1. May 1963
ONE
may 1963
JO
The house is intimidating to Jo: it’s brand new, entirely modern, and situated in a housing development so freshly hatched that the sidewalks still sparkle with chips of mica, and the palm trees aren’t much taller than a grown man. Windows are new and so clean that at least four children have run right into the plate glass on their way outside to play, and the driveways are all peppered with shining Buick Rivieras, wood-paneled Ramblers, and the sleek Corvettes that the newly-chosen astronauts are allowed to lease for one dollar per year upon arriving at Port Canaveral in Florida (this is a cute and clever way of getting around the rule that astronauts can’t receive free gifts, in Jo’s mind).
Everything feels like it’s just come out of shrink-wrap, and it lacks the cozy, homey, lived-in comfort that the Bookers are accustomed to. In fact, Jo’s first reaction to seeing Stardust Beach as they’d driven into the town, was to look out the window of their car, stone-faced, and wonder how anyone lived in a flat state without tall sugar maples, white oaks, and black walnut trees. All these palm trees , she’d thought. All this bright sunshine . The whole state feels like living inside of a lemon . But with beaches .
She wasn’t in Minnesota anymore.
In the hallway of the Booker home, which sits on a cul-de-sac of angular new homes, hangs a photo of Josephine and William Booker with their three children, James, Nancy, and Katherine. The photo was taken shortly after Bill Booker was chosen to join the ranks of would-be astronauts at NASA, and was meant to capture the happy family as they embarked upon a journey that would change their lives—and possibly history as well.
Jo passes by the photo with a stack of pool towels in her arms now, pausing as she cocks her head and contemplates it. Her kids are adorable, of course. Bill looks handsome and dignified, and she looks…Jo isn’t sure how she looks. Hesitant? Content? Fearful? Lost? Maybe a little bit of everything. The woman in the photograph seems to know that she’s the nucleus of the people around her, but also that she’ll need to hold everyone together in the face of whatever is coming next. And that right there is the rub, isn’t it? Because she has no clue what is coming next. All she knows for certain is that her husband, a decorated Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, has been chosen to possibly go to outer space. The very idea of it completely terrifies her.
Jo reaches out to straighten the frame and catches a glimpse of her own reflection in the glass. Her hair is styled, her eyes lightly penciled and coated with mascara. She is not a stranger to herself exactly, but to her own eyes she is an unfamiliar vision. She has done herself up in a way that she thinks is presentable to the other astronauts and their wives, and she’s welcomed them and all of their children into her new home so that everyone can get better acquainted. Jo blinks, willing the woman in the glass to come into focus. To be familiar. To be her .
In the front room, someone switches the vinyl that’s spinning on the blonde wood Zenith console stereo and puts on Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” Jo tries on a smile as she tucks her straight brown hair behind one ear, admiring the way it flips up at the ends. She rubs her lips together, making sure her frosted gloss is in place, then—giving the hair at her crown one more quick pat—she turns to take the towels out to the gaggle of children in her backyard who are currently squealing and splashing pool water everywhere while the barbecue sends up smoke and the smell of charbroiled meat.
“Josephine!” a woman says, startling Jo right there in the hallway. “Your home is so lovely.”
For a moment, Jo feels as though she’s been caught wandering through the private rooms of someone else’s house, but no—this is her home; she lives here, tucked into a sunny yellow stucco house with a turquoise kidney bean of a pool right off the kitchen. As a young girl, Jo had always figured she’d live and die in Minnesota, spending her summers at the lake, and her winters laughing and playing in the snow. Never in a million years would she have imagined herself living in a community of NASA people just a stone’s throw from Port Canaveral. This was never in the plans. And yet here she is, walking through the hallway of her very own midcentury modern home, holding a pile of freshly laundered pool towels, and listening to her son and her two daughters yelp and holler outside with their new neighborhood friends.
“Thank you,” Jo says, smiling at the woman. “It probably looks a lot like yours does. And you can call me Jo.”
The woman, tall and willowy with a cigarette in one hand, gives her a grin that makes Jo feel as though they’re already old friends, although Jo has been so occupied with unpacking and keeping the kids busy that she hasn’t actually met any of the other families until today. Should she have gone around and introduced herself to the other wives in the cul-de-sac by now? Probably. It must seem unfriendly of her, but in truth, she’s just out of her element.
Jo inhales and exhales, forcing herself to smile and relax; her nerves are about to get the better of her, and she hasn’t even been out amongst the guests for any real amount of time.
“I came in while you were in the kitchen,” the woman says, still grinning at her. “You were busy. I’m Frances Maxwell,” the dark hair, dark-eyed woman says, extending a slim hand with red lacquered nails. She holds the cigarette in her other hand, elbow perched on her sharp hip as the smoke wafts over her shoulder. “But I only answer to Frankie.” She reminds Jo of Sophia Loren, both in figure and in smoldering eye contact.
Jo shifts the towels to one hand and runs a hand over the front of her white linen dress before offering it to Frankie to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been so busy getting things sorted out here that I haven’t met anyone in the neighborhood yet. I just…” Jo trails off, her eyes darting down the hall nervously. She wants to make a good impression.
Frankie appraises her for a beat, taking a drag on her cigarette and exhaling the smoke upwards through lips the same color as her nails. “Funny thing,” she says. “We both go by boys’ names. Are you a tomboy, Jo Booker?” Jo shakes her head, though she does enjoy fishing, camping, and riding a bicycle. Maybe she is a bit of a tomboy after all. “Me either,” Frankie says, putting a hand on Jo’s arm. “I wouldn’t trade in being a woman for all the tea in China. The dresses, the makeup, the glamour—it all seems like so much more fun than being a man, doesn’t it?”
Frankie is more plain-spoken and down-to-earth than Jo would have imagined for a woman wearing a bias-cut silk dress in the middle of the Florida humidity, and it’s easier than Jo expects to just relax and be herself. She laughs. “I’m a big fan of being a woman,” Jo agrees.
“Come over sometime and we’ll have a drink by my pool, alright?” Frankie says, blowing smoke over her shoulder again. “You seem like a real peach, Jo Booker, and I think I’m gonna like you.” Frankie winks at her as she takes another drag on her cigarette. “I’ve got to grab a beer for my husband. See you out there?”
Frankie walks down the hallway, hips swinging beneath her sheath of a dress, cigarette held aloft in one manicured hand.
Frankie is obviously going to be a handful, but she seems fun. She’s nothing at all like Sally or Genevieve, Jo’s closest friends from Minnesota, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe a fresh start means jumping in headfirst and trying new things. Meeting new people. Being adventurous. Maybe it means being open to things she previously thought she’d never get used to.
Regardless, Jo thinks she may have just made her first Florida friend.
The dining room table is pushed up against one wall, and Jo has covered it with platters of fried chicken, a Jello mold with flecks of pineapple and chunks of canned peaches suspended inside of it, bowls of baked beans, a tray of deviled eggs, and the various potluck dishes that the other women have carried in and handed to her as their children raced through the open sliding door and out to the pool. In one green glass serving bowl is a heap of coleslaw; another platter boasts brownies covered in white chocolate icing. Another wife has brought cupcakes, and the family who lives next door to Barbara has contributed a tray of miniature hotdogs stuck with toothpicks that have red, white, and blue plastic flags waving from them. Jo is doing her best to keep track of names and faces and which kids belong to which family, but to be perfectly honest, she’s confusing people left and right as she refills drinks and laughs at their small talk and joking asides.
“I really love what you’ve done with the place, Mrs. Booker,” Barbara says, waddling over to where Jo is standing by the dining room table. Barbara has her right hand pressed into her lower back, and her hugely pregnant belly protrudes out in front of her; she looks like she’s smuggling a beachball beneath her turquoise-and-white checked tent dress. “I had no idea what to do with this space in my own house,” Barbara says, sweeping the hand not pressed to her lower back around to indicate the open kitchen, dining, and living area. “It’s just so…modern. I mean, I love it, but I grew up in Connecticut with lots of cherry wood, four-poster beds, and brocade. This looks like a house out of a magazine, doesn’t it?” Barbara turns her head to look at Jo as she wrinkles her impossibly small and cute nose. “It’ll take some getting used to.”
Jo nods and glances over to where Bill is standing with a knot of men who are all dressed as he is: slicked down hair; collared short-sleeve shirts; dress slacks ironed so the crease shows. Each man has a bottle of beer in hand, and even from a distance, Jo can see that Bill is a bit older than the other men—not much, but enough that it’s noticeable. Bill has always had a whiff of maturity to him that makes him seem older than other people his age, and in fact, it was one of the things that Jo had liked about him right away.
“You’re so right,” Jo says absentmindedly, tearing her eyes from the men and bringing them back to Barbara. “It’s not what I’m used to either.” She tucks her hair behind her ear nervously and points at the sunken living area. “We moved here from Minnesota, and our house there was very traditional: split level, master bedroom upstairs, kids’ rooms downstairs. My kitchen was closed off from the rest of the house so I could cook in peace, and the living area was a den with a door that closed. This configuration is going to take some getting used to. It feels like we’re all sharing the same space all the time.”
Barbara walks over to the edge of the dining space and looks out at the sunken living room where Jo has placed her furniture. She’d assured Bill before leaving Minnesota that her heavy wooden end tables, coffee table, and the dark plaid upholstery on her couch and loveseat were timeless, but now, here in light, airy, sunshiny Florida, it all looks kind of staid and boring. Not to mention out of place—after all, they’re essentially living at the beach now, not in some sort of mountain hideaway. There’s no fireplace, no heavy wood breakfast bar, and no carpeted stairs in this new house.
Jo follows Barbara so that they’re standing side by side as they look at the living room. She sets one hand on her narrow hip as she surveys the room. “I wasn’t sure about decorating. Again, our previous home was more traditional, and this house seems to call for entirely different decor. I’m kind of stuck.”
Barbara, who is about a foot shorter than Jo, looks up at her with a dimpled smile and dancing eyes. She leans in closer as if she’s about to impart a deep, dark secret. “I can give you the name of the lady who decorated our house, Mrs. Booker. You’ll love her.”
Jo, who has never been one to waste anything—especially the solid, expensive furniture she’d chosen for the house she thought her family would live in forever—smiles with relief. “Please, call me Jo. And thank you so much,” she says. “I’m a little lost. This has been a harder transition than I’d imagined, and now that we’re here I really want to enjoy our new life. But it’s all a bit foreign to me.”
“It is,” Barbara says, nodding vigorously. “Florida is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Todd and I can’t get over this weather,” she says, lifting her chin in the direction of the men in the kitchen. “He’s the one in the red shirt,” she says helpfully. “Sweetest guy you’ll ever meet, but he’s more at home on a sailboat than he is on a surfboard. And I grew up riding horses and wearing corduroy, so being down here where it’s just beaches and bikinis is pretty out there for me.”
Jo feels immensely relieved to hear that she’s not the only one suffering from culture shock, and she can’t help feeling that she and Barbara are bonding—at least enough that she can push their discussion beyond furniture and home decor.
“So,” Jo says, looking at the men again. “Is Todd excited to be here?”
“Oh, definitely. He’s always wanted to be an astronaut. How about Bill?”
“He’s over the moon,” she deadpans. The women laugh together. “Sorry, but yes. He is excited. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, and once he heard that there was a chance he could be selected by NASA for a manned space flight, I heard about nothing else. Our whole lives were consumed by his desire to be chosen for this.”
“Oh, you’re not kidding,” Barbara says, bumping Jo’s bare shoulder with her own. The central air conditioning is working like magic, but the fact that the kids are constantly going in and out of the sliding patio door means that the sticky May heat is seeping into the house nonetheless. “Todd was obsessed with being chosen. Obsessed .”
The women shake their heads in unison, looking at the men as Todd leans back against the counter, listening intently to something Bill is saying. “Looks like maybe our husbands are hitting it off, too,” Jo says hopefully. She’s already envisioning barbecues by the pool, and having another family to trek to the beach with for picnics. A big part of their lives back home had always been doing outdoorsy things with friends and family, and Jo can’t wait to find that kind of community here in Florida. Of course nothing will replace her friendships with Sally and Genevieve, but if she’s going to get by here, then she’s going to need to forge these new relationships. Her sanity relies on it.
“Hey, we should toast Gordon Cooper,” one of the men says, raising his beer bottle in the air. “Cheers to the first man to sleep in space.”
“Yeah, but he had to sleep alone!” crows one of the younger-looking men—a guy named Ed Maxwell who Jo has figured out is Frankie’s husband. The other men laugh appreciatively.
“I think we can beat thirty-four hours,” Todd, Barbara’s husband, says with a hopeful grin. “If he did twenty-two orbits, I can do twenty-three.”
Barbara leans closer to Jo as the men boast and clink beer bottles. “Lot of bluster for a bunch of newbies, huh?”
Jo says nothing, but folds her arms across her chest as she eyes her husband. Rather than speaking up, he is listening intently to the other men, taking mental notes as to what each of them says.
“Did you hear that Bob Dylan refused to play on The Ed Sullivan Show ?” Ed Maxwell says. As he speaks, Frankie sidles up to him and slides beneath the arm that he slings over her narrow shoulders. From the way that Frankie looks at Ed, it’s clear that they’re still newlyweds, or close to. “Said he wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t sing that song that makes fun of the military and segregation.”
This provokes a raucous outburst from the group—military men, all—who boo and shout about Dylan’s politics.
“Traitor,” a short, stocky man with a square jaw says, tipping his beer bottle to the sky as he chugs. “Can’t stand when some famous singer pipes up with his opinion on things he knows nothing about.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Barbara says, taking Jo by the hand and pulling her away from the men’s discussion. “Let’s get everyone dancing.”
Jo lifts an eyebrow as she looks pointedly at Barbara’s extremely pregnant stomach. “Dancing? I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah! Come on, let’s do it!” Barbara leads the way to the turntable and flips through the stack of records there, choosing “Runaround Sue” by Dion. She sets the needle on it with a fuzzy scratch of static.
Giving a little hip-sway, Barbara starts to dance in the middle of the sunken living room. Jo glances around to see if anyone else is as worried by this as she is. “Do you think you should be doing that in your condition?” Jo calls out over the music, pointing at the way Barbara is moving and shaking. Jo remembers doing a lot of sitting around uncomfortably when she was as pregnant as Barbara is now, but there is a look of total glee and abandon on Barbara’s face as she dances.
Barbara laughs merrily. “Absolutely! I hope this knocks the baby loose so she comes out sooner rather than later. I am done with being pregnant in this heat. I gotta evict this kid!” She closes her eyes and sways to the music.
Just as Jo is about to insist that Barbara take it easy—maybe sit down and let the other women bring her a cold lemonade—Todd makes his way over to his wife with an appreciative grin on his face.
“Hey, baby,” he says, setting his beer bottle on the coffee table and reaching out his hands to take Barbara’s. They dance together like they’re at a sock hop, and for a moment, Jo blocks out Barbara’s gigantic stomach and she can picture this adorable blonde woman wearing Todd’s letterman’s sweater; she can see them as high school sweethearts in some upscale Connecticut town with green hills, horses, and lots of plaid and leather. As the couple smiles at one another, swinging around (at least as much as they can, considering Barbara’s huge belly), Jo admires the ease with which they both seem to do everything. They’re cute, cheerful, easygoing people—that much is obvious. Barbara brought Rice Krispies treats, for heaven’s sake, and their two little boys are wearing matching navy blue shorts and white polo shirts; they seem like a perfectly nice, friendly family, and Jo loves that. It actually brings her some relief to realize that not all the good people in the world are congregated in Minnesota, and that she might encounter more of them out here in the wild.
“Hi,” Bill says, coming up next to Jo as they watch Barbara and Todd start to sway together to Elvis singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which someone else has helpfully added to the Zenith. “How are you holding up?” He puts his beer bottle to his lips and takes a swig, and as he does, his silver watch glints in the sunlight that floods through the skylight over the living room.
Jo nods, but her eyes are still on Barbara and Todd. She wishes that Bill would take her out there and dance to Elvis, but she knows that won’t happen. Bill is all business when it comes to meeting his new coworkers and peers, and he’d been nervous all day as they got ready for this party, wanting everything to go well as the families met and mingled for the first time.
“I’m hanging in here,” she finally says. “How are you?”
Bill glances back at the kitchen where the other men are now holding paper plates filled with fried chicken, appetizers, desserts, and side dishes. Laughter comes from their little group, and Jo glances at her husband to see if he feels like he’s missing out on whatever is being said in his absence. But she knows her husband well enough to know that that isn’t what Bill Booker is thinking about at all. In fact, what he’s most likely doing is assessing who his biggest competition is, and determining who might be the weakest links out of the other new hires. That would be so like him to already be thinking strategy.
“Jo,” Bill says, turning his head to look right into her eyes. His face, normally intense and focused, looks oddly relaxed. She has no idea what he’s about to say. “You know I’ve always loved our life, right?”
Jo searches his face for clues. She doesn’t know where he’s going with this. “Yes?”
“Well, for the first time in a very long time, I think we’re right where we’re supposed to be. I think this is it.” He puts an arm around Jo’s narrow waist, pulling her to him; this is as close as they’ll get to dancing for the moment.
All around Jo, things are flowing: music, laughter, the sounds of pool water splashing on the concrete outside, the heat of the afternoon. But inside of her, everything has come to a standstill; it’s as if someone has pressed the pause button on her heartbeat. Her husband’s feelings are completely opposite to her own: he feels at home, in the right place, excited for the future. And in spite of all the pep talking she’s been doing in her brain, and all of her attempts to convince herself that she’ll find friends and purpose and a new normal in Florida, all Jo wants is to pack up and move back to Minnesota. She wants to spend the summer at the lake with Sally and Genevieve and their families. She wants to look forward to the change of seasons, which she knows she’ll miss out on entirely in Florida.
But there isn’t time for her to ruminate on the apple cider and fall bonfires and thick blankets of winter snow that she’ll be missing, because just as Jo opens her mouth to say something to Bill, a loud “Oh!” rings out from the living room, and Jo spins around to see Barbara standing there, both hands on her stomach.
Barbara’s blue eyes go wide in surprise as she stares at the puddle of amniotic fluid that’s spreading across the brand-new wood floors, and then she looks right at Jo. “I’m sorry about your floor, Jo,” she says breathlessly. “And I don’t mean to ruin your party here, but I think we’re having a baby.”