Chapter Eight #3
“I wouldn’t completely discount the power of ice cream.
It’s small, yes. But it’s your way of showing them that you care, that you understand their pain.
You get to be human, Polly. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.
You get to say when it’s too much, when you can’t do this anymore.
It’s always about them, and yes, we married them, and we love them, but sometimes when we need it, it gets to be about us, too.
“I didn’t learn that when I was a little girl.
I thought that I had to look pretty and be sweet, and not upset my mother, and it took me forever—too long really—to feel like that wasn’t the case.
Hell, sometimes I think I’m still figuring that out even at my age.
Look at what you’re teaching your girls; at the example you’re giving them.
You’re showing them that it’s alright to say when something isn’t working, when you’ve had too much, when you’ve wrung every bit out of yourself and there’s nothing left.
I can’t think of a better lesson to teach them. ”
Polly wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Thank you. For always knowing exactly what I need to hear and saying it right when I need to hear it.”
“Whatever you and the girls need, I’m here for you. Always.”
Polly hugged her. “Thank you. We’re going to get through this. Somehow.” She pulled away and lifted one of the newspapers. “And we’re going to figure out how to get Joe and the others home. What you’re doing—bringing attention to this mission—he would be so proud of you.”
Vivian hoped so.
Vivian handed Polly the memorandum she’d been reading before Polly walked into the room.
“A man gave this to me at the press conference yesterday.”
She waited while Polly read the memo.
Polly’s eyes widened as her gaze connected with Vivian’s. “Was something wrong with the spacecraft? Were they aware of it and did they send them up anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want to do?” Polly asked. “What’s the endgame in all of this?”
“To bring Joe home. For him to be safe.”
She couldn’t think past that now, couldn’t think past the tightness in her chest that arose every single time she imagined her husband not coming home.
“And what if you can’t?” Polly said it softly, and she was probably the only person who could ask that question without giving offense, because Vivian knew that she would be by her side no matter what.
“Honestly? If something went wrong up there, if there was a problem with the spacecraft like that reporter intimated, then I want to tear it all down. All of it.” Vivian took a deep breath.
“Joe would hate it, of course. Would hate if he was the reason we gave up on going to the Moon. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least. He believed in this mission, this dream. ”
“I don’t know,” Polly replied. “You know Joe better than anyone. And he loves you more than anyone. He knows who he fell in love with. And he knows who he married. I don’t think you can do wrong by doing what you think is right.”
“Thank you.”
“You should ask Frank about the memo,” Polly encouraged.
“See what he knows about it. I can’t promise he’ll tell you the truth.
And if it comes down to doing the right thing by Joe or protecting the space program, I don’t know what he’d do.
But you should still bring it to him. He owes you the truth.
They all do.” Polly was silent for a beat.
“This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to turn out, you know?
At the beginning, it seemed like there was so much ahead of us.
Our futures were so bright—” She broke off, as though she’d just realized who she was talking to, that Vivian was all too well-versed in “this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to turn out.
” Polly reached out and squeezed her hand.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t blame you for a second if you brought it all tumbling down.
Hell, I’d be standing there next to you. ”
“If you had it all to do over, would you have said ‘no’ that night I asked you if you wanted to go on that double date?” Polly asked.
Vivian laughed even as she wanted to cry. “Maybe? Definitely? Definitely not? I don’t even know anymore. I’m still not sure what made me say ‘yes.’ I had big plans to watch Perry Mason.”
Polly flashed her a watery smile. “See what you would have missed out on?”
Everything.
She would have missed out on everything.
It was strange to think how many small moments, how many innocuous choices had led her to this point in her life.
She remembered standing in front of the bulletin board at the YWCA and seeing the little note card with Polly’s advertisement for a roommate posted there with a pushpin.
She’d almost walked away from the board without writing down the phone number, because truthfully, Vivian hadn’t wanted a roommate—had been perfectly fine with living alone.
But something had tugged at her—the low rent and the good location, perhaps—and she’d jotted down the phone number on the back of a newspaper.
Vivian glanced down at the newspapers Polly had strewn on the bed, and flipped through them, until she got to the last one, and beneath it a stack of mail.
“I picked it up from your box,” Polly said. “I figured it was the last thing you needed to worry about, and I didn’t want those vultures out there going through it.”
“Thank you.”
When was the last time she had remembered to pick up the mail? A day or two before the launch, perhaps. It simultaneously felt as though the past few days had happened in the blink of an eye and the span of a year.
Vivian froze.
A postcard stared back at her.
A gondola floating in the Grand Canal graced the image.
Venice.
Vivian’s fingers trembled as she picked up the postcard and turned it over.
There was no stamp. No address. No handwriting.
It was completely blank.
“Are you alright? What’s wrong?” Polly asked.
Vivian handed the postcard to Polly wordlessly, unable to formulate a response to her friend’s questions.
Surprise flashed across Polly’s face as she recognized what it was—and the significance of it as well.
“That’s—that’s just like the postcards Joe used to send you when we lived in Arlington.” Polly did the same thing Vivian had, turning it over and studying it. “That’s so strange—there’s no postmark or stamp or anything. How did it even get in here?”
“I have no idea. Are you sure it was in the stack of mail that was in the postbox?” Vivian asked.
“I think so. Could Joe have left it in there before he left?”
“I suppose so, but it doesn’t make any sense. If he did leave it in there for me, why wouldn’t he have written something on it?”
Not to mention, whenever he’d sent her a postcard before—and there were many, all bound with a ribbon in a drawer in her dresser—it had always been from a place where he was, not somewhere he’d been stationed seven years ago. And certainly not a blank one.
The note in her dress, the voice over the squawk box, and now this postcard—they felt like signs, like Joe was trying to communicate with her somehow.
She just wished she knew what she was supposed to do to help get him home.
“What if he’s still alive?” Vivian blurted out. “What if he’s out there somewhere and he needs me, and he’s trying to get me to listen to him? What if I’m the only person who can rescue him?”
She could see the hesitation on her friend’s face plain as day, the concern etched there.
“Vivian—that sounds—”
“I know. I know everyone thinks it’s my grief talking, but I’m telling you it’s not that. There’s this feeling that I have. Like he’s trying to speak to me.”
“But how? How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. I don’t—Joe always said that there was so much we didn’t know about space. So much we didn’t understand. Maybe there’s some way he can communicate from there, as unlikely and impossible as that may seem.”
It sounded like something out of one of the science fiction novels Joe loved to read, but what if there was some kernel of truth in those books? Joe himself had told her that all those stories were rooted in a combination of science and imagination.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way—you know I love you and there’s nothing I want more than for Joe to come home to you and for everything to be alright. But—”
“How do you explain the message that Joe left in the pocket of my skirt?” Vivian asked.
“The one that Joe wrote Wait for me on. Frank said that the calculations on the back of the paper were his. He recognized them and said that he gave them to Joe right before he boarded the ship. How could it have ended up in my pocket?”
“I don’t know,” Polly admitted. “Maybe you’re right. I just don’t want you to have hope only for it to be extinguished.”
“And if it is? Why not have hope at this point? After all, the alternative is that my husband is dead. If I’m either going to be devastated now or grieve him later, then I’d rather hold out on hope for as long as I can.
Besides, it isn’t just hope—it’s the feeling I have inside of me that I can’t shake.
Like I’m missing something or there’s something he’s trying to tell me.
Sometimes it feels like he’s shouting at me. ”
Wait for me.