Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space Page 11

  And they had, the three of them together. They made their act of contrition, bowed their submissive little heads and begged his forgiveness. But Gena and Lucy had stolen a look at one another from beneath the curtains of straight black tresses that hung over their lowered faces. And with that look of understanding they had removed themselves from both father and mother, and from a heritage that would take away their self-respect and dignity simply because their genitalia were internal rather than external.

  * * *

  24. The McCormicks Move to NASA

  “I never knew... she never told me." He shook his head, wondering what other secrets she'd kept."So I guess teaching middle school wasn’t gonna do it for her, the respect thing, ” Alex said.

  “She wanted to do graduate research in environmental science; did you know that?” Uriel asked.

  “No! She never said…”

  “She said… Did you ever listen?”

  The lights on the stage below came back on to reveal the entry hall of their military base housing block at Edwards. Gena entered, bent under the weight of an overstuffed backpack full of papers to grade. She looked worn, the dark circles under her eyes and stress lines on her forehead adding years she’d never earned.

  Alex supposed it had been another “one of those days” she used to complain about. Middle school kids at their very best, she would say, were enough to turn a beat cop’s hair gray and make his trigger finger itch a little. At their worst they could drive even Mother Teresa to break several major commandments. And Gena was no Mother Teresa.

  Teaching, she had told him more than once, was not her cup of tea; at least, not at a secondary school level. College, that’s where she longed to be; Professor McCormick, environmental researcher and respected faculty member, teaching an upper level class of interested-to-the-point-of-worship young university students, all of them with IQ’s considerably higher than the caloric content of a carrot stick.

  Alex remembered those heated conversations, but had always thought she was just blowing off steam. Now, as she picked up the mail from her overstuffed box in the apartment building entry, what she found there lit her face like a shaft of sunlight through a midwinter arctic gloom. It was a large envelope containing an application to the UCLA graduate school program, along with a financial aid packet and information regarding the GRE testing schedule.

  “I am so outta here,” she grinned, grabbing the packets to her chest and locking the little mailbox. Her hand shook so badly from excitement that it took three tries to fit the key into the lock before she succeeded.

  The stage setting switched in a blink; now the interior of their second-floor apartment—one of the hundreds of identical, non-descript standard issue living quarters at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s hot dry Mojave Desert.

  Alex remembered how she’d nagged him about living off base in Rosamond, renting a nice little house with a yard, or maybe even buying. But he wouldn’t hear of it.

  “This is temporary, Gena; a jumping off point, a little rest stop on the road of our life. It is not a final destination,” he’d assured her. “If I were you, I wouldn’t even unpack the fine china.”

  Three years later, they were still in that same little two bedroom apartment, still poised for that jump, and still listening to the sounds all around them that assaulted their privacy through the paper thin walls—the sounds of fights and fucking, the sounds of loud TV shows they didn’t watch and louder music they didn’t like, country and rap blasting together in an immiscible attack on ears and sensibilities. And the smells that permeated their space as well, smells of frying bacon, of onions and hamburger patties, of fish and boiled cabbage.

  Now, sitting down at the kitchen table, the catalogs and info packets strewn around her, Gena began to fill out the college application forms, her eyes shining with a film of happy tears.

  When Andy came in a moment later in his Little League uniform, tossing a baseball into the air and catching it in his gloved hand; she barely looked up.

  “No ball in the house, sport. You can have two cookies, no more. I’ll start dinner in a few.”

  “Okay, Mom,” the gangly 12-year-old said, grabbing four chocolate chip cookies on the way through to his room, still tossing the ball.

  Gena kept on writing, oblivious.

  She had just finished the basic information section on the application when Alex burst through the front door like a needle in a balloon. He was wearing a smile that split his face, so excited he was wiggling like a puppy. He held a small manila envelope in his hand, something else behind his back.

  “Guess what this is?” he asked, sounding out of breath.

  Gena didn’t look up until she had signed and dated her grad school application. Then she raised her head. “What?”

  “Well, guess!” he insisted.

  Gena glanced at his hand. “A manila envelope?”

  “It’s from NASA! I’ve been accepted into the space program! We’re going to Houston!!”

  Gena set down her pen and looked up at him, her expression stunned. “Great. Perfect,” she muttered. She rested her arms across the pile of brochures and applications, and simply stared at him. There was only the slightest quiver of her lower lip to betray her emotions.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  He looked down at the pile of paperwork she rested her arms on, seeing it for the first time. He reached around her to pick up the pamphlet from UCLA.

  “What’s all this?”

  Gena responded in a flat, dead tone, not even able to meet his eyes, “My application to graduate school at UCLA…I told you.”

  “Yeah, but we have to go to Houston now.”

  “Houston,” Gena repeated dully, tasting the word.

  “Houston. NASA? The space program? It’s what I’ve been working for all these years, Gena, and now I’ve finally got it! Look!” He brought the bottle of champagne he’d been hiding behind his back into view. “I got this to celebrate!”

  Gena pushed her paperwork aside, and tried on a smile as she got up to give Alex a hug and a gentle peck on the cheek.

  “That’s great, honey. I’m proud of you.”

  She turned back to the table and began to straighten up her piles of papers and brochures, making them into a neat stack. A tear slipped down her cheek.

  * * *

  Alex turned to Uriel, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize how important it was to her.”

  “Go on down,” Uriel suggested.

  Alex hurried down onto the stage and impulsively tried to put his arms around Gena, but there was no substance to the hug, to the being. His arms went through her to inadvertently embrace himself, then dropped helplessly to his sides. He took a step back.

  Meanwhile the virtual Alex, still blissfully unaware of anything but his own success, had returned from the kitchen with a corkscrew and a couple of wine glasses. He filled them both, handing one to his wife.

  “This is it, baby, this is what we’ve been working for, praying for—and now we’re on our way. Look out Houston, here come the McCormicks!”

  Andy walked back into the room just as his dad was saying this, still dressed in his baseball uniform. He tossed a ball in his glove.

  “What’s a Houston?” he asked curiously.

  “Texas, sport: Houston, Texas. NASA space program headquarters.”

  “What about it?” Andy asked warily. He’d stopped tossing his ball.

  “We’re moving there,” Alex replied. “I’ve been accepted into the space program, son—your dad’s gonna be an astronaut!”

  Virtual Alex grinned, then giggled as the reality of this hit him anew, shaking his head and doing a little jig. “An astronaut! Hot damn, I’m an astronaut!”

  But the later Alex was staring at his son as if for the first time really seeing him.

  “We’re moving?” the boy responded. “Uh…when?”

  “Couple of weeks. My new assign
ment begins July first.”

  “But, but what about my Little League?!”

  * * *

  Alex looked up toward Uriel, who watched them all from the auditorium seats, then back at the Andy and Alex on stage.

  * * *

  “Don’t worry, son,” Alex was saying, as he sipped his champagne, never noticing that Gena wasn’t drinking hers, “I’m sure they’ve got Little League in Houston.”

  “Yeah, but my team needs me here! We start the regional playoffs next week, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Alex was beginning to feel a little miffed that his family was giving him a hard time about this. He felt they should be as excited as he was, fully behind him and this dream come true. But he took a deep breath, not wanting to spoil his moment by becoming impatient.

  “Andy! Son, you’re not the only player.”

  “I’m the starting pitcher, Dad,” the boy exclaimed, his voice rising.

  Alex turned to Uriel. “He was the actual starting pitcher? The main one?”

  Uriel nodded.

  “And they had already made the regional playoffs?” Uriel nodded again.

  “Damn! How’d that slip by me?”

  “Someone else can pitch,” Virtual Alex argued. “It’s Little League, for Christ’s sake, not the World Series!”

  “Shit! Dad…!” the twelve-year-old cried in pain and anger.

  “Andy…” Gena interjected.

  “Don’t use that kind of language in this house!” said Alex.

  “Why not? You do.”

  “Andy dammit!” Alex took a breath, calming himself. “Listen, son, I’ve worked my whole life for this moment. This is my dream…”

  “Well Little League’s my dream,” Andy interrupted.

  That did it. Alex lost all control, and began to yell, “…And I am not about to turn down an opportunity to join the space program for the sake of some stupid, meaningless baseball tournament between a bunch of clumsy, prepubescent spoiled brats! Now, go to your room and start figuring out what you want to take with you to Houston.”

  Andy stared at him open-mouthed, then burst into tears, threw his baseball and mitt on the floor and rushed from the room.

  Alex looked up at Uriel from the stage. “Oops! I guess I could have worded things a little more tactfully.”

  “Considerably. And in Texas, did he play?”

  “I, I tried to encourage him to sign up the following year, but he said he wasn’t interested anymore.”

  The stage went black for a moment, then relit. It was the practice field, silent and dusty orange under the setting desert sun, just Andy and his best friend walking away, heads down in the attitude of abject despair only the prepubescent can pull off well.

  “It’s so not fair!”

  Andy threw his favorite mitt on the ground, then stared at it a moment before reluctantly picking it back up and brushing off the dust. Some dirt particles clung stubbornly to the sheen of fresh oil on the leather skin, and he smacked the glove hard against his leg to shake them free.

  “Can’t you sue him or something?” His best friend Charlie, first baseman for the Edwards Sidewinders, was nearly in tears as they walked through the windswept desert arroyo near their government issue housing tract.

  “He’s my dad. You can’t sue them; it’s like the law or something.”

  “But how are we supposed to win the championship without you? Did he even think about that?”

  “I dunno; you got Ricky.”

  “Ricardo sucks!”

  “Yeah, well…” Andy squinted up at the desert sun, still too intense even at 7PM in late May. “Mom’s trying to convince him to let us stay behind until the playoffs are over. She’s using the end of school term thing as an excuse. But he’s being…Dad. Like it’s so important that we all go together. He says it’s bad Dee-R or something if we don’t.”

  “I think that’s P-R…Public Relatives. My dad says that’s all the Space Program cares about these days, especially since the shuttle disasters: keep a good public image so the program keeps getting funding.”

  “I don’t care, it still sucks.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “It sucks all right.”

  They sat on the ground, the setting sun hot against the back of their necks, tossing rocks at a can. There was nothing else to say.

  * * *

  “And Gena?” Uriel inquired. “How did she take to Texas?”

  Alex shrugged, beginning to realize he’d failed her too perhaps.

  “She did, okay. Didn’t ever get around to signing up for graduate school, but she did get a job teaching at the base. The kids were a lot better behaved, she said… And the other astronauts’ wives took her under their wing. They’re a close knit group, supportive.”

  “How supportive?”

  Alex looked at him levelly. “Very.”

  You don’t know the half,” Uriel chuckled, flicking on the screen again.

  * * *

  25. The Astronauts’ Wives Club

  GENA SLOWED AS she drove past the familiar four-bedroom ranch style home, set back from the street by a wide lawn as lushly maintained as any in this quiet middle-class Houston suburb. Several cars already occupied the available spaces in front of the home, but there was a spot directly across the wide tree-lined avenue just long enough for her 5-year-old Miata to squeeze into.

  She pulled a quick U-turn at the corner, came back around and maneuvered the little sports car neatly into the narrow space with inches to spare.

  “Nice parking job!” Sarah called out to her from the porch, as Gena came up the walk. “Ever thought of being an astronaut?”

  “Right,” Gena laughed. “Just don’t look too closely at the fenders of the cars in front and back.”

  “I won’t tell Patty and Michelle…come on in.”

  Gena paused a moment to look up at the western sky, aglow in the vibrant bands of red and orange that marked a South Texas sunset. The evening air was still balmy, even for this late in September.

  Inside the house, she was sure, the regulars had already begun the ritual wine and cheese tasting; the one tradition of the Astronauts’ Wives Club that Gena always looked forward to, even when she wasn’t really up for some of the rest of it. In truth, though, the club had turned out to be a whole lot more fun than she’d thought it would be when she was originally recruited.

  The Astronauts’ Wives Club, she was informed by Ray Petersen last June—just after he’d promised to get her that teaching job at the base high school—was a charitable as well as social organization that many of the wives of the various shuttle crews belonged to.

  “It’s purely voluntary, of course,” the flight director had assured her; “but they do great work in the community, helping local missions to feed hundreds of holiday dinners to the needy at Thanksgiving and Easter, running the annual Christmas Toy Drive for the entire base, and raising money for special programs and computers at the base schools. I’m sure they could use your organizational skills, at least until your new teaching position starts in the fall.”

  “Oh, oh sure, of course…I’d be delighted,” Gena had agreed, pasting on a smile she hoped looked sincere. What else could she say to her husband’s new commander, the man who had already promised her a teaching position within four days of her arrival?

  Ray had handed her a little business card, embossed with the name and logo of the Astronauts’ Wives Club—interestingly, a dodo bird flying backward into the elongated nose cone of a rocket, saying “AWC!” It was the mindset of whoever’d come up with that design that made her think it might not be that bad after all. Below the logo were the names and phone numbers of the club president and vice president.

  “Just give either of these ladies a call, tell them Ray recommended you, and they’ll let you know the time and place of the next meeting.”

  The AWC, it turned out, had been scheduled to meet at the club president’s house the following week. Gena had said she’d be delighted to come.<
br />
  “Cheese, wine or a dessert?” Sarah French had asked her.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gena’d replied.

  “We have a little tradition,” Sarah’d laughed. “We ‘taste’ a selection of wines, exotic cheeses and favorite desserts each meeting, while planning how to squeeze as many bucks as we can out of the pillars of Houston society—which is an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”

  Gena had stifled a giggle, but she needn’t have bothered. Sarah laughed so heartily it had drowned them both out.

  “Anyway,” she’d admitted, after catching her breath, “sometimes we don’t get very much work done at our meetings—depending on the wine list—but that’s why we meet so often.”

  “Wow, my kind of club. I’ll do…dessert I guess, until I get a better feel for all your tastes.”

  “That’s y’all’s tastes…we’re in the South, honey,” Sarah’d laughed again.