Melanie Benjamin - The Aviator's Wife

Charles climbed in on the pilot’s side and took a quick look at all the controls, pushing a few buttons, playing with some toggles and pedals on the floor. Then he handed me a stick of gum—that awful spearmint, but I accepted it gratefully, and started chewing away. He started the engine and it sputtered, the propeller whirling, but this time it seemed so far away; not at all like my first flight, when I could feel the choppy air on my face. Enclosed as we were, I could see only out the front and a limited bit to either side. The whine of the engine was muffled, although still loud; already my head was pounding with it.

“Here we go,” Charles said, and moved the control stick gently; the plane taxied down the field, picking up speed bit by bit until, once more, I felt suspended in a grand leap—before the wind caught us and propelled us up, up, up.

The moment we took flight, I noticed that Charles looked quickly out the side of his window, did a double take, and looked again. His hand gripped the stick, muttering something under his breath.

“What?” I asked, trying my best not to squeal in delight as we skimmed the tops of pine trees, so close I could have sworn I felt them tickling the soles of my feet.

Charles didn’t reply, so I shrugged and enjoyed the scenery; the sound, glittering with white birds—sailboats, that is; the vast estates, many of which I recognized now as the homes of some of Daddy’s banking associates; the vivid green undulating below. The plane bumped and bucked as it gained altitude, causing my stomach to do its own jittery acrobatics, but then it smoothed out so suddenly that my heart soared. My worries about Dwight, questions about my future, doubts about my purpose in life, all fell away. I was light, translucent; luxuriously, I stretched my arms and legs, wondering if the sun’s rays could pass right through me.

Then I turned to my companion. Instead of the sure, carefree grin I expected to see, Charles’s mouth was set in a straight line, and those startling blue eyes were narrowed in steely concentration.

“We lost a wheel,” he shouted over the pulsating drone of the engine. I realized conversation was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

“What?” I shouted back.

“On takeoff. I thought I felt something. We left one of the wheels on the ground.”

“So?” We were up in the air now; what did we need wheels for?

“Landing. A bit challenging,” was all he said. Then he flicked some switches with his thumb, muttered something that sounded like a complicated mathematical equation, and nodded to himself.

I wanted to ask more but felt ridiculous, shouting so.

“Loud!” I said instead, pointing to my ears.

Charles nodded. “Some people use cotton. In their ears.” He pointed to his. “I don’t. That’s not flying.”

I nodded, as if I understood.

We flew for a while in silence. Then he turned to me again, his brow wrinkled in concern, as if something had just occurred to him. “We should stay up awhile to burn off fuel so landing is safer,” he shouted. “Do you have other plans today? I’m not keeping you from something?”

For some reason, this last question struck me as hilarious; he seemed more worried about my social schedule than he was about the plane! And so I surprised us both by laughing.

“No!”

“Good,” he said, his eyes widening and his grin deepening. “Although that means you’re stuck with me for a while.”

“I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be stuck with,” I replied. And although I said it flippantly, I meant it. Who else would I rather be with in this situation? No one.

Was I afraid at all? It’s incredible to believe now, but I was not. I had such confidence in Charles; as we flew on and on, the relentless clamor of the engine giving me a slight headache but nothing more, I honestly forgot about the “challenging” landing coming up. Instead, I was almost grateful for the situation. We were trapped alone together in the sky for hours. We would have something remarkable to share; something to bind us to each other. I seized this realization greedily, and, hoarding it, forgot all about the danger.

“You take the controls,” he suddenly called, almost an impish gleam in his eyes.

“What?”

“Take the control stick.”

“I—I can’t!”

“Why not? You want to learn, don’t you?”

Why he assumed this of me, I had no idea, but as soon as he said it I realized he was right. This, at last, was something I could do . Right now; before I had a chance to think about it and analyze it until I was no longer even sure what it meant.

“You fly,” Charles shouted. “Don’t be afraid. You can do it.”

So I leaned over, reaching with my left hand. His hand was still on the stick, but I grasped it, just above his, and for a moment both our hands were flying the plane, we were steering our path together. And while we didn’t even glance at each other, I felt a charge jolt through me and knew that he felt it, too. His breathing quickened.

Then he let go. And I was flying the plane myself. At first smoothly—I was still thinking of his hand, touching mine, unaware of what I was really doing. Then, however, I was aware—aware that I was actually, really, flying an airplane!—and I overcompensated by gripping the stick tighter, which caused it to jerk right. And so did the plane. Steeply, it began to bank, and as my entire body was blanketed in a cold sweat, my hand shaking, I overcorrected and it banked precipitously left.

Charles didn’t exclaim, didn’t even suck in his breath. He simply sat with his arms folded across his chest, allowing me to find my own way, somehow confident that I would. And finally, my hands still clammy but my heart now steady, I did. We flew in a straight line, and I felt the plane tug against me, like a horse, and I remembered how sensitive a horse is to his bit, and that’s how I finally learned to fly. As if I were holding reins instead of a stick; as if I were riding. Even the little pockets of air that we hit began to feel no more dangerous than jumping a horse over a gate.

I don’t know how long I flew; my shoulder began to pinch, however, and Charles flipped a switch on the dashboard, looked at his watch, and tapped his head. “I’ll take over now. Landing.”

“Oh.” After he grasped the stick, I let go. Charles suggested, his voice so reasonable even as he had to shout, that I gather the cushions from the two rear seats and place them on either side of me, which I did.

“I’m going to take us down over there.” He gestured to a field with a longer airstrip than the one we had taken off from. “We’ll need the extra space.”

“All right.” I was calm. So was he. The air inside the plane suddenly felt heavy, pressing me into my seat, and our voices sounded deadened to my ears. Still, I was not afraid. I trusted Charles Lindbergh, the man who had conquered the sky, to bring me back safely to earth.

We circled the airstrip a couple of times, lower and lower. Several people ran out of a small shack and a neighboring house to look at us. They waved, and I waved back.

“They’re telling us not to land.” Charles had a grim smile on his face. “They can see we’re missing a wheel.”

“They’re in for a treat, then!” I continued to wave at the figures, jumping wildly below.

“Brace yourself, and as soon as we stop I want you to unbuckle and exit the plane. If the door won’t budge, push the window and crawl out. Then run as far away as you can. Can you do that for me?”

It was that last “for me” that stirred me from my eerie calm. It touched my heart; truly, as if the words wormed themselves into my flesh, between my ribs. I felt adrenaline tingling my every pore, and I nodded, holding on tight to the edges of the seat. As the ground came rushing up at us, I instinctively ducked my head, feeling, not seeing, the plane hit the ground. For a suspended breath, I thought we were fine—but then I felt something break beneath us. “The wheel,” I said—or maybe it was Charles. It was the only word either one of us, or both of us, spoke.