The Aviator's Wife

  When I saw Violet’s broken body, as twisted as the wreckage of the plane I had once located in the mountains of New Mexico, I wept. How could I have ever believed this fragile girl was involved? No matter that I was desperate, insane with fear for my child; I should never have told Colonel Schwarzkopf to question her or any of the servants. Who was I to play God?

  Too late did I believe in her innocence. Only days after her suicide, the police determined that the only thing poor Violet was guilty of was being foolish. She had been involved with a married butler in my mother’s household. Her frantic tears, her inability to stick to a story about her activity that awful night; it was all a cover-up for trysts with her lover.

  So Violet would not be at Next Day Hill to welcome us home. So many of the servants, familiar faces to me since childhood, were gone now, chased from the house by the police, or retired, grown old in my absence. Even Ollie Whateley had passed away.

  And Betty Gow. She would be absent as well. I don’t remember if any of us actually spoke of it, but somehow, in those weeks after Charlie’s body was found, it was agreed that Betty had to leave the household. I knew she would never love the new baby in the same way; she knew it as well.

  Violet, Betty. And Elisabeth, my sister. She, too, was gone. There were still times I found myself picking up the telephone to call her, before remembering.

  She’d looked so vibrant on her wedding day in December 1932. Jon was just a cooing baby in my mother’s arms as I stood with my sister in the same room I had been married in. It was a rare moment of celebration for my entire family; we all spoke and wrote about it for weeks after, reliving the beauty, the poignancy. The relief that Elisabeth seemed well, loved, cared for. Although I never saw her look as happy, as joyful, with Aubrey as she used to, when she was laughing and scheming with Connie.

  Elisabeth’s goodbye kiss was a promise to me; a promise that despite her marriage, I would never be alone. I would always have someone willing to listen, not judge; sympathize, not urge me to action. And I would do the same for her.

  Two years later—almost to the day—she was dead. The harsh Welsh climate was too much for her; doctors ordered her to sunny California. Aubrey whisked her away, but she died of pneumonia, Mother and Aubrey by her side.

  I would never stop missing her.

  So lost in my thoughts, I didn’t realize that we were home until we were turning into the private drive of Next Day Hill. There was a new man on duty, but he recognized us and pressed the lever for the gate to open. As the gates closed, two black cars that had been following us—reporters and photographers, I realized—parked outside. I sighed. Now we were well and truly home.

  “Mama, is this where Grandma lives?” Jon was climbing over me, eager to get out. “Can you please move?” He gave me a playful shove, so I did. I pushed myself out of the car; Land and Jon scrambled after me. We walked up the steps, the boys scampering ahead.

  The door swung open; my mother appeared. Before I could blurt out my apologies for leaving her all these years, and for bringing photographers back to her home, she had me in her arms. “Welcome home, my daughter,” she sang out. “Anne, Jon! And you must be Land!” She released me, reaching for the boys. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby, when I visited you in England. Do you remember me?”

  “No.”

  My mother laughed. She threw back her head and laughed. This was no sad old lady, as I’d imagined her; no Miss Havisham surrounded only by memories, grieving her life away. No. My mother looked ten years younger than she had when I’d last seen her; she was trim, stylish in her own club lady way, although her hair was still corralled in that severe Edwardian manner. But she was electric with energy and drive; it was I who felt old and feeble, exhausted by travel, overwhelmed by being back in my native land.

  “You look terrible, dear,” she confirmed my assessment, shaking her head at me. “You’ll have your old suite again, of course, and the boys can go up in the nursery. There’s room for your nurse—where is she?”

  “She had to come on the next boat; there were things she had to arrange before sailing.”

  “Of course, of course. I can’t imagine the chaos over there! Charles is here already; he drove straight through from Washington overnight. He’s upstairs, sound asleep.”

  “He is?” I was stunned; I hadn’t expected to see him so soon, and, ridiculously, I longed to powder my nose and put on a fresh frock before I saw him.

  Mother must have sensed my bridal jitteriness, because she suggested I have a glass of brandy first. So I followed as she marched down the hall into what used to be Daddy’s office, but which was now redecorated. No—reborn.

  Flowers bloomed in vases; the stuffy leather furniture was replaced with comfortable chintz. There was a Picasso on the wall, which worked surprisingly well with the cabbage roses of the fabric. Where Daddy’s enormous banker’s desk had been was now a delicate French writing desk. It was piled with papers.

  “I thought you’d be surprised.” Mother’s eyes twinkled.

  “Surprised? I’m lost. Is this the house of the very proper ambassador’s wife?”

  “No, it’s the house of the very busy former suffragette.” She laughed, and the boys laughed with her. She bent down to hug each of them. “Oh, I won’t be able to get enough of these two! Do you want some cookies? Milk?” She looked at me, and I nodded.

  “Get those children some cookies, would you, dear?” She turned to a young woman who appeared out of nowhere. The girl nodded and ushered the boys toward the kitchen.

  “Who was that?” I couldn’t seem to move my legs, couldn’t sit down—even after my mother gestured to a comfortable armchair.

  “Oh, that’s Marie. She’s part of my staff.”

  “You have a staff?”

  “Of course! One needs a staff when one is about to become acting president of Smith College.”

  “What? Mother—when? How?”

  “Naturally, the world situation is making the search for a new president more difficult, so I was asked to step in during the interim. The college has so many ties, you know, overseas. We cannot turn our backs on our friends, and I’m going to see to it that we don’t.”

  “Mother, it’s just me you’re talking to—you don’t have to make a political statement!”

  “Oh, goodness! Did I? I’m sorry, I suppose I’m practicing!” My mother laughed, and I laughed along with her. I was so happy for her, so happy she was busy and engaged and not grieving, as I had imagined. I shouldn’t have, I realized; when had she ever stopped long enough to give in to an emotion?

  But she seemed so different now. She reminded me of Charles, that was it; they both had that purposeful gleam in their eye, a secret, a goal, that only they could recognize.

  “What do you think of Aubrey and Con?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject to one that had been festering in my mind for a while now. Elisabeth’s widower had married her youngest sister in 1937.

  “I think it’s wonderful. Aubrey was lost, the poor man. Widowers always have to remarry, have you ever noticed that? Women are fine on their own, but men … anyway, Con will keep him on his toes. She needed a project like him.”

  “And what about love?”

  “Oh, they love each other, Anne! I’m not sure that’s the most important thing in their case, however. Not like with you and Charles. If you didn’t have love, I’d worry more about the two of you. But Con and Aubrey, they’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you. I think.” I sipped my brandy and, despite my resentment at her breezy attitude, knew she was right. “But Elisabeth—isn’t it disloyal, somehow?”

  “Elisabeth is gone, dear. The living have to live.”

  “But it’s as if she never married him at all—it feels as if they’re erasing her, somehow.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, dear. Not for them.”

  I shook my head. Mother reminded me of Charles in other ways as well. I was the caretaker, I realized; the caretaker of t
he dead and of their memory. If no one wanted to think about Elisabeth, then I would. If Charles didn’t want to remember Charlie, then I would have to remember him for the both of us. I admired both my mother and my husband for their energy, their dogged focus on the future.

  I also, for the first time, pitied them. For despite the pain of loss, as time went on, the memory of those I’d loved warmed my heart more than grieved it.

  “I’m glad you’re so happy for them,” I told my mother. “And I’m very glad about your appointment, Madame President! Now, where are you keeping my husband?”

  “Upstairs. Dinner is at eight, as usual. I’ll have something sent up for the boys; I’ve already prepared the staff. Now I must run off to a meeting.”

  “Of course you must.” I embraced her, delighted and proud, even as I felt myself unable to keep up with her any more than I was able to keep up with Charles. The world was falling to pieces around us, and all I wanted was to find somewhere to hide myself and my children from the wreckage. While my husband and my mother came running out, arms open wide, to make something good from it. Something worthwhile.

  The only problem was, I knew that their definitions of “worthwhile” were dramatically different.

  “I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN,” Charles said that evening. “Your mother. What did she say, about not turning her back on those overseas again?”

  “Just that. Nothing more.”

  “Nothing more? She said it to spite me. She’s never forgiven me for taking you away to Europe.”

  “That isn’t Mother,” I said crossly as we dressed for dinner, turning away from each other, oddly shy—or uncomfortable, I wasn’t quite sure which—in our state of undress, after the weeks apart. He was in his boxers, pulling up his dress socks over his lean shins and snapping them into their garters. I was in an ugly, utilitarian slip, and I felt that way—ugly, utilitarian. After three pregnancies, my figure was losing its elasticity. I had a definite pooch to my stomach now, and my breasts sagged, even as we both hoped for more children.

  For some reason, our reunion had not gone well. Almost from the first hello, we had snapped at each other. “Your little speech to the reporters was unnecessary, Anne,” he had said after he pecked me on the cheek.

  “You might have remembered to send two cars to pick us up, as we had to leave the trunks behind,” I had retorted.

  I wondered if that was how it was going to be, now that we were back in the United States, back among so many others who had claims on us; so many issues suddenly crying out for attention. One thing I had learned—among all the lessons he had set out to teach me, and others he had imparted unconsciously—was that we were at our very best, as a couple, when alone.

  “Mother’s not petty like that.” I chose an outdated brown evening dress I had left behind, years ago, as my trunks had not yet been unpacked; even before I put it on, I felt dowdy. I turned around so Charles could zip me up. “She’s like you, actually. You both believe you’re absolutely right about everything.” I was surprised by the bitterness in my voice. Still, I made no effort to hide it. “You forget how active she was in the fight for women’s votes, back when I was a child. And she and Daddy—well, they were both Wilsonians, and passionate about the League of Nations. She hasn’t changed.”

  “She knows perfectly well how I feel about the situation.”

  “She’s not married to you, you know. She’s her own person.”

  “What does that mean?” He turned to me, eyes narrowing.

  “Nothing.” I turned away and started rummaging in my travel case for some earrings.

  “Well, she’s agitating for war, don’t think otherwise. And now she’ll have the whole of Smith College behind her. She’s beating the drums, just like Roosevelt.” He sneered that last word; Roosevelt had become a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “Well, you yourself said it’s inevitable.”

  “It’s inevitable in Europe. But not here—unless people like your mother scare the American public into thinking that it is.”

  “She’s not scaring anyone—for heaven’s sake, she’s done nothing yet! She doesn’t even take office until next term.”

  “She’ll probably join one of those Jewish refugee societies next,” Charles said, as he tied his tie with vengeance.

  “So what if she does? You yourself said how awful it was that England was having to deal with so many refugees.”

  “That doesn’t mean I think they should wash up here instead. You think we should allow more Jews into America? To influence the press? The government? The movie industry—for God’s sake, they’re all Jews there, every one of them, running all those studios, brainwashing the American public. Any minute now they’ll start making movies portraying Hitler as a clown, or worse. Yet not one of them has been to Germany recently. Not one of them has seen anything firsthand, like we have. Do you honestly think we should send our young men—our sons—to fight because of them?”

  “I don’t—no, I guess, not when you put it that way—I don’t think that; I don’t think we should send young men off to fight. But, Charles, Mother believes in what she’s doing. Just as you do. Don’t you see how I admire you both for being so passionate?”

  “What do you believe?” Again, his eyes narrowed challengingly. For the first time, my husband asked me this question. Until now, he had always assumed I believed what he did. And I had assumed that, too. Wasn’t that one of the reasons I had married him—because I wanted to be just like him? Heroic and grand and good?

  But now I wasn’t sure what “good” meant. Too many participants in this increasingly terrible situation claimed to have goodness on their side.

  Anne Morrow—the Smith College graduate daughter of Ambassador and Mrs. Morrow, both advocates for the League of Nations—would answer, “I’m with Mother. The Jews need to be saved. Hitler is a dangerous man.” But I would say these things because they told me to, or hoped, by their example, that I would come to believe them on my own.

  But I was no longer Anne Morrow; I was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the wife of a legend who was an admirer of Hitler—and an increasingly vocal proponent for keeping America out of any European war.

  Fleetingly, guiltily, I envied my mother; old enough to have outlived her parents, a widow without a husband to think of. What if, like her, I had the time to think for myself? To have the honest courage of my own convictions, and not the false courage of borrowed ones? My marriage would be different, that much I knew.

  But would it be better?

  I shook my head, tempted by the notion but not blinded by it. My duty now was to my sons, whose needs I had neglected for their father’s for far too long. I had to settle Jon into school, find a doctor because Land was prone to ear infections, and move us all into a house. I had also just come out of years of purgatory, purgatory I had wandered with only my husband for companionship and security. Once, I had thought I could leave him, but it had only been Jon and me. Now, with two sons and hopefully another child on the way (for I suspected I might be pregnant, although it was too soon to be certain), I couldn’t risk pushing Charles away from me. “I’m on your side, of course. I mean—I’m on our side,” I continued, sitting on the edge of the bed so that I could slip my feet into a pair of evening shoes. “It’s our side. I’m with you. Of course, I don’t think we should go to war. Not over Germany, anyway; not over the Jewish influence.”

  “Good girl.” Charles smiled, that rare, prized personal smile, relaxed, so that all his teeth showed. And I smiled back, waiting for that familiar, belonging glow to fill me up, make me better, stronger; as good as him.

  But I waited in vain. For the only thing that filled me up was a shameful weariness, an enveloping languor that made me wonder how on earth I was going to make it through dinner, let alone the next few weeks, seated between my husband and my mother. Forced to decide, once and for all, who I was now: the ambassador’s daughter?

  Or the aviator’s wife?

  CHAPTER 14

  Ma
y 1941

  WE DROVE THROUGH A TUNNEL, so dark I felt like a ghost, my skin a pale wisp of smoke. I moved closer to Charles, who patted my shoulder absently as he smoothed the papers on his lap. And then we were born into the light; dazzling, blinding, relentless light. A roar greeted the sight of our car; a wild, frightening roar. The driver steered the car down a narrow path, lined on all sides by waving, shouting throngs fielding, like weapons, signs bearing my husband’s name. Then we stopped, and Charles emerged from the car first. His appearance whipped the crowd into an even greater frenzy; the cheers were so unhinged I heard violence simmering just beneath the surface of approval. I was afraid to step out of the car; afraid of what could happen tonight. It seemed that anything was possible these days; anger was so prevalent, rippling like waves over our country. Outside Madison Square Garden, the anger had been directed toward us. Cries of “Nazi! Fascist!” had greeted our arrival. Rocks had been thrown at the armored car.

  There was anger inside the Garden as well, but Charles was not the source of it. Rather, he was the white knight leading this seething crowd toward their common enemy—President Roosevelt. The guards were having a difficult time holding back the swarming crowds; my limbs felt like lead, my chest as if I’d swallowed a block of ice, as I finally slid out of the car.

  “Lindbergh! Lindbergh for President!” roared the crowd. Flashbulbs popped, more blinding than ever in my life; I had to shield my eyes from the relentless glare. My ears rang from the noise of the crowd, all around me, above me, as well—I felt like we were truly in a fishbowl. And I couldn’t help but think of what good targets we would be, were someone to aim a rifle at us.

  Somehow I followed Charles down a red carpet to the podium, where others were already seated—Father Coughlin himself, the leader of the Christian Front; Norman Thomas, the leader of the American Socialist Party; Kathleen Norris, a popular writer; Robert R. McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune. We took our seats, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung, and one by one the others spoke. Brief, heartfelt speeches on the necessity of staying out of the European war, and of building up America’s defenses instead of building up England’s. I did not pay them any mind; I was concentrating on Charles. He looked relaxed; his limbs loose, his hands still, even as his jaw was set in that familiar angle of determination, and those blue eyes were more focused and intent than I had ever seen them. I was glad he did not turn his gaze upon me, for I felt it might burn a pinpoint hole, just like a magnifying glass would, through my skin.