address this? After all, it was a situation of his own making;
“So, I’m asking you,” Jon said, ever patient—although I could see that he was shaken. He had a difficult time looking at me directly, and his hands, in his trouser pockets, were balled into fists. “Did I have—have a big brother, I guess? And he died?”
“Yes.” I pushed myself away from the desk and went to my bed; I patted the coverlet, and Jon sat down next to me.
As I sorted through my tumbled emotions—anger at Charles; the tender sadness that any mention of “the events of ’32” still invoked; frustration at the teacher, for having introduced the subject in the first place—I glanced about the bedroom. It was a woman’s bedroom, not a man’s, with dainty lace curtains, dresses in the closet, lipstick on the vanity. No tie rack, no shaving kit, very few suits, and those in the back of the closet. I wondered how many other wives lived in such a bedroom; how many other wives had subtly, over the last couple of years of war, remodeled their homes, their lives, around someone’s absence.
Most, probably. I was not remarkable enough to be the only one.
Our house here in Bloomfield Hills had not been exactly to either of our tastes, but given the housing shortage, we leaped at it. Four bedrooms, three acres, only $300 a month in rent. It was decorated in an ornate, fussy style that I longed to change but couldn’t; our landlady, who was living with her sister for the duration, had a habit of popping over unannounced, just to make sure we hadn’t touched anything. The boys shared one room, Anne had another, and the new baby had a separate nursery; and then the master bedroom, in which I slept alone. For Charles was now, finally, at the front.
During the past two years he had worked tirelessly for Henry Ford, insisting on being paid only what he would have earned in the army. He had made himself into something of a human laboratory rat. Volunteering for everything, Charles tested high-altitude chambers, oxygen-deprivation chambers, sound chambers; he usually came home at night slightly ill, or with his ears ringing, but always with a satisfied smile. And as the war marched on, and so did time, and memories, he crossed the country, testing bombers for other companies as well—North American Aviation, Curtiss-Wright, Douglas: all companies that had turned down his services after Pearl Harbor. Finally, he convinced Lockheed to send him into the Pacific theater, where he used his experience to teach pilots how to fly at high altitudes in the P-38. Officially, he was not allowed into combat, which should have quelled my worries. But I knew my husband too well; I also knew how other pilots idolized him. Whenever we flew commercial—even during the worst of the America First ordeal—Charles was treated like a hero. The pilots, grinning like schoolboys, always came back to shake his hand, stuttering that it was a privilege to fly him, of all people.
I could not imagine Charles Lindbergh failing to talk a mere military pilot into allowing him to tag along on a combat mission.
Despite my fears, I rejoiced that we were now, truly, like every other wartime family. I worried, and waited for infrequent letters, and managed everything on my own—secretly sure that my husband was having the time of his life, while I was not.
“This—the kidnapping—was mentioned in your history book, then?” Oh, how right I had been, all those years ago! Our personal tragedy was history now in every school textbook. Neither of us had thought of
“Yes,” Jon answered, settling beside me on the bed. “There was a picture, too, of the man they said did it.”
“God.” I shuddered, remembering Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s blank, expressionless face when I testified while everyone else in the room was weeping.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about it? I might have been able to help!”
“Oh, sweetheart!” I wanted to laugh and cry both; how innocent, how sturdy he was—truly the man of the house, like so many little boys during wartime! “You weren’t even born yet. There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done—not even Father, although you must believe me. He tried. He tried so very hard to find our baby, to bring him back to me. Charles Junior. That’s what we named him. Charles Junior. Charlie.”
“Like Anne? Anne Junior?”
“That’s right.” And I remembered my horror when Charles named her after me; he insisted, saying it was tradition. I’d felt it was inviting tragedy into our lives once more. But over time, this feeling had faded. Anne was a healthy three-and-a-half-year-old now, always chasing after her big brothers—and nearly always catching up. She was also a dutiful older sister to Scott, born in August 1942.
“What was he like? Charles Junior?”
“Oh, well—he was a baby, of course. Not even two, so we didn’t really get a chance to—to know him.” My voice caught on the jagged edges of my heart that had never healed, and I had to take a deep breath. “But he looked an awful lot like Father. More than you, even.” I smiled at my son, already tall and lean for his age, hair the same reddish-gold as Charles’s. But his forehead wasn’t quite as high as the baby’s had been, and his eyes were a darker blue.
“Did you like him?”
“Of course, Jon. Of course. We loved him. Just as much as we love you.”
“Then you must have been very sad.”
“Yes, I was. Very sad.”
“Did you cry?”
“Yes, I did cry. Sometimes—sometimes, I still do. Not very often, though.”
“When you go outside by yourself at night? When you say you’re locking up the garage? I know you don’t really do that, because I always lock it after dinner. I’ve never missed a time.”
I laid my cheek against my son’s head and sighed. “Yes, that’s when. But not for long.”
“Did Father ever cry?”
It was a blow—a punch in the stomach, this question. I inhaled sharply, and Jon looked at me in alarm. Biting my lip, I turned away from his innocent, searching gaze.
What responsibility did I have to my children, regarding their father? He had been gone for several months, a long time in the lives of those so young. And even before he left for the Pacific, he was an infrequent guest in his own house with all the flying he had to do for his work.
The children knew that he was famous, of course; his Paris flight was part of our family lore. Other families told a story about the time Father ran away to join the circus only to come home a week later, hungry and penitent; our family told the story about the time Father flew to Paris by himself, only to come home the most famous man in the world.
Charles, of course, embodied the role of hero; a strict, somehow aloof parental presence, expecting his offspring to be miniature versions of his own ideal of himself. And I was left to try to make up for all the warmth and understanding he didn’t display; to make up for his absence, his focus, always, on something bigger, something more important, than his family.
Now it was up to me to tell my son about his father, and I wasn’t sure how truthful I should be. Should I tell him how he had berated me for my tears, so long ago? Should I reveal how he had laughed and clapped when the man found guilty was electrocuted, while I excused myself and quietly vomited in the bathroom?
Should I share with my son his father’s coldness, how he sometimes turned away from me at night if I had dared to question his judgment during the day?
Should I tell him his father was anti-Semitic?
But there were so many other things to tell as well—how comforting he could be, simply because of who he was, the bravest man in the world. How charming, when he forgot to be the hero, and remembered how to smile, truly smile, so the ice in his eyes melted into cloudless sky. How boyishly happy he was tinkering with anything mechanical, every limb loose, grease streaking his clothes. I’d long ago learned that those were the times I should
