1. June 1964
CHAPTER 1
June 1964
JEANIE
Working for NASA is everything Jeanie dreamed it would be. It is also a crash course in gender relations, sexism, and the way some (most) men simply cannot look at a woman and see anything but thighs and breasts and a pair of hands that should be making dinner and changing diapers instead of calculating fuel consumption and space landing parameters.
"You ready for the weekend, Florence?" Peter Abernathy, a fellow engineer, climbs into the elevator with Jeanie and punches the button that she's already pressed. She squashes the instinct to roll her eyes at this.
"I most definitely am," Jeanie says pleasantly. "How about you?"
As the elevator doors slide closed, Jeanie is treated to a long-winded monologue on Peter's golf game, his favorite Scotch, the woman he's currently dating, and the project he's working on with the Aeronautics Research Mission team. Not once between the time the elevator car starts its ascent and the time it stops does Peter ask Jeanie anything about herself; she'd known instinctively that "You ready for the weekend?" was simply code for "Let me tell you all about my weekend."
"Have a good one, Peter," Jeanie says, stepping off the elevator as he holds the door open for her. Thank goodness the men she works with have all been raised with the barest of manners; Jeanie can hardly imagine what would happen to civilized society if the men stopped holding doors for women or being polite. It would certainly make the workplace entirely unbearable, as Jeanie knows instinctively that there will never be such a thing as an office or a company where the women are treated like and paid the same as the men. Men holding doors is hardly compensation for all of that, but at least it's something.
Back on the floor where she works, Jeanie crosses the giant open space, winding her way between cubicles and stopping every so often to lay a manila folder on the desk of a coworker. She's been tasked with overseeing the copying of their latest findings, collating it into a report, and delivering the reports to each of the men on her team. It's not lost on Jeanie that, as the only woman on her engineering team, she's frequently asked to do things like secure meeting rooms, make copies, and disseminate documents that they all need. Rather than letting it frustrate her, she accepts that because she's the youngest person on the team, she's simply paying her dues.
However, during a phone call with her mother just the weekend before, Jeanie had realized that she was, in fact, not the youngest member of her team; that distinction goes to Todd Roman, who turned twenty-seven just two months after Jeanie. That had blown her comforting theory out of the water.
Much to Jeanie's surprise, her own mother has been the person in her life who has most questioned what it means to be a woman, and what sort of limitations her gender puts on her life. The first time they’d had the discussion, over the Christmas holiday when Jeanie went back to Chicago following JFK's assassination, it had come as a shock: after all, what did Melva Macklin, mother of three, housewife for her entire adult life, know about the challenges of being female in an almost entirely male engineering program at Northwestern? What experience did Melva have with earning the respect and attention of her male coworkers? But, much to Jeanie's shock, her mother was well-versed in the topics, and her questions were insightful, thought-provoking, and encouraging. Jeanie had ended the holiday with the realization that other women did understand how hard it was to find your footing in a predominantly male workplace, and that her own feelings were real, and not imagined.
Still, she'd come back to Cape Kennedy after the new year invigorated and ready to tackle her job, only to find that one of the men in her group, Ed Maxwell, had been chosen to join a special project in Seattle without her ever hearing a word about the project or the selection process.
Jeanie has found that so much goes on right under her nose that she simply isn't privy to simply because someone is always asking her to run a little errand or complete a menial task and she misses the information.
"Hiya, Jeanie," Bill Booker says, looking up from his desk as she sets a file down in his wire in-box. "How are you?"
Unlike Peter Abernathy, Bill's eyes hold a spark of real interest. His question isn't meant just to spark a one-sided conversation.
Jeanie pauses, holding the remaining files in front of her as she hugs them to her chest. She's wearing a boxy A-line dress of yellow gingham that hits about an inch above the knee, and her long, brown hair hangs straight down to about the halfway point of her back. Jeanie wears no more than a swipe of mascara and a hint of frosty lipstick, and in her ears are small gold studs. She's gotten progressively more tanned during her time in Florida, and her legs are the same color as her suntan nylons, but she'd still never show up at work with bare legs. That just wouldn't do.
"I'm doing alright, Bill. Thanks for asking. How are you?" Jeanie tilts her head to one side as she waits for Bill's reply. They've become friends, she and Bill Booker, but even though he's a terribly handsome man, Jeanie refuses to let herself imagine the way he looks at the end of the day when he's at home and relaxing. She doesn't let her mind wander to the way Bill unbuttons the cuffs of his sleeves and rolls them, revealing strong, tanned forearms. She doesn't like to imagine the way his profile looks when they're standing around talking about life and space and the moon. And she never (okay, almost never) goes back to the early morning they'd shared in the office, watching the sun come up together as they drank coffee and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the still-empty office.
Jeanie wants to think about all those things, but Bill Booker is a married man. In fact, he is a happily married man with three children and a wife whom Jeanie has met. Jo Booker is someone she likes and respects, and therefore Jeanie needs to respect that Jo is his wife, and she--little Jeanie Florence from Chicago--is merely his coworker. Bill Booker is the senior member of their team, and his salt-and-pepper hair, his broad shoulders, and his lopsided grin occasionally creep into Jeanie's subconscious, making her life far more difficult than it needs to be.
So now, standing there at his desk, Jeanie hugs the files to her body even more tightly, keeping her thoughts in check as she watches Bill's blue eyes dance with amusement.
"I've got nothing to complain about," Bill says. His gaze stays on Jeanie. "But I'm really asking—how are you? Last time we talked, you said there was something going on with your brother, right?"
Jeanie is touched that he remembers, as she'd only mentioned in passing one day during lunch in the cafeteria, that her little brother, seventeen-year-old Patrick, had been struggling lately to make good choices.
"He's alright," Jeanie says. She scratches one arm anxiously, thinking of Patrick and the way he'd been caught drinking with his friends and driving dangerously down some country back roads while hanging out of the car and playing mailbox baseball as his buddies cheered him on. "I'm just worried that he'll mess up his future by doing stupid things right now."
Bill leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. "Ahhh. The issue that young boys everywhere must face: have fun now, but still try to make decisions that won't land you in jail." He chuckles softly, as if remembering his own youth.
"Did you ever do anything dumb like, oh, say, riding around at night with your drunken friend driving a car so you could lean out the window and hit mailboxes with a baseball bat?" Jeanie lowers her chin as she delivers the question with complete disapproval.
Bill roars with laughter and a few of the people in their vicinity turn towards him. "Oh, I shouldn't be laughing at that—not at all. It just took me back for a moment." He shakes his head. "When I was seventeen, right before I enlisted, I thought it would be great fun to climb the water tower in my little town and paint my initials on the side of it. So did my buddies, only we were—as you might imagine—somewhat inebriated. My best friend, Rob, fell off the ladder from about twenty feet in the air. Broke his collarbone and had to sit out during the football season. Probably would have gotten a scholarship to play in college if we hadn't been doing dumb kid stuff."
"That's what I worry about," Jeanie admits. "The dumb kid stuff having long-term ramifications."
Bill watches her with earnest interest. "What about you, Jeanette Florence?" He lifts his chin in her direction; his arms are still folded across his chest. "What kinds of dumb kid stuff did you do at seventeen?"
Jeanie leans against the low cubicle wall that surrounds Bill's desk. Around them, phones ring and the sound of typewriter keys clacking fills the air. A conversation in a nearby cubicle results in polite laughter.
"Me?" Jeanie asks, letting her memory drift back to herself at that age. 1954. Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney had big hits that year. Marilyn Monroe Married Joltin' Joe Dimaggio. Hitchcock's "Rear Window" was showing in theaters. Jeanie and every other girl she knew wore poodle skirts to school, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education landmark case. It's only been a decade since then, but so much has changed, with JFK's assassination and the rising tensions in Vietnam; Jeanie sometimes feels like she closed her eyes in one world and opened them in another.
"Yeah, what were you like when you were your brother's age? I bet you were ditching classes to smoke cigarettes with your girlfriends."
Jeanie can't tell if he's joking, but her face immediately bursts into flames. "Me?" she says in shock. "No. No way. I've never smoked a single cigarette."
Bill slaps his desk. "Not even one?"
"No..." Jeanie shakes her head—she can't imagine herself sharing a smoke with Carol in high school; they weren’t the kind of girls who would have looked cool leaning against a car with a cigarette in hand, eyeing everyone knowingly. “Not even one.”
Bill stands up. He yanks open the top drawer of his desk and pulls out a pack of nearly full cigarettes and a lighter. “Come on.”
“What?” Jeanie is blinking and staring after him. She’s never seen Bill with a cigarette. “You smoke?”
Bill doesn’t break his stride, just puts one hand in the air and waves for her to follow without turning back to look at her.
After taking the stairs instead of the elevator, they’re outside in the hot June sun. Bill leads them to a tall overhang that gives some shade, then slips a single cigarette from the pack and puts it to his lips. Jeanie has been silent this whole time.
A man is driving by on a NASA vehicle that looks like a golf cart and a small tank had a baby, but when he sees them there he brakes suddenly, coming to a halt. “Got one to spare?” he asks Bill, nodding at the cigarette.
Bill steps out of the shade and into the harsh sunlight, where he taps another cigarette out of the pack, offers it to the man, and then gives him a quick light. The man takes what looks to be a grateful drag on the cigarette, exhales, and salutes Bill. “Thank you kindly. Trying to quit because the wife doesn’t like the smell of it, but it’s hard.”
“Indeed it is, soldier,” Bill says, saluting the man back. It’s clear to Jeanie that they know one another and have discussed their respective military service histories, but she isn’t sure who this guy is, or what branch he'd served in.
“Ma’am,” the man says to Jeanie with a tip of his imaginary hat. “Have a good day.” He puts his foot on the accelerator and drives on.
“So,” Bill says, stepping back into the shade. “Let’s initiate you into the club.”
“I’m not sure, Bill.” Jeanie shakes her head. “All I ever hear is how hard it is to quit. I don’t want to become a smoker ,” she lowers her voice, whispering the word smoker like it’s a profanity.
Bill chuckles. “You won’t,” he says. “You’re not the type. But it’s time to live a little, Jeanie Florence.” Bill hands her a cigarette of her own, showing her which end to put in her mouth, and then he lights it for her. “Inhale,” he whispers as the flame catches the end of the filter. “There you go.”
Immediately, Jeanie starts to cough. Hard. It’s disgusting. The taste is horrid, and the smoke burns her lungs. “Bill,” she says between coughs. “Why does anyone do this?”
Bill is still laughing. “Well, the nicotine relaxes you. And it’s social. Some people do it because it gives them a good excuse to leave work for a few minutes every couple of hours—hence the term ‘smoke break.’ People gather together, share a smoke and some laughs, and then get back to their work day.”
Jeanie takes a small, tentative puff and coughs again. When the fit passes, she looks Bill in the eye with a touch of mistrust. “But it’s horrible,” she says hoarsely. “Is that why you smoke?”
Bill tilts his head from side to side. “Yeah, mostly.” He narrows his eyes and looks out at the smooth, flat ground that stretches out for acres around them. In the distance are parked cars, more half-breed golf cart/tanks driven by men in aviator sunglasses and short-sleeved button up shirts, the launch pads, and, farther out, the tree line. “I smoked in Korea,” he says softly as he looks at the toe of the shoe that he drags across the pavement. “And then I quit for a while. Jo hates it.”
At the name of Bill’s wife, Jeanie gets a strange pang in her chest. She’d met Jo the night of Frankie Maxwell’s dance performance at the Cocoa Beach Performing Arts Center, and Jo had been lovely. She’d even invited Jeanie to dinner, which hasn’t happened yet, but sounds like it could be fun.
“If she hates it, then why do you do it?” Jeanie asks. When Bill roars with laughter, Jeanie’s cheeks go red. “What? Is that a dumb question?”
Bill wipes his eye roughly with a knuckle as he holds his lit cigarette in the other hand. “No, it’s not dumb. It’s just…sometimes it’s the things our spouses don’t want us to do that we most want to.” Bill looks at the confusion on Jeanie’s face and goes on. “I don’t mean you set out to do something that your wife wouldn’t want you to do just to be unkind, but when you get married, you lose a certain sense of autonomy. Which is fine,” he adds hurriedly, putting up the hand that's holding the cigarette. “You know what you’re signing up for when you say ‘I do,’ but there are moments when you feel like…you know, the old me didn’t have to ask permission to have a smoke or go for a drive or stop for a beer after work.”
Jeanie nods. Her experience of marriage has only been through observation. She remembers her mom and Wendell sitting side-by-side on the couch in the evenings after dinner, him grading papers, and her reading a book. Or them seated at opposite ends of the table at dinner, listening as the kids all talked about their day. Jeanie suddenly realizes that she has no idea what sorts of concessions either of them had to make in order to have a happy and successful marriage, which, by all appearances, they did and still do. Did Wendell ever roll down the windows of his car and just keep driving after a long day of teaching middle schoolers at Elmwood Country Day? Did her mother ever sneak out at night to have a cigarette under the stars and think about the boy she’d loved and married—the one who’d gone to war and died, leaving her with a daughter and a mortgage to pay? Jeanie has no idea. It has never occurred to her to ask.
“What do you suppose Jo does to hang onto that ‘old’ version of herself?” Jeanie asks this innocently enough, but as Bill’s eyes grow serious, she realizes it’s possible that he’s never considered it.
He takes a drag on his cigarette and then flicks the ashes. “I’m not sure. She probably doesn’t have any bad habits, like smoking.” He frowns. “I guess she goes out for evening walks with Frankie Maxwell, Ed’s wife. Yeah, they do that quite a bit.”
“Maybe that’s when she smokes her cigarettes,” Jeanie says. “Either literally or metaphorically.”
Shaking his head and smiling, Bill puts his cigarette between his lips again and inhales. “You’re a smart cookie, Jeanette. And you’re right: maybe it is where she smokes her cigarettes, so to speak.” Bill drops his butt on the pavement and grinds it with the sole of his shoe. “And you don’t need to finish that,” he says, reaching out for her cigarette and dropping it to the ground where he crushes it just as he’d done with his own. “But I’m honored to have been your first.”
Jeanie’s face gets hot again. The fact that she still blushes at her age infuriates her, and she’s sure that it makes her seem like an inexperienced and na?ve little girl. “My first?”
“Smoking buddy,” Bill clarifies, putting his hands into the pockets of his pants. “I doubt we’ll be out here three times a day sharing a smoke, but hey, at least you can say you were a bad girl for a minute, and I got to see it with my own eyes.” He winks at her and pulls open the side door of the building, holding it for Jeanie so that she can go in first.
The door swings shut behind them with a click, shutting out the summer heat and encasing them once again in the air-conditioned hum of the office.
“Better get back to it,” Bill says, punching the button for the elevator this time so that they can ride it up to their floor.
They’re quiet on the ride up, but Jeanie stands there next to Bill, her shoulder just inches from his, as she thinks about Jo going out walking with Frankie Maxwell in the evenings. Jeanie needs more friends—she needs a social life. Being in Florida and working for NASA is like a dream come true, but truth be told, she's lonely. After working all day, she occasionally stops at The Black Hole with a couple of her other female coworkers and has a drink with the guys, but that's not the same thing as having friends to go to the movies or the beach with. It's not the same as getting to know people and creating meaningful relationships.
Jeanie glances up at Bill and smiles self-consciously when he looks down at her. They both gaze straight ahead at the closed doors in front of them until the elevator stops with a loud ding.
Maybe she should take Jo up on that invitation to dinner after all.