The Astronaut's Wife

17

The thing that Jillian planned to do with Nan later that day was give her a healthy dose of hell. Spencer’s sudden appearance at the rendezvous point between her and Reese was far too convenient to be mere coincidence. Nan—and only Nan—could have tipped him off to Reese’s presence in the city.

“You were the only one who knew, Nan,” Jillian raged at her sister. “And I asked you not to tell him.”

Nan’s head was still throbbing from her big New York night out and she was close to tears. “I didn’t do it, Jilly,” she said. “I swear it, Jilly. Really…”

Jillian was unmoved by this display of emotion. “What were you talking about last night, last night when I was in bed. The two of you were out here. I heard you.”

“We were just talking,” said Nan defensively. “Just shooting the breeze. Nothing more than that.”

“Talking? About what?”

“Just talking, Jillian,” said Nan. “Please, don’t do this. It’s not good for you.”

Jillian remained coldly inquisitorial. “Where did you go last night, Nan?”

“Please, Jillian,” Nan pleaded, “listen to yourself. You’re driving yourself crazy.”

Jillian spoke through clenched teeth. “Just tell me. Where did you go last night?”

Nan shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. “I love you, Jillian. Spencer loves you. We all do…so much…”

“Spencer was there, Nan,” Jillian replied. “And you were the only person who could have told him about Reese.”

Nan fought back her tears and looked at her sister, she bit her lip and then, reluctantly, picked up her backpack and headed for the front door of the apartment.”

“I love you, Jillian,” she said. “But I’m not going to do this with you … I love you…” Nan slammed the door behind her, leaving Jillian alone with that radio. The children sang: “Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” But then the song was over, and the children just sat there staring at Jillian. Her face was filled with loneliness and fear—and she was so consumed that she had not been paying attention to her class at all.

Finally a little girl summoned up the courage to speak. “Mrs. Armacost?”

Jillian shook her head as if just waking from a dream “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, “what is it?”

“The song is over.”

Just then the school bell rang and Jillian realized with some relief that school was over as well.

It was only a sense of duty and routine that made Jillian stop by her mailbox to see if she had missed any important announcements or handouts. There was only one piece of mail for her, an envelope which she tore open. Inside was a single piece of paper with a padlock key taped to it. Scrawled on the paper were the words: “New York Storage. Unit 345—Mrs. Armacost. Be careful.” It was signed, “Sherman Reese.” Jillian rode the huge freight elevator up to the third floor of the New York Storage facility. As the giant stainless cube rose slowly, Jillian wondered what lay in store for her in Unit 345. She was about to find out.

The elevator stopped, the door opened, and Jillian stepped out. The vast storage floor, lined with hundreds of locked bins stretching off into the far shadows, was absolutely silent and poorly lit by occasional fluorescent lights. They were controlled by a large button on the wall next to the elevator. A sign above it read: TO CONSERVE ENERGY, LIGHTS SHUT OFF EVERY 30 MINUTES. Jillian did not see it; rather she was intent on finding Unit 345. The place was a maze and the only sounds were the buzz of the lights, the hum of the ventilation outlets, Jillian’s footsteps on the concrete, and her breathing. She walked past row after row of white doors with numbers stenciled on them. Everything was clinical looking as if the place were a laboratory. She found door 345 and put the key in the padlock and opened it.

Jillian stepped into an eight-by-eight cube. Jillian pulled closed the door behind her and fumbled for the light switch. She snapped on the overhead and found that she was standing in the middle of a little archive. There was a desk and chair and shelves from floor to ceiling packed with folders. There were boxes of documents. Everything was neat,. clean, and appeared to be organized to the point of what seemed to be mania. Part of the walls were given over to cork bulletin boards, each covered with orderly rows of newspaper clippings, all of which concerned Spencer Armacost in some way. There were sober accounts of his shuttle missions from scholarly journals, there were magazine stories that had been planted in the glossies by NASA public relations.

Sherman Reese had kept up to date. There was a picture and advertisement from Aviation Week showing Spencer, Nelson, and a mock-up of the McLaren jet, along with the announcement: Coming to the skies, 2013.

Sherman Reese had been in New York for a long time before making his attempt to get in touch with her. She felt a wave of nausea when she saw the stack of photographs, all of them taken in New York City—Spencer on the sidewalk, Spencer entering the apartment building, Spencer getting into a cab… Spencer talking with Nan. Jillian could only wonder when that one had been taken…

In the middle of the desk was a videotape with a Post-it note stuck to it. It read: “For Jillian.” Just as she picked it up the lights in the storage facility clicked off.

There was utter darkness for a second or two, then the dim yellow security lights kicked in. Jillian was spooked and dashed out of the storage locker, running through the maze of corridors until she found the welcoming light in front of the elevator. She punched the call button and stood in the dim light listening to her breathing, silently begging the elevator to arrive.

The elevator slid open and Jillian started to throw herself into it, but instead found herself face-to-face with a young couple pushing a large pallet piled high with storage boxes.

“Getting off,” said the man.

Jillian stepped back. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

They pushed-their burden out on to the floor, the woman hitting the button that turned on all the lights. Trying to calm herself down, Jillian stepped into the elevator and the door closed. The panic did not sink. She was alone in the big metal box and she clutched the videotape, her arms wrapped around her belly. She was deathly afraid and she did not have the slightest idea of what. She knew she was afraid of the videotape—but she also knew that she had to see what was on it. But Jillian steeled herself, pushed the videotape into the VCR, took the remote control, sat on the couch, and hit the play button.

There was a flash of static then an image. Sherman Reese’s hotel room. Sherman stepped in front of the camera. It was plain that he was very nervous. His laptop computer was open on the bed next to him and he glanced at it from moment to moment.

Sherman spoke directly into the camera. “It’s a joke, right… But if you’re watching this tape, then I never got to that meeting with you. If you are watching this tape, Mrs. Armacost, then I am probably flicking dead. This is the backup. That’s what they always taught us at NASA,” he said. “Always make sure you have a backup. This is mine…” He paused a moment, as if thinking about his own mortality. Then he gazed steadily into the camera lens. “I’m not crazy,” Reese said. “I wish I were. I prayed I was, but I’m not.” He paused again. “I’ve been thinking you might be thinking that you’re crazy, too. How could you not? I mean, after all that’s happened…”

It was as if that speech was a little prologue, an introduction to what happened next. From the pocket of his suit coat he pulled another small tape recorder, one identical to the one she had carried away from him and smashed.

It was as if Reese knew what she was thinking. He smiled crookedly. “I told you… always have a backup.” He plugged the recorder into his laptop and hit the play button. The first voice she heard was Reese’s own.

“There are two voices on the tape you are going to hear, Mrs. Armacost. Your husband’s and that of Captain Streck.”

The sonic response lines of the noise on the tape showed on the laptop screen.

Spencer spoke first: “I’m going to rotate the main panel forty-eight degrees. You got me, Alex?”

Alex Streck’s voice replied. “That’s good to go, Spencer. I’ll need the 9c spanner as soon as… Spencer? You feel that?”

Reese pointed to his laptop screen. “Now, you see, this line here is your husband’s voice. This line here is Captain Streck’s,” he said professorially.

Spencer’s voice came next. It was high and panicky. She knew it was her husband, but she had never heard him like that before. “Alex? Jesus. Alex? What the—”

Reese pointed to the third line. “Two voices but there are three lines. There’s something else on this tape. Something we can’t hear. Something out of our range. But… I translated it. I had to hear it… This is what it sounds like.”

As she listened the squalor and disappointment that had become Sherman Reese’s life vanished. Instead, he was his old self, the precise, NASA-trained scientist.

Reese typed a code into the laptop, and from the speakers came that sound, the insect screaming, the horrible. shrieking. The terrible noise hit Jillian like a hot bullet.

Reese killed the sound and then turned back to face the camera. “Now, NASA said it was static. They said it was caused by the exploding satellite.” Jillian had reached her own conclusion. “It’s not static,” she whispered.

“NASA said it was a static buildup in their suits,” said Reese. “But it’s not static. I tracked it. It didn’t come from the satellite. It didn’t come from the suits. It didn’t come from the shuttle.” Reese’s cool seemed to ebb.

“It didn’t come from earth either,” he said nervously. “Two minutes. That’s all there is. That’s all it took. It’s a transmission, Mrs. Armacost. If you wanted to come here, to earth. I mean, from very far away… maybe you wouldn’t have to travel in a ship… maybe you could travel in a transmission. Travel at the speed of light. Like a thought. You wait for two humans to be up there…two of us in orbit, near a target. With something to aim at, like a satellite…”

Jillian was hanging on every word, staring hard at the screen. The story he was telling was so much worse than she ever imagined, she could hardly believe it.

“Two of us who are beyond suspicion,” Reese continued. “Heroes. All-Americans. You wait for a pair like them then erase them like a tape and record your own message.”

Jillian didn’t think she could hear any more. The truth was too awful to bear.

“Natalie Streck knew it,” said Reese. “And you know it, too, don’t you? He is not your husband anymore. He’s not. You know he’s not.” He looked square into the camera lens. “Don’t you?”

Reese seemed pleased that he had proven his case. He went back to his professorial mode. “That satellite they were supposed to be repairing—they weren’t repairing it, they were deploying it—you know what that was for? It was designed to listen for transmissions from deep space. It was supposed to look for anything, anything coming from there at all. It was just supposed to listen.” Reese laughed a little and shook his head ruefully.

“NASA thinks it failed. They think it didn’t work. We know it worked. Don’t we?”

Suddenly. Reese stopped talking. He appeared to listen to something beyond the view of the lens, then, without warning he jumped up, and ran from the frame. There was the sound of fumbling and static as the camera was shut down and the screen of Jillian’s television set went blank. She did not move, staring at the gray snow, even though the disturbing, hair-raising “show” appeared to have come to an end.

But it hadn’t ended. Abruptly the static cleared and Reese re-entered the frame. It looked as if some time had passed and Sherman looked a little worse for wear. He was holding a blueprint in his hand and he waved it at the camera.

“There’s no computer to run that plane,” Reese said. “It hasn’t been designed yet.” He unrolled the blueprint and held it close to the lens. “Once it’s designed it’s going to go right here, in the cockpit. Right here where the pilots should be.”

Jillian moved closer to the television screen squinting at the blueprint, trying to see the point that Reese indicated with a poorly manicured fingernail.

“It’s going to be a binary computer,” Reese said. “Binary. That’s twin, Mrs. Armacost. Twin. What do you think you have inside you? What do you think he put there?”

She couldn’t take any more. She turned off the VCR and leaned back on the sofa, her head reeling. She could see herself in the bathtub, Spencer kneeling next to her, washing her, attending to her. She heard Spencer’s voice. “What will they be? Pilots?”

Jillian lay on the couch, the television remote control in one hand and remembered well what she had said that night. “Pilots…just like their father.” She sat there still for a moment, the silence in the apartment was overwhelming. It made Spencer’ s voice sound that much louder.

“Jillian?”

She jumped and dropped the VCR remote as she turned to face her husband. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, doing her best to recover from her obvious surprise. “You’re home early.”

Spencer sat down next to her on the couch. Jillian watched anxiously as Spencer toyed absently with the VCR remote control. He tossed it lightly from hand to hand.

“I felt bad for you, getting into that fight with Nan.”

“How do you know about that?”

“She called.”

“And she didn’t tell you what it was about?”

Spencer shook his head. “She said, ‘None of your business, Spaceman.’ ”

“That’s right,” Jillian answered. “It was just sister stuff. She’ll get over it and so will I.”

Spencer ran his thumb up the remote, his finger playing on the play button.

“You haven’t heard from her?”

Jillian shook her head and watched his fingers play around the buttons.

“Well,” said Spencer, “I wouldn’t worry…I’m sure she’ll call soon enough.”

Jillian could not stand it any longer. She reached out and placed her hand on her husband’s. He stopped fiddling with the buttons. He touched her fingers.

“Jillian, you are trembling.”

“Am I?” Jillian said as lightly as she could. “I guess I’m just a little cold.”

Spencer put his arms around her as if to warm her. “I have something here to cheer you up.”

Spencer reached into his briefcase and pulled out a videocassette and waved it at her.

“Follow the Fleet,” he said. “Fred, Ginger, me, you. What do you say? How about it?”

Spencer went to the VCR and tried to load the tape. but he found the bay occupied. “You watching something?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

He popped out the tape of Sherman Reese’s expose. “No label,” he said. There was the faintest sound of suspicion in his voice. “What is this thing?”

The lie came so easily, Jillian was astonished by herself. “It’s a pregnancy video,” she said. “Denise gave it to me. She thought it would make me feel better.”

Spencer loaded Follow the Fleet. The he joined her on the couch, taking her in his arms. “You worry too much, Jilly.” He hit the play button and they waited while the feeder tape spooled through the VCR.

“Why are you building that plane?” Jillian asked, trying to keep her voice light and casual.

Spencer laughed. “What? What are you talking about, Jillian? I don’t get it.”

“That plane… that terrible plane that you and Jackson and McLaren are so proud of… Why do you have to build it? Why does it have to exist at all?”

Spencer shrugged. “It’s a contract, Jilly. And I didn’t add as much as Jackson said I did…They have a bunch of real smart engineers over there. They’re behind most of it,”

The first notes of Follow the Fleet began to flow from the VCR, but neither of them were paying attention.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Spencer. “You’re worried about what kind of world we’ll be bringing the twins into. I think about it, too, believe me…

They settled down to watch the movie. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “We won’t let anything happen to them. Will we? I know you won’t and you know I won’t. Follow the Fleet played on the television, but it played to no conscious audience. Both Jillian and Spencer had fallen asleep, entwined in each other’s arms.

Jillian dreamed. A dream so real that even in her sleep she hated it. Those familiar words.

“I’m going to rotate the panel forty-eight degrees. You got me, Alex?”

“That’s good to go. I’ll need the 9c spanner as soon as…Spencer? You feel that?”

“Alex? Jesus. Alex? What the—”

Jillian awoke with a start, waking Spencer at the same time. Follow the Fleet was still on the television set.

Spencer pulled Jillian into an embrace. “Must have dozed off,” he said.

“Were you dreaming?” Jillian asked.

said Spencer, “just sleeping.”

“You weren’t dreaming?” Jillian pressed. “No, Jillian. I wasn’t dreaming,” he said. Jillian looked into his eyes. They were not loving, but black and cold.

“Were you?” Spencer asked.

Jillian looked down at the coffee table where Sherman Reese’s video cassette had been before they fell asleep. The tape was gone. Jillian felt her stomach lurch.

“Were you?” Spencer repeated.

Jillian looked over at the radio and closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “No dreams for me.”