Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
“Viv.”
What’s wrong?”
After four years of Joe training to be an astronaut, she knew by the way he said her name, by the sound of his voice—rough and low—that something had happened.
Something bad.
It wasn’t the first time he’d called her bringing news of a tragedy in the space program, and she doubted it would be the last.
“Listen, I wanted you to hear it from me first. There’s been a fire during a routine test.”
It was the way he said “fire,” the word a portent of loss. It sank into her bones, that word, that feeling of dread that constantly lived in the pit of her stomach swelling.
“I’m so sorry. Are they—”
“Dead. All three of them. The fire was in the command module. They couldn’t open the hatch to get them out.”
Joe bit out each word with military precision, the same way one might recite facts or figures, the way someone might do math problems, but beneath his tone she could tell that he was fighting to keep it together, that whatever he had experienced today had been very bad indeed.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Joe.”
Vivian struggled to keep her voice steady, to match his unemotional tone.
It wouldn’t do if she lost her composure.
He didn’t say it, but they’d been together long enough that she knew what he needed, could tell that despite the bravado he’d showed her, he was grieving, and she wished she weren’t so far away in their house in the Houston suburbs, that she could be by his side at the Cape when he needed her most.
These days, Joe was gone more than he was home.
He spent the workweek living at the Cape, and then he came home for Friday and Saturday nights and then left again.
Vivian was alone most of the time, and while being alone had never bothered her before, maybe it was the fact that she didn’t feel like she was alone by choice.
As beautiful as Clear Lake was, it didn’t feel like home, didn’t feel like a place she would have chosen to live.
And while it was nice having Polly nearby, Vivian had struggled to find a role for herself in the Astronaut Wives Club—or A.W.C.
, as they called themselves. She was lonely, and as much as she loved her husband, she was beginning to wonder how she fit into his life.
“I’ll need to be here a bit longer,” Joe added. “I don’t know if I’ll make it home this weekend.”
“Of course, whatever you need. I love you, Joe.”
“I love you, too, Viv.”
She swallowed past the unshed tears. “Be safe.”
“I will. I’m coming home to you, Viv. I always will.”
Vivian hung up the phone, and she stood there for a moment, her hand on her stomach, feeling the baby kick, and she offered a prayer to the heavens that everything would be alright.
—
Vivian held on to Joe a little more tightly when she saw him again after the fire, the realities of the dangers of his job—even in training—hitting home.
Up until this moment, they had lost astronauts to flying accidents, but there had been none in training. NASA was standing the mission down, trying to understand what went wrong.
Vivian lay beside her husband in bed, her head resting on his heart.
His hand cupped her stomach as he liked to do when they were together now.
Each week he saw her, she grew bigger, and she could tell he was dazzled by their child, marveling at the kicks and rolls that happened in her stomach with stunning regularity.
Tonight, though, he was quieter than normal, and she sensed he was working through something in his mind, something he wasn’t quite ready to share with her yet.
And then he sighed, like he was releasing a great tension that had been building inside himself. “I love you, Viv.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered, holding him more tightly.
“You and the baby, you’re everything. All of this—you’re the thing that gives it meaning. I love what I do, and until I met you, I didn’t think I would ever find anything I loved as much. But this life—I don’t know—I see the toll it takes on families. Frank and Polly—” He sighed.
“Frank and Polly—what? Is something going on with them?”
“No—I just—it’s a hard life. Hardest on the wives. On the kids. On the families. I know what you’ve given up being with me, the sacrifices you’ve had to make. I don’t want you to have to keep making them.”
Vivian rose from her position on his chest, bracing herself on her elbow, staring down at him, not quite believing what she was hearing.
Usually, when Joe started conversations like this, she was dreaming.
“What are you saying?” she asked him, her heart thundering.
“I guess I’m saying that maybe it’s time to hang things up. All of this—going to the Moon—maybe it’s too much.”
Hope filled her, swelling inside her until it built with a crescendo.
It would be a chance at something that felt like a normal life.
A chance to be happy, to not worry every time he went to work that he wasn’t going to come home like so many of his coworkers.
A chance for their child to grow up with a father who they saw on a regular basis.
For their child to not have to live with the kind of anxiety and fear Vivian experienced on a daily basis.
Their child wouldn’t lose its father like she had.
“I’m getting to be an old man,” Joe continued. “Maybe it’s good to go out on top and not be forced out like some of the others. To end things on our terms.”
“How long have you been considering this?”
“Since the fire.”
Ah.
“Hell, maybe since before that, too. Maybe since I realized that it constantly feels like I’m being torn in two different directions. Things aren’t going well at work. The tests—there have been lots of failures. Too many. Too many things going wrong. To be honest, the Moon feels farther than ever.”
Surprise filled her. Joe rarely spoke about the intricacies of his job given the sensitive and secretive nature of what he did.
She rarely asked because the science of it was somewhat beyond her, and if she was being honest, it felt like speaking about his dreams of space only heightened the differences between them.
The chasm between them felt great when he was constantly looking to a journey that took him so far away and she was left behind, trying to make a home for them, a corner of the world that she could call hers, where she could feel safe.
“When President Kennedy gave his speech at Rice saying that we would go to the Moon, it seemed inevitable. After all, he had a way of making you feel like anything was possible, like you could be something greater than yourself,” Joe continued.
“He did.”
That day in Houston felt like a lifetime ago, like it belonged to someone else’s memories.
“Now it seems like we still have so long and so far to go,” he added. “Maybe we overestimated our own abilities, our own potential. Maybe we reached too high.”
The instinct to offer Joe comfort was there, the desire to tell him that he was capable of anything, that she believed in him and his dreams. But try as she did, the words wouldn’t come.
Because the alternative existed—the potential that he would give all of this up.
She wouldn’t have to keep worrying about the possibility that he would go to work one morning to run a test, and he wouldn’t come home.
Or that the next time he jumped into his T-38 to fly to Houston it would be his last.
The prospect of peace was too compelling to ignore.
Instead, she said what felt like entirely the wrong thing.
“I’ll support you in whatever you decide.”
Something that looked like disappointment flashed across his face, and Vivian instantly wished she’d never said it, wished she’d told him that he shouldn’t give up, that she’d watched him fight his way to being an astronaut and now that he was so close to the Moon, he should see the realization of his dream through.
“Maybe I should just go back to the Air Force. Go back to flying,” Joe suggested as her heart sank.
She knew what going back to the Air Force meant, what would happen if he was flying fighters again.
Vietnam.
Not only did she oppose the war in principle, but the idea of him being over there, possibly shot down or worse—
It felt like no matter what he chose, she would lose.