The Astronaut's Wife

2

Jillian could never quite reconcile herself to the term space travel. It wasn’t travel as human beings understood the word; it wasn’t as if Spencer was just another husband away on an extended business trip. There was something about his going into space that made his absence seem more extreme, bizarre—almost unnatural. And attendant on these peculiar circumstances, the anxiety and fear that Jillian felt was that much more acute. And while it was possible to forget your husband for a moment or two when he’s at a sales conference in Santa Fe or a convention in San Diego, his actions, his fate was ever with her when Spencer was in space. A slight vibration of apprehension, slightly flustering like a low-grade fever, was always with her. When Spencer was away, up there, it was as if he had died but he was going to come back to life, as if resurrection was guaranteed by NASA and the United States government, as well as by God and all the saints.

She could not be alone—not for the whole time he was gone. When Spencer was away, Jillian turned to her younger sister Nan for companionship and a steady guiding hand. Not that Nan was all that reliable in the conduct of her own life, but she had an instinctive knowledge of what her big sister needed when Spencer was away. And Jillian was glad to have her near.

Of course, like many siblings close in age they were a study in contrasts. Jillian was thoughtful and took care of the things that were precious in her life, constantly giving thought to the results and possible aftermath of even trivial occurrences; Nan, of course, was impulsive and spontaneous, wandering in and out of jobs, friendships, and relationships with men, without much thought for the future or the consequences.

And although they were sisters they could not have looked more dissimilar. Both were pretty, but Jillian had finer, more classically even features which were set off by her soft, short blond hair and her wide blue eyes. Nan’s face was small, and its component parts were pleasingly out of of proportion. Her eyes were just a tiny bit too far apart, her mouth slightly off kilter, her hair was a rather random mop of brown silk. All of this imperfection served to make her a pretty young woman.

There was a haphazardness to her gamine face that suggested a mischievousness that contrasted with her sister’s alternating moods of serenity and anxiety.

The two women dressed in completely different manners and styles as well. Jillian kept things casual and classical, never straying an inch beyond the boundaries of good taste; Nan looked thrown together.

She appeared for dinner at Jillian’s door that night dressed in bright pants, a ribbed knit shirt, a pair of black classic Keds on her feet. Had she looked any more current she would have been dressing in the styles of the week after next.

The two sisters were at work in the Armacost kitchen, back to back, preparing dinner. Even the tasks the two chose to do pointed up the differences between them. Jillian was bent over a cutting board, chef’s knife in hand, carefully but skillfully making a julienne of fresh vegetables. Nan, no less skillfully, worked the cork out of a bottle of red wine. Behind them, mounted under the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets, a small color television set played, the sound off. The sisters were hardly aware that it was there.

“Let me get this straight… he called you from space?” said Nan as she eased the cork from the bottle of pinoe noir. She sounded incredulous. De-spite her sister’s marriage to an astronaut she still could not get used to this NASA stuff. It was still science fiction to her. Of course, it wasn’t the technology involved that astonished her, but the act itself. Nan was not famous for her success with men.

The cork emerged with a pop. “From outer space,” she repeated as she reached for a wine glass.

Jillian, still engaged with her vegetables, did not turn around. But she nodded, as if to herself. “Well, technically not outer space,” she said. “He was still in the earth’s orbit. But, yes, he called me from the orbiter. Out there.” She gestured vaguely toward the window with the knife in her right hand.

Nan sighed and sipped her wine. “I can’t get Stanley to call from the Beef and Brew and you get a call from outer space. You gotta admit, that’s got to make a kid feel a little… inadequate.” She poured a glass of the scarlet wine and handed it to Jillian. “Not that it’s your fault or anything, Jilly 0…”

Jillian smiled and took the glass. She thought that if she was in Nan’s shoes she would not exactly relish the idea of a call from Nan’s latest boyfriend, Stanley, whether from the Beef and Brew, outer space, or anywhere else. Stanley, sadly, was no woman’s idea of a knight in shining armor.

“Like I said,” Jillian replied gently, “technically it wasn’t outer space, Nan.”

Nan shrugged and shook her head. “Earth’s orbit, outer space, Jupiter, whatever. Jill, if you want to get really technical about things, you scored.” She took a deep pull on her wine and shook her head again. “Oh man…”

“What?” Jillian asked.

“I don’t get it,” Nan replied. “How is it—we grow up in the same house, we watched the same television shows, ate the same frozen dinners… Your background is no different than mine, you know. It’s no nature versus nurture thing here. We weren’t separated at birth or anything like that—”

Jillian looked puzzled, not quite sure where her sister was going with this. “So what?”

Nan rolled her eyes and swigged a bit more wine. “So what? So you land Johnny Rocket Boy—who probably would have sent you flowers from outer space if he could have—and I keep on ending up with subtly different models of ‘throws up on himself Elmo.’ ” She took another gulp of the wine and then winked slyly at her sister. “And let me guess… I’ll bet he’s good at the little things, too, isn’t he?”

“What little things?” Jillian asked innocently. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling broadly, but she could not match her sister for brazenness. After a moment, she blushed and looked away, turning back to her vegetables.

“Those little things that mean so much,” said Nan, peering at her sister over the top of her wine glass. “You know what I’m talking about, July.”

“Maybe,” she replied and blushed a little bit more.

Nan laughed out loud at the truth she read in her sister’s eyes. “It’s true,” she said. “Men are like parking spaces. The good ones are taken and you can bet that the available ones are all handicapped. Maybe you don’t know that, but I sure as hell do.”

The two sisters shared a laugh over that, Jillian shaking her head ruefully as she expertly diced a zucchini. “There’s a man out there for you, Nan. Give it time.”

“How much time is time,” Nan shot back. “Wait a minute, Jilly-o… I know… Maybe, just maybe, I’m gay. Maybe that’s it. I could be gay, you know.”

“Oh, Nan, you? You are not the type.”

“Maybe I could get to like it,” Nan countered. “You know, gay is pretty damn cool these days… or is that over already.” She considered that for a moment. “No, I think it’s still pretty cool.”

“Nan, stop it!”

But Nan wouldn’t stop it. She knew that anything that took her sister’s mind off of the space mission was good for her. “What? You don’t think I could be gay? I could be gay. I know if l really tried…” Nan stood up straight squaring her shoulders against some formidable challenge. “Okay, Jillian, that’s it. It’s official. You have a gay sister, From now on I want you to—” Then she yelped in alarm. “Jesus Christ, Jillian! Be careful.”

Nan was gaping at her sister’s slim hands. The silver blade of the chef’s knife had sliced deep into her left index finger. Blood was spilling out among the green and yellow of the vegetables.

But Jillian did not appear to have noticed. “What?” Nan yelped. “Jill, what?” Jill did not respond. Rather, she was staring at the mute screen of the television set. Nan followed the line of her gaze and saw still pictures of two men, two men identified by the television network as Commander Spencer Armacost and Captain Alex Streck. At the top of the screen were the words: Special News Report.

For a moment time seemed arrested. There was no sound. There was no movement. It was as if for that split second both women had become as still and as inert as statues, their bones and joints frozen. The spell on Jill broke first.

“Oh my God…” Jillian gasped. Then she pushed past Nan to raise the volume on the television set. But she was a second too late. They had missed the story.

”…his has been a special report,” said the deep-voiced announcer. “We now return you to the program already in progress.” h a matter of seconds a midday talk show blared from the screen.

“Jill! What’s going on?” Nan yelled.

Jillian did not answer. She twisted the knob on the set, running madly through the channels, but there was nothing more about her husband, just regular programming—the game shows, the cooking shows, the soap operas seeming all the more inane when contrasted against the dread that had suddenly filled her body.

“Jill? Jilly?” said Nan. Jillian did not appear to have heard. She was still desperately turning the channels when the doorbell chimed. Both Jillian and Nan froze.

Jillian knew exactly what was happening. “Oh God,” she whispered. “It’s them.”

“It’s who?” demanded Nan.

“NASA…they probably have a trauma team or an honor guard or something. This is it.”

“Jill, you don’t know—”

But Jill had raced to the front door and thrown it open. Standing on the step was a middle-aged man m a well-cut gray suit—the NASA uniform— and with a particularly sheepish look on his face. He seemed to have trouble looking Jillian square in the eye and he shuffled his feet nervously.

Jill had met most of the Victory team at one time or another, but she had never seen this man before. In her fear and anxiety she felt a deep, irrational loathing for this anonymous man, a warm body on whom she could vent her wrath.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I’m Sherman Reese, Mrs. Armacost,” he said softly. “I’m from NASA. It’s about your husband.”

Jillian’s anger had flared up for a moment and now had burned itself out. She slumped against the door frame, her pretty face pale and drawn as if the last few minutes of her life had exhausted her, had drained her of her entire reserves of energy and strength. Blood was dripping from her finger like a leaky faucet.

“What has happened?” she asked. Her throat was tight, her voice harsh and dry.

“We’d like you to come down to the—” Reese started, but was interrupted.

From inside the house Nan shouted, “Jill— there’s something on TV about Spencer!”

“We have a car waiting,” said Sherman Reese softly. He took her arm gently, as if to guide her toward it.

“Jill?” Nan called from inside the house. “Jilly, I think you better come and see—”

As if suddenly afraid of Reese, Jill backed away, as if by not seeing him she could turn back the clock by those few minutes needed to set the world right again. There would be no NASA man at her door, no sinister NASA car in her driveway.

“Please, Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese quietly. “Captain Streck’s wife is already over there. Any questions you have will be answered down at the—

Jillian turned and ran back into the house, Reese following in her footsteps.

“Mrs. Armacost, please don’t make this more difficult than it is already.” Jillian vanished into the kitchen. It was here that Reese found her, gazing at the television set while Nan wrapped Jillian’s sliced opened finger.

“Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese, “the Director wants…”

“Shush,” said Jillian. She did not even so much as glance in his direction.

There was a reporter on the television set, microphone in hand, standing in front of the chain-link gate at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Cape. It was odd that the reporter would be doing his standup from outside the complex; there was an elaborate press room inside the space administration building. It could only mean that there had been a complete press lockdown on the story.

The television correspondent more or less confirmed the suspicion. “All we know for sure— and we don’t know much—is that both men were outside the orbiter, performing repairs on a communication satellite. The condition of Armacost and Streck, as well as the well-being of the rest of the shuttle crew, is unknown at this time…

While the reporter signed off and threw the story back to the network, Jillian turned to Reese and looked him square in the eye. Her voice was eerily calm.

“Is my husband dead?” she asked.

Reese shook his head apologetically. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the condition of your husband. I have been sent here by the Director to—”

“Is my husband dead?” July asked again, her voice edged with a tinge of hysteria, as if the false calm was melting away and she was just barely holding on to her feelings.

Reese shrugged. “To be honest, ma’am, I just don’t know. Details are very sketchy.”

“If you don’t know,” Jillian said coldly, “take me to someone who does. Now.”

She looked at the man’s starched shirt, as stiff and as spotless an officer’s whites, his crisp perfectly cut suit, that smooth shave, and the shine on his shoes and felt contempt for him. He was down here whole and healthy while her husband was deep in space, far beyond rescue, dead in the silence of space.

Reese shrugged. “That’s what I’m here to do, Mrs. Armacost. Captain Streck’s wife is already there.”

Nan grabbed her sister roughly by the sleeve and tugged her toward the door. “Come on, July, let’s get over and there and find out what the hell is going on.”

Sherman Reese stepped between then. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if he were genuinely sorry. “I only have security clearance for Mrs. Armacost.”

“Then you better get security clearance for Mrs. Armacost’s sister, mister, because—”

Reese looked beseechingly at Jillian. “Please, Mrs. Armacost, could you tell your sister—”

Jillian nodded and tried to stand straight. It was odd; she did not feel the desire to cry—not yet, anyway. She turned to Nan.

“It’ll be okay, Nan,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?” Nan’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m sure…”

The radio was on in the no-frills government car that carried them through the quiet suburb.

“NASA is now officially confirming that Commander Spencer Armacost and Captain Alex Streck were outside of the space shuttle Victory when there was an explosion on the communication satellite on which they were doing repairs…”

Reese looked worried as the words spilled out of the radio, but the young woman did not appear to be listening to the grim report. Rather, she was engrossed in the world beyond the window of the car. It was a fine Florida summer evening. People were sitting on their lawns, laboring over barbecues, lazing in swimming pools. Kids rode bikes. Life was continuing even as hers might be coming to an end.