Chapter Eight #2
Polly laughed, the sound devoid of humor.
“God, no.” She hesitated. “I don’t know.
I haven’t really talked about it with anyone.
For a while after I told Frank I wanted a divorce and he ultimately agreed, it didn’t have to be real.
For months it was like this secret that I held inside.
Finally, I told my parents that I was leaving Frank.
They haven’t spoken to me since. My mother said I was breaking my father’s heart, that I was selfish and foolish, and that I should think of the girls.
No one in the family has ever gotten divorced, and she was horrified I was breaking that streak. ”
“I’m sorry.”
Polly shrugged. “I’m not surprised. I was dreading telling them. My parents have been married since they were eighteen. My father sleeps on the couch more nights than he sleeps with my mother, but they would never consider divorcing. What was I expecting?”
Of all the couples to end their marriage, Vivian never would have predicted Polly and Frank.
They were the model so many astronauts and their wives aspired to.
They were the ones who hosted holiday gatherings, inviting others to join in.
Their house was the unofficial home base for the astronaut families, and even though Polly had come to the position somewhat reluctantly, she was the wife they all looked to for guidance.
Polly was unquestionably Frank’s partner, and while Vivian had her doubts about the Space Race and whether they should be in it at all, Polly believed in going to the Moon, was proud of the work the astronauts did, even if she shared the same complaints and concerns about the lifestyle that others either voiced aloud or felt privately.
Divorce, though, was still very much a taboo in their circle.
After all, the competition for the astronauts to get a spot on a space mission was as cutthroat as it could get.
No one worked this hard or came this far to be left on the ground or relegated to a less important or prestigious mission.
But NASA wasn’t just looking for great astronauts—they were looking for good public relations, and that meant happy, intact families.
The wives were meant to be an ideal no woman could possibly achieve—in fact, one of the Mercury Seven wives, Rene Carpenter, had created a caricature of such a woman and given her the apropos moniker of “Primly Stable.”
No astronaut could afford to admit that there were cracks in their home life if they wanted a shot at going to the Moon.
There were rumblings that there were unhappy astro marriages, wives who were unraveling, who had turned to a bottle or pills that Doc Wyler prescribed, husbands who spent more time with their girlfriends than at home with their families.
Vivian often wondered what would happen when the cracks came to light in the public eye, if the wives were finally able to speak out loud about the things they’d only hinted at up to this point.
They’d yet to have a divorce in the space program. Once they did, how many other marriages would follow? Now that it was going to be Polly and Frank, well—who was next? How many spouses would be emboldened by Polly’s choice since she was the first one to acknowledge that this wasn’t working?
There were more than a few wives whose husbands were quite frankly awful, and Vivian would be the first to congratulate them when they finally said they’d had enough of being cheated on and treated horribly by men who were supposed to love and honor them.
There was an unspoken code that what went on at the Cape, stayed at the Cape.
While most of the wives lived with their children in Houston, some of the astronauts effectively lived secret lives, going out every night with girlfriends—which the wives had nicknamed “Cape Cookies”—on their arms. It was an open secret, but one that many of the astronauts protected for their fellow brothers in space.
And it wasn’t just the astronauts who turned a blind eye to their compatriots’ infidelities—the wives seemingly did as well, a fact that Vivian had never understood or expected.
They ignored the telltale, even blatant, signs that their husbands were cheating, and if a wife knew that another astronaut was stepping out on his wife and family, well—let’s just say no one acknowledged what was happening.
“Did he—” Vivian didn’t want to finish that question, didn’t want to introduce the dreaded Cape Cookie into the conversation, but they both knew how much of a reality it was when you were married to a man who everyone in the world wanted a piece of, a man who inspired a level of hero worship.
She’d never heard any whispers about Frank, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have someone on the side.
Vivian liked to think that she knew him well, knew the sort of man he was, wanted to believe that Joe would have told her if something was going on, that he would have stood up for Polly and the girls, but she’d been an astro wife for too long and had seen too much to be anything but pragmatic about such things.
“No, there wasn’t anyone else. I asked Frank that once when I was frustrated, and I don’t think he could have faked the surprise on his face at the question.
He genuinely looked like the possibility of cheating hadn’t even occurred to him.
I don’t think Frank would have had the time anyway considering how consumed he is with the mission.
Besides, Frank?” Polly gave a tired little laugh.
“He’d have given himself away after the first time he cheated. Frank’s terrible at keeping a secret.”
That was true. The other guys had always given him a hard time about that, joking that if the Soviets wanted to learn anything about the space program, Frank was their man.
Considering how seriously Frank took his job, the indictment had annoyed him tremendously, which only made the other astronauts tease him more.
“It almost would be easier if it was another woman,” Polly added. “How do you compete with the Moon?”
It was a common lament among the spouses. Before it was the Moon, it was space, and before space it was breaking the sound barrier, and before that flying a jet plane in the sky, and before that flying any plane, and before that—
It was difficult being married to someone who was always chasing the next thrill, the next leap forward.
It was tough being the one left behind at home to worry and wait, harder still when their lifestyle didn’t offer many opportunities for careers of their own since the astro wives with children were essentially single mothers while the men were at the Cape during the week, gone more than they were home, the rearing of children and keeping of homes set against the backdrop of their erratic and dramatic lifestyles often involving a Herculean effort.
And that was just life as a space wife.
It was heaven compared to what their previous lives as military wives had been.
Between the constant threat of deployment to a war zone, the frequent moves every couple of years, the ever-present absences that came with the various training and duty obligations, the imminent risk of death, and the fact that it wasn’t unusual to have a year go by where you only saw your husband for two or three months out of twelve, it could wear on even the most supportive spouse.
Not to mention, at one time or another many of the spouses had worked to financially support their husbands’ aspirations, from holding down jobs so the men could study to heavily contributing to the meager salary that their husbands’ military careers provided.
And still, when it came down to it, they were relegated to a back-seat role, their contributions minimized and dismissed in the face of their husbands’ positions as astronauts.
Betty Friedan would have had a field day with the dynamics at play in the space program.
It was utterly demoralizing that women were viewed solely in their roles as support for their husbands; it was hardly surprising that the same space program had made no efforts to include women in their astronaut program in the near decade since its inception.
“I haven’t told the girls yet,” Polly continued.
“I think they know something is going on, at least Grace does. Frank and I have been fighting more lately. I’ve tried to avoid doing it in front of them, but it’s hard.
It’s not like our house is that big, so they overhear everything.
We’ve taken to trying to schedule our fights to the evening when the girls are already asleep.
How sad is that? A couple weeks ago Grace woke up and her eyes were red, and it hit me that I think she heard me and her dad fighting and cried herself to sleep. What kind of a mother am I?”
The last part emerged on a sob, Polly’s shoulders shaking.
“You’re a great mom,” Vivian replied honestly, wishing she could say something that would help her friend believe it. “And the girls love you. You’ve been their constant through this wild, unpredictable ride.”
“I know. And that’s the part I feel the worst about.
The girls are used to Frank being gone, to worrying about him, to the moves, and changing schools, and all the things they shouldn’t have to think about at their age.
But they’ve always seen me as the one they can count on.
I’ve been the steady one, the one who put a smile on my face when Frank told us he was getting sent away on another mission, who told the girls everything was going to be alright.
And now it feels like I’m letting them down, because I’m the one telling them that everything in their lives is about to change even if they don’t want it to.
They’re going to expect me to fix it like I’ve fixed everything else for them, but there’s no taking them out for ice cream to make this better. ”