The Aviator's Wife

and forth. His “blue pills,” he called mine, for I wrote on a light blue stationery.

As friends do, we even sometimes vacationed together with our spouses; Charles liked and admired him, although neither of us really cared much for his wife. The children all knew and loved him as the family doctor. And we might have gone on that way; he might have remained one of my small coterie of chaste admirers, those men who knew that they could never really compete with Lucky Lindy, but enjoyed sipping cocktails on his terrace with his neglected, charming wife and wondering, “what if?”

But there came a time when I wanted more; my skin longed to be caressed by something warmer than silk lingerie. I wanted, I desired, I sought—so I took. I took more than I thought I was allowed, for the first time in my life; no longer the disciplined little girl my father admired, or the obedient wife my husband trained. I stepped through the looking glass to find the passionate woman who had been waiting for me, all these years.

Buoyed by the slightly tipsy flattery of a few middle-aged men as unhappy in their marriages as I was in mine, one day I took the train into New York and checked in at the Plaza. I came to the city frequently, of course, but it seemed that always I was either accompanied by a child or lunching with Con at the Cosmopolitan Club.

For the first time, however, I truly felt on my own, an adult, with adult decisions to make. My heart beat fast, as if on a grand adventure. Silly, I scolded myself; you’ve visited here a thousand times before. But not since I was a girl, coming in on the weekend from Smith with my college friends, had I felt so defiantly independent. I was going to rent an apartment, and even though Charles knew and approved, still I felt reckless and daring. And I had the entire city from which to choose! I threw myself into apartment hunting as I’d never thrown myself into house hunting before, when Charles had made most of the decisions.

This time, I was in charge, and I loved it. I loved every minute of it—the running up and down stairs with the tireless apartment agent, the nights spent going over brochures, the excitement of putting a bid in and having it accepted; a two-bedroom apartment with a dollhouse kitchen on the Upper West Side, just a block away from Central Park. Then the decorating—the picking out of curtains, wallpaper, furniture—this last, in Charles’s opinion, a luxury since we had more than enough surplus furniture in Connecticut. Why didn’t I just take some?

Why, indeed? Because I wanted a fresh start. I didn’t tell him that, however; I explained that with the cost of shipping it wouldn’t be that much less than buying new. Then I assured him I was keeping track of every expense in my accounting book. That seemed to mollify him.

Soon all was ready, and the first person I wanted to show it to was Charles. I felt, surprisingly, like a bride waiting to be carried over the threshold. It astonished me that still, after all that had happened, he was the first person I wanted to share everything with; good and bad. Somehow, a thing never seemed real until he saw it or experienced it, too—and then told me how to think about it.

But he didn’t come when I invited him. He had some Pan Am conference in Germany. He would visit soon, though, he promised. Meanwhile, would I remember to clean out the utility room, as the last time he was home he had noticed some old boxes of soap on a shelf in the corner?

No. No, I would not.

So I spent the first evening in my apartment alone, curled up on my new sofa nursing a solitary glass of wine as I gazed out over the city: the lights, the traffic, the bustle, the verve. All day I had felt queasy, a bit drowsy and thick as a terrible feeling crept over me; the feeling that I’d made a foolish, irreversible mistake. What right did I have, to strike out on my own at my age? What was I thinking? To live for oneself is a terrifying prospect; there is comfort in martyrdom, and for years, my hair shirt had been more comfortable than the silk brassiere I was currently wearing.

Then I heard voices outside my door, disappearing down the hall toward the elevator; the voices of people going out for the evening. All of a sudden I couldn’t—wouldn’t—sit there feeling sorry for myself. So I picked up the phone and—knowing full well what would transpire next—I called Dana.

He came over, and we sat in the growing shadows of evening, neither one of us turning on the lamp; content to have the lights from the city illuminate us as we bent our heads together, for the first time finding ourselves without words, only glances and touches.

Did I feel guilt? Shame? Regret?

Of course I did. I was married; he was married. We both had children that we vowed never to hurt; I couldn’t even bear to have pictures of mine in my apartment, after that night.

Oh, but I was ready. After a lifetime of being with a man who did not want to hear me speak unless I was mimicking his own views or assuring him he was right, I was ready. More than that, I was desperate to share the parts of me that Charles never wanted to know were there. The weak parts: that was how he viewed them and it took me a very long time not to view sympathy, grief, doubt, the ability to be moved to tears by love and happiness and sadness and music—as weak, despicable traits.

Dana taught me that the ability to grieve deeply also meant that a person had the capacity to love deeply, laugh deeply, live deeply—and that this was a capacity to be cherished. And that was, finally, why I loved him—because he never complained when I had a headache or changed my mind about something. He never shut down when I revealed my fears, my worries. He never tried to make me feel less, weaker, than he was—because he shared his own emotions with me, as well.

This honesty—this total freedom; it was as if I’d been living in one of those oxygen-deprived chambers that Charles used to test in the war. Until finally, I passed out. And when I awoke, it was to flowers and music and warm brown eyes—and all the air, all the space in the world; not just what was visible in the sky. I believed then that I could never get enough of it.

We were discreet, and it helped that I’d made few adult friends since my marriage. It also helped that the children were far too absorbed in their own lives to imagine I had one of my own.

Dana and I began to gather around us a small circle of his trusted friends, those who understood the nature of his marriage. Although most were astonished to discover the nature of mine. And I found, to my surprise and delight, that I was something of a literary star; I became a sought-after guest now suddenly available for dinner parties.

Of course, I knew my publisher was pleased with Gift from the Sea. It was continuing to go into extra printings, in both hardcover and paperback. I received lovely, warm letters from women all over the world. They wrote thanking me, asking me how I knew what they had been going through, assuring me that I was a friend for life.

Tucked away in Connecticut, I had not had a chance to taste the literary life—the life I had imagined back at Smith, when I had fancied myself, perhaps, a second Edna St. Vincent Millay or a member of the Algonquin Round Table. So it was with some disbelief, but mainly pure joy, that I found myself invited to speak at banquets and fund-raisers, or to give readings at libraries or wonderfully dusty little bookshops in the Village. I was asked not because I was Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, the aviator’s wife; I was asked because I was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the latest literary sensation.

I rejoiced in every minute of it. And only occasionally did I wish that Charles was there to witness my triumph.

Dana rarely attended these events as my escort—I had other married male friends who were happy to step in—but he was always there as part of our circle of friends, and when the evening was over we’d all go back to my apartment, where Dana would sit in a special chair near the fireplace, and I would sit in my special chair opposite, and we all would talk and laugh and play games through the night. My intellect, my wit—I’d forgotten I’d even possessed them, and they were dull and neglected, to be sure. But in the company of others who prized thought over action, laughter over brooding, they blossomed and sharpened. My tongue fairly tripped with sparkling phrases, insightful comments. Once, I looked in a mirror in the middle of a game of charades; I was smiling that carefree grin, the one that used to look so unfamiliar in photographs. I laughed; finally, the face I presented to the public was the one I wore in private. Charles had done the same thing, only he had become a stone monument over time. I had become a real person. A happy person.

Sometimes, Dana would be the last of our friends to depart, and it would not be until after breakfast the next morning.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he breathed into my ear the first time we made love. I was terrified and transported, both; to be touched by another man’s hands, not Charles’s? To be looked at, examined, all my flaws—my too-round breasts, heavy with age; my pouchy stomach, after six pregnancies; my thighs, though