been with the first—but it was true that with my father gone, he chafed a bit at what he called the “harem” of Next Day Hill.

“Take care of your marriage, Anne, like I said.” She laid the towel down on the stack and rose to go. I had to smile; she looked so Victorian at that moment in her sensible dress, old-fashioned hairstyle, watch pinned to her shirt. “Charles is not like Daddy.”

“I know,” I assured her with a rueful smile. “That’s the one thing you don’t need to tell me. I know.”

I WAVED GOOD NIGHT to my son and went downstairs to see to my husband’s meal, wishing my mother could observe me acting as the lady of the house. Even if it did seem just that—acting. Or playing. It didn’t seem real yet, that this house was actually mine, so used was I to the back cockpit of a plane.