The Astronaut's Wife

by Robert Tine

  Everyone in the class responded with alacrity. “We have oranges in Florida!”

  Well, all but one said that. A lone little boy answered, “We have rocket ships!” His eyes were bright at the very thought of such magical contraptions.

  Jillian smiled at her space-obsessed pupil. “Yes, Calvin, oranges and rocket ships.”

  Just then the door of the classroom opened and young girl, a child a little older than the pupils in Jillian Armacost’s class, came bustling, bursting with self-importance, into the room.

  “What is it, Lynne?” Jillian asked.

  “Mrs. Whitfield sent me here with a message for you,” the girl said excitedly. Mrs. Whitfield was the formidable principal of the elementary school.

  “What’s the message?”

  “Mrs. Armacost, you got a phone call!”

  Phone calls at school were so out of the ordinary daily routine of the day that it was with a mixture of apprehension tinged with a distinct sense of curiosity about who might be calling her in the middle of the working day.

  The secretaries in the school office were full of inquiring looks, consumed, as Jillian was, by curiosity.

  She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  The response was a man’s voice, a voice she did not recognize. “Is that Mrs. Armacost?”

  “Yes,” she said, her heart sinking. She knew the voice of NASA when she heard it. She could not help but wonder if something terrible had happened to her husband. “Yes, this is Jillian Armacost.”

  Jillian had guessed correctly. “This is NASA communications,” said the man. “We have your husband for you.”

  The man made it all sound so simple, as if he was putting through a call from somewhere nearby—across town maybe—as opposed to from high up in outer space.

  Jillian felt a tremor of excitement flash through her body. “You…, you have my what?”

  “Stay on the line please…”

  There was a crackle of static on the line, then Jillian heard the man say, “Go ahead, Commander.”

  There was another burst of static, as if the atmosphere was clearing its throat, then to Jillian’s astonishment, she heard Spencer’s voice come on the line. “Jillian? Are you there?”

  Jillian seemed even more surprised than she had been a moment before. “Spencer? Is that you?”

  “Can you hear me?” It was definitely Spencer’s voice, but there was an aerated, hollow quality to it, as if they were on a very long distance call. Which, Jillian thought, was exactly what they were doing.

  “Spencer, I can’t believe this,” Jillian ex-claimed. “How did this happen?”

  Through the ether, Jillian heard her husband laugh. The sound made her shiver with delight. “I told you I’d call you,” he said, continuing to chuckle. “It’s amazing isn’t it.”

  As if to compensate for the immense distance, Jillian could only shout into the phone, her voice seeming to ring through the entire school building. “Yes, amazing,” she yelled.

  There was a moment of silence as they listened to their connection, each straining to hear the other breathe.

  Finally Spencer broke the silence. And he did it in a typically Spencer fashion. “Hey, Jill?”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me something. It’s really important, okay?” There was a note of urgency in his voice that sent her levels of anxiety skyrocketing once again.

  “Yes, Spencer,” she said nervously. “What is it?”

  “You have to tell me…”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you wearing?” She could hear the laughter in his voice and she wanted to slap him and kiss him at the same time. “I have to know, Jillian.”

  “Spencer…” said Jillian reprovingly, as if she was threatening one of her little students with a time-out.

  “Come on,” Spencer replied. “no one else is listening… C’mon, tell me. It’s just you and me.”

  An apologetic-sounding male voice broke in on the line. “Uh, not exactly, Commander,” he said a touch sheepishly. “Including Houston and Jet Propulsion Labs, there are about three hundred folks on the line just at the moment.”

  Spencer ignored the caution. “Jillian, are you wearing that black skirt of yours? The tight one?”

  In spite of being embarrassed Jillian laughed loudly. “Settle down, cowboy. This is a school teacher you’re talking to, you know?”

  Spencer laughed and paused a moment before continuing. “Nice day down there, huh?” he asked. “Not a cloud in the sky, right? One of those perfect Florida days…”

  “It’s beautiful here,” said Jillian. Then a weird sort of dread overcame her, a panicky feeling that needed to be quelled immediately. He had spoken so wistfully about something so mundane, so workaday, so not Spencer. Why would he be interested in the weather? It was as if he was asking her about something he would never see again, something deep in his past.

  “Spencer,” she asked quickly, “where are you?”

  Before he could answer, the voice of officialdom, the NASA voice, came back on the line abruptly. “Thirty seconds to go, Commander,” he cautioned.

  Jillian felt her panic ratchet up a notch. “Spencer, where exactly are you?”

  There was a pause, the briefest delay. It could have been due to the distance of transmission, it could have been reluctance on Spencer’s part. Jillian did not know. She did not care. The hesitation had not lasted a second, not a half second, but it seemed to Jillian to have played out over an hour or more.

  “Can you see outside, Jill?” he asked finally.

  “Yes, Spencer.” Jillian glanced out of the window in the office. The day was bright and sunny, the sky blue, just as her husband had described it to her a few moments before.

  “Fifteen seconds, Commander,” said the guy from Houston.

  “Jillian…” said Spencer wistfully. “I am right above you. Right over you now.”

  Jillian knew it was foolish, but she couldn’t stop herself. Without thinking about it she pulled the phone cord as far as it would go to the farthest extension of the wire. Then she threw open the window and looked into the sky.

  “You looking up?” Spencer asked.

  “Ten seconds, Commander…”

  “Jillian, smile for me, huh? Okay?”

  Jillian gazed into the sky, a smile on her face, but with tears in the corner of her eyes. “I already am.”

  “Five seconds, Commander Armacost.” You could almost see the guy with his eyes glued to the digital clock on his console, counting off the seconds.

  “Jillian, I—” That was all he managed to say before his voice was lost in a sea of static.

  “Spencer?” Jillian sounded as if she was demanding that her husband not leave her.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Armacost,” said the voice of NASA. “We lost the link. But he’s talking to Mission Control right now. Everything is fine. We’ll take good care of him.” That was NASA all over, don’t worry, your kindly old uncle is here, always on the job, taking care of the boys up there in space.

  “Thank you,” Jillian whispered. “I know you will.”

  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.r />
  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 s
uddenly 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.