Chapter One #2
None of the homes they’d had throughout their marriage and Joe’s military career had been particularly glamorous.
A military officer’s pay didn’t go far—and Vivian had learned to economize with a frugality that made her proud.
But even she had to admit that the diminutive house on Cocoa Beach with a postage stamp for a backyard had been a bit of a disappointment.
When she’d heard “Florida” and “beach,” she’d envisioned towering palm trees and crashing waves.
The ocean was beautiful, to be sure; it was just that their stretch of street was too far away to properly enjoy it.
The landlord had sold them on the fact that the beach cottage had a view of the water, but he’d neglected to mention that you had to be standing on the roof to see it and, thus, enjoy it.
She knew this because a few weeks after they moved in, Joe and some of his astronaut buddies had ended up on the roof drinking beers and eating peeled shrimp by the pound while they set off fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July, seemingly impervious to the fact that a storm was building in the background.
Those were the moments in her marriage when she just had to shake her head and accept that Joe and his friends were built differently, that while it was impossible for her to fathom why grown forty-something-year-old men would think it was a good idea to climb up on the roof of their rental home and shoot off pyrotechnics—think of the security deposit, she’d implored him—given their line of work there was little that fazed them, little that they would say “no” to, particularly if it came in the form of a dare from another astronaut.
These were the instances when Vivian vacillated between wanting to scream and falling a little bit more in love with him, because there was something so utterly charming about Joe when he was incorrigible.
And so, despite the dubiously appointed “beach view,” Vivian set out making the cottage feel like a home, just as she’d done in the three other places they’d lived in the last five years.
Not that Joe minded where they resided or if he could see the beach, or mountains, or any other vista. He had the sky—and his eyes turned toward space—and nothing else really mattered.
A helicopter sounded overhead, and Vivian almost regretted that she hadn’t taken NASA up on their offer to move her to a safe house for the period surrounding the launch to escape the overwhelming media attention.
The other wives who had gone through this before her had warned her that it would be unlike anything she’d ever experienced, but even so, she hadn’t been prepared.
There were some things you just couldn’t anticipate until you were thrust into the middle of them.
Thankfully, today Polly had the foresight to draw the drapes closed.
Vivian had never grown used to the notoriety that came with being an astronaut’s wife, never warmed to the instant celebrity that had followed them because of Joe’s job.
There were reporters camped out on her lawn at this very moment, their flashbulbs trained on the beach cottage’s front windows.
They’d been there since the week leading up to the launch, yelling questions out at her when she got in the car to go to the grocery store or went to the salon to get her hair cut and colored.
They climbed in bushes, knocked on doors, and generally made a nuisance of themselves even though much of the interest that the initial astronauts evoked had lessened throughout the Gemini missions and now for the Apollo ones.
The novelty had somewhat worn off, the idea of a man going into space no longer as awe-inspiring as it had once been.
Frank and Joe had hypothesized that going to the Moon might be the thing that rallied the nation and the world, and Joe’s lunar orbit was supposed to be a critical first step on that journey, particularly after the series of setbacks the space program had faced.
Vivian glanced up at the sky, at the fluffy white clouds, the placid blue, and the unknown beyond. She tried to imagine Joe out there somewhere, pictured him floating through space in the little spacecraft they’d built as part of their quest to eventually put a man on the Moon.
It was a moment she’d repeated on military bases throughout his career, when she’d heard the roar of an engine and glanced up at the sky, wondering if he was flying above her, holding her breath until he landed.
Sometimes it felt as though she were strung together by those moments, all those held breaths, luck, and bravado enough to get by on.
Until now.
“Come back to me,” she whispered to the sky.
The words escaped on a broken sob.
Vivian slipped her hands into the pockets of her launch dress that she’d hastily put on this morning when it became clear that the parade of casseroles and brightly colored gelatin salads at her door wasn’t going to stop.
Not that she blamed them. She’d done it, too, when there was a crash or an accident.
They all had.
Every single time she’d wondered if she would be next.
Now she was.
Her fingers grazed a slip of paper in her right pocket.
Vivian rubbed the object between the pads of her thumb and forefinger, a habit she’d picked up when she was a kid and was trying to calm herself down.
The sliding glass door slid open behind her with a thud.
Vivian whirled around.
Joe’s best friend and Polly’s husband, Frank Abbott, walked out on the patio.
He looked like he hadn’t slept since the launch yesterday.
“I’m sorry.”
Vivian’s heart sank. “What are they saying?”
Frank raked a hand through his hair, his fingers trembling slightly. “It’s not looking good. We’ve lost telemetry. We aren’t getting any data from the spacecraft, aren’t able to track it or Joe. There’s no contact, Vivian. For him to be unreachable for this long…”
The rest of the sentence hung between them, unspoken, as though Frank had already reached the conclusion that Joe was lost to them for good.
“What if it’s just that the comms are down? That’s possible, right?” Vivian asked. “Surely, things like this happen during training.”
“They do, yes. It could be that there’s a problem with the system, but Joe is alright—it could be a lot of things—we just don’t know.
That’s the tricky part—without comms we’re pretty much guessing at this point.
It’s complicated. No one has done this before.
You train for it, you simulate, you run tests, but there are things out there we can’t account for, variables that can change the whole thing.
We’re doing everything in our power to reestablish communication with the capsule, to figure out if they’re still on course like they should be. ”
There was so much they were still learning about space travel, too many unknowns and unpredictable factors.
There were things Joe couldn’t tell her, parts of his job he had to keep secret given the sensitivity of the mission and the fervor with which the Soviets were pursuing their own aims in space.
All the things she didn’t know, all the things NASA likely didn’t know, absolutely terrified her.
What kind of hubris did it take to launch a man into space with the hope—but no pretense of certainty—that he might come back?
“Look, we’re doing everything we can,” Frank added.
“Yes, you said that already,” Vivian murmured. “What exactly are you doing? What actionable steps are you taking?”
“I’m sorry, Vivian, but I really can’t go into more detail about it.
You know how this stuff is. Everyone there is doing everything they can think of to bring Joe back.
I promise you. But, Vivian—” He hesitated.
“It’s been nine hours now, and we aren’t getting any sign that his capsule is where it’s supposed to be.
If it was blown off course, or if some kind of accident happened, well, getting into space has never been the hardest part. ”
“It’s getting home,” she whispered, echoing the words that had filled her with dread the first time she heard Joe say them at a press conference when a reporter asked Joe what part of space flight worried him the most.
“I’ll be honest with you—I think—I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility—”
Vivian shook her head, interrupting Frank before he had the chance to finish the thought, to put her greatest fears into words.
“No. That I won’t do. If he were gone—” She wouldn’t say the word. “If he were gone, I would know. I would feel it. I’m telling you—he’s out there somewhere. He’s going to come back. He promised me.”
“I hope you’re right.” Frank glanced at the house behind him. “I wanted to stop by to check on you—to let you know what’s going on—but I need to head back. Polly’s here if you need anything. One of the secretaries’ daughters is watching the girls, so whatever you need—she’s here.”
“Thank you. Frank—the other families—how are they doing?”
Joe was the mission commander, but he was joined by two other astronauts—Michael Drayer, the navigator, and Paul Robin, the command module systems expert.
Paul was single—one of the few in the group—but Michael was married with three kids.
Vivian had never been close to his wife, Bridget—in fact, if she was being completely honest, she’d never liked Bridget all that much.
If there had been a poster child for the perfect astro wife, Bridget Drayer was it, and she’d never hesitated to show her disdain for how much Vivian failed to fit the mold.
Of all the reasons Vivian felt inadequate as an astro wife, many of the encounters involved Bridget.
And now, absolutely none of that mattered. All she could think of was how Bridget must be feeling in this moment. Not to mention their children. And Paul’s parents—
“Are they still here at the Cape or are they back in Texas?”
“Bridget’s in Texas. She didn’t want the kids to miss school, thought it was best to keep them in a routine while Michael was away, so she was already flying home when all of this began unraveling.”