The Last Pilot: A Novel (23 page)

Timber Cove was becoming an astronaut village; the wider area a NASA community. The Harrisons lived next door to the Lovells, around the corner from the Whites and the Glenns. Everyone was a short walk away. She felt safe. The sadness she felt at leaving the high desert (and she wasn’t about to pretend to herself or her husband or anyone else for that matter—
Life
deal or no
Life
deal—that she didn’t ache with sadness) had just been buried under a mudslide of good fortune, of goodies.

There were times, like that morning, when she felt physically dizzy; a kind of emotional vertigo. On those occasions, she’d walked down to Clear Lake and gaze at the horizon. She felt deep comfort at the space; the absence of everything but the gloomy rippled surface of the water and the blue sky banking overhead. She didn’t even take Milo. She wanted to be alone. It was in those moments that she allowed herself to think about Florence. At home, and everywhere else, she could think of nothing
but
her. However, staring across the filthy lake, a silty fug of oil from the refinery across the bay thickening the hot air, there, she was able to consciously, deliberately—tenderly—think about her daughter. Silent tears would fall like carnival ribbons and she’d think, how—
how
—did something that had only been in her life for two years, something that
hadn’t even existed
for the first thirty years of her life, how did the loss of this … this …
thing
destroy so much? She’d carried her, nurtured her, given her life, then brought her into the world, which had then slowly killed her. She hated the world for what it had done. The earth, the soil under her feet, everything. It could all go to hell. She couldn’t escape it. It was everywhere. She was part of it. It was her. She would look into the murk and want to drown. She would slide down onto the grass and cry. She’d cry for her daughter, lost, and she’d cry for the thoughts she had in her head. And when the emotion passed, and it always did, she felt exhausted, but, somehow, better. The sun was still warm. The horizon constant. There was so much sky. She’d think about the program. What they were trying to achieve. So many people. So many people. And how she was part of that now.

Back at the house, in the kitchen, she ran her fingers along the cool smooth surface of the countertop. She had an integrated blender, a Thermador double oven, a double sink, a dishwasher. Across a wide breakfast bar was a combined living and family room, with paneled walls, stone hearth and a high cathedral ceiling with beams. There was a separate dining room with floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out over an abundant garden with a patio area and swimming pool. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a study. She’d argued with the draftsmen about the bedrooms. We only need one bedroom, she’d said, plus a guest room. He told her that it would be foolish
not
to have a third bedroom when it came to reselling. With the layout you’ve chosen for the ground floor, he said, adding one wouldn’t even be a problem. And a lot of folks looking round here will have children. Tired, she’d relented. Now, it was an empty hole howling above her head. She poured a glass of cold Coke and sat outside on the patio. The chairs and table were new. Almost all of their furniture was new. They’d hardly taken anything from the old house. It was all too decrepit, too small, so they’d left it. It was cheaper and easier that way. The air force had yet to lease the house, so they could return for anything if they wanted. They’d left so fast. So little time to say good-bye. That was military life though. Pancho was pretty beat up about it. She never said so; someone like Pancho didn’t need to. She was pissed at Jim. She couldn’t figure out why he’d want to throw away the Blue Suit to sit in a tin can. She had this phrase,
chimp mode
, whenever she talked about him.
So
, Pancho would say when Grace called her from Houston,
is he in chimp mode today?
Meaning, was Jim testing the new systems. It rankled her, but Grace knew Pancho was hurting. She could barely look Jim in the eye when they’d gone over to say good-bye. The telephone helped, but there was something about not being in the same place. You moved on; that was it. This time Grace felt different though. She felt tethered. She felt sick when she thought of her little girl all alone in that cemetery. She felt
black
.

Oh, God.

She stood up quickly and walked around the garden. She was barefoot and the grass felt cool where it had been shaded from the morning sun. The garden was planted up and alive. Deep greens, yellow, indigo-blue. Enclosing it was a wooden fence that ran the length of the house’s rear perimeter. The wood was stained light brown. At the back of the garden, parts of the fence were still exposed where the plants hadn’t yet thickened out. The fence was six feet high. She stood looking at it for a long time. She reached out her hand and touched it. Then she went back inside.

Grace sat on the sofa and read for an hour. She grew restless. Milo was asleep in the sun upstairs. She collared him, found her sunglasses and headed out again. She thought about calling on Marilyn Lovell next door. She liked Marilyn, and their husbands got along well. Not that either of them were ever around. Deke had been working them hard from the get-go. Wally—Jo Schirra’s husband—and the rest of the Mercury boys were concentrating on the next flight, scheduled to launch in a few weeks time, and the New Nine (she already hated the name) were learning as much as they could about Project Gemini. Jim would leave the house early and arrive home, exhausted, late. They were working out of rented offices in the Farnsworth-Chambers Building downtown, since the Manned Spacecraft Center was still being built. There was something about the speed that everything was happening at. It unsettled her.

Milo pulled on the leash. Grace felt sorry for him. He’d never had to wear one before. He wasn’t used to the cars, or the intricacies of a suburban neighborhood. He pulled her on. Maybe, she thought, she might bump into one of the other wives. Annie had been so sweet to her, and Pat kind. The others she wasn’t so sure about. She’d picked up on a strange hostility from the Original wives. Did they think she didn’t deserve to be in Timber Cove? That they weren’t entitled to their slice of the
Life
pie? Marge Slayton had organized a lunch for them not long after the Nine had arrived in Houston. It had been oddly tense. As though the Mercury wives resented these nine rookies and rankled at their attitude, like an older sister punishing her younger sibling for simply arriving and benefiting from her hard-earned privileges. Grace understood the pecking order. God knows she’d been a military wife for long enough. Unofficially, the wives rose in rank with their husbands. Living somewhere as remote and godforsaken as Muroc in the early days, it wasn’t something she’d really encountered. Hell, if you were living on some desert outpost to God knows what, who really gave a damn? But then, she knew she wasn’t like the others, and Jim was more than a cut above the pilots who’d been selected for the first monkey shots. The boys at Edwards were an elite few. And the other wives knew it. Marge was trying, with Susan Borman, to formulate the equivalent of the Officer’s Wives Club for them in Timber Cove.

Coffee, every month, Marge said. We’ll rotate homes. And we’ll call it the AWC.

None of the other wives needed to ask what the
A
stood for; like their husbands, nobody uttered the word itself. Grace had picked up on the code early on. It was always
the men
, or
the boys
, or
the fellas
. Grace had neither the time nor the patience for the kind of organized horseshit that came with the service. All the other wives wanted to talk about was
Jackie’s wardrobe
, or how Jackie
wore her hair
at such-and-such occasion. Grace didn’t give a damn. And over that first coffee, when she dropped cigarette ash on Marge’s new shag-pile rug and said, goddamn it, the others looked at her like she was trash. Jeez Louise, she’d thought. Was this really her world now? Jan was different though. Neil was a civilian and had been flying for NASA so they didn’t follow the same rules. She liked Jan. But Grace was used to being alone and that’s the way she wanted to keep it. She wasn’t planning on attending many of the AWC meetings.

At the corner of Shorewood and Whispering Oaks she paused and lit a cigarette. Then she walked back down to the edge of Clear Lake.

Grace sat opposite Marilyn at the Lovell kitchen counter drinking coffee. She hadn’t spent long at Clear Lake.

I promise, she said.

Marilyn was slender and tall with black hair that erupted from her head in dark curls twisted into a beehive. She tapped her cigarette into a glass ashtray on the countertop and leaned forward.

I’m pregnant, she said.

Pregnant? Grace said, putting down her mug. I—wow—that’s, uh—goodness, congratulations. Sorry. You just caught me by surprise.

You’re not the only one caught by surprise, Marilyn said.

That’s wonderful news, Grace said, it really is.

Yes, it is, she said, but with three monsters already—well, two; my eldest is practically—honey? Marilyn said, breaking off.

I’m sorry, Grace said.

It’s okay, Marilyn said, moving her coffee out of the way and reaching for Grace’s hands. What is it?

Oh, God, Grace said.

Come on, you can tell me, Marilyn said. Friends
and
neighbors.

It’s not right for me to come into your home and hear your wonderful news and—

It’s fine, Marilyn said, really—I’m the wife of a test pilot. I’ve had to deal with
much
worse,
believe
me.

Grace laughed through her tears.

Have another cigarette, Marilyn said, offering her the pack. Grace took one and lit it and told her everything and when she was done Marilyn hugged her and told her she couldn’t imagine going through what she’d been through and Grace felt a little better.

What’s Jim been like? Marilyn said from the other side of the kitchen, putting another pot of coffee on.

Grace didn’t say anything.

Figured as much, Marilyn said.

Grace lit another cigarette.

You know, Marilyn said, returning to the bar with fresh coffee, I remember this bad string we had a few years back at Pax River. Probably the worst I’ve known. I mean, it was
grim
. We lost twenty-two pilots over an eleven-week stretch. That’s two a week! About halfway through my Jim comes home—on time, thank God—and I say to him, how was your day? Like a good wife. And he says, super, super. So I ask him, you know, did you fly? And he says, yup, lotta fun. And that was it. He started asking me about dinner or something. I found out later that he’d been practicing low lift-over-drag landings in a F-104 with John Murphy in the backseat. The idea was—and I only half understand these things—to land the thing at about two hundred knots using the afterburner for speed and stability, flaring the flaps … well, that was the idea. But the afterburner malfunctioned. They lost thrust, and dropped like a rock. Murphy told Jim he was gonna punch out if they couldn’t regain power. He’s in the backseat and the tail woulda hit first, right? So the tail hits the runway. Murphy ejects. Jim decides to stay with the plane, which hits the ground and screeches down the runway at God knows what speed before smashing into the mesquite.

She stopped and gave a small laugh at the memory and stubbed out her cigarette.

Jim was fine. Behind him, where Murphy had been sitting a few seconds earlier, was the engine. Murphy was fine. And if Jim had punched out as well?

What? Grace said.

His ejection mechanism broke on impact, Marilyn said. He would have been killed either by partial ejection or the nitroglycerine explosion.
Super, super; lotta fun
. So, your Jim? It doesn’t surprise me. It’s what they’re like.

I know but—

I know.

Grace stared into her coffee. Marilyn lit another cigarette.

You have a beautiful home, Grace said.

Why, thank you. Let’s go outside.

The women left their drinks and sat out by the pool on green chaise lounges.

It all feels so … normal, doesn’t it? Marilyn said.

Grace thought for a second, then said, yeah.

So normal it’s weird! Marilyn said.

I know what you mean, Grace said.

You know, Marilyn said, I was so thrilled when Jim told me about this astronaut business—no, thrilled isn’t the right word, it was more than that. Relief. That’s what it was:
relief
. It was only a matter of time—and that’s all it is, time—before some officer or base chaplain was going to walk up my path and knock on my door. Now, Jim will tell you that every time you go up, the clock gets reset—you know, that the odds aren’t cumulative? That’s bullshit. Only a matter of time before he got killed testing airplanes for the navy. But he’s out, thank the Lord, and with NASA now. And this astronaut business? I know where he is pretty much all day! And when they put him on top of that rocket? I’ll be able to watch the whole thing on television right from the living room! I won’t have to wait and wonder and watch the clock as it pushes itself toward five and he still isn’t home. I won’t have to phone the wives of other guys in the group to find out if anything’s happened. I won’t have to call the base and demand to speak to my husband.

Yeah, when Jim told me he was going to be spending the next few weeks in class—

Ha!

I almost cried!

And, Marilyn said, NASA says they’re even going to give us these little
squawk boxes
—at least, that’s what Chris Kraft called them—like an intercom, only one way—so we can listen in on the communications between the spacecraft and the ground. How about that?

Sounds pretty neat, Grace said.

This is
the life
, Marilyn said. The classroom, the office, the simulator …

And the only thing you have to worry about, really, is the launch, Grace said. Which, frankly, seems a hell of a lot safer than testing every crazy plane the air force dreams up.