The Aviator's Wife

articles vilifying Charles glaring at me, accusingly, from the pages of every newspaper and magazine. Most, as Charles was quick to point out, were owned by Jewish publishers.

“You know how I’ve always felt that you’re the writer in the family,” he continued—and he put his arm about my shoulder.

“I am?” I asked mildly—although I was pleased beyond reason to hear him say so.

“Yes, you are, and don’t be coy; it doesn’t suit you, Anne. What I need now is for you to turn the tables on the press. I was thinking that it would be powerful if you wrote an article about our position. Clarifying it, really, for naturally the press keeps getting it wrong, simplifying the reasons to further their own views. But you were in Germany. You saw what the future can be—and you saw what democracy did to us, to our baby. This ridiculous march to wage war against a power that is greater than us—maybe even better than us—I need you to write about it. From our point of view.”

Those shared goggles! My heart ached at the memory of how we used to fly together; after coming home to America, I had gotten my wish, we had settled down—or I had, anyway. The last time Charles had asked me to fly with him, I had refused.

“What do you mean, you want to stay home?” he’d asked, incredulous.

“The children need me. I’m their mother.”

“You’re my wife.”

“Yes. And I love being with you! And we will take many trips together. Just not this one. Land has a cold.”

Charles had looked down at me, a perplexed purse to his lips, a disapproving furrow to his brow. Then he went off to make preparations for his trip—to San Francisco, I believe it was. Watching him make his preflight checklist, pack his old calfskin travel bag that he’d had since we were married—he never let me pack for him; he said women didn’t know how to pack things efficiently—I sensed the passing of an era, not just in our marriage but in the world at large. Aviation was no longer romantic, hopeful, bringing countries and peoples together; it was about to tear the world apart.

Tucking Jon and Land into bed at night, I rejoiced that I would be able to do so the next night, and the next, and the next; that they would no longer greet me warily after a long trip, as if they weren’t quite certain they should get attached. But sometimes, I remembered—and longed for—the time when it was just the two of us, above. Not Charles, flying solo. Not Anne, worried about the children. But Charles and Anne; a glorious creature, mythic.

Adored.

I continued to page through the magazine, not seeing, not reading. The glossy pages were slippery in my fingers. I felt my husband’s need—his surprisingly desperate, and desperately cloaked, need—pulling me toward him, irresistibly as always.

But for the first time ever, I was suspicious of it.

“Why me? Why can’t you write it? You’ve written other articles; you’ve written your own speeches. You know how difficult this would make things between Mother and me—not to mention Aubrey! Mother has been awfully good about not criticizing you publicly. Do you want me to break her heart?”

Charles didn’t answer, not at first. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting in his hands. He stared at something, something I couldn’t see, something I could never see. I always had assumed it was too brilliant and fine for my eyes. Now I wondered if it was really there at all.

“I don’t mean to sound vulgar,” he said finally. “But—so far no one has dared to attack you. You’re—you’re always going to be the baby’s bereaved mother, and so above reproach. Which is why you are in the perfect position, really. If you give our cause your voice, your name, you will elevate it. Even more—than I can…”

I knew this last wounded him, for his voice trailed off. Yet I flinched, and my heart—my poor, put-upon heart that was still stretched and patched beyond reason—stiffened against this latest indignity. The baby’s death was terrible, but it was sacred; it was mine. Not Charles’s. I’d always felt that; I’d always hugged it to me, selfishly unwilling to share it with him. Or with the world. How many times had I been asked to write about it? To give the “bereaved young mother’s” side of the story? Never, I’d said. And Charles had supported me.

Now he was asking me to trade on it. And for what? Europe was in flames, Stalin was now allied with Great Britain, and I knew the sentiment in our country—in the heartland that had, at first, agreed with Charles—was slowly turning; there was a sense that our involvement in the war was not just inevitable, but righteous.

Still, I didn’t respond, and Charles did not press me. I knew he would not; he never did. He stated—or much less frequently, asked, just once. And then withdrew, as if it was beneath him to repeat himself.

“Anne, please,” he said, his voice suddenly a whisper. “Please. I would very much appreciate it if you would do this for me. I can’t do it for myself.”

My hands—my heart—fluttered, then were stunned into absolute stillness. Only once had I heard my husband ask like this. And that was for the safe return of our son.

I heard myself say, “Yes. Yes, I will do this for you,” before I could fully comprehend the consequences.

Charles nodded. He did not thank me. He did not ask what he could do for me. He simply went back to his chair by the radio and turned the knob up. The accents of Amos and Andy, thick as molasses, exaggerated as the funny papers, filled the suddenly oppressive air of our den.

I picked up the copy of Life, and began paging through it once more. An old photograph of Charles, young, grinning, just landed in Paris, caught my eye. Beneath the photograph it said, “Lucky Lindy—No Longer Can We Count on Him to Know Right from Left. Or Wrong. Where Did Our Hero Go?”

The country missed him. I missed him.

My husband, sitting upright in his chair—for he never slumped—chuckling at the radio, missed the hero, as well. With his lean, bronzed body, high forehead, chiseled jaw, he did not look ordinary; he never could. But he did look lost, somehow; smaller. For so long he had stood tall against the endless horizons of our country’s possibility; now they threatened to engulf him. More than anyone else, Charles Lindbergh missed the hero he had once been; the boy who only needed himself and his machine, beloved by all the world simply for doing what he knew was right, and for doing it better than any man alive.

It was not that easy anymore. And for the first time I felt him passing over the controls of our marriage to me, trusting me to steer us both out of this storm, acknowledging that at least for now, he did not know how.

I had been a passenger in our life together for far too long. And so it was because of this—my desire to restore my husband back to himself, to his countrymen, and, yes, to me—that I sat down at my desk the next day and began to write. Still a devoted diarist, I remained unable to understand my thoughts and emotions until I could write them down, play with them, move them about on the page.

Now, I prayed, I could do the same with our lives, although even then, I suspected that there was no page big enough, no ink powerful enough. But I tried; I had to. My husband, the hero of all heroes, amen, had asked me to.

But the words did not come easily. And when they did, they looked wrong on the page.

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AMBASSADOR MORROW WOULD WEEP

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BOTH LINDBERGHS SHOULD BE BEHIND BARS

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TREASONOUS TRACT TARNISHES TRAGIC TIARA

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MRS. LINDBERGH

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