The Aviator's Wife (13 page)

“Begin what? What books and charts? Charles, please slow down and be more specific!” My voice began to rise, but I was so bewildered and, yes, disappointed. What happened to my romantic honeymoon?

My husband sighed, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“You’re going to learn to fly, as well as
navigate. I’m planning a trip to the Orient to chart the routes for passenger flights. I’ll pilot, naturally, but you’ll need to know how, as well. You’ll serve as navigator.”

“I—I,
navigate
?” It was such an awesome word. Magellan navigated. Columbus navigated. Da Gama navigated. How could I do such a thing? “Are you sure?” I asked anxiously, twisting the tie of my robe in knots. “Are you sure
you want me?”

“Of course. Who else would I want? Who else would I trust but you, my wife? I would like my eggs now, if you please.”

I could only stare at him, overwhelmed by all that was expected of me. Last night, I realized suddenly, had only just been the beginning. Charles Lindbergh had chosen me; that, in itself, had been enormous enough to absorb, and I hadn’t quite finished doing so.
But now I began to understand what that really meant. I would be not only his wife but his copilot. I would not only make his eggs but steer his course to the Orient.

I started to say, “I’ll try,” but stopped myself just in time. I understood that “try” would not be an acceptable answer.

Instead I said, “Of course. How do you like them?”

“Over easy.”

“Perfect. That’s just how I like my own
eggs.”

I did not like my eggs over easy. But it would be simpler, I knew, to pretend that I did.

Yet another thing I was learning. And so soon.

WE WERE DISCOVERED
on Block Island. We went ashore to purchase more supplies, and a man said, “Hey, ain’t you that Lindbergh fellow? And his new bride?”

I tensed, ready to flee; to my great surprise, Charles simply
scratched his nose and spit—two things
I had never seen him do before.

“That Lindbergh fellow? Nah. What would he be doing here? I heard they flew to Maine, that’s what I heard.”

“Huh. Now that I think of it, you’re right. That’s what I heard on the radio, too.”

Charles turned to me with a wink, and I smothered a smile; I caught his joy, his mischievous delight at his deception as he grabbed my hand, for the first time ever in public.
He held it tightly, even while we strolled leisurely through the little fisherman’s shack, loading up on eggs, cereal, and a can of coffee. (It had taken me three tries to make an acceptable pot that morning, and even then, all Charles would do was grunt and close his eyes as he drank it.)

I thrilled to be claimed in such a manner; that was the moment I felt well and truly married. Even the night
before had not made me feel so possessed. I had surely only imagined Charles’s frozen look when I tiptoed up for my wedding kiss; I had misunderstood all those awkward poses for the photographers in the days leading up to our wedding, when Charles had never once touched me, never once smiled down at me, never once behaved in any way like a man in love.

Finally, here, in this rambling shack with
buckets of worms in every corner, my husband did reach for me; he held on to me and at last all the tense, public weeks leading up to our wedding vanished, and we recaptured the intimate magic of the night he asked me to marry him. My heart did that crazy, weightless leap, like an airplane catching wing, and I could not stop myself from grinning. I even rubbed my face in the scratchy wool of his
sweater, like a cat marking its territory. And I think he was surprised, and touched, when I did.

I never wanted to leave that shack; I didn’t want to break the
spell of this miraculous, ordinary moment when a man and wife discussed the merits of cornflakes versus shredded wheat. I think I knew, even then, that moments like this between us would be too rare.

Oh, how did I know? Did I smell it,
like an animal smells an intruder in the wind? Hear it, like an animal hears danger in a branch snapping? For we were animals, Charles and I, trapped, caught; as soon as we left the shack, still clinging to each other in the haze of our astonishing, teasing intimacy, we were surrounded by people and reporters and photographers.

“It’s them!” somebody cried, and we sprang apart, caught—doing what?
I didn’t know; I felt only the shock of confusion, of guilt, as my heart beat wildly and my knees began to shake.

“Charles! Charles Lindbergh!” “Colonel!” “Anne!” “Mrs. Lindbergh! Annie!” “Look here!” “Look over here!” “How’s married life?” “Get any rest last night?” Guffaws, applause, questions, questions, and everywhere, people looking at me, staring at me, gaping at me from my head to my toes,
and I blushed, knowing why. I’d heard of old-fashioned shivarees, when relatives and friends spied on newlyweds, rousing them out of their beds, making crude jokes of their intimacy. This was a shivaree, a most public shivaree, and I was mortified by what I knew they were all thinking.

“Charles? Charles?” I spun around, blindly; the flash powder was exploding and I could feel the crowd pressing
closer and closer. What would happen when they got to us? Would they chew us up and spit us out, our bones picked clean? What was it Shakespeare had said about “a pound of flesh”? I couldn’t control my fears; I was imagining us both trampled on the dock, and I knew I was on the verge of my very first hysterics. I could feel everything moving faster and faster, utterly out of control, and I reached,
blindly, for my husband.

“Move, Anne!
Now!
” Charles was pushing me ahead of him, simultaneously trying to shield me from the crowd and using me to clear a path. I twisted around to look back at him, but he hissed, “Go on!” His eyes were wild, but his face was that closed-off mask that I had first glimpsed in Mexico City.

I clutched the soggy bag of groceries to my chest, worried that I might
break the eggs. Absurdly, I wondered if my hair was combed and knew that it wasn’t; it was streaming down my back, unkempt, like my clothes—a baggy sweater, dungarees, tennis shoes. I would be seen like this in every newspaper in the land. My heart sank. For this, ironically, would be my official wedding portrait. We had taken none at the ceremony, for fear someone would sell them.

So
this
was
to be the photographic evidence of my marriage—this mad sprint through a shrieking, clutching gauntlet of reporters, fishermen, businessmen, women, and a startling number of children; people who, for some reason, had run to see us, who felt they had a
right
to see us, on our honeymoon. No one would remember my exquisite pale blue gown of French silk, the bouquet of lilies of the valley picked
from the garden at Next Day Hill—all was a dream, a beautiful dream, now. So I ran, my head bowed, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Finally we reached the
Mouette
—the crowd chasing us as if we were fugitives—but discovered any escape was impossible. A mismatched flotilla of vessels—dinghies, canoes, fishing boats—were bobbing in the water just beyond the dock, boxing us in, their passengers standing
on the decks and even, in one case, hanging from a mast. Simply to get a look at us.

“What do we do?” I turned around, sniffling, wiping my tears.

“Now I wish we had a plane,” Charles growled. “We’ll have to wait them out. Surely some policeman will eventually come
and make them go away. I’ll radio for help once we’re inside the boat.”

A woman broke through the crowd and ran up to me.

“Charles!”
Before I could understand what was happening, she reached out to me; Charles tried to step between us, but not before she had wrapped her arms around me and smothered me in an embrace.

“You dear girl, you! You keep him safe and happy, you hear? And may God bless you with a little Lindy as soon as possible!”

“I—I—” I squirmed out of her arms; she was round and smelled of fresh yeast, and her
handbag kept hitting me on the side of the head.

“Please,” Charles said, pulling her away from me. “Please, leave us alone, all of you. We appreciate your good wishes, but we’d like to be left alone now.”

I stepped onto the slippery deck of the cruiser, miraculously managing to hold on to the groceries while falling hard on my knees. Charles helped me up and followed me down to the galley. He
assisted in putting the groceries away, not commenting on my trembling hands, the tears that kept springing to my eyes even though I tried to blink them away.

I waited for him to comfort me, to wrap me in his arms and tell me it would be all right. He didn’t; he looked at his watch instead.

“Try to have dinner on the table at eighteen-hundred,” he said, ducking his head as he disappeared into
our little cabin bedroom, where the ship-to-shore radio was. After a moment I heard his voice, calm, soothing, as he transmitted. Outside, there was still a great scuffle of feet on the dock, muffled, excited voices, but miraculously, no one came aboard the boat. Apparently everyone was content merely to stand on deck and watch and wait.

I twisted my hair into a knot at the back of my neck and
splashed some water on my face. Charles came back into the galley with his arms full of books and charts; he spread them out on the little wobbly table while I cooked, or rather heated a tin of beef stew over the tiny gas burner and opened a loaf of that awful white bread.

“Don’t let them get to you, Anne,” he said, as he studied a page in one of the books and scribbled something on it. “Don’t
let them make you cry. Never let them win.”

“I didn’t know we were at war.”

“Well, we are. I have been, ever since Paris. I’m sorry that you have to get caught up in it, too. But I’m also grateful that I no longer have to go through it alone.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” Then he did look at me, and smiled; it did what all his smiles—so few, I was beginning to understand; so precious—did to me. It made
my heart soar, my skin prick with warmth and attention; it dried my tears and gave me courage.

So I served up our dinner in that impossible wobbly galley, illuminated only by one battery-powered lantern hanging from the ceiling, swinging hypnotically, casting long shadows across our faces.

After I cleared up, my husband began to teach me how to fly.

Once, I leaned over to get a better look
at a diagram of an engine, and paused, ever so briefly, to rub my face in the sleeve of his sweater. With a soft sigh, he stroked my cheek and hugged me to him before he continued his instruction.

Meanwhile, just outside the boat, strangers kept chanting our names, an eerie incantation that plucked at my nerves.

And I knew that this was the bond we would share, that would bind us together forever.
Not the experience of losing a wheel on takeoff. Not the passion of the night before, nor even the vows we had uttered, the promises we had made before our families.

No, it was the experience of being hunted. Of being two animals, prey, trying our best to fight off those who would do us harm, even as they wished us well.

TAILWIND
. Vertical stabilizer. Longitudinal axis. Yaw.

Keep moving. Eyes
down. Never smile. Never engage.

The list of things I needed to learn grew longer with each passing day. Yet I mastered them all. I had to. Without them, I never would have been able to survive in my new role as the aviator’s wife.

CHAPTER 5

October 1929

T
HE GREAT
A
VIATRIX
paused in the doorway as she entered the room. She was clad in her usual trousers, shirt, and scarf, despite the fact that this was a formal affair. Her sandy hair cropped short, her body lean and long, her resemblance to my husband was obvious—and obviously calculated.

“It’s a wonder she didn’t change her name to Charlotte,” Carol
Guggenheim murmured, as the rest of the room burst into applause. The Great Aviatrix grinned, ducking her head in a bashful way, but I saw the glimmer in her eyes. Unlike my husband, she enjoyed the attention.

“Here she comes,” I whispered, as she made a beeline toward us. Charles, Carol, Harry, and I were standing in the middle of the Guggenheims’ drawing room at Falaise, their country estate,
that enormous Normandy castle I had first glimpsed last summer. The party was for us, to welcome us back from our latest cross-country flight. Only Harry and Carol could persuade Charles to attend such a grand soiree.

“Welcome back, sir.” The Great Aviatrix saluted my husband and flashed her toothy grin.

Charles saluted back with a faint smile, then shook her hand. From some corner of the room,
a camera flashed, and Carol immediately
stepped in front of me, protectively, and frowned; she always reminded me of a young lioness, fiercely guarding her young—in this case, Charles and me. Carol and Harry were always looking out for us, weeding out the climbers, those interested in exploiting us, from those who could genuinely help us or simply be our friends. And their home on the sound, with
its acres of land and forest, had become a haven for us from the press; we were welcome anytime, no questions asked.