by Irene Gallo
“Chock-full of fun.” He glances longingly at Arthur C. Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night, dog-eared at page ninety-seven, next to him on the end table, but he promised June that he’d watch the show with Carol.
“I want to go to Frontierland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland,” says Carol.
“Not Adventureland?”
“And Adventureland.”
“That Disney is a real moneymaker. Too bad I can’t get a job with him. But he’s anticomm…”
“That’s enough!” June, who has just returned, slams down Chet’s martini on the side table, and it splashes over the edge of the glass. June stalks from the room.
“What’s wrong with Mom?”
“Guess she doesn’t like Walt Disney.” Chet is silent for a moment, then says, “That’s not fair, honey. It’s my fault. I said something wrong.” He follows June.
* * *
Carol closes her eyes for a moment as some boring man talks, seeing four little purple tops spinning through space, a distant Earth behind them, and then the strange, multicolored creatures that live on Mars. Her head is always full of pictures. Right now, she is remembering the Man in Space show, in which Wernher von Braun narrates his plan for going into space, and the other shows that are about the moon and Mars. The plan uses a space shuttle and a space station. It is a plan that von Braun has worked on for several decades and published in Collier’s magazine in 1952. Of course Carol has not read it, but this is its introduction:
By Dr. Wernher von Braun
Technical Director, Army Ordnance, Guided Missile Development Group, Huntsville, Alabama
“Scientists and engineers now know how to build a station in space that would circle the earth 1,075 miles up. The job would take 10 years and cost twice as much as the atom bomb. If we do it, we can not only preserve the peace, but we can take a long step toward uniting mankind.”
Collier’s, March 22, 1952
The US Space Program will manifest the German’s plan to the letter, except for actually going to Mars. Perhaps we are not enthused about going once Soviet and US probes show us that Mars is not inhabited by one-eyed creatures, but, at the most, life invisible to the naked eye. What would be the point?
“And now—” says someone on TV.
Carol opens her eyes. Her parents have not returned. She stabs the carpet repeatedly. She stabs her leg. The point of the blade on her thigh makes her taste peanut butter. This doesn’t seem strange to her. She runs to the kitchen, climbs onto a stool, and gets the jar from the cupboard.
* * *
A few months later, Chet succumbs, as he must, and they are all at Disneyland. At Tomorrowland, in fact.
“Look, Daddy! It’s the Moonliner!” Carol leans forward, pulling on her father’s arm relentlessly, until they are right next to it.
“At least it’s not a Nahzee rocket,” he says, looking at the big red TWA insignia, hands in his pockets. “Except for the fin design.”
June takes Carol’s hand firmly. “Chet, can’t we ever just have some good plain fun?”
“I thought we were.”
“You know what I mean. Why does everything have to be such a dark conspiracy?”
“Because it is? Look around! Germans, Germans, everywhere.”
“GE? TWA?”
“Volkswagen? Krupp? Von Braun?”
“Chet, much as you despise it, we do live in a capitalistic nation. Maybe it’s time you got used to it.”
“Maybe it’s time the land of the free got used to me.”
Carol’s mother blinks fast, and her voice is low. “It’s marvelous how you take it upon yourself to remind me every single day that just because a man is brilliant does not mean he can get along with people. I mean, it’s like you can’t be smart and kind at the same time. Maybe you’d explode if you tried. That would be like igniting liquid oxygen. Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s jet-propelled Chet Hall! Good-bye, Chet! He’s off to a perfect world.”
“You think that’s funny, don’t you? I spent the war fighting these monstrous people.”
“I know, Chet. Don’t raise your voice.”
“And now I’m the one who’s anti-American! Because I believe in human rights and wasn’t afraid to say so!”
Mothers herd their kids past Chet with sidelong glances. An astronaut with a bubble helmet strides toward him. “Now this death-dealing born-again Nahzee is on TV while I may not even be able to support my wife and kid! He’s not that smart, June. He’s just frigging wily. He follows the money.”
“Sir,” says the astronaut, “would you mind stepping away from the Moonliner?”
“I sure as hell would mind!” shouts Chet.
When things get heated, it’s Carol’s cue to step in.
“I want to go to the moon,” says Carol. She takes her father’s hand. “Daddy, can you please take me to the moon?”
Chet shrugs off the astronaut’s tight grip on his shoulder and swoops her up. “Of course, honey. And do me a favor. Always remember that I love you more than anything in the world.”
“Even more than the moon? The moon’s not in this world, is it?”
“I love you more than anything in the universe. More than anything we know and more than anything we might ever know.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
How do kids learn to do this?
Years later, recalling this in the Pacific Coast “encounter group” where she is soon to meet her future husband, Carol remembers sticking out her tongue at the astronaut. At least, she thinks she does.
It sounds good, anyway. It sounds the way one would like to have been.
And something else hits Carol as she poaches in the mud pit in the future (though not as far ahead in the future as the Moonliner). She re-hears those desperate words she heard one night through the air-conditioning vent. Her parents never knew she could hear them.
“June, it’s a very good offer.”
“In France.”
“A lot of women would consider this an adventure. Carol could grow up there.”
“And never come back.”
“Come on. Of course she could. Your parents would love to visit France. They could even live with us.”
“I hate to mention it, but you may have noticed that we don’t speak French.”
“I don’t have to know it for the job, but it would be good to learn.”
“You aren’t happy here, Chet. I don’t think you’d be any happier there.”
“I want to be able to support my family. I’m sick and tired of going from job to job.”
“Lay it all out for me. Get guarantees from the government. That at least Carol and I can come back any time we want. And, preferably, you too. I want to know exactly how much money you’ll make. How long the contract is for. I want paid return tickets in my hand before I uproot my family.”
“I don’t know if—”
“That’s right. You don’t know. They may well revoke our passports.”
A sigh. “This is a great country, isn’t it.”
“It’s a country, like any other.”
“That’s not how the story goes. This is an extraordinary country! A magical country!”
“It’s rotten to the core in so many ways.”
“I can hardly believe my ears! My sweet little wife from Kansas just said—”
“But here, there’s the possibility of change. That makes all the difference. People can make changes.”
“Without my top-security clearance, I’ll never be able to work on what I love. What I was born to do.”
“I guess I was born to run a vacuum cleaner.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What do you think I mean? If you would help out around here I could get a job.”
“A secretarial job.”
“A chemistry degree is not nothing, Chet. I might even land a job somewhere else in the country and we could move there. Oh, that’s right—I did land a job somewhere els
e, but you wouldn’t leave your precious jet lab.”
“Look, maybe they’d help you find a job you really like in France. Let’s see about that.”
“Would you do that?”
“June? Are you crying?”
“I’m just happy.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I love you. Even though you’re a functional idiot.”
* * *
1957
October:
Soviets launch Sputnik.
December:
US Vanguard rocket burns on launchpad, failing to launch first US satellite.
* * *
One evening when he actually gets home in time for dinner, Chet looks up from his meatloaf and says, “This is an exciting day! Mary Morgan figured out how to fuel von Braun’s Jupiter rocket.”
“Mary Morgan?”
“You remember—at the picnic? Her husband is the one with the bright red hair. Carol played with their little boy. I don’t think Mary finished her degree, but she’s pretty damned smart. Von Braun’s team was completely baffled so they tossed the job over to North American. Mary’s boss was under some pressure because…”
“Because Mary’s a woman.”
“Right. And doesn’t have a degree. Had two years of chem engineering, then went to work at Plum Creek making explosives for the war.”
June looks keenly at her husband. “Kind of what I did, for GE. Except I finished my degree. Listen, I’ve been thinking that I might take an evening course at Caltech, if you could watch Carol. I guess I don’t have time for a job until she’s older.” Chet’s mother’s dark prediction of Carol’s utter ruin should June go to work rings in her ears. She thinks it’s hogwash, but then again …
Chet shovels in a forkful of whipped potatoes, nodding. “Mmm. That’s a good idea, except that I have to work late an awful lot. Maybe your sister could watch her?”
Carol remembers the picnic, the little boy, and the man, who smiled at her.
* * *
Wernher von Braun, at a North American Aviation picnic given to celebrate his rare appearance, sees a little girl and boy tossing a ball back and forth under a cottonwood tree. The boy’s redheaded father says something to him, and the boy and girl look in von Braun’s direction. He smiles and waves. That girl may live on Mars someday, he thinks, as the wife of an engineer. She might live in one of the habitats that he himself designed last month. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to iron clothes on Mars? The fine-grained future is beginning to come into focus. Maybe they should include Monsanto’s Kitchen of the Future, the housewife’s dream, in the Mars plan. It would definitely be an attraction for women.
January 1958
Chet, working for the Jet Propulsion Lab, helps design the Jupiter-C rocket that will launch Explorer-1, America’s first answer to Sputnik. Chet wrangles passes for his family to view the launch.
They fly to Cape Canaveral, where Chet proudly takes them right up next to the enormous rocket. Mary Sherman Morgan, who had worked at NAA when Chet started there (“But I guess she’s retired to have babies, now.”) developed the fuel for the Jupiter-C rocket after von Braun’s team failed repeatedly. “Mary wanted to name the fuel Bagel, so that we could say that the rocket was fueled by LOX—liquid oxygen—and Bagel, but they have no sense of humor. They’re calling it Hydyne.”
Chet, June, and Carol are allowed into the launch room, with its fascinating dials, meters, and ongoing technical chatter.
As the ground and room and very air vibrate with the power of ignited Hydyne, the rocket separates from the launchpad, borne on a vast slice of fire that slowly—much too slowly, it seems—rises, then hovers, as if it might subside back onto the launchpad, crumple majestically, and explode on national television. Then, as if waking from a deep sleep, the rocket gains speed and altitude and is gone, leaving a trail of white vapor.
At the Atomic Motel in Cocoa Beach that night, Carol writes in her diary, “My soul vibrated too when the Jupiter-C rose from the launchpad and the scaffold fell away. That is not scientific, but that is how it felt. The rocket was in outer space very quickly. When I said I wanted to go into space, and go to Mars like Dr. von Braun plans, the men who heard me laughed, all except my father. He said, ‘Why not?’ They did not seem to know why, exactly, but they seemed sure that I just couldn’t.”
Many years later, Carol reads that when von Braun was asked about women in space, he had responded that 110 pounds of “essential recreational equipment” might eventually be included in spaceflights. Apparently, that too got a big laugh.
1959
During Carol’s summer vacation, Chet takes her to the Jet Propulsion Lab at least once a week so she can “see what goes on there.” On the weekends, they start building rockets. June is enthused about the idea and spends her days thinking about how to present the material to Carol, how to show her the chemistry in very small steps. She loves gathering odds and ends that they’ll need to make the rockets. She begins to think about writing a book for children Carol’s age about rockets. The grandparents think they are crazy.
In general, rockets are simple. Fuel in a tube, a hole through which force can be expelled when the fuel is ignited, a fuse by which to ignite the fuel, a nosecone, and a safe place from which to watch.
If you have anything specific in mind—speed, distance, lift, a payload, a target—then rockets are really complicated. The engineer’s world is not one of airy speculation. It all comes down to what works: test, refine; test, refine. Endless iterations and interlocking of systems until you have something that works. Every time.
They go to a hobby shop that is full of rocket kits.
Some are intricate models. “It’s the Moonliner!” says Carol. “I want that! It’s nuclear powered.”
Chet and June look at each other. June says, “How about a model of a real rocket? Look! Here’s a Jupiter-C, the rocket your father worked on. The one we saw at the Cape.”
Chet sees that Carol is torn. Both are equally important to her. “Let’s get them both. Imagination is just as important as reality. Now, over here are some rockets we can build and launch ourselves. Just to see what they’re like before we start designing our own.”
June could swear she sees Chet take a skip or two when he leaves the store with his shopping bag. They spend happy evenings building the models, and after that, the grandparents get into the act, spoiling Carol with new model rockets every week until her collection would be the envy of any boy. In fact, when she takes it to show-and-tell, it is indeed the envy of all the boys and many of the girls.
* * *
Chet takes Carol to the Santa Susana testing grounds in the Simi Valley whenever he has a chance, and twice to White Sands. He and June help lead her well beyond her math homework; they help her to see geometry and mathematics from different perspectives. When her teacher complains that she is asking too many questions and that she is getting too far ahead, they take her out of public school and enroll her in a Montessori school that has materials that seem to enthrall Chet and June even more than they do Carol.
Chet converts the garden shed in the backyard to a workshop where he can weld and dabble with chemicals. He is in seventh heaven. June loves it too. Carol is not allowed in by herself, and has her own goggles and lab coat. Together, they keep detailed records of the results of their experiments.
It is a halcyon summer of rocket testing. June packs picnic lunches that they eat under a lone cottonwood by a creek up in the yellow hills on the edge of a vast, fenced test range or in a blockhouse with good-natured engineers who converse with Carol as if she were an adult. They ask Chet and June why she knows so much at such a young age. Chet replies that geometry and trigonometry are taught much too late in school, that one has to “strike while the iron is hot” (his favorite homily) when it comes to helping kids pursue their interests in the world, and that one must use tangible objects that kids can manipulate. This always brings a laugh. “Yeah, nothing more tangible than a rocket
, Chet—especially when it heads in your direction.” Carol overhears her mother say that Carol is a normal child—well, maybe just a little above average—and that all children would benefit from this approach to learning. “Yeah—if only there were enough rocket scientists to go around.” A general laugh. Carol gets the impression that rocket men are lighthearted people who are always laughing.
* * *
In September of 1962, Carol’s mother unfolds the newspaper at their sun-drenched breakfast table and reads, “Kennedy Says ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon in this Decade.’”
“By God, I purely love that man,” says Chet, reaching for the Log Cabin syrup. Then he starts coughing. He coughs hard, for a long time.
Carol says, “You have a bad cold, Daddy.”
“Yes,” says her father. “I need to drink more orange juice.”
June jumps up and starts to wash dishes. She washes them very quickly. She rattles them, scrubs them with steel wool, and smacks them into the dish drainer.
* * *
Chet dies in a car crash on his way back from White Sands in early November 1963. Forever afterward, his and Kennedy’s deaths—their suddenness, the way they divide history, their absolute darkness—are inextricably linked in Carol’s mind.
A force Carol does not understand, but accepts as a part of the unexpected changes in life, like the shock of menstruation (which no one told her was coming—perhaps her mother thought she wouldn’t believe her) blankets her heart and mind for the next few years, a black cloud that she hugs close. It keeps her from volunteering in class, from making the kind of sharp remark she used to make when kids made fun of her. Her mother takes Carol to a therapist, but she rather despises him.
One night, lying awake and staring into the dark, she understands what has happened. She has a somatic vision, a picture that floats above her, of her life as a ribbon in time and space. It is not a flat ribbon. It is an infinitely long cylinder, made up of tiny shapes, sounds, people, events, faces, days that she used to be able to expand and remember. She can see the point where her heart, mind, time, and space—everything—suddenly flattened and twisted into the tiniest thread imaginable, dense and heavy with time, as dark as the void of space. Before the dark twist, everything was real, and after it—now—is real, but very different because the twist stops the flow from past to present. The dark twist occludes every glad memory and, according to her grades, everything she’s ever known. She doesn’t care.