Chapter Ten #2
That sometimes your luck simply ran out, no matter how good of a pilot or astronaut you were.
“Could something have gone wrong with the navigation system?” Vivian asked.
“Yes. Maybe. In theory, the computer controls the capsule, but things go wrong. People like to act like the machines are infallible, but the truth is that they’re only as good as the inputs that they’re given or the people who build them.”
“Did you know that there were concerns about the navigation system?”
“No.”
“Would others have known?”
“I don’t know, Vivian. Honestly. I swear to you that if I did, I would tell you.”
She wanted to believe him. Badly. Wanted to believe that the man who stood next to Joe at the altar when she married him would care more about his friend than the Space Race.
“Would you?”
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, Frank, it just feels like you’re squarely in the agency’s camp. I mean you came to me asking if I would give a statement to show support for going to the Moon while my husband is missing.”
He raked his hand through his hair. “He’s my best friend, Vivian.
He may be your husband, but he’s my best friend.
I’m the mission director on the ground. I’m the one who told him the mission was good to go.
You don’t think it’s eating me up inside to know that something might have happened to him on my watch? ”
“I’m sorry, Frank. I—”
She didn’t know what words to offer him, how to explain the feelings that warred within her.
She’d always wished she had a different temperament for this sort of thing, watched as the other wives seemed to believe in the mission with such a fervency that she almost thought if their husbands were sacrificed to it, they would accept the loss as part of the territory.
Maybe it was the fact that she’d already lost her father to war; she wasn’t ready to give up her husband to space.
“I’m so worried about him,” she settled on finally, the words somehow both exactly the ones she was searching for and terribly inadequate. “I need to feel like I’m doing something, like he’s going to come home, because the alternative is unthinkable.”
“I know.”
Vivian could tell from the way he said it, by the manner in which his shoulders sagged a bit, that a part of him had already given up, and even as it frustrated her to confront the fact that he might think it was over, because he was Joe’s best friend, more like family to both of them, she worried about him.
“How are you doing, Frank?”
It was the question Joe would have asked if he were here and saw his friend looking like this.
“About as well as you would expect.” Frank studied her for a moment, and whatever he saw in her gaze must have confirmed it for him. “I guess you heard that Polly left.”
“I did. I’m sorry. For all of you.”
“Me too. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did that made her stop loving me.
I’ve tried racking my brain to figure it out.
She told me a month before the launch. Said she would come out here for you, would keep up the appearance of everything being normal because we both agreed it was the last thing you and Joe needed to be worried about.
Even after I agreed to the divorce to make her happy, I kept hoping she would change her mind, that this was some sort of mood she was in that would go away. ”
Vivian leveled him with a look. “Come on, Frank. You can’t chalk this up to a mood and then ask why she’s upset.”
The thing about Frank was that at his core, he wasn’t a bad guy.
She’d seen enough of the ones who had little care or consideration for their spouses and children, who treated them as though they were hardly more than accessories designed to complement their space ambitions.
Frank had a terrible habit of saying the wrong thing, but she’d always known him to be someone who cared deeply about his family, about doing the right thing.
He just fared better with machines than people.
And considering she’d never been all that great with people, either, she had a bit of a soft spot for him even when he said things that infuriated her.
She realized that the crux of her frustration with Frank stemmed from the fact that he was likely torn between his loyalty and affection for Joe, and his unshakable belief in the Space Race and the need for the Americans to decisively best the Soviets once and for all.
Frank had spent the entirety of his adult life believing in his service—that the mission he dedicated himself to was an honorable one, that his actions kept those he loved and his countrymen safe.
Even though she didn’t view the world through the same lens he did, she could understand how Frank felt like prioritizing the mission to the Moon was a manner of serving his family.
She could understand his bewilderment, even as her heart went out to poor Polly, who had shouldered the weight of her family for so long and was perfectly entitled to say she was done and wipe her hands of the entire business.
“I don’t think she stopped loving you, Frank. She’s tired. We’re all tired. This life—it asks a lot. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t break at times.”
“You and Joe never seemed like that. Like it was breaking you.” He flushed. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to bring up something sensitive during—”
“No. It’s alright. It’s good to talk about him. To think about him.” Vivian took a deep breath, steadying herself. “We fight plenty, Frank.”
Surprise flashed across his face. “I just don’t understand what happened. With Polly, I mean. We didn’t used to fight. Now it seems like it’s all we do.”
He looked so miserable, so clueless, that she couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him, for how he looked like a man whose world had been turned on its axis and wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Thanks to the military and then NASA, Frank was used to following the path that was set before him, to existing in a clearly defined structure with an established hierarchy that governed the way he saw himself in the world and in his interaction with others.
There wasn’t a code of conduct that governed civilian relationships, and she would have bet anything that if someone handed Frank a codified handbook for how to deal with his wife, he would have gladly accepted and followed it.
“She carries a lot—Polly does,” Vivian tried again.
“I know,” Frank replied.
She recognized the expression on his face because she’d seen it enough on her husband’s.
She understood the frustration that Frank felt, considering she’d seen Joe be torn between his loyalty to the space program and the mission, and his loyalty to her and their marriage.
It wasn’t an easy situation for either of them.
Vivian hesitated, not sure how much she should get involved in her friends’ marriage, but at the same time, she’d known both since before they were Polly-and-Frank, and she cared deeply about them.
“Polly makes everything look easy. Perfect. Like she stepped off the pages of Life magazine. But I think she works harder than anyone else to make things look easy. And when things don’t go the way she thinks they should, she’s the first person to blame herself.”
“She’s my wife. You don’t think I know that?”
“Maybe you know it, but Polly doesn’t know that you know it.
She doesn’t hear it enough. She feels like a lot of the things she does go unnoticed.
” Vivian sighed. “It’s hard enough being an astronaut’s wife.
This life—it doesn’t leave much room for us.
The work you’re doing is important—the whole world celebrates your efforts and accomplishments.
But the work we do keeping everything running, the work Polly does at home and with the girls, that’s important, too.
Even if it’s hard to compete with matters of national security and, you know, the universe. ”
“What do I do? How do I get my family back? You know Polly better than anyone. What would you do if you were me? How do I show her how grateful I am?”
“Show her that she matters. That you see her. I know this is the absolute worst time with everything that’s going on, and believe me, Polly understands. But Polly needs to feel like she and the girls are a priority to you.”
Vivian rose, taking the memorandum she’d handed Frank and slipping it back into her purse.
He made a move like he was going to stop her, and then he just shook his head as though he realized the futility in putting up a fuss.
She was moving to leave his office when he called out her name.
“I know you want to believe Joe is coming home. We all want that. But if he doesn’t, if something happened to him out there, then he would want you to be happy.
You’re the love of his life. He was different when he was with you.
More comfortable, more at peace. More than anything he would want you to be alright, Vivian. ”
She didn’t reply, didn’t think she could bear to, because it unmistakably felt like Frank was warning her to prepare for a conclusion he considered to be inevitable, and she refused to accept.
“What if he’s out there somewhere? What if I did hear him on the squawk box? What if he needs help?”
“Vivian. What you’re talking about—the science of this stuff. It’s complicated. There’s so much out there that we don’t know, so much that we’re learning.”
She was beginning to think this was the only refrain they had to offer her, and she refused to accept it.
“Sending a man into space was complicated once, but you figured that out, didn’t you? Don’t tell me getting him back safely is beyond your reach now.”
“We don’t even know if he’s out there to get back safely,” Frank replied. He paled. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine, Frank. Don’t think it has escaped my notice that you all seem to think he’s gone. I’m just asking you not to give up. Please.”