The Aviator's Wife

words. No more explanations. Bending down, I take him in my arms; he’s so light, so fragile. He reminds me of Elisabeth, when she was ill.

We match our breaths together, rising and falling as one. “I love you,” I tell Charles Lindbergh, the last thing he will hear in this world. Such an ordinary phrase.

For an ordinary couple, after all.

Charles sleeps again, a deep, engulfing slumber that appears to consume what’s left of his flesh; he is melting into the bed, his mouth sagging, his skin papery. He sleeps like that for two more hours, until, surrounded by his son and his wife—

He awakes with a start, a gasp, his eyes open, fixed on that distant spot on the horizon, and he inhales sharply, then exhales.

And then is no more.

There is a sharp intake of breath as we lean toward this man, this giant, but he is flesh and bones, finally, just like the rest of us. Land and I look at each other, too shocked for tears; Charles Lindbergh was mortal, after all.

As the doctor comes into the room, stethoscope in hand, I walk away, shaking, although my eyes are dry. I wonder how to begin living the rest of my life without him; without the answers to the questions I will never stop asking.

I spy, on a corner table, Charles’s old traveling bag; already I am hungry for reminders of him. Smiling, I pick it up. However did it last so long? It’s in tatters; the calfskin worn and shiny, the rusty clasp held shut with safety pins.

For some reason, I open it just to smell his scent one last time, finger his old clothes—a polo shirt he’s had since his sixtieth birthday, a present from Reeve. Those horrid, scratchy wool socks he always insisted on wearing, even with tuxedos—oh, how I tried to get him to change! A photograph—I pull it out, instantly on my guard. I’m not sure I can stand any more surprises. But it’s so unlike Charles to travel with a photograph that I have to see. Unnecessary weight, I can hear him bark, as I open the hinged frame.

“Oh!” For in my hand is the photograph of a young woman. It only takes me an instant to recognize her as me.

So young—dark hair, not gray; no lines or wrinkles. The woman in the photo is a girl, really; a thin, solemnly smiling girl, not the grinning idiot of all those early newspaper photographs. This smile—this careful, cautious smile—is the one that reflected my truest self. Especially back when I was so young as to be unformed; afraid of everything because nothing truly terrible had happened to me, yet.

And in my lap is a baby.

My firstborn; the blond curls, the cleft chin, the big blue eyes. With a shock of remembrance that pulls me to my knees, I recall the day Charles took this photograph. He had just gotten a new Kodak, and was forever snapping at everything—when he wasn’t taking it apart and putting it back together, fascinated by all the intricate parts.

That day, I was holding the baby, squirming in a towel. Charlie had just been bathed, and he was smiling, reaching toward me, when Charles snapped the picture.

I don’t want any reminders, Charles had declared after that terrible May. We need to forget.

Yet he has carried this photograph on every journey, every flight since; even to war and back. I picture Charles in the jungle, trying to sleep on a cot or maybe on the ground; oceans away from home, bombs overhead, just one soldier among many, wanting to remember something good, something decent—something to remind him why he is there.

Or, perhaps, something that might allow him to welcome death.

Through eyes blurred with tears—healing, welcome tears—I look back at the still figure on the bed; rising, I walk over and place the photograph in his arms. And I bow my head, touching my cheek to his, thanking God for this—this unexpected gift of a glimpse into Charles’s heart; the heart he had tried to hide from me, all these years.

This answer to all my questions.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I begin to croon softly, just as I used to do to the babes in my arms, all of them. I thought they’d never be able to put the Lindberghs together again.

Gently, Land reaches over the bed to close his father’s eyes.

As he does so, I pray that at last, Charles has found what he has been looking for, all his life.

CHAPTER 22

I AM FLYING.

Alone, unafraid, high above the blue of Long Island Sound.

I went to visit the daughter of an old friend, who still had an estate with a private airfield. At her father’s behest, she had kept an airplane, a four-seat monoplane, in a barn, all these years. Once, the wheel of that plane had fallen off. Once, a girl too young, too stupid to be afraid, trusted a boy to bring her home safely, and he had. And she had thought that he would, for the rest of their lives.

So did he.

I thanked Harry Guggenheim’s daughter Diane, a slim, nervous, middle-aged woman now. Harry had died a few years previous. While he always asserted that his friend Slim was no anti-Semite in public, in private Harry had stopped returning his calls.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Lindbergh? You haven’t flown in a long time.”

“I know. But I have to.”

“You remember everything?”

“I don’t know, but I suppose I’ll find out.”

“How are you doing? Without him?”

“Well. Well enough.”

“Father always said he lost him a long time ago.” Harry’s daughter shook her head. “Before the war. But then he always said, ‘Damn, if I don’t miss him, still.’ Did he believe it all, Mrs. Lindbergh? Did Colonel Lindbergh believe what he said, back before the war?”

I hesitated, torn between wanting to placate the daughter of a kind, loyal friend, and the truth.

“If you knew him,” I finally said, “you would know Charles Lindbergh never said anything he didn’t mean.”

“That’s a shame.” Diane shook her head, slowly, mournfully. Then she looked at me with a pitying smile. “But you, we never believed that you—”

“Well, I did. I’m tired of people pretending that I didn’t. I was just as wrong as he was. More so, because I didn’t speak out for my own beliefs. I borrowed his, as wrong as I knew they were. I’m no better than the Germans. The Germans who sat by and didn’t say anything, all those years.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Lindbergh, you’re not like them! I’ll never believe it. My father never believed it!” My old friend’s daughter wouldn’t help; she wanted to absolve me, and I didn’t want to be absolved.

“I’m sorry, Diane. Truly sorry, for the pain we caused you and your family. The pain I caused you, and so many others.”

“It was so long ago.” She shrugged. So did I. Unlike men, women got less sentimental as we aged, I was discovering. We cried enough, when we were young; vessels overflowing with the tears of everyone we loved. All the tears I cried when my son was taken. But I hadn’t shed one tear since my husband died.

“Father always said you were the brave one.” Diane laughed down at me in astonishment; she was a head taller than I was. “He said that the colonel never knew fear, he never understood consequences. You did, but you went along with him, anyway. That was bravery.”

“Or idiocy,” I replied, then I climbed—stiffly, every joint aching—into the cockpit. I pulled my goggles over my head, fleetingly aware of how ridiculous I looked—a graying grandmother wearing old-fashioned flying goggles. Then