6. Jo
CHAPTER 6
Jo
"Honey, the number of times you'll make your husband mad over the course of your marriage is too high of a number to bother with," Nurse Edwina says, waving a hand at Jo dismissively. "Pssh. If I worried every time I made mine angry, I'd have a head full of gray hairs."
Jo can't help it: she looks directly at Edwina's completely gray head with raised eyebrows. In response, Edwina gives her a short, wicked little cackle. "It's the nursing that did this to my hair, not the husband," she says, putting a hand to her silvery beehive.
Jo picks up a box of sterile bandages and passes it to Edwina, who is filling the supply closet on the second floor as Jo checks off the items on a clipboard. "Is it all the night shifts?" she asks earnestly.
"Oh, probably." Edwina pauses and lets her eyes drift up toward the ceiling. "And all the babies born on my watch, the people whose lives have ended while I was in the room, the staff romances I've had to turn a blind eye to, and the heartache of realizing that there are some injuries you just can't fix." She looks wistful for a moment. "But that's life, right, hon?"
Edwina holds out her hand for the next item, and Jo scans the cart for a big container full of aspirin. She checks it off on her list and passes it to Edwina to put into storage.
"It's just hard sometimes--life. Isn't it?" Jo scans her list and makes a tick mark next to surgical tape, searching for it on the cart. "I really bungled this one by writing about Bill, and now I have no right to be mad at him for discussing our life with his therapist when I discussed it with everyone who reads that magazine." She's mad at herself for not catching that parallel before trying to put Bill in his place, not only because he was right and she was wrong, but because it's almost crazy for her to be upset with him after the way she's used their private lives as public fodder.
"Well," Edwina says with a sigh. "I've never been to a psychiatrist myself, though Lord knows it wouldn't hurt me--or anyone, probably--but I admire your husband for giving it a go. And what goes on between doctor and patient is confidential, Josephine, so don't you go thinking that you can ask him questions or demand answers. What goes on in there is private."
Jo forces herself not to roll her eyes. "I know," she says. "It's just… I feel..."
"Jealous? Revealed? Curious? Suspicious?"
With a self-conscious laugh, Jo blows out a breath. "Yes. To all the above. It's a woman doctor--what if she's judging me and thinking I'm a terrible wife?"
"What if she's not?"
"Does a person go into therapy to sing their wife's praises, or do they go to talk through all of her worst behaviors and personality traits?"
Nurse Edwina stops what she's doing, pops one rounded hip, and plants a fist on it. She levels her gaze at Jo. "Again, I've never been, honey, but what your husband is doing and saying in there is his business. Not yours. You need to accept that he's going, watch the process from the outside, and assume that whoever this doctor is, she's doing good work with him. Got it? 'First do no harm.' They all take that oath." Edwina wags a finger at Jo and turns back to the cart. "Now, why don't you find me some laxatives and let me put them on the shelf here, huh?"
Jo smiles at Edwina, who has become something of a confidant to her over these past couple of years. Although Jo had found Edwina steely and a bit prickly when she'd first started at the hospital, she now finds her wry and empathetic. She dearly loves the older woman, and always looks forward to working with her on little projects so that they can chat like this.
As she hands over the box of laxatives, Jo smiles at Edwina. "Thanks for listening," she says. "I mean that."
Edwina waves a hand at her again as she turns back to the storage closet. "Oh, honey. It passes the time," she says in an off-hand way, but Jo knows it's more than that. These brief moments of connection with other women have changed everything about her life--they were the first thing that brought her genuine joy after moving to Florida with Bill and the kids.
Impulsively, Jo reaches out and gives Edwina a quick hug when she turns around from the closet.
"Oh, you," Edwina says, giving her a firm pat on the back to release her. "Now go visit some old sick people and let me do my work, will you?"
Jo smoothes down the front of her sweater and then takes her own cart, pushing it down the hall with a grin on her face.
* * *
“I hate events like this,” Jo says through gritted teeth to Frankie, who is standing next to her. Jo and a group of the astronaut wives are stationed off to the side of a big room at NASA, smiling and looking picture perfect. Their husbands are sitting at a table on the stage at the front of the big meeting room, and there are lights and cameras aimed at all of them. Their faces are young and unlined; handsome men with smoothed hair, big smiles, twinkling eyes. There is a buzz of excitement in the air.
“Today, February third, 1966,” Arvin North begins from his place at a podium under the lights. “The Soviet Union has landed its Lunar 9 probe on the moon.” Flashbulbs pop wildly, and the click of camera shutters crackles all around the room. North pauses and waits for a moment until it dies down. “This is obviously an exciting event for the entire world, and a coup for the Soviet Union. They have beat us to the moon.” Again, cameras clack and click in a burst. “I, however, do not see it that way. I see this as inspiration. As challenge. As motivation.”
Jo looks at the men seated at the table: Bill on one end, with Todd Roman, Ed Maxwell, Vance Majors, and Jay Reed seated in a line. Arvin North’s podium is at the opposite end of the table from Bill, and all the men have their eyes and smiles trained on their boss expectantly.
“These are our newest crop of astronauts,” Arvin North says, turning to nod at the men seated at the table. They’ve been with us now for nearly three years, training, preparing, working hard, and keeping their eyes focused on a moon landing for the United States. I think today is the right time to bring them forward and to show America that we have a strong, dedicated, amazing team of men who are ready to take us not just into the stratosphere, but the exosphere, and all the way to the moon.”
Applause, the noise of cameras, and shouted questions break out in the room, and the sudden burst of noise startles Jo. She puts a hand to her heart and looks out at the rows of reporters.
“How are things going?” Frankie leans in closer, putting her mouth near Jo’s ear so that they can talk between the two of them and not have the other wives overhear.
Jo keeps her eyes on the crowd but takes a step closer to Frankie, standing next to her so that their bare upper arms are touching. “We had a bonfire on the beach this past weekend,” she says, “and everything was going great. The kids were playing, we were about to roast some hotdogs, but then Bill just lost it.”
Frankie waits as the room goes silent and a selected reporter is allowed to ask a question. When Arvin North launches into his answer, she turns her head back to Jo and whispers. “He lost it? How? Why?”
Jo puts a hand over her mouth discreetly and whispers back. “I was asking some questions about therapy and he was responsive, which kind of surprised me, and then when I admitted that I didn’t like him talking to some strange woman about our lives and our marital issues, he exploded.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes. He reminded me ever-so-gently that I’d used our marriage as material in my story, and that every woman in America already knew what went on behind closed doors in our lives.”
“Ouch.” Frankie winces. “He’s not wrong.”
“I know.” Jo glimpses Barbie, who is standing a few feet away from them along the wall of the room. Things have been a little off between them since Bill fought with Barbie’s brother on New Year’s Eve, but they seem to have tacitly decided to let the men handle their own issues without the women feeling any sort of real fracture in their friendship. For this, Jo is grateful.
With all the lights focused on the stage, the women are clustered in the dim recesses of the space. Barbie flicks her gaze in their direction curiously, and Jo smiles at her before leaning in even closer to Frankie. “I knew right away that I’d messed up, but he just stood and walked away. I ended up cooking everything, the kids ate, Bill wouldn’t look at me, and we haven’t talked about it since.”
The room explodes in discussion again as the reporters vie for the opportunity to pose the next question. The women wait.
“So, you two haven’t spoken at all?” Frankie says after things settle down again.
“No, we have.” Jo folds her arms across her chest and looks at the stage, trying to pretend that she’s paying attention to whatever is being asked. She feels like they’re standing off to the side in gym class—like a group of girls who don’t want to take part in sports and who don’t want to be called on by the teacher. “We’ve talked, but it’s all been surface stuff: ‘How are the kids? How was your day? Do you want milk with dinner?’ Stuff like that.”
“Have you tried… you know?” Frankie nudges her with an elbow and Jo makes a surprised sound that comes out like a laugh tangled with a snort. “Maybe you two just need to shake the sheets a little.”
“Frankie!” Jo hisses. “My God!”
Carrie Reed is next to Frankie, and she giggles behind one hand. “Sorry,” she whispers to them. “I just heard that last part.”
Jo clams up immediately.
"I'm serious," Frankie says. "Get things back on track. And do it quickly, because, well… you know." She shoots Jo a warning look.
Jo's head snaps in Frankie's direction. She realizes from the arched eyebrow that Frankie is referring to Jeanie Florence.
"What?" Frankie says defensively. "I'm just saying that you need to make sure things are good between you two."
Jo sighs because she knows Frankie is right. Leaving things the way they are between her and Bill while he spends his work days with Jeanie isn't a good idea. She’s about to say something back to Frankie when the men stand up behind the table and face the room full of attendees. They all stand erect and at attention, like the former military men they are.
“I think it’s time to put on our game faces, girls,” Barbie whispers to all of them, smoothing down the front of her dress and plastering on a smile as the men file off stage and out a side door. “We’ve got a meet-and-greet to get through.”
Jo wants to do anything but stand around the giant, open space at Cape Kennedy that serves as the event spot. They’ve had several photo ops there, as well as cocktail parties and other gatherings. She pulls herself together and holds her head high, following Frankie and the other women out of the room and into the open space with its high ceilings and to-scale replicas of different space capsules.
“Ladies,” Dave Huggins says, greeting them with his camera in hand. He’s about forty, with dark hair parted to one side, and thick-framed glasses that hide how handsome he really is.“Can I get a photo of you chatting?”
The women haven’t started to talk yet, and Jo eyes the servers circulating with champagne on trays. It’s about ten minutes to five, and though that is technically cocktail hour, it feels a little early to get tipsy on bubbly. Still, when the waiter passes by, Jo takes a flute.
“Jo, if you could stand next to Jude, that would be great,” Dave Huggins says, already squinting into his viewfinder. He waves with one hand to shoo Jo into position, and she obliges.
“Hi,” Jude says as they stand together, facing one another. Instead of champagne, Jude holds a glass of orange juice in one hand. “None of the bubbly stuff for me.” She looks a little sad about it, but also kind of pleased with herself, as she should be. Jo is well aware of the personal struggle Jude went through to get to where she is now, and she’s proud of her.
“Hi, yourself.” Jo clinks her flute against Jude’s glass. “Happy announcement day for our boys.”
Jude laughs and sips her juice. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“I have no idea.” Jo glances at her watch; it’s five o’clock now, and she tips her champagne glass and takes a solid drink. “I guess it’s something like that, right? Arvin North called them here and introduced them to the world as the newest crop of astronauts, so that’s a big deal, right?”
Jude frowns at her. “Well, it is a big deal… but, Jo? Are you okay?”
Jo folds one arm across her stomach and takes another drink as she looks around. Without realizing it, she’s scanned the room for Jeanie Florence. “Mmm,” she says with a nod, hoping it sounds noncommittal. “I’m great.”
“You don’t look great—and I mean that in the nicest way,” Jude says. “It’s just that the last couple of times I’ve seen you, you’ve seemed distracted.”
Jo’s attention returns to Jude full force. “I have?”
Jude nods, eyes wide. “Yes. And so I’m asking: are you really okay?”
A film of tears passes over Jo’s eyes like a flash flood. She blinks them back, forcing a smile and a nod for Jude. “I am,” she says, reaching out to take one of Jude’s hands in hers. “I’m just going through one of those phases where you don’t feel like a good mom, or a good wife, you know? When everything seems like it’s wrong, and it’s your fault, and you can’t fix it.” She takes a step closer to Jude, looking at her imploringly. “Have you ever felt like that?”
Jude nods. “I have,” she says in a quiet whisper. “I think we all have.”
They’re still holding one another’s hands and Jo is about to say more when Dave Huggins returns. “Hey, gals,” he says, snapping a photo of Frankie from an angle. “How about if you all stand in a line with your right foot in front, and, yeah—just like that,” he says, watching as the women rearrange themselves. “Right. And if you can hold your drinks in both hands in front of you, then you’ll look completely uniform. Kind of like a line of Rockettes,” he says, giving Frankie a knowing look and an eyebrow wiggle.
If any of them liked Dave Huggins less, they would have told him to take a long walk off a short pier, but he’s been a presence in their lives for the past few years, and he’s never been anything but professional, friendly, and a great champion of the wives, taking excellent photos of them, and always making their families look good in print.
So the women line up. They smile. They laugh and look at one another with bright eyes, hamming it up for Dave and for NASA. After all, this is their husbands' chosen profession, their families' livelihood. And there's an element of glamour to the whole thing that is undeniable. To be held up before all of America, and even the world, as families of excellence, as wives of the men who may soon walk on the moon--well, this does something to a woman's feelings of importance. Jo looks around at her fellow wives, seeing the gleam in their eyes as they tilt their heads to one side coquettishly, or twist their bodies just slightly to find a better angle for the camera. These are all signs to her that they know their places; they know what's expected of them as astronaut wives, and they understand what's at stake here.
Jo looks back at Dave, tossing her head just slightly to rearrange her hair and to loosen her shoulders. She forgets about Bill and his therapist, about Jeanie Florence, about her own inability to put her fingers to her typewriter and get something on paper at the moment. Instead, she feels the flare of determination behind her eyes as she turns her slim body at a three-quarter angle, glancing back at Frankie over one shoulder and laughing along with the other women.
It's time to get real here: only three men will be going to the moon when it finally happens. And none of them knows whether the impression that the families or the wives make will do anything to grow the cachet of their men in the eyes of the powers that be. So, without being told, each of the women attempts to fill the unspoken roles that have been laid out for her: perfect homemaker; adoring wife and mother; beautiful girl-next-door; and future wife of an astronaut.
Jo can't be sure whether her stories in True Romance will help or hurt Bill in the long run, but it hits her right there, as Dave's flash bulb pops repeatedly, that she needs to step up her game.
So Jo smiles. She poses. She keeps her eyes on the prize. And the prize is presenting the world with the all-American family. Helping her husband to get a leg up in hopes of being chosen for the right missions. And, most importantly, keeping her marriage strong no matter what.