Yet our lingering presence on the continent, our now highly publicized and scrutinized past visits to Germany, were cause for much discussion back in America. At least, according to the worried letters, full of newspaper clippings, I received from my family.
One night, Charles and I went out for a romantic dinner at La Tour d’Argent. Just as the third course arrived, we heard an overdressed American couple at the table next to us say, too loudly, “I guess America’s not
I froze, my fork halfway to my mouth. I looked at Charles, who raised an eyebrow, forbidding me to react in any way. I continued to eat, as I heard the woman say, “I guess sauerkraut’s more to their taste, not apple pie.”
“Sauerkraut and iron crosses,” her husband agreed.
The pressed duck was tasteless in my mouth; the wine turned to vinegar. Charles was right. If this was what was waiting for us in America, we could not return.
Charles, however, was smacking his lips with gusto, tearing into his duck as if he hadn’t eaten in days. His eyes gleamed with purpose. I knew he had just recognized his latest mission.
Two days later, he was on the phone to Cunard, arranging our tickets home.
AND SO WE RETURNED, leaving a continent about to be torn apart by war for the safer shores of America, or so we thought. Charles went first, to report directly to Washington about all he had seen—and to caution them as well. He firmly believed that Germany would easily overtake Poland; he thought England and France were foolish to declare war outright, and had even written a secret paper to Chamberlain and to Daladier urging them not to. I wished he hadn’t done that; he was already being maligned as an appeaser, even a spy, in some quarters.
But Charles, single-minded as always, did not appear to notice. After he reported to Washington, he looked for suitable homes near Mother but delayed taking one until I got there. It was a good thing that he did, for none of the clippings he had sent me mentioned schools, and when I chastised him for this, he was honestly perplexed. It had not yet registered with him that our children were growing up, needing schooling and friends and doctors and all the other things children required. Beyond the fact of their births, that primal inclination to protect them from harm, he did not seem much interested in parenting. I wondered if it was because of what happened to little Charlie; if he couldn’t see the point of getting too involved, only to have them taken from us. Or if he simply couldn’t understand the needs of a child beyond the age of twenty months, the age of his firstborn, forever. I understood this, had feared it in myself when Jon was first born, but found my heart miraculously expanding along with our children as they grew. I rejoiced that I was able to love and care and worry just like any other mother.
Yet other mothers did not pin whistles to their children’s pajamas so that they could call for help in the middle of the night.
In April 1939, I trudged down the gangplank of the
“Mrs. Lindbergh! Mrs. Lindbergh! Are you glad to be back? Where is the colonel?” I shook my head at the usual questions, but then froze when confronted by new ones.
“What do you think of the Nazi Party? Did your husband really meet secretly with Hitler? Is it true that he was offered a commission in the Luftwaffe?”
I started to get in the car but turned around, unable to keep quiet.
“My husband has been recalled to active duty as a colonel in the Army Air Corps. He’s unable to meet me because of his work.”
Then I ducked inside the car, my heart pulsing daringly; I knew I shouldn’t have answered them. Charles had forbidden me to do so; he felt it best that he always be the one to speak for us in public, and normally I was only too happy to let him. He wasn’t here, however, and I heard the hostility behind those questions, and felt that I had to defend him—even though I knew he would not see it that way. But I was proud of the work he was doing now; because of his knowledge of the European situation, the military had him flying all over the country, inspecting air bases, suggesting which factories could be modified to turn out the type of planes necessary to make America the leading air power in the world.
I was proud of it, and wanted to tell the world about it—for I didn’t know how long it would last. Already, I could see that Charles was on a collision course, torn between his sense of purpose and his sense of duty. They were very different things; I saw that clearly. I wasn’t sure that he did, however.
“You spoke very well, Mama.” Jon patted my hand. “They were such nasty men.”
“I did? Well, thank you, darling.”
“Are we home now?”
I looked out the car window; we were still surrounded by strangers peering into the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of my children, flashbulbs popping, blinding us. I hugged them both to me, and sighed.
“Yes, we are, darlings. We’re home.”
AS WE DROVE OUT of the city, across the bridge into New Jersey, my stomach fluttered. And with every mile we drove toward Next Day Hill, my head began to throb, my skin to feel clammy.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Jon asked.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to smile. My son frowned, knowing that I had lied to him.
Now that we were almost there, I was dreading coming home. Being away for three years had kept the ghosts at bay, but now I was about to encounter them in their own setting. For it was at Next Day Hill that Violet Sharpe—poor, excitable Violet Sharpe, barely older than myself—had taken her life a few weeks after the baby’s body was found. After being summoned for yet another round of questioning about her involvement in the kidnapping, she had swallowed a glass of chlorine cyanide.
I was horrified and sickened at the news. And racked with guilt. I should have known; I should have realized that Violet didn’t have a Charles to bully strength into her, to force her to look ahead, to forbid her to dwell in the past. She didn’t have anything in her life but my mother’s protection and shelter, but even my mother couldn’t protect her from Colonel Schwarzkopf’s ugly interrogations; interrogations instigated, originally, by me.
I made myself look at her body, even though Charles flat out forbade me to. I couldn’t explain to him why I needed to see her, register the thin, worried face, the sad little ribbon tied in her hair, her mouth blistered and stained from the poison. The whites of her eyes, still visible beneath half-closed lids, staring at me accusingly.
When I saw Violet’s broken body, as twisted as the wreckage of the plane I had once located in the mountains of New Mexico, I wept. How could I have ever believed this fragile girl was involved? No matter that I was desperate, insane with fear for my child; I should never have told Colonel Schwarzkopf to question her or any of the servants. Who was I to play God?
Too late did I believe in her innocence. Only days after her suicide, the police determined that the only thing poor Violet was guilty of was being foolish. She had been involved with a married butler in my mother’s household. Her frantic tears, her inability to stick to a story about her activity that awful night; it was all a cover-up for trysts with her lover.
So Violet would not be at Next Day Hill to welcome us home. So many of the servants, familiar faces to me since childhood, were gone now, chased from the house by the police, or retired, grown old in my absence. Even Ollie Whateley had passed away.
And Betty Gow. She would be absent as well. I don’t remember if any of us actually spoke of it, but somehow, in those weeks after Charlie’s body was found, it was agreed that Betty had to leave the household. I knew she would never love the new baby in the same way; she knew it as well.
Violet, Betty. And Elisabeth, my sister. She, too, was gone. There were still times I found myself picking up the telephone to call her, before remembering.
She’d looked so vibrant on her wedding day in December 1932. Jon was just a cooing baby in my mother’s arms as I stood with my sister in the same room I had been married in. It was a rare moment of celebration for my entire family; we all spoke and wrote about it for weeks after, reliving the beauty, the poignancy. The relief that Elisabeth seemed well, loved, cared for. Although I never saw her look as happy, as joyful, with Aubrey as she used to, when she was laughing and scheming with Connie.
