by Jenny Moss
When I got to third gear, it was easy. I drove the car around the narrow roads while Tommy talked to me about the fall of the Roman Empire.
“Those funny Goths,” I said.
“So,” he said. “Any more news about your future?”
“There is!” I said, glancing over at him. “Remember me talking about Professor Gaines, the poet I met? A student of hers now teaches at Hollins University—one of the colleges I applied to. She invited me to tour the campus this summer. There’s a chance Hollins will accept me for the spring semester.”
“That’s great, Annie,” he said, reaching over to squeeze my hand on the steering wheel. “Isn’t Hollins in Virginia or North Carolina … someplace like that?”
“It’s a women’s college in southwest Virginia.”
“A women’s college?” He grinned. “That sounds like an excellent place for you.”
I laughed. “You think so, do you?”
“Yeah. Having all those guys around would just distract you.” He was still grinning, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
Good grief, he was gorgeous. But I was driving. I had to focus on the road. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do next year?”
“I may be in college myself.”
“What?” I asked, looking over at him.
He nodded.
“What? I must stop for this,” I said, braking.
“The parents—”
“Just a minute,” I said, putting the car in neutral. “Okay. Now, what?”
“My mom and dad agreed to pay for college even if it is for a degree in education. And more importantly,” he said, smiling, “they’ve agreed not to complain about it.”
“That’s super, Tommy.”
“I have tests to take. There are things to do.”
“Will you go back to USC?”
“I’ve thought about it,” he said.
I was disappointed. California was far away from Virginia. “Are you going back for that old girlfriend?” I asked in a teasing voice, although I was slightly worried.
“And lose you? I’m not stupid.” He gave me a quick kiss. “No, not USC. Maybe University of Texas. Or …” He stopped and looked at me.
“What?”
“I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’d like to be close to where you are. If you’re thinking of Virginia, I’d apply to colleges there too.”
“Really?”
“How do you feel about that?” he asked.
“It would make me,” I said quietly, “very happy.”
“Would it? Because I don’t want to scare you off—”
I put a finger to his lips to hush him up. “I’d like it. Very much.”
He put his hand over mine and kissed my finger. “It’ll take me a year to get my act together. So I’d be applying for fall of ‘87.”
“Wow,” I said. “Look at you.”
“Look at you.”
“Look at me, driving this stick. I should be rewarded. You want to go to Pe-Te’s?”
“What’s that?”
“Pe-Te’s Cajun Barbeque House? You don’t know it? It’s famous!” I pointed across the highway. “You can see it. Right there.”
“Cajun and barbeque?”
“Cajun barbeque. The pilots and the astronauts hang out at Pe-Te’s. And Christa went there. Because when you fly on the Vomit Comet, you get to go to Pe-Te’s. And since I successfully drove a stick, I should get to go too.”
“Sure. You want to drive us over?”
“Cross Highway 3? No.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Not game? I don’t know if you really deserve a meal at the famous Pe-Te’s if you can’t drive us just right across the highway.”
“Get on your side of the car,” I said, pushing him back. “That’s a challenge!”
“Okay. But I think you were on my side of the car.”
“Here we go,” I said, letting out the clutch, only to have the car die immediately. “No!” I said, hitting the steering wheel and hitting his arm. “Hey, are you laughing at me?”
“Hey, stop hitting me, woman. Back on your side. And get us,” pointing at Pe-Te’s, “to there.”
I took a breath. “Fine.” I started the car up again and glanced at Tommy.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
Slowly I let out the clutch, while accelerating. “We’re going. We’re going.”
“We are going.”
“We’re going!”
“We’ve gone before,” he said.
“Okay. Shh, shh.”
I didn’t let him talk again until we were at the light to pull out onto Highway 3.
“Don’t be so nervous,” he said.
“Because I’m making you nervous?”
“Exactly.”
“The light’s green,” I said.
“Okay, go.”
The car stalled. “It’s all right,” I said. “I can do this. I got it.”
We missed that traffic cycle, but I got us through the next one. Driving down the highway itself wasn’t hard, but it was the slowing down and stopping and starting again that worried me.
At the next light, I looked at Tommy. “What? Why do you look so scared?”
“I’m not scared. I jump out of airplanes.”
“Shh,” I said, as the light turned green. And I slowly let out the clutch—
—honking from behind—
—and put on the gas and jerked through the light. But we kept going and I was happy to turn into the parking lot.
I parked and collapsed.
“Now you deserve Cajun barbeque,” he said.
“And a kiss?”
He leaned toward me. “We could skip the barbeque.” He gave me a slow, gentle kiss, one hand in my hair. And then another.
“Wow,” I whispered into his lips. We kissed again, and then I drew back. “You’re good at that.”
“Come here,” he said.
I put a hand on his chest. “Barbeque, then kissing.”
“Not sure I like the order, but okay,” he said, opening his door.
“Isn’t this cool?” I asked when we went through the metal doors. “It used to be a gas station.” It was pretty deserted.
“Look at all those license plates on the walls, and the signs too. There are thousands.”
“Every state represented, and many countries. Hey, see the dance floor?” I looked at him. “What?”
He grabbed my hands, walking backward, and started leading me to the floor.
“There’s no music,” I said.
He pulled me in tight, holding on to one hand, and wrapped his arm around my waist. We danced slowly. In my ear, he started singing a song I thought I knew, his breath warm and enticing.
I pulled back a little, wanting to see his eyes. “Is that Jackson Browne?”
“Yeah, ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ ” We looked at one another as we danced and he sang.
“Yours,” I said softly.
He smiled and kissed me lightly, still singing between kisses.
CHAPTER 59
Tommy, Lea, and I walked around the long 1967 station wagon that was the Fruitmobile. We were at a road show of art cars, which were all parked on the narrow residential street in front of The Orange Show. Dad was late, of course.
“It is so hot,” said Lea, fanning herself with her hands.
“It’s Texas and it’s June,” I said. “Anyway, look at the Fruitmobile, Lea. It only cost $800 to transform it.”
“Lots of plastic oranges and apples.”
“And bananas and pineapples and grapes. So much bright color!”
“Everyone is here to see these cars?” she asked, looking around. “There are hundreds and hundreds of Houstonians here.”
The crowd was huge, with lots of kids running around or attending one of the art-bike workshops. A television station had sent out a crew, as did National Public Radio.
“When did Dad say he was coming?” I asked Tommy. “You talked to him last nigh
t, right?”
“He will definitely be here with the Beatmobile,” Tommy said, his fingers intertwined with mine. “No way he’d miss this.”
I nodded, still worried. Dad had been a little down since Mom’s wedding. She and Donald were on a two-week honeymoon in Hawaii.
I felt Tommy squeeze my hand. “He’ll be here,” he said, giving me a kiss. I smiled into his eyes.
“How are you two ever going to be apart,” asked Lea, “when Annie goes to college? You’re never going to make it as a couple, you know,” she added in her blunt way. “Relationships don’t survive distance.”
“We won’t be apart for long,” I told her. “Tommy’s applying to colleges close to the ones I’m applying to.”
Lea gave us a crooked smile. “How ’bout that?”
Tommy wrapped me in a hug and kissed the top of my head.
Just then, I saw the Beatmobile coming down the street. “He made it!” I said. Heads began turning in the direction of the approaching car as the faces of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac got closer. These art cars were the rock stars of this show.
I shaded my eyes. “Is that …?”
“I think it is,” said Tommy.
I laughed. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?” Lea asked.
“The Love Bus,” I said excitedly. “Do you see it? It’s right behind the Beatmobile.”
“The Love Bus?” asked Lea.
I looked at Tommy. “Did Dad tell you Bonnie and Clyde were coming?”
“He might have.”
“You kept a secret from me?”
“I did,” he said, smiling.
“Bonne and Clyde?” asked Lea.
“You’ll like them, Lea,” I said, smiling. “Nice, nice people.”
“Not the Bonnie and Clyde I was thinking of,” she said. “You know, Annie, I hate to say I told you so.”
“Then don’t. Come on,” I said, pulling her by the sleeve toward the Beatmobile and the Love Bus, which were now parked a little ways down the street.
“Do you think they brought the dogs?” Tommy asked.
“Probably,” I said, laughing. A crowd of people had already started to form around the newly arrived art cars. I couldn’t see if Bonnie and Clyde had gotten out yet.
“But I have to say it, Annie,” Lea continued, like she’d never stopped talking. “I told you college was the right place for you.”
“It might be.”
“You’re going to love it.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I can’t wait to find out.”
Those were Christa’s words. It was what she’d told Lea that night at dinner. How could that have happened only eight months ago?
“Are you coming, Annie?” Tommy asked as he and Lea started to make their way to Dad and the Beatmobile.
“Yeah, in a minute,” I said, waving him on.
If I hadn’t gone that night to meet Christa, I wasn’t sure I’d be here with Tommy at the Orange Show today or going off to college next year. That night I’d seen something in her that I’d wanted for myself.
It was living from your heart to your fingertips, through your soul to your toes, letting your spirit—no one else’s—push you out and up, and through and over, and away and maybe even back again.
I didn’t know why that came so easily for Christa and was such a struggle for me.
But there’s poetry in the struggle.
“Reach for it … push yourself as far as you can.”
—Christa McAuliffe
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Christa McAuliffe
On July 19, 1985, ten teachers stood by Vice President George H. W. Bush as he announced NASA’s selection for the new Teacher in Space Project. The winner, who had been chosen from eleven thousand applicants, was Christa McAuliffe, a thirty-six-year-old social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire.
I was a young NASA engineer working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston when Christa was selected as the first, and only, teachernaut. Although I had the privilege to be involved in the payload training of two of the Challenger astronauts, Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka, I never met Christa. We were at the same college-campus-like space center for four months working in buildings across the pond from one another, but our paths didn’t cross. Almost twenty-five years later, as I did research for this novel, I realized what an opportunity I had missed. Christa McAuliffe was one of those remarkable people whose life and spirit inspires the rest of us.
Sharon Christa Corrigan was the first child of Ed and Grace, a young couple living in Boston in 1948. She was walking at ten months and talking in complete sentences at one year old. Seeking adventure early on, she rode her tricycle down a busy street toward the city of Boston. She was discovered among the stopped cars after the family dog’s barks alerted Ed and Grace to Christa’s daring escapade.
The Corrigan family grew in size as Christa grew up. Over the years, she tended to her younger siblings, dreamed of flying to the moon, sung her way through high school musicals, wore the first strapless gown ever seen at a dance at her high school, and fell in love with a guy with a motorbike.
And then she married the guy with the motorbike. But not before she’d graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts in education and history. Her wedding to Steven McAuliffe was on August 23, 1970. It poured rain that day, but the sun came out for the ceremony.
During her career, Christa mostly taught social studies and English to seventh and eighth graders. She loved being a teacher. Her mother would write later that Christa asked “but two things of her students—that they be themselves and that they do their very best.” In 1982, Christa accepted a position at Concord High School to teach American history, law, and economics.
Christa was especially interested in the social history of common people and designed a course for her high school students called The American Woman. Sources for the course included diaries, travel accounts, and personal letters, because Christa felt that these firsthand accounts revealed rich history not found in the memorization of dates and places. It’s not such a surprise that she wanted to fly on the space shuttle, not as an astronaut, but as a teacher who would return and share her experience with the nation’s students.
Christa and her husband, Steve, were living a contented life in Concord when the Teacher in Space program was announced in August 1984. Their two children, Scott and Caroline, were born in 1976 and 1979. Steve was working as a lawyer at a prominent firm in Concord while Christa continued teaching.
One night, Christa and Steve heard President Reagan announcing on the radio that NASA intended to put a private citizen into space, and that first citizen was to be a teacher. Although Christa knew she wanted to apply, she didn’t turn in her application until February 1, the very last possible day to submit one. Three months later, a list of the 114 state nominees was released to the press. Christa McAuliffe was one of the two teacher nominees from New Hampshire.
Of those 114 teachers, only ten would be selected as finalists. In one of her taped interviews as a nominee, Christa was asked her philosophy of living. She said she wanted “to get as much out of life as possible.” She also told her interviewer: “I think the reason I went into teaching was because I wanted to make an impact on other people and to have that impact on myself.” On June 28, Christa was told she was one of the ten finalists.
The selection process moved quickly. A little over a week later, Christa and the other finalists were at the Johnson Space Center undergoing extensive medical and psychological examinations. One test Christa was nervous about was one for claustrophobia. She was zippered into a three-foot-diameter nylon ball and not told how long she’d be left in the dark. Christa thought she’d be yelling to get out, but actually found the experience to be somewhat peaceful. Fifteen minutes later, she was released. Christa was also subjected to a treadmill test, X-rays, blood tests, dental exams, and even a ride on the KC-135, a NASA plane used to produce seconds of weightlessness. Aft
er their time in Houston, the finalists traveled to Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and to Washington DC for three more days of interviews.
On July 19, 1985, Christa McAuliffe was announced as the nation’s Teacher in Space.
AUTHOR MEMORIES OF
INSPIRATIONAL TEACHERS
I’ll never forget Mrs. Beall, my first-grade teacher. She was the first person to tell me that she thought I’d grow up to be a writer. She probably said that to everyone in my class, but when she said it to me, I was suddenly surrounded by a huge and overwhelming sense of Yes. —Kathi Appelt
My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Dunwoody, let my friends Heather and Naomi and me stay in at recess to write books on arithmetic paper, which we illustrated, folded, and stapled. I was charmed by the blue rinse in Mrs. Dunwoody’s white hair, imagining her leaning back into the hairdresser’s hands and choosing the color of the sky. —Jeannine Atkins
My geometry teacher’s name was Dick Purdy, and he was known for being particularly T-O-U-G-H. I was known for being particularly bad at math, and, as a junior in a sophomore math class, I was dreading it! But for some reason, Mr. Purdy believed in me. He never went easy on me, but he took me under his wing, told me I should be a math teacher when I grew up, and even offered me a summer job working for him at the local swimming pool. I got my first math A ever in that class, and I worked hard for it. Turns out, he was wrong. I would have made a horrible math teacher. But it was nice to believe that maybe I could be one, even if for only one year. —Jennifer Brown
In class, my high school English teacher, Joann Clanton, was tough and demanding. I’m still not sure she felt I was a very good writer. But I always felt like she believed I could become one. —Kristy Dempsey
To Dave Christie, my high school yearbook advisor, for giving me the monumental responsibility of copy editor, knowing (even when I wasn’t sure) that I would rise to the occasion. You taught me to believe in myself! —Kimberly Derting
Mrs. Weber was my third-grade teacher. As part of a history unit, she taught us to make soap, stitch our own samplers (mine hangs on my office wall), and spin on a wheel. But her biggest impact on me was when she sent a poem I wrote to the town paper (without telling me), and they published it—my first publication, and the first time I knew I wanted to be a writer. —Janet Fox