Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Six months after their wedding, Joe was officially selected for astronaut training and they moved to Houston, Texas.
On the plus side, Frank had been selected for astronaut training as well, and Vivian took comfort in the fact that Polly would be by her side as she acclimated to yet another transformation in her life.
As soon as they arrived in Texas, the full weight of what she’d signed up for began to hit Vivian. Life in Italy had been relatively quiet, but astronaut training was another beast entirely.
Her relaxed, happy, confident husband became stressed-out and singularly focused as if overnight. Competition for the astronaut spots was exceedingly tough, and the competition spilled over from the astronauts themselves to their spouses.
Project Mercury—which comprised the first seven astronauts—was finished, and while the space program was turning its sights to the next phase, Gemini, there was a growing contingent of public opinion that was strongly questioning whether the cost of manned spaceflight was worth the reward.
To that end, it felt like the astronauts were called to do more, be better, in order to justify their existence.
In addition to how difficult the training was, Vivian saw how much Joe worried about whether he’d get his chance to go up at all before the manned space program was scrapped entirely.
It was ironic that for so long Joe had been focused on getting selected for astronaut training, and now that he was there, it seemed like the dream was growing even more out of reach.
She barely saw him, spent most of her time in Houston either looking for jobs or helping Polly set up the nursery in her house now that she and Frank were expecting their second child.
Whenever Vivian felt frustrated with the turn her life had taken and how difficult it was to maintain a relationship that most certainly came second to the space program, she only had to look at what Polly was going through to feel like she had little to complain about.
At this point, she hoped Polly had the good fortune to go into labor during one of the few breaks she and Frank had, because otherwise Vivian had a sneaking suspicion she was going to be the one by her friend’s side while she gave birth.
Each day, Joe came home from training more discouraged than the day before.
“How was your day?” Vivian asked him one evening, staring up at the ceiling as she lay beside him in bed.
He sighed. “Not great.”
Surprise filled her. She asked him the same question every evening, and every evening he said the same thing, that training was “fine,” even though “fine” sounded like a synonym for something, well…“not great.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
Vivian had realized early on in their marriage that Joe wasn’t used to sharing his concerns with someone else.
Most of his problem-solving seemed to happen internally, and only when she pushed a bit did he let her in and share what was bothering him.
Little by little, he was talking to her more, but she also understood that he had built a career on his own, one that he was proud and fiercely protective of, and sometimes when confronted with professional struggles, he was reluctant to let her in.
“Some of the guys don’t respect me,” he told her after a beat, and knowing Joe as she did, knowing how proud he was, she understood how much it cost him to admit that.
“Why wouldn’t they respect you?”
She was learning things about herself in this marriage, too, and Vivian realized that she was incredibly protective of her husband, and when Joe was slighted at work, she became irrationally angry.
Besides, this was Joe. Everyone loved Joe. Everyone looked up to Joe.
“Because of the test pilot thing. I’m just a fighter pilot and everyone knows it.”
One of the challenges with Joe going through astronaut training was how much Vivian didn’t know—or understand—about the subtle nuances of his career.
As newlyweds, Vivian felt like she was playing catch-up on the things that the other spouses who had been married far longer than she had learned long ago. And the other wives judged her for it.
“You’re not ‘just a fighter pilot,’ ” Vivian protested. “You’re a great fighter pilot. I seem to remember someone telling me that,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Joe groaned. “I was an ass for saying that.”
“No, you were just confident. You should be confident now. You’re great at everything you do.”
He arched an eyebrow at her, making an exaggerated face. “Everything?”
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t lie. “Everything.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry you’re having to see me like this. I think it’s starting over that feels so hard. I’ve been flying for so long that it’s as natural to me as breathing. But this is all new, and I’m starting to think I’m too old to learn something new.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s exhausting. The doctors poke at you; you’re constantly a lab rat. They’re hunting to find something they can use against you, some ailment that’s disqualifying.
“I keep watching pilots around me—good pilots, great pilots—wash out in the program. We all know that some of us are going to be cut, and I keep thinking that it’s only a matter of time until I’m next.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Vivian replied. “You’re going to be an astronaut. And you’re going to go to the Moon, just like President Kennedy promised. I have no doubt of that.”
Joe pressed his lips into the curve of her neck, a line of goose bumps pebbling on her skin.
“You know it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re an astronaut or not,” Vivian murmured.
“I just want you to be happy. Just want you to be yourself, whatever version of that I get. I don’t understand the whole astronaut thing.
I didn’t get the fighter pilot thing, either,” Vivian confessed, her hand stroking Joe’s chest.
He snorted. “That’s not exactly news. You’ve made that point abundantly clear a time or two or one thousand. Be honest—you wish you’d married someone utterly boring and not nearly as dashing?”
Vivian laughed. “You are entirely too handsome. I’ve always thought that, too.”
“Too handsome? And to think of all the years I spent when I was young worrying girls would never find me attractive.”
“You were cute when you were young,” she protested, remembering the photographs she’d seen of the skinny boy with the serious expression on his face.
“I was all limbs and no sign of growing into them. The names they called me—”
“I would have loved you then. Just like I love you now.”
“I know.” Joe said the words solemnly, like a vow just between them. “I think that was what attracted me to you most in the first place. The fact that you weren’t interested in me because I was a fighter pilot.”
“Because I was attracted to your hidden depths?”
Joe had the good sense to look abashed. “Well, no. Actually, it was because you were a challenge at first. I’d gotten used to not having to work hard, you see, and—”
She shoved him lightly. “Pig.”
“I’m being honest,” he protested. “But then there you were, making eyes for Graham Carlson”—he made a face as he said the newsman’s name—“and all I could think was that I would tie myself up in knots doing whatever it took to have you look at me like that.”
“That’s all it was—that I was a challenge?”
It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, hopefully wouldn’t be the last time they lingered over the details of how they met, as though they needed to say it aloud to remember the marvel of it—the way he wasn’t supposed to be in town at all, but he’d broken his arm, and Vivian never would have agreed to go on a double date with him and Frank if Polly had told her they were fighter pilots before she’d walked into the bar that night, the tenuous manner in which their paths had crossed, in which it felt like fate had a plan for them despite their best intentions, as if the stars themselves had aligned to bring them together.
“Of course not,” Joe replied smoothly, shifting in the bed so that he tucked her against him. “You were everything.”
She laughed. “Good line.”
“Great line,” he corrected. “Also, completely the truth.”
“And to think, we never would have had this if Frank hadn’t stolen Polly away from you.”
Joe laughed. “You think Frank stole Polly away?”
“Well, didn’t he? After all, you set the date with her and then she ended up with Frank.”
This part, they’d never discussed.
It was strange looking back on how it unfolded, knowing what she did now.
At the time, Joe had been singularly unruffled by the entire experience, which now knowing him like she did, knowing the way he looked at her, the way he felt about her, it was difficult to imagine him being so nonchalant about something he cared about slipping through his fingers.
“First off—Frank didn’t steal Polly away, and he never would have. Neither would I if the roles were reversed. We’re brothers. We wouldn’t do that to each other.
“I was interested in Polly when I met her, yes. She’s pretty, and smart, and funny. But that was all it was. When I got there, I saw you.”
“And let me guess, you were swept off your feet by how dazzling I was?” Vivian joked.
“I thought you were extraordinary. And then you expressed your doubts about whether we should go to space, and I’ll admit it gave me pause and I nearly revised that opinion.” Joe grinned. “Are you really going to make fun of the single most important moment of my life?”
“I thought the first moment you ever sat in a fighter jet was the single most important moment of your life.”
“Please don’t ask me to choose between my two great loves.”
“Because it isn’t a competition? Flight has your heart every single time, doesn’t it?”
Her tone was light, teasing, because she’d come into this marriage with her eyes open about who she married and what his priorities were.