22. Bill
CHAPTER 22
Bill
Bill has had enough of seeing Jeanie and Peter Abernathy together. They’ve been eating at the same table during the lunch hour nearly every day since shortly after Peter’s thirtieth birthday party in the office back in September, and he’s seen them together at The Black Hole on more than one occasion, which frays his nerves in a way that he can’t—or refuses to—define. It’s been nearly two months of watching them sit near one another at meetings and conferences, of overhearing them talk about plans to golf or play tennis on the weekends, and of having the other guys elbow Peter and say something jokey about the fact that a female engineer is a real catch because she must know how everything works— wink, wink .
Bill has had more than his fair share of these kinds of comments, thank you very much.
“You got plans for Thanksgiving?” Todd Roman asks him a few days before the holiday as Bill snaps his briefcase shut and heads for the stairwell. He’s hoping to avoid the elevator and get out of the building without running into Peter and Jeanie discussing their dinner plans or making eyes at one another that they think no one else can see.
“Jo and I considered taking the kids home to Minnesota for a long week, but in the end, her mom and dad wanted to come down here and get a break from the winter weather. So they’ll be here tomorrow and stay for a week. How about you guys?”
“Barb wants to stay here,” Todd says with a shrug. “Connecticut feels more like the holidays to me, but she’s gotten on board pretty quickly with the tropical winter months. I’m fine with it, to be perfectly honest. Traveling with three little boys is a lot of work.”
“Sure, sure,” Bill says as he bangs the handle of the door that leads them to the stairwell. It opens and the men take the steps down in rapid succession, the sound of their shoes echoing all around them.
With just as much gusto, Bill yanks the handle to open the door on the ground floor, and in the blink of an eye, he and Todd cross the lobby and end up out in the bright November sun.
“You headed to The Black Hole?” Todd asks him, swinging his own briefcase as he cuts a path to his convertible Corvette.
Bill stops in his tracks. He’s tempted to just head home and start the weekend on this sunny Friday evening, maybe jump in the pool with the kids, or sit down and have a drink with Jo before dinner—something they rarely get the time to do—but a part of him wants to take the edge off before he hits the door of his own house.
“Yeah,” Bill says. “I’ll stop by for one beer.”
The Black Hole is jumping with the excitement of an upcoming holiday, and someone has put Bing Crosby on the jukebox in spite of the fact that it’s only November 20th. Bill has left his briefcase on the passenger seat of his Corvette, and he’s taken off his necktie and loosened the top button of his collared shirt. A beer is just what he needs to start the weekend, and he orders one on his way in, carrying the bottle over to the usual table on the side of the bar where he and the other guys always congregate.
“Booker,” Jay Reed says, looking up at Bill as he points a finger in his direction. “Settle this bet for us: Packers and Browns, or Packers and Chiefs in the next Super Bowl?”
Bill, who loves sports as much as the next guy, immediately starts running stats and figures and scores in his head as he pulls out a chair and takes a long pull on his beer.
“Packers and Browns,” he says decisively, setting his bottle on the scarred wooden tabletop. “No question. And I have Packers for the win.”
“Bold assertion, given that we’ve still got months to go,” Ed Maxwell interjects. He launches into a detailed description of the last three games, which Bill easily joins in on. This is the kind of mindless talk he needs on a Friday—sports, games, predictions on who will throw the ball farthest. “But I like your conviction.”
The talk meanders to the week behind them, the week ahead, and the fact that it’s already been a year since JFK was shot.
“Goes too fast,” Bill says. He has his elbows on the table, and he shakes his head at the memory of that day. “I really thought things would change after that. For us, I mean. I wasn’t sure that LBJ would be as pro-NASA as he is.”
“He never hid that he was,” Todd counters. “He always came out on our side.”
“Sure,” Bill agrees with a shrug. “But politicians lie. All the time. It just wouldn’t have surprised me to find that he forgot about the things that Kennedy cared about.”
“I guess we’re lucky on that front,” Ed says. “But he’s kind of taking his time with jumping in on the Vietnam front. We need stronger action there.”
“Now, Ed,” Jay says, ever the peacemaker of the group. He goes on to counter every argument Ed poses, and their discussion of the U.S.’s potential role in Vietnam takes some twists and turns that Bill isn’t interested in following.
He drains his beer and stands. “Alright, gents. Time for me to get home and see what the missus has in store for me this weekend.”
“See you Monday, Booker!” comes the chorus from the table, and then the men turn back to their beers and discussions.
Bill slides on his aviator sunglasses halfway through the bar, ready to step out into the golden light of early evening. But his smile falters as he has to step aside to let Jeanie and Peter enter the bar. Rather than take off his sunglasses, Bill moves out of the way with a nod and a close-lipped smile, and once Jeanie and Peter are inside, he walks around them and right out of the bar without another word.
“So this is…”
Bill can hear his mother-in-law’s hushed question coming from the front room on Thanksgiving morning. Jo rushes in to change the topic.
“Yes. Mmhmm. This is the urn,” Jo says in low tones, undoubtedly turning her mother away from the vase that holds Margaret’s ashes.
Bill has gotten used to seeing it there, and even though Jo has asked a number of times about possibly relocating it or even scattering the ashes— Perhaps at the beach? Maybe during a nice sunset ceremony ?—Bill has brushed off all discussions about it and insisted that he’s not ready to do anything just yet.
“Hey, Billy,” Jo’s father says, stepping inside from the pool area, where he’s been taking turns tossing the three children into the pool—even thirteen-year-old Jimmy. “You got an extra towel or two? I’m afraid these kids have gotten me soaked.”
“Sure, Pop,” Bill says, using the name he’d adopted for Jack White when he’d first married Jo.
Bill hums as he hunts through the linen closet for towels, and as he does, he can hear Jo talking to her mom from down the hallway.
“He’s doing okay,” Jo is saying. “Honestly, it was such a shock the way it happened. We still don’t have all the details, and I think he needs to accept that maybe we never will. Margaret made a choice to end her life without warning, and that’s possibly all the information we’ll ever have.”
Mrs. White makes a tsk-tsk sound and Bill imagines her shaking her head in disapproval, her hair smooth and combed into a graying flip. “But will you just have to live with this woman in the middle of your marriage forever, Josephine? I mean, come on, that’s not even reasonable. First it was her and the financial and emotional toll of her existence, but now it’s her presence in your home.”
“Shhh, Mama,” Jo warns. “It’s fine.”
“Honey, I’m a practical woman,” Mary White whispers—and Bill knows this to be true. Mary has always been a kindly, grounded, pragmatic person. “But your husband needs some help to move past this. He lost a baby, and then he effectively lost his first wife when he decided to put her in a facility. And then he lost her again when she died. Sometimes people need professional help to move past all of that.”
Jo makes a sound that Bill recognizes as dismissive. “He would never. Bill? Psychotherapy?”
Mary White takes a long pause here, and all Bill can feel from where he’s kneeling on the tile floor in front of the closet is the weight of his wife’s words: Bill would never… But maybe he would? Maybe he could sit down to talk to someone about all the dark thoughts that claw at the edges of his mind. Maybe he needs to. This is the second time someone has said as much in the past few months, and while he took Arvin North’s suggestion to heart as something that might help or work in his favor in terms of his career, now he takes his mother-in-law’s words as a suggestion from someone who knows and cares about him on a personal level.
“I think you need to talk to him, Jo,” Mary says to her daughter. “He looks like he’s not sleeping.”
Jo lets out an audible exhale. “He got pulled off a mission shortly after Margaret died, and I didn’t want to connect the two things. I’m sure he has, but I didn’t want to. Don’t you think NASA does stuff like that all the time? Rearranges missions and changes things?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mary says. “I wouldn’t know. But if you think one thing might be related to the other, then I think it’s worth sitting down and talking to him.”
“I would,” Jo says, “but sometimes he’s hard to talk to.”
Mary gives a quick, short laugh. “Just like every other man who ever walked the planet, Josephine.”
Jo is quiet for a moment. “Right. I guess so.” She sounds unconvinced. “Maybe after the holiday I will. I’ll try to find a time to just sit down with him and see how he’s feeling.”
“Yes, do that,” Mary says. “You spend so much time doing all the things you do…” She goes quiet here, and her words are laced with so much meaning that even Bill can pick up on it. “You’re at the hospital all the time volunteering, which is wonderful, or you’re writing your stories, but your first priority is to your marriage, Josephine. I don’t want you to forget that.”
Bill winces—both from crouching on the cold tile with his bare knees, and from his mother-in-law’s words—and then pushes himself up to standing. He can’t take listening in on this conversation any longer, so he closes the cabinet door loudly.
“Jo?” Bill calls out as if he hasn’t heard anything that’s gone on. “Where can I find more pool towels for your dad?”
Jo’s shoes come click-clacking down the hall, and Bill walks away, leaving her to the task of digging up more towels.
It goes on like this over the course of Thanksgiving, and Bill can feel the distance between himself and Jo as they move around one another. There are no harsh words, and there are no deep discussions, but he can feel the slight tension as he reaches past her to grab his toothbrush from the cup on the counter while she wipes off her cold cream. He can sense that she’s lost in her own thoughts when he leans over to put a kiss on her cheek in the kitchen while she rinses dishes at the sink. He can see the faraway look in her eyes as she watches her parents with the children.
But this too shall pass, Bill knows. They’ll have a chance to sit down and talk, and maybe he’ll even tell her that he thinks Jeanie Florence is the one who shared the information that got him taken off the mission. It’s high time that he starts opening up to Jo the way he used to, and it’s definitely time for him to start treating his wife as his confidante, as talking to Jeanie as if she were his close friend certainly came back to bite him.
Soon , Bill thinks. We’ll talk just as soon as we get the chance .
Early December at Cape Kennedy is a whirlwind. Planning for the Gemini orbital mission is in full swing, and everyone is so focused on that project that for Bill, it seems that nothing else is going on at NASA. He’d underestimated his own involvement in the mission after being moved off the three-man roster for the physical part of it, and while being the lead for Gemini in mission control isn’t nearly as exciting as suiting up for it, Bill is up to his eyeballs in facts and figures, last-minute crises, and all-hours discussions about every tiny detail of the mission.
Talking to Jo keeps getting pushed back as Bill barrels straight ahead towards December 13, and at this point, he imagines them sitting poolside at Christmas, Gemini behind them, and nothing but time to talk and reconnect ahead of them.
For her part, Jo seems occupied with shopping, gift-wrapping, meal-planning, the hospital, and the damned story keeps her tapping away on the typewriter well into the night. Of course, there are worse things a man’s wife could be doing, but now she’s got an event she’s cooking up with PR at NASA, and Bill can only devote so much of his energy and brainpower to staying on top of what’s going on there. As far as he knows, there’s a cocktail party of some sort planned, and Jo will be sharing some of her stories with a crowd of women while Dave Huggins takes photos and the public relations specialists orchestrate some sort of PR blitz about astronaut wives doing exciting things.
At least that’s what he’s gathered in the slivers of time that he’s at home and awake.
“North needs you to look at these right away,” Jeanie says late in the afternoon of the 11th, setting a file on Bill’s desk as he crunches numbers and makes notes on something that’s been bugging him. “Can you sign off on this as soon as possible?”
Bill, caught off guard, looks up from his notepad, pencil still in hand, and locks eyes with Jeanie. “Is this the re-figuring of the geosynchronous orbit?” He frowns, reaching for the file in her hands.
“Yep,” Jeanie says. Of late, she’s kept her smiles soft, but distant, but here she is now, letting her gaze linger on his as if she’s about to ask him a question. “Bill,” she starts.
Rather than saying anything, Bill waits, file in hand, hoping that she’ll make it quick so that he can get back to the task at hand.
“I was wondering,” Jeanie says. She stops, her eyes dancing to one side so that she’s not looking at him. This has the effect of making her look like a nervous school girl, and Bill has to resist the urge to reach out and touch her arm to make her feel at ease. “I thought maybe you and I could eat lunch together today. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
Bill isn’t prepared to eat lunch with Jeanie, or to talk to her about how her dates are going with Peter Abernathy, or to act friendly and to ignore the reality of the way she’s dropped a grenade on his career by sharing his private admissions with their superiors.
“I’m actually working through lunch today,” Bill says as he makes a big show of stacking her file beneath his other papers. “Could you just debrief me on it here?”
Jeanie looks around nervously, tucking a long strand of hair behind one ear. “Um. I’d rather not.”
As if on cue, Bill’s phone rings and he reaches for the receiver as he glances Jeanie’s way. “Sorry. I’m kind of tied up today. If it’s related to Gemini, then we just need to squeeze in a conversation here at my desk. If it’s anything else, let’s push it until after the thirteenth, okay?”
Bill doesn’t wait for her to answer before putting the phone to his ear. “Bill Booker,” he says gruffly. He listens as the caller starts talking, but his eyes are on Jeanie as she walks away, looking mildly dejected. The curve of her narrow shoulders tugs at his heart and Bill almost wants to set the phone down and follow her to wherever she’s going, but he can’t.
For so, so, so many reasons, he just can’t.