The Aviator's Wife

I worked with the myopic concentration of an artisan; I would not be hurried, I resisted Charles’s suggestion that I set a schedule, a certain amount of words every day, as he had done. I took my own time, found my own way, lingering over words, searching for imagery. I rebuilt myself as a woman wise, understanding, at peace; I rebuilt myself on the page, praying that I could rebuild myself in life as well. Knowing that if I did, it would be the most courageous thing I had ever done. For I knew my husband too well; I knew that he wanted me to succeed, to be strong and brave, only in the abstract.

In practicality, he needed me to remain weak. Content to look at the world through his goggles, not my own.

Right before Mother died, in 1954, I spent an afternoon with her. She had suffered a stroke that robbed her of her speech and memory, but a few days before the end, she exhibited signs of a miraculous recovery. In her suddenly searching brown eyes, I could see her clear mind once more, and I was so eager to say something to her that I blurted out, “You’re my hero.”

“Anne?” She turned to me with a crooked smile; only one side of her face had movement.

“I said you’re my hero. You are. Because of how strong you’ve been since Daddy and Elisabeth died, how you reinvented yourself.”

Mother shook her head impatiently. “You need to… stop looking for heroes, Anne.” Her speech was slow, slurred, but understandable. “Only the weak need… heroes… and heroes need… those around them to remain weak. You’re… not weak.”

I remembered those words. I knew they were true, all of them. True about me, and true about Charles. I brought them out, every now and then, as I kept working—on both the manuscript and myself. And, perhaps on my definition of my marriage. No, my prayer for my marriage; a marriage of two equals. With separate—but equally valid—views of the world; shared goggles no more, but looking at the same scenery, at the same time.

All the while I worked, I raised my children until one day, to my utter surprise, they were both finished. And I emerged from my cabin with a book; my book. My Gift from the Sea.

I couldn’t wait to share it with the world. But most of all—

I couldn’t wait to share it with my husband.

1974

NOW THE SURF IS RAGING OUTSIDE; I rush to shut the doors and windows to muffle it. Then I turn back to his bed.

“I don’t understand!” I pound the mattress, forcing him to stay awake, stay here. “The house in Darien was your idea. The children—our children! Why could they never keep your attention except to be criticized? You wounded them then, and you’re wounding them now. Forget about me. What about Jon? Land? Scott? The girls? Did you ever stop to think how they will react to this?”

“It has nothing to do with you, or them. You—you are my family. Our children are my heirs. The other women, I won’t say they meant nothing. But they aren’t you.”

“How old? How old are they?”

“I don’t know. Young. They are young—or they were, when we first met.”

“Younger than me?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you chose them? Because they’re young—because they’re German?” I want to laugh; but it’s far too tragic. After all these years, it still comes back to this? A man who has spent over thirty years trying to change the notion that he’s a Nazi—having a secret German love nest? “Your own master race—I should have known! Was I not pure enough? Our children not good enough for you?”

“Anne, you’re hysterical.” Charles coughs, his entire body racked with the effort, and I hand him the water before the nurse stationed in the next room can hear. He sips, his Adam’s apple, so prominent now, sliding up and down, and when he waves his hand, I take the water away. “A man can still spread his seed, no matter his age. That’s all I did. I followed my instincts.”

“That’s such a typically male thing to say.”

“Are you telling me you were happy all those years? Are you telling me you never desired companionship when I was gone?”

Now he looks like the old Charles, the healthy, untouchable Charles; his gaze is clear and precise as it pierces right through me.

“I never wanted you to leave in the first place,” I reply truthfully, not flinching from his gaze, even as I ponder my own secret.

And wonder, for the first time, if he’s ever guessed it.

CHAPTER 18

IT’S THE QUIET THAT YOU NOTICE, first, when the children begin to leave.

And not just the practical fact that the record player is unplugged, the radio turned off. Not simply the lack of some instrument being practiced behind a closed door. Not merely the silent phone, the absence of stampeding feet up and down stairs, the slamming of doors, the constant rush of water in the bathroom.

It’s more than that—and less than that, too. It’s a hum, a vibration that leaves when they leave. For all of a sudden the very air in the house is slower, duller; gentler against your eardrum.

First Jon left, to go to Stanford in 1950. Dutiful as ever, he came home every vacation, anxious to see the wreckage his siblings had done in his absence and to put it right again. But he also married young, in 1954. He did not come home so much after that.

Land followed him west to Stanford two years later. Our last son, Scott, burst out of the house like a caged animal released; he started at Amherst in 1959, but it was soon apparent he was the one who would have to learn life’s lessons the hard way.

Scott rarely came home for the holidays, and I never even looked for him to. His teenage years had been typical—had his last name not been Lindbergh. But Charles simply could not understand the fluctuating grades, the late-night pranks, the minor brushes with authority. He could not understand the lack of focus, the inability to see past tomorrow. Whenever the two of them were together, it was explosive; the girls tiptoed about, trying not to get hit by the debris.

I, however, did not tiptoe.

“You can’t talk to him that way,” I shouted at Charles, my hands balled into fists, my heart wrecked with pain for my son, who had just been called a lazy idiot by his father. “Words like that can never be forgotten! He’ll carry that with him his entire life!”

Charles remained maddeningly calm. “Of course you’d defend him. He’s just like you. Your whole family, you Morrows—all so stubborn and perverse. Had I only known—”

“What? Known what?”

“The things you didn’t tell me when we were courting. Dwight and his problems. Elisabeth.”

“Elisabeth? What about Elisabeth?”

“Her weak heart. Her emotional state.”

“Because she felt? Because she loved? Oh, don’t make this about my family. We’re talking about your son.”

“It’s only that it’s no surprise to me he’s such a mess, given his genetic history. Still, I’m determined to make him into a real Lindbergh.”

“And what does that mean? Someone who has no feeling?”

“It means I have to be tough on him, just like my father was tough on me. You’re his mother, and you coddle