Melanie Benjamin - The Aviator's Wife

“We get married. That’s what we bright, promising young Smith girls are supposed to do. That’s what it’s all for. We marry equally bright, promising young men from Princeton or Cornell or Harvard or Yale. We collect silver and china; we begin to entertain, modestly at first, you know! Then we have babies and bigger houses and more silver and more china and entertain lavishly. Our husbands come home every night at the same time, and we get bored looking at their faces over the dinner table. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, they take us to Europe once in a while. If we’re very unlucky, they become politicians and we have to move to Washington. Meanwhile, we play tennis and golf and try to keep our figures and our sanity.”

“It all sounds so awful!”

“Well, it is. And it isn’t. I wouldn’t mind a house on Long Island and a charge account at Tiffany!”

“But what about love? What about passion? What about— more ?” I flung my pencil down with a dramatic gesture that surprised both of us. Bacon picked up the pencil and handed it back to me, her eyebrows—dramatically darkened, just like a film star’s—arched in amusement.

“What about it? What’s gotten into you, Anne?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be one of those dried-up matrons you see at bridge parties, scowling at the younger generation. I want to be one of those marvelous old ladies covered in scarves who rock in their chairs with mysterious smiles, remembering the scandalous affairs of their youth!”

“Why, Anne Morrow!” My roommate’s green eyes deepened. “You sly creature! I guess still waters really do run deep!”

I shrugged, blushing, and Bacon returned to her magazine with a chuckle.

Tapping the pencil against my teeth as my briefly soaring soul returned to my normal, earthbound body, I couldn’t help but wonder. As awful as Bacon’s scenario sounded, at least she had some kind of vision for her future. Whereas I—fanciful thoughts of scandalous affairs aside—did not. I saw myself drifting about, like an actress in a play, waiting forever for her cue.

Beyond graduation, I truly couldn’t see; I had always possessed some vague notion of “writing,” but what on earth would I write about ? Didn’t one have to have experiences first? While the short essays and poems—many of them, lately, singing of wind and clouds and sky—I had written for the Smith Review had been well received, my words seemed like fluff to me; dandelion fluff, ephemeral, not substantial enough to remain in anyone’s memories, let alone mine. Already, I couldn’t remember half of them.

And where would I do this so-called writing? I had no plans except a smattering of invitations to classmates’ summer homes for a weekend of sailing or tennis. Which was one more reason to envy my sister; as soon as Elisabeth graduated two years ago, she’d made a real life for herself with Connie Chilton. Between the two of them—and with Mother and Daddy’s quietly proud blessing—they were single-handedly going to revolutionize early childhood education. They were already planning to start their own nursery school.

Unless, of course—or rather, until —Elisabeth married. Which suddenly seemed a very real possibility, one I couldn’t bear to contemplate.

Seized with an impulse to act instead of think for only the second time in my life—the first time having taken place in an airplane—I grabbed a fountain pen. Scribbling quickly, before I lost my nerve, I signed my first graduation announcement with a short note, then slipped it into an envelope. For a sickening moment I realized I had no idea where to address it—until I remembered, my heart soaring with joy and empowerment, that we were dignitaries now. All I had to do was pick up the telephone and someone would find out for me.

Privilege, I was not ashamed to admit at that moment, had its perks.

OF COURSE, HE DIDN’T COME.

During the entire graduation ceremony, even when my name was announced not once, but twice, as the winner of both the Montagu and Jordan prizes, my only feeling was of disappointment; childish, selfish disappointment. What were those prizes to me when the one I desired the most was withheld from me? I searched and searched the crowd for his lanky, yet imposing, figure, those blue eyes that had seen me, and I searched in vain.

To make matters worse, after I received my diploma and joined my family, I was told that he had recently visited our home in Englewood.

“Colonel Lindbergh came to call two weekends ago, just after we got back from Mexico City,” Mother said, after she hugged me and whispered how proud she was. She was wearing her alumni pin; so were Elisabeth and Connie, who, naturally, had driven up together.

“He—he did?” I tried to conceal my hurt by opening up the sheepskin cover and studying my diploma. Anne Spencer Morrow .

“Yes, he did. Elisabeth and Constance happened to be home, so they were able to entertain him.”

“Ah.”

“The colonel was as loquacious as ever,” Elisabeth said, with a wry smile for Connie, who returned it, wrinkling her broad, freckle-splattered nose.

“I’ve never met a more boring man.” Connie sniffed disdainfully.

“Oh, he’s not boring, he’s just—careful,” I said. Being very careful, myself.

“There’s my girl!” Daddy ambled up; he had been detained by a crowd of admirers and a couple of members of the press. “We’re so proud of you, Anne!”

“Yes, we are,” Mother assured me with another hug. Con, my little sister, took my two prize certificates and studied them. Then she sighed dramatically.

“Marvelous. Yet another Morrow achievement I’ll have to live up to!”

“I wish Dwight were here,” I blurted out, surprising us all. Naturally, we were not to mention my brother’s recent “troubles” in public. But Con’s little joke reminded me that there was at least one Morrow who was having difficulties living up to his heritage.

Dwight had been hallucinating, delirious, at school. Daddy’s stern letters exhorting him to “buck up” had not helped; finally Mother arranged to place him in a rest home in South Carolina. It was merely a “temporary” situation, she reminded us all—but a necessary one.

There was an awkward silence at the mention of my brother’s name; Mother fiddled with her gloves while Daddy tugged at his necktie.

“We thought it best for him to remain—for him to get some strength back, before traveling,” Mother said, her eyes glazing over, giving her an odd, faraway air. She had turned away from my father, who suddenly seemed very interested in a clump of damp grass clinging to the top of his white shoe. Con and Elisabeth stared at the ground, while Connie Chilton retreated a few steps, as if unsure whether or not she should hear any of this.

“You’re coddling him,” Daddy grumbled—but he would not look at my mother, and for the first time ever, I sensed a crack in their partnership. My parents’ overwhelming closeness was as much a part of my childhood as my beloved Roosevelt bear with its missing eye. My parents never argued or contradicted each other; they decided and spoke in one unified voice, and at times I had felt lonely in the face of it. Loved, always—yet sometimes lonely.

But now—

“We are not coddling him, Dwight. The boy is in pain ,” Mother snapped—the first time I had ever heard her raise her voice to my father. Then she turned away, as if collecting herself, while Daddy strode off to the car, his cheeks scarlet, his shoulders pinched so that his suit coat appeared even baggier than usual. Con blinked away a few bright tears before trotting off behind Daddy.

I turned to Elisabeth, to gauge her reaction to all this; she simply pressed her lips together and shrugged, then held out her hand to her friend. Connie Chilton looked as if she wanted to say something, but I saw Elisabeth squeeze her arm in warning.