3. Bill
CHAPTER 3
Bill
Bill’s morning and afternoon drives to and from work aren’t long, but they are his time to think and clear his head. In the morning, he cranks up the radio and reflects on the day ahead and what he needs to get done, and on the way home, he occasionally stops off at The Black Hole for one drink only, then cruises slowly home with one arm hanging out the window of his Corvette, and the other on the steering wheel as he ponders whatever has happened that day.
On this particular drive to work, Bill is listening to Elvis on the radio at low volume, recalling the minor debacle he’d come home to the night before. Jo had waited until they’d eaten and then sent the kids to read or hang out in their rooms before telling him about the incident that Frankie had shared with her that afternoon. It had been difficult to keep the smirk off his face as Jo had used euphemisms and awkward hand gestures to explain the situation. Bill completely understands the natural urges and interests of a boy at that age, but to the boy’s mother, this needed to be treated as a gravely serious situation to be dealt with.
In the end, Bill had invited Jimmy out for a late drive, which in and of itself was unusual, but as they’d driven through the darkened streets of Stardust Beach with the top of the Corvette down to let the warm summer night surround them, Bill had kept quiet.
When they reached the beach, he’d parked and wordlessly gotten out. Jimmy followed. They wandered down to the water together and stood there, side by side, looking at the moon over the waves.
“Jim,” Bill said in a mellow voice. “I understand that a boy feels things at your age, and I want you to understand that those things are all totally normal.”
Next to him, Jimmy had exhaled softly but audibly, like he’d been holding his breath and expecting something along these lines. “Dad, I—“ he started, sounding mildly defensive.
“No, no,” Bill stopped him. “I’m not mad, and I’m not asking you what happened. That’s personal business, son. You’re a growing young man, and that means you need a certain amount of privacy in your life. From now on, all I’m asking is that you lock the door and be aware of your surroundings, do you understand me? No one is in trouble,” he reiterated, “and there’s certainly nothing wrong with those…feelings—nor in the expression of them,” he said, clearing his throat lightly. “But the ladies in the house should be protected from such things. That’s all I’m saying.”
Jimmy remained silent and kept staring at the water. Finally, he’d nodded. “Okay, Dad.”
They’d driven home afterwards without speaking, and Bill had cranked up the music and let the wind blow their hair around wildly as he zipped around curves and took corners a bit faster than he needed to in order to amuse his son. Driving in that manner isn’t something he’d ever do with Jo and the girls in the car and Jimmy knows that, so that simple bit of carefree boyishness between them was his way of underscoring their solidarity following a seemingly serious discussion.
But is it that serious to Bill? Not really. Some things are just a rite of passage with boys, to be perfectly honest. Now will he respond as casually when Jo tells him that one of the girls has started menstruating? Ugh, the very thought of that actually makes him cringe a little. With luck, Jo will handle that herself and not involve Bill too much, though he isn’t the kind of man who eschews all things pertaining to womanhood or anything barbaric like that. It’s just that they’re his baby girls…there’s something about them growing into young ladies that makes him wistful and somehow uneasy at the same time. Heck, maybe that’s how Jo feels about the whole Jimmy situation.
Bill swings his car into the lot at Cape Kennedy that morning and finds a spot near the building. He parks and turns off the car at the same time that Jeanie pulls into a spot just a row over from him. Without realizing it, they get out of their cars at the same time, closing their doors in quick succession. Jeanie hears his car door and turns, smiling at him with surprised happiness.
“Good morning, stranger,” she says, lifting one hand in greeting. The strap of her purse is slung over one shoulder and her brown paper lunch bag is held in her other hand. “How are you this fine morning?”
Bill keeps his lunch in a metal pail and carries a briefcase in his other hand, so rather than waving, he just smiles and waits for Jeanie to catch up to him so they can walk into the building together.
“Glad it’s Friday, that’s for sure.” Bill looks down at her as they fall into step together.
“Plans for the weekend?”
“Nothing too crazy. You?”
Jeanie tilts her head to one side. “I might go to a baby shower for one of the secretaries here—Kathryn Michelin, do you know her?”
Bill shakes his head. “Can’t say that I do. But I tend to keep to myself. I would imagine the ladies mingle a bit more than the men. Maybe you all chat around the coffee pot in the break room?”
Jeanie laughs lightly. “Sure. We stand around and trade recipes and talk about who the cutest astronauts are.”
“Really?” Bill frowns. That’s precisely what he would imagine the women doing, but the way Jeanie says it makes it sound sarcastic on her end.
“No, definitely not.”
Okay, sarcasm it is , Bill thinks. “Then how do you all know one another? If she’s a secretary from another floor or something, how are you acquainted?”
Jeanie considers this as their heels click on the pavement in unison. “I think it’s more of a sense of we all need to band together. We’re the interlopers here—and everywhere—when it comes to work situations, and so we all get to know one another.”
“The interlopers?” Bill cocks an eyebrow disbelievingly.
“Sure. You remember how it was when I first started here. I was an outsider for sure. Getting to know other women in the building—even just saying hello in elevators or sitting at a table of women at lunch—gives me a tribe. It gives us all people to lean on.”
Bill holds the door open for Jeanie and she walks through it. “This is really how women are?”
Jeanie nods and turns back to him, now that he’s a step or two behind her. “Think about it: a woman’s chance for survival alone in the wild is quite low. There’s danger everywhere, and we aren’t physically as strong as men. So what increases our chance for survival? Traveling in packs.”
“Ahhh, is this why you ladies all use the restroom in groups?”
This makes Jeanie laugh. “No,” she says, her long, straight hair swinging behind her as she shakes her head. “That’s just so we can get away and talk about the men without you hearing us.”
The rest of the morning is tinged for Bill with the leftover feeling of satisfaction from this interesting and humorous exchange with Jeanie. He goes through the motions of two meetings, a briefing, and an observation of a new piece of launch technology with her laughter still ringing in his ears.
What is it about having a friendly exchange with someone of the fairer sex that leaves such a pleasant residue behind? And Jeanie Florence in particular can change the whole trajectory of Bill’s day. She’s smart, funny, fascinating, and making her smile is like some kind of reward just for getting out of bed that morning. He realizes that he’s grown to cherish and value their work friendship, and out of nowhere, he flashes back on Jeanie and Jo meeting at Frankie’s house in the spring. Recalling this awkward interaction (well, awkward for him, anyway) sends a spasm of discomfort through Bill and his smile fades.
Jeanie—innocent, curious Jeanie—had walked over and introduced herself to Jo when Bill had frozen up and neglected to do so himself. And, in turn, his gracious wife had chatted with Jeanie and even invited her to dinner. Now, that dinner had never come to fruition and Bill is actually quite grateful for that, but seeing the two of them together next to Frankie’s swimming pool that night had made Bill sufficiently uncomfortable and had reminded him that there needed to be a separation between work and home.
“Booker,” Arvin North, the head of operations for Bill’s team at NASA, lifts a hand in the air as they walk towards one another in the hallway of the first floor. “Word with you?”
Bill gives him a crisp nod and follows North into his office. Arvin North motions at a chair for Bill to sit, and he does.
“I’d like you to head the three-man earth orbital test mission,” North says without preamble. “You, Bob Young, and Derek Trager.”
Bill is ready for this. He’s been ready for this. Being asked to lead a small mission—even a test that never leaves the ground—is a sign that he’s in consideration for one of the bigger missions. He needs to prove himself here, and he knows that he can.
“Yes, sir,” Bill says with excitement bubbling up inside of him. “I’m ready.”
“I know you are.” North looks at him over the tops of his reading glasses as he skims a file on his desk. “Wouldn’t have appointed you for this if you weren’t.”
Bill floats through the afternoon. At lunch, his head is in the clouds.
“The Senate just passed the Civil Rights Act this afternoon,” Vance Majors says to the men at their table as he pulls a bologna sandwich from a piece of waxed paper and takes a bite.
“How the hell do you know that? You got a television hidden in your desk drawer that plays the evening news at noon?” Ed Maxwell laughs.
“Nope,” Vance says, chewing a big bite. “My older brother works at the Washington Post . He calls me with any big news when it comes across the wire.”
“Hey, how do you feel about the whole thing?” Ed asks the table at large. “I heard businesses can’t discriminate against people for anything—gotta hire people no matter their color, religion, or gender.”
“We already have women here,” Todd Roman says, elbows on the table as he leans over his own sandwich to take a bite. “And they’re not so bad. They kind of brighten up the scenery.”
The other guys laugh, elbowing each other and winking as they do. Bill smiles half-heartedly at their banter, but he understands what a big deal the Civil Rights Act is. How necessary progress is, not just for their country, but for all of them as citizens.
When Bill was in high school, around the time he started dating his first wife, Margaret, he’d been friendly with a boy named Jerome. Jerome was Black and wanted nothing more than to play football at the high school and then go to college and keep playing football. And with the talent that Jerome had in just one of his pinky fingers, he could have beat out any other boy in their county for a full-ride scholarship and a starring role on the football team. He should have beat them all.
Bill and Jerome spent hours and hours throwing a football around a field together, running, practicing passes, shouting with glee, and having fun the way that carefree kids do. The fact that they couldn’t attend the same school, couldn’t go into town together cruising on a Saturday night with their respective girls, couldn’t even go to the same church—none of that bothered the boys. When there was a ball in play, nothing else mattered.
But at the end of high school, as Bill was considering marrying Margaret and joining the Air Force, essentially putting his life in order and making the kinds of plans that a young person so cavalierly makes without regard to what else fate might have in store for him, Jerome went missing. One day he and Bill had met in the field and thrown a pigskin back and forth like it was nothing, and then the next day Bill showed up and Jerome didn’t. It wasn’t long before the whole town heard through the grapevine that Jerome had been found shot in an abandoned barn that belonged to a mean old man named Mr. Sanger. No charges were ever brought, and no one made any formal accusations, but Bill had always felt that a spat between Jerome and Mr. Sanger’s grandson, Earnest, on a makeshift football field one Saturday had been the event that set the wheels of vigilante justice in motion. Essentially, Jerome had knocked Earnest over, and when Earnest had railed at him using all the ugly words and names he knew, Jerome had told Earnest that the University of Arizona had already recruited him for their football team, and what did Earnest think about that when it was Earnest who had always been crowing about playing football there?
Well, obviously Earnest didn’t take too kindly to that piece of information, nor did his grandfather, Herb Sanger, and Jerome’s life had ended in a dilapidated barn before it ever really started. Bill never forgot the way it felt to hear that a friend had died. It was shocking, it was wrong, and it was senseless.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Bill says now, setting his apple core on the table and wiping both hands on a napkin. “The world is changing, and if we play our cards right, we can change along with it.”
“Optimistic,” Vance says with an approving nod. “I like it.”
“My wife wants to take a bus to Ohio and learn how to register Black voters in Mississippi,” Jay Reed says, leaning back in his chair and lacing both hands behind his head. "I'm not sure how I feel about that."
"The part where she takes a bus to Ohio and then heads to Mississippi, or the part where she registers Black people to vote?" Todd asks as he sticks a spoon into a small container of fruit cocktail.
"The part where my wife hops a bus with a bunch of sweaty college kids and heads out on a humanitarian mission," Jay says. "I understand the purpose of the mission—and I wholeheartedly support it—but I'm not sure that I'm ready to be on my own with two kids while she's out there doing work like that."
The men all nod in sympathy. By and large, they are a group of educated, scientific men who have spent time in the military, fighting to make America the best, strongest country in the world. They believe in causes bigger than themselves, and it doesn't surprise Bill at all that Jay would support the cause but not necessarily his wife's desire to pack a bag and join the wagon train to Mississippi.
"That's a tough one," Bill says, chewing his sandwich thoughtfully.
"Bit different from a wife wanting to hand out cookies to new moms at the hospital, isn't it?" Vance says, glancing in Bill's direction.
"But Jo is also a writer now," Ed adds. "Frankie tells me her work is being published on a monthly basis." The men all look right at Bill. "How do you feel about her doing all these other things?"
It's a big question, and to Bill, it's also indicative of the fact that, while the men are supportive of progress and change, they tap the brakes just slightly when that progress hits too close to home.
"At first I had questions," Bill admits regretfully. "When she told me she wanted to volunteer at the hospital, I was kind of an ass about it."
"That's hard to imagine," Ed says.
Bill shrugs. "Be that as it may, I assumed that it might be too much on her plate with raising the kids and keeping the house, and—yeah, it sounds horrible to say out loud now, but I selfishly worried that she'd be out of the house and that the things we all count on her for might fall by the wayside."
"And how has it gone?" Todd asks curiously.
"Things have been good on that front." Bill pulls the two pieces of bread apart to see if he's accidentally eaten all the cheese before he's finished the meat and mustard in his sandwich. He has. He puts the bread back together and bites into it anyway. "And she does her writing at night after the kids are asleep--usually after I am, too. So I don't mind any of it too much."
"But that story," Ed says, shaking his head. "Frankie read it out loud to me one night after we finished eating dinner." He gives a low whistle. "Lots of details in it that could only come from one place, right?"
Bill chuckles along with Ed like he knows what Ed is referring to, but he's ashamed to admit that he hasn't actually read any of Jo's stories. It was something she wanted to do for herself and for fun, and while he's proud of her minor successes, it's not like the genre or the topic are really in his wheelhouse. And at ten dollars per short story, she's not exactly raking in the money or knocking his socks off with her financial windfall.
Rather than tell the other guys that he hasn't read Jo's stories, Bill gathers his lunch remnants in his pail and snaps it shut. "I should get back to my desk here, gents," he says, pushing in his chair with a perfunctory smile and walking away.
After putting his lunch pail away, Bill heads into the men's room and is standing at the sink, washing his hands, when he catches sight of himself in the mirror beneath the fluorescent lighting. Bill shuts off the water and pulls two paper towels from the dispenser, drying his hands as he looks deeply into his own eyes.
And what does he see there? He sees a man who is on the far side of the mountain and sliding towards forty. He sees someone who has put in what seems like a lifetime with the Air Force, someone who is now pursuing his dreams and making strides towards the moon. He sees a husband, a father, a son, an ex-husband...thinking of Margaret, Bill pauses, his hands going still as he holds the now balled-up paper towels between his palms. His ex-wife: lovely, troubled, flame-haired Margaret. Not being able to help her or fix her will undoubtedly be his life's greatest failure--actually, divorcing her while she was in a mental health facility might qualify as his biggest failure and regret--but having a first marriage that didn't stand the test of time isn't something that feels good to him.
Still, if not for the fact that he’d realized he couldn't help or stay married to Margaret any longer, he wouldn't have met Jo. And if he hadn't met Jo, then his three children wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't be living the life they're living now, so...as with so many things, he has to simply chalk it up to things that were meant to be. This had to happen in order for that to happen, he had to cross over the same speed bumps to get to the place he is now, and would he do it all over again?
Yes, he would. Always yes. A resounding yes.
Bill throws the paper towels in the trash and walks back out to the third floor.