Chapter Three
Three
Thirteen Hours Gone
“Viv.”
In the dream, Joe sat beside her on the bed, dressed in his flight suit, the one he’d worn before he’d started astronaut training, when they had been young and in love, and everything had been simultaneously more complicated and yet simpler.
Vivian lay in bed, Joe’s back to her, staring at the slope of his shoulders, the bend in his spine as he put his flight boots on, as he prepared to leave her once more.
She slipped in and out of the dream, unsure if it was a moment she had created in her mind or a memory from one of their many goodbyes.
How many times had they done this dance?
More than she could count, certainly. Her marriage was defined by these absences, by the dramatic goodbyes that often dictated the tenor of their marriage.
After all, you couldn’t be mad at your husband right before he went away when there was such a high chance that he wouldn’t come back, or every time he went to work when just doing his job meant a likelihood of death, or when he was about to launch himself into space, going farther in the known universe than anyone ever had before, or—
“Viv.”
The voice was louder now, her name—the nickname Joe called her—piercing through the haze of the dream, the déjà vu of it all, and then, urgently now—
“Vivian.”
It returned to her in waves—the tension in her living room, the little pill someone had pressed in her palm telling her she looked like she needed to get some rest. Not a surprise since she hadn’t slept more than an hour or two the night before while she waited for news of Joe after the initial launch.
She’d lain down for a nap, the sleeping pill and exhaustion doing the rest, the kind of sleep that came over her so strongly it obliterated all else.
What had it been? Four hours? Five?
Her head pounded, the aftereffects of the medicine making her feel a bit fuzzy.
“Viv.”
Vivian lurched out of bed. Her gaze rested on the squawk box on her dresser, the speaker NASA had given her so that she could hear radio communications between Joe and Mission Control when the spacecraft passed over their house in its orbit.
NASA gave it to the wives when their husbands went into space, a way for them to stay connected, a story to share with the Life reporter they would have to speak with when the mission was done.
They’d been cautioned that NASA would cut off the squawk box if something went wrong so the spouses wouldn’t hear it, and it had been silent up until—
“Vivian.”
It was unmistakable now—she’d recognize that sound anywhere—Joe’s voice was coming from the squawk box.
He was alive.
Vivian rushed over to the box, her heart pounding as she stared at the speaker.
“Joe? Are you alright? What happened? Are you safe?”
The words escaped before she remembered what they’d told her about the squawk box.
That she would be able to hear Joe, but he wouldn’t be able to hear her.
She willed him to say something else, to offer some explanation of what had happened, how his spacecraft had lost contact and how long before he would return to her.
Wait.
Based on what they’d told her, he wasn’t supposed to be in range for another three days. She remembered it because she circled the day with a black marker on the little calendar that hung in their kitchen.
What had changed?
Why was she hearing from him now?
How was she hearing from him now?
The red phone NASA installed for her in addition to the squawk box sat on the nightstand, and she hurried over, her heart pounding as she lifted the handle and asked the operator to connect her to Frank’s office at the Cape.
A man’s voice echoed in her ear on the other end of the phone line.
“I need to talk to Frank Abbott, please,” she said to the man who answered the call. “This is Vivian Mitchell.”
She put more emphasis on her name than she normally would lest she be fobbed off to someone who was directed to “manage” her.
There was an interesting dynamic between the space program and the spouses.
They weren’t employees the same way that their husbands were, of course, but it was understood that they were part of the package, that in some ways—at least in the image that they presented to the world, the support that they were meant to garner among their fellow Americans—the astronaut’s family was almost as important as the astronauts themselves.
After all, there was a steady line of interchangeable fighter pilots and test pilots looking to go to space. The ones that had been chosen were the best of the best, but they also had the ability to convey a message of picture-perfect Americana that would make them heroes.
Their families were trotted out for media appearances and interviews, the wives meant to clothe themselves in glamorous dresses they received as gifts or on enormous discount, considering their husband’s salaries hardly funded dressing like a movie star even if the expectation for them to resemble one existed.
The wives were useful tools for the space program—their presence and efforts expected to generate positive press and public enthusiasm.
And conversely, while the shopping trips to Neiman Marcus and the like held a certain appeal to many of the wives, Vivian would bet her life’s savings that nearly every single one of them would—if asked—say that they would much prefer their husbands have a different job, something staid and predictable like an accountant, or a dentist, or a postman, or really, nearly any other profession. Most importantly, a safe one.
“Frank’s busy right now, but I can ask him to call you back,” the voice on the line—one she didn’t recognize— replied.
She glanced back at the squawk box, now resting silently.
“Please. I need to talk to Frank. Just for a minute.”
She’d keep calling until they put her on the phone with Frank, a conclusion the man seemed to arrive at, because he sighed, sounding very much like he was sick of dealing with astronauts’ wives.
“Let me see if I can find him.”
Vivian propped the phone between her ear and her shoulder while she waited, using her free hands to pick up the phone receiver and carry it over to the dresser where the squawk box rested.
She stared at the device expectantly. Waited for it to emit another sound. Joe must know how worried she was, and she’d bet he kept saying her name to reassure her, because he understood how desperately she needed to know he was alright.
“Vivian.”
This time, her name didn’t come from the squawk box, but from the phone’s receiver.
Finally.
If anyone would know what was going on, it would be Frank.
“Frank? Where is he? What happened? Is he alright?”
Silence filled the line.
“Frank?”
“Vivian, I’m sorry. We still don’t know anything. I promise you that as soon as I hear something, I’ll let you know. I need to go—”
“What are you talking about? Joe just spoke on the radio. You heard him, right? Surely, you’re communicating with him. Did he tell you what happened? Is he safe? Are the comms back up?”
“Vivian. We haven’t had any communication from the spacecraft.”
That wasn’t possible.
She stared at the squawk box, dread sinking in her stomach like a meteor. But no—she’d heard him clear as day. It had unmistakably been Joe saying her name.
Only Joe called her Viv in that tone of his that often had the capacity to make her forget about why she had been annoyed with him.
“I heard Joe on the radio. It came through on the squawk box that they brought over a couple of days ago. He said my name. A few times.”
Definitely four. Or had it been five? Was one of them her dream, or had he said her name and had she incorporated the sound into her dream? How long had she slept through the sound of Joe speaking through the squawk box?
What if he had asked her for help? What if he had said something important and she’d missed it because she was asleep, dead to the world thanks to the pill she’d taken. Surely, they were recording this in Mission Control. Someone else had to be listening besides her.
“Vivian. I promise you—we’re monitoring all communications coming from the spacecraft and there haven’t been any.
If Joe was speaking on the radio, we would hear it in Mission Control.
There’s just been silence. Occasionally, a faint static sound, but Vivian—we’ve been listening.
We wouldn’t have missed something like that. ”
“Well, you must have, because I’m telling you—he said my name as clearly as though he was sitting here right now. I know my husband’s voice. At first, I thought I was dreaming, but then I woke up and I heard it, I heard him, coming from the box.”
She could hear the rising note of panic with each word she spoke, and she tried hard to push it down, to remain as calm as possible.
She’d learned throughout Joe’s career that whether she was a military wife or an astronaut wife, they would often treat her as though she existed on the verge of hysteria, the level of calm and detachment that they demanded of her unnatural.
“Maybe you were still dreaming. It’s been a rough few days. Did you see Doc Wyler? Did he give you something to help you sleep, maybe to calm your nerves? Those pills can pack a wallop—”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I mean, I was, at first, but I woke up.
The sound of Joe saying my name woke me up.
I got out of bed, walked over to the dresser, and heard that thing”—she pointed at the squawk box, her hand shaking in midair—“say my name. It was Joe. Joe said my name. He called me Viv. No one else calls me Viv.”
“We’ll check the tapes,” Frank replied. She’d been placated by enough men throughout her life to know that if he was going to check the tapes, it was only out of a sense of obligation and a desire to calm her down and not because he believed her or thought they were going to find anything there.
“Listen, Vivian—I need to go in a second, but while we’re on the phone, there’s the matter of a statement that we need to think of.”
“A statement?”