Melanie Benjamin - The Aviator's Wife

I lived in a world of remarkable thinkers and dreamers; people whose greatest achievements usually involved the writing of books, the handshake of diplomacy, the paper chase of academia. Heroes were figures from history or from literature: knights errant, brave explorers crossing oceans fully aware that there might be dragons at the end of the rainbow. There were no heroes in these modern times, I had sincerely believed—until I found myself bumping elbows while doing the Charleston in a sea of collegiate humanity, shouting “Lucky—Lucky—Lin—DY!” at the top of my lungs.

And now, because I was the ambassador’s daughter—miraculously! astoundingly!—I was going to spend my Christmas holiday with him, this doer of all doers, this hero of all heroes, amen.

That first evening, he and Daddy left immediately for an official reception, while the rest of us unpacked on the second floor of the embassy; the “family quarters,” Mother explained, sotto voce, as she showed us all to our respective rooms.

“We have fourteen servants,” Con enthused, as she followed me into my grand suite, complete with a private bathroom. “Fourteen! Mother doesn’t know what to do!”

“I’m sure she’ll find something to occupy her time,” I said wryly. Our mother was as tightly wound as a bedside clock; gongs going off every hour as she filled her days with meetings and charitable dinners and fund-raisers and writing letters upon letters. I envied her energy, even as I resented it for taking her away from us. But it seemed to me that the hot, pulsating force of it affected me negatively when we were together, as if the two of us were a science experiment. It pushed me away so that I was always looking for dark corners and silences, space to think and feel and worry but never, ever, to do , despite—or, perhaps, in spite of—my mother’s shining, bustling example. Contemplation, rather than action; that seemed to be my lot in life, and I was ashamed of it even as I craved it.

“Oh, she does! There’s a party tomorrow, you know.”

“On Christmas Eve?”

“Yes, she says it’s intimate, just for the staff and all of us, but that probably means fifty, at least!”

“Oh, bother!” I sat down in a heap, putting the finishing disastrous touches to my crumpled traveling dress. A party. With Elisabeth. Old worries and doubts and paralyzing fears stole over me; no one would pay any attention to me , the colonel would dance with her , she’d look exquisite, I’d be a brown lump next to her, I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say, maybe the colonel would dance with me, but it would only be out of pity…

But it wasn’t Elisabeth’s fault, I scolded myself. My sister was simply one of the golden people, like Colonel Lindbergh: effortless, graceful creatures, like unicorns. The rest of us could only look at them in awe, through no fault of their own.

“What are you going to wear?” I asked Con wearily. She wrinkled her snub little nose.

“Something glamorous,” she said, with such assurance that I had to laugh, even as I envied her as well. Why couldn’t confidence be bottled, like perfume? I’d sneak into my sisters’ rooms at night and steal a few spritzes, just as I sometimes stole their clothes.

“Well, you’d better help me find something,” I told Con, moving toward my trunk.

“Something to catch an aviator’s eye?” she retorted wickedly.

I shrugged. But I didn’t contradict her.

THE NEXT EVENING, I hesitated outside the entrance to the formal reception room, calming my breath. For the first time since arriving, I noticed that the embassy wasn’t really as glamorous as it initially seemed. It was like a grand dame’s moth-eaten dress desperately covered in jewelry and gay scarves; the shining chandeliers and elaborate velvet portieres did not quite disguise the worn upholstery, the faint, spidery cracks in the ceiling. It was clean—I was sure Mother had something to do with that!—but shabby. I wondered how Mother liked her new home, or even if she did. She’d been planning a grand new house in Englewood when Daddy got his appointment; they were still going ahead with the building of it, but it would be years, now, before they could live in her dream home. Typically, she never allowed herself to voice a moment’s remorse about it.

As I held my breath, I could hear her fluty laugh, Daddy’s excited voice, Dwight’s hoarse chuckle, Elisabeth’s throaty murmur, and Con’s bubbly giggles. Also, a strange new instrument: a high-pitched yet masculine voice, offering only monosyllabic answers. Colonel Lindbergh. I felt my face flush, the bodice of my evening frock strain tightly against my breasts, flattened down as much as possible by a very hot, very uncomfortable rubber brassiere that Elizabeth Bacon, my roommate at Smith, had convinced me to buy.

“Wherever can Anne be?” Mother asked, and I imagined her looking at her watch, her mouth a thin line of impatience. So I took a deep breath—but not too deep in that cursed brassiere—and cleared my throat before entering the room.

“Here I am, Mother. I’m sorry—I’m afraid I got lost.”

The room was brilliant—so many chandeliers and candles—that at first I had to blink, adjusting my vision. Then I saw the forms of my family huddled around an enormous grand piano at the far end of the room. I had to cross that room somehow, and I blushed to think that they would all be staring at me. Oh, why hadn’t I arrived earlier? I could have slipped in unnoticed, not causing such a fuss—I felt the heat of their collective gaze upon my cheeks as I hurried toward them, my eyes staring only at my brocade evening shoes, the heels sinking into the plush carpeting. At last I reached them—I felt my father grasp my hand—but when I looked up, I saw that no one was watching me. And then I almost giggled at the absurdity of my vanity. I had made no grand entrance, after all. How could I, when he was in the room?

For every member of my family was turned toward Charles Lindbergh, and so I could easily slip behind my father, taking my usual place at the edge of the crowd. As I did so, Mother murmured, “Then leave a little earlier next time, dear.”

“Yes, sorry, Mother.” I peeked over Daddy’s shoulder; Colonel Lindbergh was standing on the other side of the piano, next to Elisabeth. While Daddy was all pink and round in his evening clothes, and my brother, Dwight, a solid brick, the colonel was tall and slim as a knife. He looked uncomfortable in black tails with white waistcoat; he stood stiffly, his elbows askew, his shoulders pinched. In almost all the newsreels and photographs I’d seen, he’d been in his flying clothes. An entire nation had memorized his worn jacket, jodhpurs, helmet with the goggles tucked under his arm, the scarf around his throat. It was jarring to see him out of this costume, away from his airplane.

But the face was the same—the heroic brow, stern chin, high cheekbones. His eyes were so blue as to be startling; I decided I’d never seen blue eyes before, until that moment. They were the color of morning, the color of the ocean; the color of the sky.

He caught me looking at him, then he looked away and began to tap his fingers nervously on top of the piano, as if playing a tune only he could hear. That was when I noticed his hands, his fingers long and tapered. I imagined them gripping the control stick of his plane, steering it across that endless ocean; I thought them more than capable of the task.

“Aren’t you, Anne?”

Someone had asked me a question and I had no idea what it was, or who had asked it. So I nodded like an idiot and said, “Yes,” and was amazed at the sound of my own voice. It sounded normal, while inside, my heart was still beating so wildly I felt my entire body throb with each pulse.