The Aviator's Wife (22 page)

Scott, having had a last, healing talk with his father, has left; his wife and child are in France, and he has been away from them long enough. Jon, too, had to return to Seattle to his family. Land remains, drifting in and out as I sit vigil, offering to relieve me. But I say no,
rather snappishly. I want him to leave for now. I don’t want him to go far; I just want my son away from the house. I
must
talk to Charles, and I’m terrified that time is slipping away alarmingly. With every ragged breath he takes, Charles loses a little ground.

Finally, I instruct Land to visit the grave site to make sure it’s progressing. And I wait, and I watch, and at last Charles snorts,
and groans, and wakes up with a wrenching start, blinking as if surprised to find himself still living.

“What time is it?” Out of habit, he tries to raise his left arm, but his wrist is far too thin for a watch.

“Two o’clock in the afternoon.” I hand him a glass of water to sip. He can’t hold it himself, so I do it for him; I want to cry to see him so helpless, so wasted.

But then I remember
the letters in my handbag. And I place the glass back down on a small teak table and return to his side, standing over him so that he can see me.

I have no time to reconsider; I plunge into it now, before he slips away again.

“The nurse gave me your letters,” I say.

He is tired, and sick, and his eyes look more gray than blue now, almost milky. “What letters?” he asks. And I realize he truly
doesn’t understand.

“The letters you wrote.” I answer with the patience of a teacher, helping him to remember because I desperately need him to remember, so I can have this long-delayed moment of absolute honesty with him. “All three of them. To those women.”

“Oh.” He blinks as if trying to focus his eyes. Then he turns to gaze at the rolling, crashing waves outside his window.

“The letters
to your—lovers, I suppose I should call them? Your mistresses?” I take a tremulous breath; I have been rehearsing this for forty-eight hours straight, even in my sleep. I will not stumble and cry and shout; I’ve done those things already today, walking along the beach before dawn, the pounding surf the only thing more stupendous than my rage. “Those women you hid away, all these years. Even more
thoroughly than you hid me.”

“I didn’t hide you. I told you that, once.”

“I need to know why. I need to know how—how could you do this to me? To your children, especially? How could you hurt us all so?” Despite my vow, I feel the sting of angry tears.

I turn away, and so I can’t see his face when he whispers, “I never wanted to hurt you, Anne. But I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did!” I wheel
around, prepared to continue this, but he interrupts: “No. Not now. But then. Back then, in ’thirty-two. The baby.”

The blow, as always, is visceral but not as devastating as it used to be. Time, as everyone told me then, does soften the pain.

“You? What do you mean,
you
hurt me? Charles, no, don’t you remember, they found the man who—”

“No. It was me. It was always me.”

Every muscle tensed
against the onslaught of memory, I wait. Is this it? Is this all?

But he begins to breathe raspily, steadily. And I know that he’s fallen back to sleep.

CHAPTER 9

March 1932

“B
ETTY, DO YOU THINK
we ought to give him a bath tonight?”

“I don’t know. He’s still sniffling so, Mrs. Lindbergh. I think not.”

“You’re right, Betty, as usual.” I smiled at her, and she blushed, looking, for just a moment, like a young girl. Pretty, with red hair, a quick smile, Betty Gow normally exuded such authority in the nursery that I felt the
difference in our ages acutely. I was only twenty-five to her twenty-nine. This always made me feel as if our roles should be reversed; that she should be the mother, and I the nursemaid. She simply knew so much more than did I.

“I suppose just change him and put him in a new sleep shirt?” I winced at the question mark in my voice. “I’ll be downstairs, seeing to dinner for the colonel. I’ll come
up before you put him to bed. I wish we had brought more clothing with us this weekend, though. I’ll be happy once we’re all moved in.” I glanced around the airy nursery, freshly painted and papered; the only room of our new home that was completely furnished. So far we came down only on weekends, without Betty; playing family, I thought of it. Just the three of us, and I cared for the baby myself,
almost as if it were a game. Knowing that I couldn’t do that much damage, for come Monday, Betty would be there to undo it.

But when Charlie woke up this past Monday sniffling and feverish, I’d decided to stay put until he was better. This morning, Tuesday, I’d rung up Next Day Hill and asked Betty to come out; I wasn’t feeling well myself. Taking care of a sick baby full-time was more work than
I’d anticipated, and I felt my inexperience keenly. In short, I needed her help, especially since Charles had gone into the city as usual yesterday morning.

“Thank you so much for coming,” I told Betty again. “I hope you didn’t have any plans tonight?”

“Oh, Red and I were going to see a movie, but I called him and told him I couldn’t go, and he could either like it or lump it.” She winked at
me, so assured; I had never been that assured of a man and even after being married for almost three years, I still wasn’t.

Standing there so competent, complete with my baby in her arms, Betty didn’t seem like a woman in love, and I fervently hoped she wasn’t. Her boyfriend, Red Johnson, was a nice enough man. But I relied too much on Betty; I didn’t want her to marry and leave me.
Us
.

“Was
he—was he angry?” I hated to pry, but Betty and I had so little to talk about, usually. Other than the baby.

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” she replied tartly. “He knows our Charlie comes first.”

I smiled, even as I was in awe. I was the baby’s mother, and I couldn’t imagine saying that to Charles.

“Well, that’s good,” I said, suddenly shy; I’d pried too much. “I’d better go see about dinner.”

Betty nodded and brought little Charlie over to me for a quick kiss. His nose was crusty, and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. He didn’t act as if he were sick, however; he smiled up at me with a gay little wave before being borne off by Betty to be changed.

FIVE MONTHS HAD PASSED
since Daddy died. Five months of sorrow on the surface, but pure contentment underneath as finally, after
two years of delays caused by Charles’s meddling with first one architect, then another, our home outside of Hopewell, New Jersey—about sixty miles from Manhattan—was almost completed. With no plans for future flights on the horizon, I disregarded, once and for all, Mr. Watson’s parenting advice and gave myself over to the pure joy of being with my child. I smothered him with kisses and spent entire
afternoons in the nursery, knitting or mending while he played contentedly at my feet, Betty bustling about in the background with her Scottish competence and humor. Spoiling him; I freely admitted it. I had to, while I could, for I was expecting another child. Soon little Charlie would have a sibling to contend with, and my attention would naturally be divided. So I showered him with it now.

Of course I missed my father. But with my own family to care for, I missed him less than I would have before; I understood that, and knew that he would have, too. So while I mourned him; mourned, once and for all, the end of the family I had thought I’d known as a child, I saw it as a natural progression. My father had died, and I was expecting a new life. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?

I wanted to worry about Mother, but she wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to be doing surprisingly well; she’d packed up the Washington townhouse with no regrets.

“It killed him,” she said bluntly, the day she moved back to Next Day Hill for good. “Washington. Politics. He hadn’t the heart for it, and he couldn’t say no.”

“What will you do?” I couldn’t imagine my mother’s future without my father,
so seamlessly had they always worked together
for the same common goal—his career. She had so much energy. So much determination. What on earth would she do with it now?

“Don’t worry about me,” she answered, quite mysteriously. “Worry about your husband instead.”

“Charles? Why would I worry about him? Of all the people in the world, Charles doesn’t need anyone to worry about him!”

“Things are
changing—the world is changing.
You’re
changing. Even if you don’t know it yet.”

“How silly! I’m the same as ever—plain old Anne.” I laughed at my own reflection in a mirror, and patted my stomach. I hadn’t yet started to show, but soon, I knew, I would be a dumpling once again.

“No, you’re not. You’re a mother, not just a wife; the second one really makes you understand that. There’s a difference—and
I’m not entirely sure your husband will ever understand. Mine didn’t.”

I looked at my mother—my surprisingly wise mother—in astonishment. Why hadn’t she been so honest and straightforward when I was growing up? Then, her inner life was hidden not only from the world but from her children. All I ever saw was the perfection of my mother’s marriage, the impossibly shiny surface that reflected my
own doubts and fears back to me a hundredfold. Daddy alone was allowed to have his faults; he was loved, indulged for them, while my mother stood smilingly, soothingly, supportively by.

Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands? I’d gone from college to the cockpit without a chance to decide who I was on my own, but so far, I was
only grateful to Charles for saving me from that decision, for giving me direction when I had none. Even so, I suspected there were parts of me Charles didn’t understand;
depths to my character he had no interest in discovering. I wasn’t resentful; he was so busy.
I
was so busy. We were young. We still had time to appreciate each other; we still had time to develop the marriage I’d only imagined
my parents had had.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, before I could stop myself.

“Sorry? Whatever for?”

“Sorry for you, that Daddy died before he had a chance to know you like this—know you for yourself, not just his wife.”

“Oh, Anne.” Mother smiled, touching my cheek, ever so gently. “Don’t feel sorry for me. No one knows the truth behind a marriage except husband and wife. Especially not the
children! We knew each other, darling. You can be sure of that. Like I said—don’t worry about me. Worry about your own marriage. We’re the caretakers, we women. Left on their own, men would let a marriage run itself out, like one of Charles’s old rusty airplane engines. It’s up to us to keep things going smoothly. And, my dear, life with Charles is never going to be easy. You have much more work
ahead of you than I did.”

“How do I know I can manage it?”

“Because you can. Because you have to. Because you don’t have any other choice; no more choice than any wife. Now, hand me some of those towels to fold, will you?”

We busied ourselves with folding the towels and placing them in a basket, and I wanted to ask my mother, “At what cost? What did it cost you, all these years? What will it
cost me?”

But I didn’t. She was right. Children didn’t need to know everything about their parents’ marriage. And my mother, for all her surprising attributes, was no fortune-teller.

“I do hope you won’t be lonely if we’re not here so much, now that the house is just about done,” I said instead.

“That’s the way it should be,” Mother said briskly. “Two captains of the same ship—it never works.
You two need your own
household, finally. And I still have Elisabeth and Dwight and Con, you know. My family still needs me, I should hope!”

“I know Elisabeth does.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No reason, just, you know—her health.”

“Well, doctors don’t always know what they’re talking about. Elisabeth will be fine. Perfectly fine.” Mother smiled, a bit too fiercely, and folded a towel with such
vigor, I feared the crease might never come out.

I nodded and patted her hand—and was surprised when she clung to mine longer than was necessary. The shadow of losing her child was in my mother’s eyes; so frail, so fragile was Elisabeth these days, she didn’t seem a whole person anymore.

“We’re not quite out of your life yet,” I reminded my mother with a laugh. “We still don’t have all the furniture,
and it’s easier to stay here during the week until we have a full staff. It is so
nice
here!” I admit, I rather thought of Next Day Hill as a luxurious hotel, a place where I could lounge around, have my meals brought to me, not worry about the details. I also knew my son was safest here, with all the guards, the dogs. The police in Englewood were almost our own private security detail. And, flattened
with the nausea accompanying my new pregnancy, I enjoyed being cared for and pampered—instead of having to organize and run my own household.

“Well, of course you’re always welcome to stay, dear. I love having you! But do think about Charles. I don’t think he’s quite so content.”