The Aviator's Wife

“How? How do you know?” Charles asked, gripping my hand tightly.

“He is safe because he is away from here.” The man rose and began to pace before us. “You do not know God, you worship at the feet of false idols. Man was not meant to fly, not meant to have wings. For God created him in His image, not the birds’. Your child has been taken from you as punishment. Whoever has him must have seen this, must have known this, and I feel it is my duty to make you aware of your sin, and to urge you to repent of your evil ways. If you do, surely God will see fit to return your child to you, but until then—”

Charles gripped the man by the arm; I thought he was going to throw him out the window. Instead he lifted him up, carried him—feet dangling—across the room, and shoved him out the door, shouting, “Get this idiot out of here!” before slamming the door shut.

I was trembling, sick; my skin was clammy, and I felt my stomach churn—or was it the baby kicking? Desperately, I wanted only to lie down and close my eyes—after first scrubbing every inch of this room, to rid it of that horrible stranger’s presence.

“That was a mistake,” Charles said, and I had an absurd urge to laugh. It was such an understatement. “I shouldn’t have brought him up to you, Anne—it was my fault. I feel, however, that we must take every person seriously. We can’t possibly know at this point who might or might not have information. That said, I should have interrogated him further. But he did insist—he insisted on seeing you, not me. I thought—well, I thought. I was wrong. Forgive me.”

“Oh, Charles, I don’t blame you!” Why was he being so distant and formal?

“No, Anne. I am responsible for that. I am responsible for you, especially now, in your condition. I can protect you, at least—” He turned away, and cleared his throat several times before walking to the window.

“Charles—” I moved toward him, aching to reassure him somehow, to remind him he was not alone in this. But before I could take another step, he turned to face me. “I arranged for your mother to come,” he said briskly. “I thought it best that she be here.”

“Oh.” I, too, was lost; lost once again in my own terror as I looked out the window and saw strange men tramping over some bulbs I had planted last fall. Tulips, I remembered. Dutch tulips, white. Charlie had helped me; he had carried the knobby tubers in a basket before dumping them all out and arranging them in little patterns, gurgling happily, calling them “bubs.”

“Have you heard from Elisabeth?” I asked Charles, dabbing at the tears on my cheek before turning around. “Dwight? Con?”

“The police have been alerted, and they’re safe,” he replied, and somehow we faced each other while never once meeting each other’s gaze.

“The police are talking to them?”

“I allowed it; I thought they might be of help. Anne, Colonel Schwarzkopf would like to talk to you when you’re ready. He would like to talk to the servants, as well. Betty, in particular.”

Betty! “How is she?” I asked, stricken with guilt—I’d forgotten all about her. I hadn’t seen her since last night—since she had run to her room, sobbing, after Charles called the police. She loved little Charlie so—oh, how could I have neglected her? She must be as frantic as I was. I must go to her at once.

“Of course, it’s absurd,” Charles continued, as if he hadn’t heard my question. “The staff, naturally, is above suspicion. I told Schwarzkopf that. He agrees but still needs to ask basic questions in order to establish some kind of timeline—I’ll be present, regardless. But I refuse to let him administer a polygraph test on any of them, or the family. That would be unnecessary. And the press might get wind of it, and inflate it, as usual.”

“Good,” I quietly agreed.

“I’ll send some breakfast up,” Charles said. “Try not to wear yourself out. The important thing is to remain hopeful. For the baby’s sake.”

“I know,” I said, and once more, I longed to reassure him, to be the strong one, for once. But I felt that if I were suddenly to move, to make any unexpected, careless gesture, I would fly apart. Molecules and cells and bones would fragment, splintering all about the room—Humpty Dumpty, indeed.

Oh, why could I not stop recalling nursery rhymes and fairy tales this morning? Everything reminded me of my child. Everything good, and everything bad.

Charles stood for a moment, his back to me. Then his shoulders finally squared, his head snapped up, and he strode out of the room without another word—that famous Lindbergh discipline on full display once more. My husband, the father of my child, vanished before my eyes. Now he was the hero we all needed; that he needed, most of all. It was as if I was seeing him again for the first time, in a newsreel.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I sang to myself, walking slowly back to my bed, carrying my hope and terror both, one fragile, the other already so stolidly familiar I couldn’t remember life before it, within my heart. Within my womb, as well; next to my unborn child, who would have to make room for them now, and for the rest of his life.

Could they put the Lindberghs together again?

WAITING. WAITING. WAITING.

That was all I could do. That was all that was expected of me.

The next day, we received a postcard postmarked from Newark, addressed to Chas. Linberg, Princeton, N.J. The scrawled message read, Baby safe, instructions later, act accordingly. It did not have the same three-hole signature as the initial letter, but the handwriting was similar enough for the police to take it seriously. Baby safe—I repeated the words to myself, my mantra, as another day passed with no further communication from the kidnappers. Although it brought masses of communication from everyone else in the world—phone calls, telegrams, letters. The Boy Scouts of America were on full alert, every member pledging to scour roads and paths across the country in search of my child. Women’s institutes and other organizations, too, volunteered; they went door to door, looking for him.

President Hoover—who had just lost reelection—offered the services of a new United States Bureau of Investigation, headed by a man named J. Edgar Hoover. Colonel Schwarzkopf turned him down, which I thought wise (even though Mr. Hoover insisted on setting up some kind of headquarters in town, where he gave interviews to anyone who would listen). But I couldn’t imagine how more well-intentioned men, milling about my house, knocking things over and looking grim, could help the situation.

The National Guard was called out. Our child’s photograph—the one that Charles had taken on his first birthday—appeared on the front page every single day, and every newspaper vowed to keep it there until he was found. Charlie was on the cover of Time magazine. Fliers were plastered on every telephone post in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Roadblocks were set up across three states as well. Anyone who looked remotely suspicious—although that description seemed to change by the minute—was pulled over, their vehicles searched.

For the second time in five years, the name Charles Lindbergh was on everybody’s lips. For the second time in five years, everyone prayed for him, as special church services were called throughout the land.

The same radio commentators who had broken the miraculous news of Charles’s 1927 landing now broke in every ten minutes with an urgent bulletin about the kidnapping of his son. No reporters were allowed on our property after that first horrific morning, but that didn’t stop them from writing as if they were. Every day, I insisted on reading what I had worn on my walk the day before (dresses I had never owned in my life), what I had thought, what I had eaten, if I had napped. I read columns and columns of purple prose praising my “Madonna-like patience” as I “awaited the safe return of my little Eaglet.”

Was I patient? I suppose I appeared that way, compliant in my stone jail, leaving only for short walks in the gray March weather, always shielded by a respectfully silent contingent of police. It was numbness, though, more than patience. I could not believe that this circus—people were selling photographs of my child as if they were souvenirs, right at the end of our driveway!—had anything to do with my precious baby. Or my husband. Or my life. So I removed myself, mentally. To participate fully would have endangered the child I was carrying—of that, I had no doubt. And I couldn’t bear to lose both of my children; I couldn’t bear to do that to Charles.

Who was trying, so valiantly, to remain in control of a situation that grew more fantastic and bizarre with every telegram, phone call, letter. Mediums offered to come hold seances, in order to determine if the baby was “in the spirit world.” Crazed zealots wanted to cast off the evil spirits in our home; one even managed to get past the