The Aviator's Wife

never recover. I had been spared that loss, after all.

I hugged the jacket—the untouched jacket, not a scratch, not a dent, was in it—to my heart. And I sang a prayer of thanksgiving, while my children and my husband played happily outside.

1974

GENTLY I SHAKE his arm, but he doesn’t awake. Holding my breath, I shake him harder; he’s so frail, and I don’t want to do anything to hasten the end. But I have to have the answers I seek. I have to at least try.

“Charles,” I whisper, bending close to his ear. “Charles!”

He opens his eyes with a gasp, and again I sense that he’s surprised to find himself here on earth. Was he dreaming of the sky? I don’t know what his concept of heaven is, but I suspect it’s not the same as mine.

“Charles, I can’t wait any longer. I need to know. I need to know why. I deserve to know why we weren’t enough for you. Me, your children, the home I made for you, for us all. But you had to have these other women, too! Why?”

“You weren’t supposed to find out,” he finally says, licking his lips, gesturing for more water, which I bring him. There’s a film over one of his eyes, clouding the blue.

“Of course I wasn’t supposed to find out! But a nurse—a very kind, decent girl—felt differently, and she gave them to me, because she admired my book.”

“That book.”

“Yes, that book. My book.” Suddenly I crave a cigarette, so viscerally that I almost clap my hands as if to summon a genie to provide it. I rarely smoke, but I need something to do with my hands, and I desire something bad, something terrible and filthy, in my lungs just now. Something to mask the stench of death and betrayal that has filled this small, humid hut on the edge of the world.

“I wrote a book,” Charles says, and he sounds drowsy, amused, his eyes half closed, and I’m afraid he’s drifting off again and as terrible, as horrible as it is, I won’t let him. I won’t let him slip peacefully away and die an untroubled death. Once, that was all I wished for him.

Now I deny it. Because it is in my power to do so. Drunk with that power, I am demanding his explanation, his attention. At last.

I shake him by his shoulders—his pitifully thin, shrunken shoulders—and ruthlessly ask, “Why? Why weren’t we enough? Why wasn’t I ever enough for you?”

He blinks again, and looks straight into my eyes, my heart, and says, “Anne, I never meant to hurt you.”

I laugh. I laugh because finally, Charles Lindbergh is like any man. Any stupid, flesh-and-blood, egotistical man. He is no better than any of them, even if it took him almost to his last breath to reveal this to me, and it fills me with triumph and joy.

Which are followed, dizzyingly, by disappointment and despair.

CHAPTER 16

1950

“MOTHER!”

“What is it, Reeve?”

“You tell Father he must stay home. You go find him and bring him back and tell him he must stay this time!” She stamped her foot, shook her blond ringlets, and thrust her jaw out in perfect imitation of her father.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, dear. You tell him next time he comes home, all right?”

“All right. But when is he coming home?”

“I don’t know.” I pushed myself up off the kitchen floor; the drain was leaking beneath the sink again. Dropping the wrench down on the table, for a moment I couldn’t help but think, I have a trust fund. I could just go off and take the children to a nice hotel in the city, where we could have room service and go shopping, and see plays. Why am I on my hands and knees in a drafty old house in Connecticut, miles away from civilization?

Too busy to answer my own question, I washed my hands, checked beneath the sink to make sure it wasn’t leaking anymore—it was—and shooed Reeve out of the kitchen.

“Go tell your sister to please turn down her record player!” I was weary of hearing “Tennessee Waltz” played over and over, which was a shame, as I thought it was a very pretty song. The first hundred times I heard it, anyway.

The phone rang in the front hall; I waited for the stampede of feet to run to it, the cries of, “I’ll get it!” But for once, no one did; the phone kept ringing, so I headed for it, picking my way over the piles of skates and cleats and Ansy’s field hockey stick that had all been tossed just inside the entryway in the usual after-school rush.

“Hello?”

“What took you so long?” Charles asked on the other end, clearly irritated. “It rang for nearly a minute.”

“No, not quite an entire minute. Where are you?”

“Washington, of course. Strategic Air Command work. I thought I told you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Is everything all right there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“No emergencies this week?”

“Not yet, anyway.” Although with four school-aged children, I knew it was only a matter of time.

“Good. Have you taken an inventory lately? We’re due for one.”

“I’ll do it this weekend.” Charles frequently required an inventory of all our household items—blankets, pots and pans, dishes, silverware, even shampoo bottles. It was a holdover from when we flew to the Orient—actually, probably from when he planned his flight to Paris; everything had to be accounted for and discarded if it served no useful purpose. Charles saw no reason why a home couldn’t be packed as efficiently as an airplane; he himself still traveled with only his small, battered bag, the one he’d used since we were married.

“Fine. The children are well?”

“Yes. Would you like to talk to them?” Although even as I said it, I hoped he would not. For one of them would likely say something to displease him, and I would be the one to bear the brunt of it.

“No, I don’t have time. I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was running according to plan.”

According to your plan, I thought grimly. Not mine.

“When will you be home? Reeve was asking just a moment ago.”

“I don’t know. After these conferences, Pan Am wants me to attend their annual shareholders’ meeting. Then I think I’ll be back, and I have a special project I’d like you to work on.”

“Oh, Charles.” My heart sank; the last time he had dangled a “special project” in front of me, like some kind of reward for being, I don’t know, as stupidly loyal as a puppy, I ended up helping him catalog all the trees on our property. Five acres of heavily wooded property.

“I promise, it’s not like last time,” he added, as if he could see my face. “Are you sure everything is all right there?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Now, go to your meeting. I need to start supper.”

“No steak, I hope. Not on a weekday. Roast, I would think, would be the proper meal.”

“It’s chicken pot pie, for your information. Now, goodbye!” And I hung up the phone, cherishing my little triumph. Then I slumped against the wall, disgusted. Chicken pot pie instead of pot roast! How ridiculous.

If I’d really desired a victory, I would have told him that no, everything was not fine. The sink is clogged, Land got a C in English, Jon’s graduation is coming up and he keeps asking me if you’re going to be home for it, I’m tired,