13. Jeanie
CHAPTER 13
Jeanie
“And if we think about the chemical energy that morphs into kinetic energy through the combustion process, we can see how heavily space travel relies on thermodynamic principles. I mean, the heat transfer and the entropy increase, and within our spacecraft, we’re required to manage the heat generated by the engines in order to maintain optimal temperatures in our operating systems,” Jeanie says. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turns to point at an image that’s being projected onto a screen behind her in the darkened room. “Ultimately, it becomes a mission to make sure that we’re always considering the extreme temperature fluctuations in space.”
The lights go on, and the men on her team are all sitting there, looking serious and thoughtful. From experience, Jeanie knows that at least half of them are in an after-lunch blood sugar slump, but she stands at attention, waiting for their questions. As she laces her hands together in front of her, her eyes travel to Bill. He’s looking out a window at the tree line in the distance, but he turns his head without warning and meets Jeanie’s gaze.
“Thermodynamics are obviously the basis for space travel,” Bill says without warning. “So I understand the implications, but I’m wondering if thermodynamics and equilibrium aren’t the most important combination of factors that we have to deal with.”
A thrill runs through Jeanie; she should have known she could count on Bill to bring something relevant to the conversation.
“Right. Of course, Bill. Thermodynamic equilibrium is—as we all know—a state where a series of properties remain constant over time. There is no net flow of energy or matter within the system, and we achieve a state of balance where the system is stable.”
Jay raises a hand hesitantly and says something that dovetails nicely with the discussion, but Jeanie’s still watching Bill, noting the way his hair has gotten slightly longer than it’s ever been since she’s known him. His profile is sharp, and there are dark smudges beneath his eyes that make him look like he hasn’t slept well in weeks. As she’s looking at him, his eyes flick towards her and their gazes connect. Jeanie looks away.
“Good info in there, soldier,” Vance says to Jeanie as they all file out of the conference room following her presentation. “And solid points. Buy you your first drink at The Black Hole this evening?”
Jeanie, who is a full head shorter than even the shortest of the men, looks up at Vance and tucks her long hair behind one ear. “Sure. I’d like that.”
Things have been a bit tense between Jeanie and Vance since he’d cornered her and asked for her help in getting Bill thrown off the three-man mission, but she’s taken Vicki’s advice so far and stayed out of it, which has been challenging for her to do. Jeanie knows what it feels like to be bullied, and while this isn’t outright bullying like she’d gotten from Carol Fairchild on the playground, it still smacks of that same behavior. And, unfortunately for Bill, it has potential career ramifications, not just social ones.
There’s only about an hour left of work, so Jeanie loses herself in a small project and then gathers her purse and heads out to her car. She gets to The Black Hole a few minutes after the guys, and true to his word, Vance lifts a hand in the air to flag her down and then asks her what she wants.
“I’ll take a Greyhound, please,” she says. Someone plunks change into the jukebox and “Love Me Do” by the Beatles comes on.
“How’s your friend Vicki?” Todd Roman asks as he leans across the table and looks right into Jeanie’s eyes. “She was a hoot.”
“Vicki is good, thanks.” Jeanie’s smile is watery, and she can feel her energy flagging. Sometimes hitting The Black Hole is relaxing, but other times it just feels like an extension of work for her; it’s simply another hour of keeping her game face on, of listening intently to the subtext of any conversation, and of being ready for the guys she works with to loosen up and chat freely about whatever comes to mind as they make their way through two or three rounds of drinks. Jeanie doesn’t have the luxury to let herself go quite that much, so she always nurses one drink and makes it last as long as possible.
“I think she and Hank Crowley might hit it off. What do you think?” Todd asks, still watching her face. “I saw him in the lunch room today and immediately thought of setting him up with Vicki.”
Jeanie thinks about Hank: tall, well into his fifties, distinguished, no wedding ring. “He’s single?”
“Widower,” Todd says, taking a long pull on his beer and then setting the mug on the table. “Kids are grown and flown. I hear he makes the rounds with the Cape Cookies a bit, but I’m not entirely sure that Vicki would mind.” He winks at her, and then catches himself and holds up a hand. “Not that I’m insinuating anything about Vicki—she seemed like a very fun lady. It’s just that she seemed like she might be up for anything.” Todd’s face falls further as he realizes what sort of hole he’s digging for himself. “Sorry, this is not sounding right--I'm not trying to be disrespectful.”
“You’re fine,” Jeanie says with a small laugh. “Vicki is pretty open-minded.”
"So do you think I should try to set them up?"
Jeanie isn't sure. From what she's observed so far in the seven or eight months she's lived with Vicki, the woman does pretty well on her own when it comes to snagging men. But she had asked them to find her a mature astronaut, so...
"I guess it could be fun for them," Jeanie acquiesces. "If you don't mind being the one to deliver the info, then I'll write our phone number down for you and you can pass it on to Hank so he can contact her. I don't really want to talk to him about it."
Todd slaps the table, clearly pleased with himself that he's done a bit of matchmaking. "Super," he says. "I think they'll have a good time."
Jeanie has no idea whether Vicki and Hank will be a love match or not, and frankly, she's a bit preoccupied. Her eyes have landed on the doorway of the bar repeatedly since she sat down, and she doesn't want to admit to herself that it's Bill she's waiting for. She'd assumed on the way out of the meeting that he'd be joining them, otherwise she most likely would have begged off for the evening and just gone home to read with Miranda curled up in her lap.
"Hey," she says, trying to sound as off-hand as possible. "Is Bill joining us? I had something I wanted to talk to him about. Just thermodynamics and whatnot."
A slight flicker of amusement passes over Todd's face. "Yeah, of course. A little thermodynamics chitchat over beers." He picks up his mug and takes a long swig. The open-air bar is packed, and the only thing to cut the humidity are the ceiling fans and the cold drinks. "Uh, I'm not sure." Todd looks around, glancing back at the doorway over his shoulder. "I guess I figured he'd be here, but maybe Jo wanted him home." He shrugs noncommittally.
Jeanie drains her Greyhound and sets the glass on the table. "No problem," she says with a smile. "It can wait for work, I just thought while it was on the brain, you know?"
"For sure," Todd says with a lopsided grin.
"Thanks for the drink," Jeanie says, standing up and putting the strap of her purse over one shoulder. "See you guys at the office."
The other men are deep into their drinks and trading barbs about who knows what when Jeanie strides past the jukebox, eyeing a girl in a flimsy yellow dress warily as the girl leans one narrow hip against the jukebox. Jeanie pauses with a hand on the doorframe, watching as the girl makes eyes at a young pilot in aviator sunglasses. It's an intricate dance of wordless flirtation that passes between them, and for about the millionth time, Jeanie feels like an outsider. Where did other girls learn these tricks? How do they seem to inherently know the ins and outs of being appealing and interesting and romantically available?
The pilot takes off his sunglasses and stands up, making his way to the jukebox as if drawn there by an invisible rope. Before Jeanie walks out into the early evening heat, he's placed a hand on the jukebox and is standing far closer to the girl in the yellow dress than is necessary, both of their lips curled into questioning smiles. Jeanie turns and walks out of the bar.
The evening sun sparkles off of chrome bumpers and glares off windshields as Jeanie sighs, holding her keys in hand. She puts the key into the lock of her yellow Bug and twists it, nearly jumping out of her skin when she feels a hand on her shoulder.
"Bill!" she nearly shouts, turning around in a defensive pose. "Jesus. You scared me."
He holds up both hands in surrender. "Sorry about that. I called your name as you were walking, but I didn't think you could hear me."
She hadn’t heard him. The music from The Black Hole combined with the traffic on the street to block out Bill's voice, and, admittedly, Jeanie had been lost in her own thoughts. But now that he's standing right here in front of her, her heart begins to thump out a rhythm and she desperately wants it to stop.
"I didn't hear you," she admits with a smile. "Are you heading in?" Jeanie tips her head towards the bar. She's kicking herself for having left so early, and she instantly hopes that Bill invites her back inside for another round.
Bill shakes his head. "No, I was out here hoping you'd come out."
"Me?" The world nearly stops as Jeanie leans her back against the hot metal of her car. Her eyes search Bill's face. "Why?"
Bill shrugs and gazes out at the water beyond the parking lot. It's really quite beautiful in the evening light, and two boats criss-cross one another lazily with colored flags flapping from their masts.
"I wasn't ready to go home, but I didn't want to go in and talk about sports or politics or whatever," he says with a wave of his hand. "And it was you I wanted to see, anyway."
"Me?" Jeanie repeats dumbly. Polish up your conversational skills, girl , she says to herself, trying not to cringe at the sound of her own voice.
But Bill doesn't seem to notice. "Would you sit with me for a bit, or are you in a hurry?"
Jeanie pulls her key from the car door and drops it back in her purse. "No, I'm not. The only thing I'm going home to is a hungry cat."
Bill puts a hand on Jeanie's lower back and guides her towards the water, where a weather-worn bench faces the boats and the horizon. They sit, and Jeanie intentionally puts a two foot space between them.
"Things have been strange," Bill says. He's looking at one of the boats. It has Lady Luck inscribed across its transom, and a leathery old man chomping on a fat, brown cigar stands there, looking out at the water like he's just conquered a foreign land. "I can't go home right now."
Jeanie's attention is ripped away from the man on the boat and she turns her upper body to look at Bill. "What do you mean?" Immediately, she wonders if Jo has kicked him out for some reason.
"It's just hard to be there. The kids know about what happened, but it's like they expect me to be fine and just act like their old, dependable dad, and I can't. And Jo is worried about me, but she's also a little happy about Margaret being gone, and that's tough to process."
Jeanie doesn't say so, but she thinks she can understand Jo's position. "Right," she says, nodding in a way that she hopes is encouraging. "Okay."
"When I'm there, it's just: sit down, have dinner, play with the kids in the pool, watch tv with Jo, go to bed, wake up, do it all again."
Jeanie isn't sure how he wants her to respond to this, and she surprises even herself with the words that come out of her mouth. "It sounds like a pretty damn good life to me."
Bill's head snaps in her direction; he looks surprised. "Oh, it is," he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I'm just struggling, Jeanie. I'm having a hard time understanding how my life has traveled the roads that it has, and how I've ended up here."
The hot evening sun prickles against Jeanie's scalp and shins, and she shifts on the wooden bench. "Which roads are you wishing you didn't take?" She folds her arms across her chest and watches Bill's profile. She knows her line of questioning might sound forward, but he's the one who approached her and asked her to sit down to talk to him.
"I don't know if there are any that I regret," he says. "It's more that it's all gone so fast, and some of the things that happen in life are out of your control. I think I did everything I could for my first wife, and yet we still ended up here." He spreads his hands wide, turning his palms to the sky. "Or, rather, I'm here, and she's gone."
Jeanie nods as she breathes in and out a few times. "I understand that feeling. I watched my mom struggle after my dad died, and I think she felt utterly helpless sometimes. Like, if she'd done something different, maybe he would have lived. Which is--just as it is in your case--entirely untrue. Obviously my mother had no say over whether my father went to war and died there."
Bill is watching her now, so she leans her back against the bench, arms still folded.
"Can you tell me more about that?" Bill squints as the sun falls further in the sky, the light of it hitting his face directly. "If you don't want to talk about losing your dad, then that's okay, but I'd love to know more about your life. About you."
Jeanie blinks a few times; she's taken aback at his request. It's not often that she's asked to talk about herself. But she's also aware that maybe listening to her talk is a tactic of Bill's to get his mind off his own troubles.
"I'm from Chicago," she says. "Which you know. My mom, Melva, had me when she was twenty. She and my dad married young," Jeanie says, feeling the unexpected sensation of tears as she talks about her mother. "After he died, it was just us, and we didn't have much money. My mom didn't know, but I listened to her cry herself to sleep every night."
"Oh, Jeanie," Bill says. She can feel him watching her, but it's her turn to squint into the fading sunlight.
"It's fine. We were fine." Jeanie brushes her fingers against the end of her nose and keeps going. "I would sit outside her room as she cried, and then when she finally stopped, I'd go to sleep myself. I swore then that someday I'd get a really good job and make sure I could take care of my mom."
"I bet she appreciates that."
"Well, in the end, it seems that I'm working a great job just to look after myself. Unlike my mom," Jeanie says, trying to sound nonchalant, "love has never found me, so I'm just a girl out in the world on my own. My mom remarried when I was still young--to one of the teachers at my school--and then they had twins right away. That would be my brother, Patrick, who I've mentioned to you, and my sister Angela. I adore them." Jeanie's eyes soften and she smiles at the thought of them; she's so proud of her brother and sister, even if Patrick is going through a tough time.
"You did mention Patrick," Bill says. "Is he still getting up to mischief?"
"Nothing that will land him in jail, I hope," Jeanie says. "But he's definitely a teenage boy." She pauses, thinking of her sister. "But Angela is something else. She wants to be a teacher, just like her dad--my stepfather, Wendell Macklin--and she's been dating the same boy for two years. They'll probably end up getting married." Jeanie sighs. "Sometimes I wish it had been that easy for me: find a nice boy, settle down, be happy. But it hasn't worked out that way."
"Well, I hate to break this to you, but sometimes settling down doesn't equal automatic happiness."
Jeanie glances at Bill. "You weren't happy when you got married the first time?" She clamps her lips shut for a moment, then puts her fingertips to her lips. "I'm sorry. That's none of my business."
"Oh, heck no, Jeanie. You're sharing with me and being honest, and I'm going to return the favor." He thinks for a minute. "You know, I was happy when Margaret and I got married. We were young--so young--but it felt right. She'd always been the apple of my eye, but then we got married, and soon after that she was pregnant. I think the whole thing just went so quickly, and she was always prone to these...these moods, you know?"
Jeanie frowns. "Like she would get angry with you?"
"More than that," Bill says, shaking his head. "She would be raging one minute and then laughing the next. She was so unpredictable. And I never knew what might set her off. You have no idea how hard it is to maintain a balance when you don't know which version of your wife you're coming home to that day.”
“That sounds hard to navigate.”
“It was.” Bill puts his hands between his knees and hunches his back so that his shoulders are rounded; Jeanie has the urge to put an arm around him, but she doesn’t. “And I was so young that I don’t think I did it well.” He sighs. “After Violet came too early—Violet, that’s what we named our daughter—Margaret just checked out. Actually, it’s probably not even fair to say that, because I don’t think it was a choice, like, ‘Hey, I can’t do this anymore!’ but more like she just mentally couldn’t do it.”
“I can’t imagine how she must have felt.” Jeanie tries to put herself in the shoes of a woman who has lost a baby but can’t. Her heart can imagine the pain, but it feels like secondhand trauma; she has no personal basis for understanding the kind of love a mother feels for a child. “I’m so sorry, Bill,” she says quietly, finally reaching over and laying a hand on his shoulder gently for a moment. “For all of it.”
Bill blows out a long, loud breath and stands up forcefully. He walks a few steps over to where the water laps against the wooden dock. “It’s time for me to pack it all up and put it away, Jeanie, and I know that.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his gray work pants. “You can’t go on forever whining about things that happened in your past, and no one wants to be around someone who gets jumpy every time something reminds them of the bad stuff.”
There is real pain in Bill’s voice as he says this, and Jeanie wants to understand. She gets up from the bench, leaving her purse there, and walks over to stand next to him. “Do you think that’s you? Do you think you get jarred by reminders?” She dares a look up at him, and his eyes are steely and focused on the water again.
Bill is quiet for so long that Jeanie isn’t even sure he’s going to answer, but he finally speaks. “I have these spells, Jeanie.” He turns just his head and looks down into her eyes. “I have to shut myself away from everyone, and I never talk about them.”
A small and merciful breeze cuts through the humidity for a second, ruffling Jeanie’s hair and the edge of her skirt as she takes this in.
“Does Jo know how you feel?”
“I think so. She must. But we don’t discuss it.” He clears his throat. “It makes me feel weak, admitting that I can’t just handle everything. And it’s extremely dangerous to say it out loud, considering my job and the implications it would have if I cracked under pressure.”
There is a pleading look in his eyes, a look that’s begging Jeanie to understand that she needs to keep this to herself, and for a moment she remembers the way Vance was ready to prey on Bill’s weakness. She swallows, but doesn’t look away from him.
“I understand,” she says softly. “I get it.”
The water before them ripples and glitters with the light of the waning sun. Jeanie and Bill hold one another’s gaze. It feels like they’re standing on the edge of something—a precipice of sorts—and Jeanie doesn’t want to fall in. But Bill’s eyes…they’re so blue. And so questioning. He looks like a man who wants to be understood, to be heard, to be loved. Just like she’d wanted to wrap an arm around his shoulders, she desperately wants to reach up and put her hand to his cheek, brushing her fingers against the stubble he’s grown by the end of the work day. It takes all her willpower not to.
“Hey!” comes a loud, cheery voice from the parking lot. “Jeanie! Bill!”
They spin around in unison looking as guilty as two kids caught stealing fresh cookies straight out of the oven.
It’s Todd and Jay, walking to their cars. “You two found each other,” Todd says. “We weren’t sure that you were coming, Booker.”
Bill clears his throat again and Jeanie watches as he closes the shutters behind his eyes and puts a big grin on his face. “Hey, guys. I just got here, and I saw Jeanie leaving. Wanted to pick her brain a bit about today’s lecture.”
Jeanie nearly gets whiplash from how quickly he’s able to shift gears, but she keeps up. “Good to see you all, and thanks for inviting me,” she says, walking back to the bench and grabbing her purse by its strap. “But I should get home. See you all at work.”
“Bye, Jeanie,” Todd says, lifting a hand as she goes.
“See you tomorrow,” Jay adds.
This time when Jeanie puts her key in the lock her hands are shaking and she fumbles for a second. When she climbs inside, she shuts the door quickly in spite of the fact that her car has trapped the heat inside for the past hour and it feels like a furnace. She breathes deeply in and out as she jams the key into the ignition and turns the car on. The engine rumbles to life.
With both of her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes on the road, Jeanie drives all the way home in a daze.
She can’t feel the things she’s feeling towards Bill. She simply cannot. Being in Florida is all about her career. Her future. It’s about being a part of something bigger than herself, and finding a way to touch the stars.
She swings into her spot at Sunny Tides and turns off her car, listening as the engine ticks and settles. The windows are down and she listens as two neighbors out walking their dogs in the green square at the center of the resort talk loudly about the weather, which never changes, so far as she can tell. Florida is just hot, hotter, and slightly less hot.
Jeanie puts her head against the steering wheel and closes her eyes. She came here to find a way to forge her own path, to become the newer, bigger, better version of the girl she’s always been.
She did not come here to fall in love with someone else’s husband.