The Aviator's Wife (30 page)

“Yes.” He shoved the thermos into my hand, then walked away so that I couldn’t see his face. I saw only his tall, unyielding figure in his brown flight suit, boldly
etched against the gray sky and the gray water. The wind blew his reddish-gold hair—so like Charlie’s, less like Jon’s, which was a bit darker—until it stood straight up on top of his head.

“Of course I remember. How can you think I don’t?” I heard him ask above the rushing surf, the call of the seagulls.

“But you never talk about him. I think we should. Sometimes it feels as if I’m the only
one who lost anything—”

“No, Anne. We need to forget. All of it. Now, we ought to be getting back.”

Stunned, I watched as Charles Lindbergh walked back to his plane with a sure stride, a resolute set to his jaw, just like in all the newsreels. And I watched myself climb in behind him—just like in the newsreels, too.

Just like before, I sat behind my husband on that flight, and all the rest;
charting our course, relaying our position to whomever was listening. Imagining little pinpoints of grief tracked by latitude and longitude.

But as time went on, and even with my sextant I still couldn’t locate
his
grief, I knew this would poison me against him. It would poison
us
—the Lucky Lindberghs, the First Couple of the Air. And I needed the notion of
us
too much. It was all I had left.
I couldn’t let go of that, too.

So I had to believe, was
desperate
to believe, that whenever we flew over a certain part of the sound, he looked down at the waves as I did and felt a stab of pain so jagged his vision blurred. And in that tortured moment he remembered a golden-haired boy with a crooked, shy smile.

I convinced myself that the noise of the engine muffled the sound of my husband’s
tears for his lost child; that in the air, soaring, winging; in the skies, where we had always shared the same view, navigated the same course, and where Charles was always so much
more—

My husband found a way to mourn our son.

1974

I
WATCH OVER HIM
as he sleeps in this stuffy hut on a lonely beach, just as he watched over me that terrible night, so long ago. Despite my anger, I pull his blanket up to his chin, surprised to find a hidden well of tenderness inside me, still, for this man and what we’ve been through together.

It is an unexpected, welcome gift, this quiet, peaceful moment, and I decide to let him sleep
for a while longer before my betrayal comes roaring back, as inevitable as the waves crashing against the rocks outside.

It’s been forty-two years, I think, watching over my dying husband.

And still we can’t quite comprehend all we lost on that terrible March night.

CHAPTER 12

August 1936

“H
EIL HITLER!
”

The crowd, as one, raised their arms and shouted it. Stirring uneasily in my seat, I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I join in? I was grateful for the bouquet in my arms; bending my head down, I sniffed at the white, starlike flowers—
edelweiss
, I had been told by the young girl who had presented them to me with a grave curtsy.

I glanced
at Charles; he sat next to me, erect as always; never did he wonder what to do, how to act. He was simply himself, immune to persuasion, and once more I had to admire him, even in this throng of spectators. Even with Chancellor Hitler himself standing on a platform just a few rows below us. The red flags with the swastika, that black mark that looked like propeller blades bent backward, hung behind
him, before him, over him; they hung from every balcony and banister in the enormous
Olympiastadion
. The white Olympics flag, with its intertwining rings, was also in evidence, but not in nearly the numbers as the flag of the Nazi party.

Our hosts for the day, Herr Göring and his wife, were seated next to us in a private box; Truman and Kay Smith, the American military attaché and his wife, were
with us as well. We’d been in
Berlin for more than a week, and today, our last day, happened to coincide with the opening of the 1936 Summer Olympics. Charles had hoped we would be able to speak with Chancellor Hitler himself, but it seemed now that we had to be content with merely sitting near him.

The sheer spectacle of the opening ceremony, of course, would have prevented any meaningful conversation;
the fevered crowd, the endless salutes, the songs; I was hoarse from shouting. And I did not speak German well; I found the language harsh and guttural, my ear simply couldn’t find it pleasing, and so my brain refused to try to make sense of it. I’d relied on Kay to translate during our stay.

“Is it not a fine day, Herr Colonel? Is Berlin not a fine city? I trust you have found it so—but of course,
you are famous for finding cities, are you not?” Laughing at his own joke, Herr Göring slapped his thigh. He spoke excellent English, although he did so with a thick accent. It was rather a surprise, coming from a man who looked so much like a pig farmer from a children’s book; he was huge, portly, with a shiny, jowly peasant’s face.

Charles smiled politely. “Yes, yes,” he shouted over more cheers
from the crowd as another country’s athletes marched into the stadium. “Berlin is quite impressive. We have very much enjoyed our stay.”

“We are so proud that you inspected our
Luftwaffe
—what you in America would call an air force. As you are a military man yourself, we value your insight.”

“Naturally, I was honored. Although as a military man, I cannot offer any specific insight, you understand.
Even if the United States and Germany are allies.”

“Of course. We are simply happy that you have visited at last.
France and England cannot have you all to themselves!” And Göring laughed again—it was more like a donkey bray. He was very jovial, very eager to please. Although not very polished; I wondered how he had risen to such a position—minister of the
Luftwaffe
—in Chancellor Hitler’s government.

His wife smiled indulgently at him; she was a pure Brunehilde, a daughter of Norse gods. Fleshy, rosy-cheeked, with blond hair in a braid atop her head, nearly as tall as her husband. I’d found her very cold, however, to me.

There was another roar from the crowd.

“Oh, look! It’s the United States team!” Sitting up straight, I was proud to see the rows of American athletes, all in white, as they
marched by the stand. Proud to see that unlike the other countries, they did not dip their flag in front of the chancellor’s box, even if this drew a shocked murmur from the crowd.

“Charles, didn’t they look fine?” I called over to my husband.

Charles merely nodded, giving no indication he was proud of his country, nor that he even missed it.

I noticed a group of young boys approaching Chancellor
Hitler’s box. They were clad in the black shorts and brown shirts of the Hitler Youth organization, but their faces were so young. This group must have been about five or six. Feeling that familiar tug on my heart, I smiled as the smallest bowed, so solemnly.

After more than four years, I still couldn’t look at a little boy without thinking of him.

My husband did not notice them; he was absorbed
in his single-minded way with the ceremony unfolding before us. He seemed so relaxed, happy, even; the way he’d been all week. He had responded to Germany by going back in time, I thought; he’d reacted to the polite yet adoring crowds with a gleam in his eye, a surprised, shyly pleased gleam. The same gleam I had first noticed in the newsreels I’d seen of him, after he landed in Paris.
Back when
his face was open, boyish; back when he did not know the dark side of fame.

Back when I was just a girl in a movie theater, marveling at the hero on the screen.

Stifling a sigh, I turned back to the crowd, many of whom were smiling and waving our way, occasionally tossing bouquets up at us. I wondered who they saw when they looked at me. The ambassador’s daughter? The aviator’s wife?

Or the
lost boy’s mother?

Minister Göring finally seemed to register my presence; he had not spoken one word to me until now. He had not seemed to notice me much this entire visit; his attention was riveted on Charles, always. Even a man as important as Herr Göring behaved like an adoring acolyte around my husband.

“You like Germany as well, Frau Lindbergh? You see how beloved we are by all the world!
Of course, as an author, you might wish to write about us!”

“You are an author?” his wife inquired, with a smirk to her rosy lips. “You?”

“Mrs. Lindbergh is a famous author.” Kay Smith leaped to my defense. Despite her tiny size—she was even smaller than I was—she possessed fierce confidence, hyperarticulate certainty in her own beliefs. I was happy to let her speak for me; I admired and liked
her tremendously, even after such a short acquaintance.

“Oh. Famous?” Frau Göring purred. “I apologize. I did not know.”

“Not really,” I corrected her. “I’ve written some articles, and a book about our flight to the Orient.”

“Which became a best seller,” Charles interjected, looking at me sternly.

I nodded but felt my face flush, and I buried it in the cool flowers in my hand; I wished I could
claim my achievements with
the pride of accomplishment, but I simply couldn’t. Everything I did now seemed shaded by a ghost or a shadow: the baby’s, or Charles’s.

At Charles’s relentless urging—why had I ever confided my hopes to this man who did not believe in hopes, only action?—I had finally attempted to write. I tried to recapture my passion for language, for playing with words almost as
if they were flowers to be constantly rearranged into beautiful bouquets. I tried to remember that once I had had dreams of my own; good dreams, not nightmares of empty cribs and open windows. It wasn’t easy; my youthful poems and attempts seemed silly to me now. Reality had so intruded in my life that flowery verse seemed fanciful, foolish, even.

But Charles insisted that I do something with
my life other than mourn our son; he insisted it would be good for me. I also suspected he thought it would be good for him; another trophy in the closet—an accomplished wife. First my pilot’s license; now a best seller. It was expected of me.

I obeyed him, as always. My lone defiance of his authority was like a scar on our marriage, but it was a scar I thought only I could see. And I was eager
to keep it that way.

Working for months on an account of our trip to the Orient, in the end I still wasn’t satisfied with it; I had found it impossible to capture the innocence of that time before my baby’s death. It had done modestly well, and Charles was proud of it, although I couldn’t help but think that most people bought it out of morbid curiosity. The bereaved mother’s little book—could
you read her tragedy between the lines? I’d imagined people paging feverishly through it, eager to find evidence of a splotched tear, a blurry word, a barely suppressed sob.

“Germany is a country of poets and authors, of course,” Herr Göring continued. “Goethe, Schiller.”

“Thomas Mann,” I added eagerly. “
The Magic Mountain
is one of my favorite books.”

Kay inhaled sharply.

“Ah.” Göring stared
at me for a long moment, the genial farmer’s smile still on his face, even as his eyes glittered with some strange warning. “Mann. Yes. But what a pity he married a Jew.”

My smile faded. “Surely that has nothing to do with his books and stories? They’re great literature.”

“They are Jewish propaganda, deranged, and dangerous to the state. Mann is an exile. He is forbidden to return to Germany,
as I’m sure you’re aware.”

I was not. I sat blinking at this fat man in a Nazi uniform, smiling dangerously in the bright sun, and I felt like a newborn chick just breaking out of her shell, trying to adjust her eyes to the confusing, blinding assault of
life
. Instinctively, I shrank back against the cold, hard stadium bench, touching Charles’s arm.

“What?” He didn’t stop looking at the ceremonies,
going on below.

“Nothing,” Herr Göring said smoothly. “Frau Lindbergh, are you cold? You look pale.”

“No.” Turning back to the smiling faces, the waving flags, I shrugged off the cool shadow I felt fall on me just then. I let go of Charles and tried to lose myself in the frenzied gaiety of the moment, the proud parade of nations filling the stadium grass, the flags waving, the Germans in the
stands cheering lustily, calling out
“Sieg Heil!”
with military regularity. Everyone looked well fed, clean, and happy. Everyone looked tall, fair. So like my husband, I realized with a start; usually he stood out with his clean Nordic good looks, especially next to my small, dark self. Not here, though; with his Swedish heritage etched in every lean line of his body, every golden follicle of
his hair, he would have
blended into the crowd of Germans gaily waving those strange Nazi flags.

No wonder he seemed so at home.

HOME
. It was a word I no longer recognized.