Melanie Benjamin - The Aviator's Wife

It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when she finally persuaded her father to let her study in Paris—something he had resisted for reasons he did not care to share with anyone—that she acknowledged it.

I took her to Idlewild, and together we wrestled her three mammoth suitcases into the terminal where they were checked. Her hat bag and makeup case would accompany her in her coach seat; Charles forbade any Lindbergh to travel first class. He always sat in the very back of a plane, himself.

My daughter would not meet my gaze when I kissed her goodbye in the terminal; she had not met my gaze once since she found that letter. So I turned to go with a heart as heavy and cumbersome as the luggage she was carrying.

Abruptly, I felt a tug at my sleeve; Ansy embraced me from behind, with more than a trace of desperation, and whispered into my ear, “I understand, Mother. You know, I really do.”

When I turned around, the only thing I saw was her white hatbox slipping through the crowd, and then she was absorbed into the line of other passengers waiting to board a Pan Am Stratocruiser to Paris. A Lindbergh bound for Paris—I couldn’t help but smile.

There were tears in my eyes as I watched the plane take off; tears of happiness and of relief. I felt as if my own daughter had given me absolution.

I prayed for her, on her way to the rest of her life, to the other side of the ocean her father had crossed so long ago. I prayed for us all. And I couldn’t help but hope that her journey would be less eventful than his—and mine—had been.

RECLUSE THOUGH HE WAS fast becoming, there was one invitation that Charles Lindbergh could not turn down. When asked to attend the launch of Apollo XI , my husband accepted, although he refused to appear on television, even when Walter Cronkite personally asked him to.

Instead, we breakfasted with the crew the day before. The launch facility in Florida was a stunning compound, with men driving around on golf carts wearing headphones, huge hangars where the crew had worked in the flight simulators, computers everywhere.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins would soon be flying to the moon. But only one man’s entrance prompted an earthquake of excitement and salutes. Powerful, intelligent men with crew cuts and thick black glasses all jostled, like little boys, to have their photographs taken with him. For once, Charles Lindbergh acquiesced with gracious humility.

Despite his stooped shoulders, his white hair, the deep lines around his eyes, to them he was still Lucky Lindy, the Lone Eagle. The man who had, one long ago day in May, made this incredible journey possible. I was not the only one in the room moved to tears, thinking about it.

Astronauts are manly; they are the closest thing we now have to what Charles was then; true explorers, just like Cortez and Columbus. Still, after Charles, right before we left, placed his hand upon Neil Armstrong’s shoulder and said, “Son, I’m proud of you,” the young astronaut’s voice wavered a bit when he answered, “Thank you, sir.

“You were the first,” Neil continued after a moment. “We only follow in your footsteps.”

The room broke into applause, and Charles took a step back as if surprised, bumping into me. He turned and only then appeared to remember that I was there; he was, I thought, grateful for my presence so that he could simply be one of a couple, an old man and his wife.

We didn’t speak as we were driven back to our hotel. For once in his life, I believe, Charles Lindbergh was overwhelmed by his legacy.

After the successful return of the crew, we were invited to the White House officially to welcome them home. Richard and Pat Nixon insisted that we stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, and after the formal dinner, I convinced Charles to remain for the dancing in the East Room, where Count Basie and his orchestra played until the wee hours. The magnificent surroundings, the champagne—my new satin gown—all went rather to my head. I found myself dancing the Monkey with Buzz Aldrin, who was surprisingly light on his feet. Jumping around to the music, embracing that once-familiar release from myself that I had always experienced on the dance floor, I caught a glimpse of Charles. He was standing on the sidelines, uncomfortable as ever, looking at me. Simply looking at me. Without a frown or a disapproving glare.

This time, though, I did not stop dancing, embarrassed. I smiled back, then coaxed Spiro Agnew into trying the Twist. Which he did, to the amusement of all.

That night, as we climbed into the enormous canopied bed, big enough so that we didn’t have to touch in our sleep, Charles cleared his throat.

“You looked very happy tonight.”

“It was fun, wasn’t it? All that dancing?”

“I don’t like this sort of thing.”

“I know you don’t.”

“Where did you learn those new dances?”

I was silent; Dana and I had gone to the Peppermint Lounge once, right before it closed, just to see what it was like. Utterly silly after a couple of martinis, we had watched the young people doing all the latest dances, before getting up to try one or two, ourselves.

“Oh, on television, I suppose,” I finally answered.

“Television.” Charles snorted. He, of course, never watched.

He cleared his throat again. Lying on his back, his arms crossed behind his head, he continued. “It did occur to me, however, tonight—watching you dance, if that’s what they call it these days—that if I hadn’t married you, this is the kind of life you would have had. You were an ambassador’s daughter, after all.”

“That’s true,” I said, sleepily. Rather tipsily, to tell the truth; my fancy hairdo—Reeve had insisted on taking me to her own hairdresser for the occasion—had escaped its prison of hairpins and Aquanet, and was leaning to the side of my head as I lay down.

“It occurred to me that you might have missed that kind of life. Do you? Do you ever wish you hadn’t married me?”

“That’s a ridiculous question.”

“No.” Now he turned over on his side, away from me so I could only imagine the look on his face. “It’s not a ridiculous question, at all.”

I rolled back over, staring up at the canopy, and didn’t answer, not for a long time, and eventually I heard him snoring. But I did not fall asleep so easily; I lay awake, blinking in the dark, surrounded by imposing portraits of Abraham Lincoln, wishing that I had had the courage to ask Charles the same question.

The next day, we left to go our separate ways. He was preparing to return to the Philippines, to a remote island where he was spending more and more time trying to understand nature as well as he had once understood technology. I thought I might go back to Darien, or maybe Switzerland, to a little chalet he had built for me, a present intended to entrap, not liberate. It was just one more place to squirrel me away from the part of life he did not understand—which was most of it.

But before we went to the airport, he asked, so politely, which was unlike him, if I might like to stop by the Smithsonian Institution. I agreed, and he thanked me, again, courteously, and I was reminded of how he had been when we first met; how formal, how old-fashioned. I almost felt as if he was courting me all over again.

Once inside the main museum building, I followed Charles as he made his sure way through the labyrinth of halls and rooms, finally climbing a wide set of stairs until we were standing almost nose to nose with an airplane.

A little monoplane, silver, suspended from the ceiling on slender wires so that it appeared airborne, as if gliding on a nation’s collective memory. That jaunty Spirit of St. Louis painted in bold letters across the nose.