So I bundled up and pretended to be stepping out to run some errands. It is the closest I have ever come to outright lying to him, and my skin felt as if it were coated with a layer of slime. I nearly turned back to tell him, but if I had done that, I don’t think I would have made it out the door. I would have stayed home instead, just so that I didn’t have to lie to him.
Dr. Haddad’s office was on the ground floor of a brownstone. It felt more like someone’s parlor than a medical office. Lamps stood in the corners and created a dim, intimate space. The doctor herself was slender, with sleek dark hair that she wore straight and cropped at her shoulders. Her black trousers were so alarmingly fashionable that covetousness suddenly overran me.
She guided me to an armchair. “Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
Pouring a cup for herself, she smiled. “I find it always soothes me, especially in this weather.”
“It’s starting to get warm again.”
“Mm-hm … but it isn’t there yet.” She held up the cup and smiled over the edge at me. “So … what brings you in this evening?”
I swallowed, and immediately regretted declining the tea, which would have given me something to do with my hands. “I seem to be suffering from anxiety and … and I don’t know what to do about it.”
She set her cup down and leaned forward. “My dear. That’s what I’m here for.”
And I wept.
TWENTY-FIVE
PEIPING MAY ORBIT SATELLITE BY 1958
U.S. Intelligence Data Note Increasing Indications of Active Space Program
By JOHN W. FINNEY
Special to The National Times.
KANSAS CITY, KS, Jan. 9, 1957—A Government intelligence report predicts that Communist China will be able to launch an Earth satellite in two years.
The small white pill sat in the center of my palm. The palm itself was coated in a thin sheen of sweat. Overhead, the bathroom fan rattled like an unbalanced airplane engine and masked most of the sounds from the apartment.
Nathaniel had been sitting in a chair with Ray Bradbury’s new novel. I kept hoping he’d go out, but he hadn’t yet, which was probably for the best. If anything went wrong, I should have someone with me.
Telling him that I was about to take a tranquilizer would be sensible—but I didn’t.
Don’t ask me why. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, it’s just … I don’t know. I didn’t trust myself? Does that make any sense?
Taking the pill was a sign that I had failed. No matter what the doctors said about anxiety being a genuine illness, I couldn’t shake my mother’s voice: What will people think? What would my husband think?
Wetting my lips, I placed the pill in my mouth. The bitter coating curled my tongue and I swallowed a mouthful of water to wash it down. I set down the glass. Done. In the mirror, my face stared back at me unchanged. Brown eyes. Nose slightly askew. Chin a little too rounded. No horns … yet. I know it sounds melodramatic, but that two-hundred-milligram pill carried a potent possibility. Please work.
Twenty minutes. It would be twenty minutes before I could possibly feel the effects. I opened the vanity drawer and hid the bottle among my sanitary napkins. There were few places in our tiny apartment that I could be certain Nathaniel wouldn’t go. This was one.
Wiping my hands on my skirt, I opened the door and left the bathroom. Nathaniel barely glanced up from the book he was reading. Given the congressional hearings, it was a wonder that he was willing to take the day off. On the other hand, since we couldn’t resume our launch schedule until the hearings concluded, there wasn’t that much he could do at work.
Right. I pulled out one of the chairs at our table and sat down. There were bills to be paid. I pulled the stack toward me and got to work.
An hour later, the bills were paid. I’d balanced the checkbook. And … I felt fine.
I drew a blank sheet toward me and began plotting a trajectory for a moon landing. Possibly, if I thought about it, I was a little slower. Maybe. But no more so than toward the end of a long day. Not that I felt tired, just … muted? That’s not even the right word. I just felt … normal. Whatever that means.
The next morning, I checked the bankbook, looking for errors. There were none.
* * *
One of the curtains let in a thin stream of amber light from the streetlights outside our apartment. I curled against Nathaniel and nestled my head on his shoulder.
He ran a hand down my arm, leaving a contrail of goosebumps in his wake. His touch explored the contours of my hand and circled my wedding band.
“I’ve been lying to you.” Sometimes, the things I blurt out surprise me. This one didn’t.
His breath stilled, but under my cheek, the beat of his heart sped. “About?”
“The class I’m taking…” Errands hadn’t cut it as an excuse, after the first session. “I’m … I’m seeing a therapist.”
All the tension drained out of his body. “Oh, thank God.”
“That … was not the response I expected.”
He pulled me closer and kissed my forehead. “I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself.”
“You’re not upset that I lied?”
“Well, yes, but the relief outweighs that.” His hand found my hair and he stroked it back from my face. “And … I’ll admit to being a little hurt that you didn’t feel safe telling me. But not angry. Okay? I’m not angry.”
My eyes stung and I blinked them clear. “You are amazing.”
“I am in love. That’s an important distinction.” Nathaniel turned to kiss my forehead. “Without you, I’m just an average guy.”
I laughed and poked him in the ribs. “You. Are not an average anything.”
“Eh. I’m a pretty good administrator. Not bad with numbers.”
My hand drifted lower. “Good with rockets.”
He grunted and stretched under my touch. When he relaxed, he pulled me on top of him so that our bodies were pressed full length against each other. “I … I would say that you’re better at handling rockets than I am.”
“Is that so?” I pinned his arms to the bed and lifted myself up to kneel, straddling him. “Well, Dr. York…”
“Yes, Dr. York?”
“In that case, I have a very…” I kissed his neck. “Serious…” My tongue licked the sweat from his jawline. “Question.”
“Yes. Whatever it is. God, yes.”
“Would it help…” There was a rough spot under his chin that he’d missed while shaving. My heart sped up and I raced ahead to get my words in front of my fear. “If I explained the equations to the committee?”
Nathaniel twisted to look at me, though I couldn’t have been more than the same sort of shadowed blur that he was. “Elma…”
In my name was a wealth of unsaid thought. Yes, it would help. No, he didn’t want to ask me to do it. Yes, he was terrified I would break. No, he didn’t want to see me hurt. Yes, he loved me for offering. No, he couldn’t accept.
I slid off of him to sit on the bed at his side. “Remember how when I was in university, I was the only girl in class, so instructors would ask me to explain a math problem in order to show the boys up?”
“I know. That’s why I can’t ask you—”
“Hush. I’m not done.”
“Okay…” He sat up next to me, shoulders hunched forward. “Sorry.”
“The thing is … it worked. They were always shamed into doing better because they couldn’t stand to have a little girl understand something that they couldn’t.”
“And it was hellishly cruel of the professors.”
“Yes. Yes, absolutely. But … but if I’m choosing to do it, it’s different.” True, but I was still sweating, and it was no longer from sex. “And … I’m taking Miltown now.”
“Oh.”
“It helps.”
“Good.” He kissed my forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”
“So … With this new dataset, let’s return to my poi
nt.” The faster we could stop talking about my anxiety, the better. “Senator Mason keeps making you go over the equation that caused the rocket to go off course in the first place.”
“Yes…” I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine his brows knit together in concentration.
“He will keep making you explain over and over again that the problem was a transcription error when the program was transferred to punch cards. Let me explain exactly how leaving out a single superscript bar caused the program to break. If a woman tells him, he’ll have to either pretend he understands it, or admit that he’s not smart enough to be making a decision on this.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his head. “Okay. So that might hopefully, finally, make Mason stop harassing us about the error, but … the real problem wasn’t the transcription failure, and they’ll still hound us on that. God—”
I reached for his hand and pulled it away from his head. “Are you still having nightmares?” The nights that he’d woken in a sweat or cried out in his sleep didn’t leave this much of a question. It was more an opportunity for him to come clean with me. And yes, I’m aware of what it means that we had both been lying to each other, and ourselves, about how we were feeling.
His shoulders slumped farther. “Yeah.”
“I told you mine…”
“Heh.” His thumb found my ring finger and rolled the wedding band left and right. “The latest was that I was the idiot range safety officer and knew the rocket was going to crash, but couldn’t order the destruct sequence. I was glued—literally glued—in my chair. Only, of course, it wasn’t my chair, it was a seat on an airplane, and I had to watch the whole thing.”
When the rocket veered off course, the range safety officer, who was responsible for making the call about the self-destruct sequence, didn’t. He waited to see if the course would correct. It didn’t. As a result, eleven people had died on the Williams farm where it crashed. Two of them were kids.
He sighed and bent forward at the waist, pulling his hand free of my grip to wrap his arms around his head. “Senator Mason is going to use this to tank the space program. People are already agitating about the resources that are going into it instead of relief here on Earth. It’s dead simple for him to use the deaths to sway public opinion.”
“So let me explain about the new safety procedures. Let me recommend moving the launch site to the equator.” We’d wanted to do that years ago, but couldn’t get budget approval, since the Sunflower facility had already existed. “Let me explain what’s going to happen to our planet, and why space is so important.”
“This is going to be offensive, and yet…” He sat up. There was enough light from the street that I could just see his eyes, pinched with concern. “Why would he listen to you?”
“Because I’m the Lady Astronaut.”
* * *
The morning I was to address the congressional hearing, I wasn’t afraid of speaking. I was afraid that the medication wouldn’t work. I sat there next to Nathaniel as I always did, a litany of “Am I calm?” running through my head.
I wasn’t. I was terrified, but the reaction wasn’t as … bright? Does that make sense? I was still afraid, but it was like a cloud had come between the fear and me. Yes, it made the whole room a little dimmer, but it also meant that the fear itself didn’t cast such dark shadows. The actual test would come when—
Nathaniel rested a hand on my knee. “Ready?”
I managed a nod. I think I smiled. Swallowing was not possible, as my throat had gone completely dry. Nathaniel kept his hand on my knee, out of sight of the committee, as Clemons stood.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …
“Gentlemen…” Clemons paced around to the front of the table so all I could see was his back and his hands clasped behind him. “During our deliberations, it has occurred to me that we have neglected to give you an adequate foundation in understanding the root of the accident.”
… 55, 89, 144, 233, 377 …
“The ‘transcription’ error.” Senator Mason drawled as he leaned back in his chair.
“Correct. I would like to return to that error, and have one of our computers explain, in detail, the effects of that error and the steps that will be taken to ensure that such an error never occurs again.” He turned to the side and gestured at me. “May I present Dr. Elma York. She’s the physicist responsible for recognizing the effects of the Meteor on our climate, and is the pride of our computer department, although you may know her better as ‘the Lady Astronaut’ from Mr. Wizard.”
The Fibonacci sequence dropped out of my mind. This? From Director “Control Your Wife” Clemons? Whatever his intention, the shock was enough to jar me out of my pattern of fear. Was I calm? No. But I didn’t think I was going to throw up, either.
Taking a deep breath, and amazed that I could, I pushed my chair back and stood. “Thank you, Director Clemons. Distinguished gentlemen of the committee.” I focused on Senator Wargin, who did not smile, exactly, but his eyes were kind. “If you will turn your attention to the blackboard, I’ll walk you through the equation that governed the rocket…”
Senator Mason jabbed his finger at me. “We’ve been over that, ma’am. Yes, we have.”
“Oh.” I paused to smile. This man, for all his power, was a child in mathematics. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were still asking questions because we hadn’t explained adequately. I must’ve misunderstood, of course, so to help me … would you explain the part of the equation that you had questions about?”
His mouth worked, pursing and grimacing, before he nodded. “Maybe you had best proceed. To make certain my colleagues are on level ground.”
At his side, Senator Wargin had covered his mouth. His eyes were decidedly crinkled with smile lines. He cleared his throat. “Yes, Dr. York. Please start from the beginning.”
“Very well. To calculate an ascent track, we have the following equation for the acceleration in the direction of the flight path: V = ΔV/dt = [(F 1 + A e,1 * (P e,1–P a) … Now, the F 1 is, of course, referring to the thrust of the first booster. That was calculated at, as you can see farther down in the equation, 12.8 times ten to the ninth G’s of thrust…” I glanced at the bench. Senator Mason’s eyes had begun to cross. “Am I going too fast?”
“No … no, not at all. Carry on.”
And I did. By the time I finished, they either understood or pretended they did, which was actually more useful for Nathaniel’s purposes. I didn’t throw up. Not even once.
And the cherry on the cake? Senator Mason asked for my autograph for his granddaughter.
* * *
It would have been nice if that had ended the inquiries, but my testimony at least allowed them to move from “who to blame” to “budget.”
Three weeks later, I stood outside Director Clemons’s door. Even from the hall, the stink of his cigars announced that he was in. Taking a deep breath, I stared at the ceiling. The Miltown was not a miracle pill, or my heart wouldn’t be racing, but it helped. I could do this. I had an appointment. This was only one man, and not a congressional committee.
Letting out my breath, I rounded the corner and smiled at Mrs. Kare. His secretary looked up from her typewriter. “Oh! You can go right on in, Dr. York.”
“Thank you.” When had she started using my title, and why?
In his office, Director Clemons bent over a stapled report, one of his cigars clamped between his teeth. Behind him, Parker scowled. “Oh, please … like that’ll work.”
I stopped in the door. “I’m sorry. Am I early?”
“No, no … come on in.” Clemons waved me into the room and I realized that there was another man here. Tall, and blond, he looked somewhat familiar, but in my shock, I couldn’t place him. “You know Lieutenant Parker. Have you met Wernher von Braun?”
Oh God—that was Wernher von Braun, rocket genius and Nazi scientist, sitting in a chair by the window. Nathaniel had worked with him years ago, but I knew him only by reputation.
“How do you do?” Saved or damned by social niceties, I was able to make it through his response, which I barely heard, and even shake his hand. Yes, I’d heard the stories about how he wasn’t “really” a Nazi—about how he had been “forced” to use Jewish prisoners or risk losing his own life. But he’d made that choice. 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28 …
“Colonel Parker suggested that we might need some assistance in understanding your report.” Clemons waved at the chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”
Did Clemons even know I was Jewish? I sat and smoothed my skirt as if I could rub the taint of von Braun’s touch off my hands. If I walked out of the room, my chances of convincing Clemons were over. “I take it that you were concerned about Nathaniel’s impartiality?”
“Exactly so.” He leaned back in his chair. “Now, explain it to me very slowly, like I’m a congressman.”
Wetting my lips, I nodded. “I hope you’ll bear with me if I start with a history lesson, which is not in the report. It will give some context.”
Clemons waved his cigar, smoke trailing it like a plane going down. “Go ahead.”
“When sewing machines were first introduced, people were frightened because they were new and moved with an unprecedented speed. There was concern that you could go blind from watching the machine. So the manufacturers made them beautiful: they added gilding and floral motifs.”
Parker snorted. “So you want to send some Lady Astronauts up as decoration?”
“As we explained to the congressional hearing, our goal is to expand humanity to other worlds. You will need women on those worlds or they will never be self-sustaining colonies.” I glared at Parker. “I trust you don’t need me to explain the biology of babies?”
The Calculating Stars Page 22