“Fifteen seconds, Commander,” said the guy from Houston.
“Jillian…” said Spencer wistfully. “I am right above you. Right over you now.”
Jillian knew it was foolish, but she couldn’t stop herself. Without thinking about it she pulled the phone cord as far as it would go to the farthest extension of the wire. Then she threw open the window and looked into the sky.
“You looking up?” Spencer asked.
“Ten seconds, Commander…”
“Jillian, smile for me, huh? Okay?”
Jillian gazed into the sky, a smile on her face, but with tears in the corner of her eyes. “I already am.”
“Five seconds, Commander Armacost.” You could almost see the guy with his eyes glued to the digital clock on his console, counting off the seconds.
“Jillian, I—” That was all he managed to say before his voice was lost in a sea of static.
“Spencer?” Jillian sounded as if she was demanding that her husband not leave her.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Armacost,” said the voice of NASA. “We lost the link. But he’s talking to Mission Control right now. Everything is fine. We’ll take good care of him.” That was NASA all over, don’t worry, your kindly old uncle is here, always on the job, taking care of the boys up there in space.
“Thank you,” Jillian whispered. “I know you will.”
2
Jillian could never quite reconcile herself to the term space travel. It wasn’t travel as human beings understood the word; it wasn’t as if Spencer was just another husband away on an extended business trip. There was something about his going into space that made his absence seem more extreme, bizarre—almost unnatural. And attendant on these peculiar circumstances, the anxiety and fear that Jillian felt was that much more acute. And while it was possible to forget your husband for a moment or two when he’s at a sales conference in Santa Fe or a convention in San Diego, his actions, his fate was ever with her when Spencer was in space. A slight vibration of apprehension, slightly flustering like a low-grade fever, was always with her. When Spencer was away, up there, it was as if he had died but he was going to come back to life, as if resurrection was guaranteed by NASA and the United States government, as well as by God and all the saints.
She could not be alone—not for the whole time he was gone. When Spencer was away, Jillian turned to her younger sister Nan for companionship and a steady guiding hand. Not that Nan was all that reliable in the conduct of her own life, but she had an instinctive knowledge of what her big sister needed when Spencer was away. And Jillian was glad to have her near.
Of course, like many siblings close in age they were a study in contrasts. Jillian was thoughtful and took care of the things that were precious in her life, constantly giving thought to the results and possible aftermath of even trivial occurrences; Nan, of course, was impulsive and spontaneous, wandering in and out of jobs, friendships, and relationships with men, without much thought for the future or the consequences.
And although they were sisters they could not have looked more dissimilar. Both were pretty, but Jillian had finer, more classically even features which were set off by her soft, short blond hair and her wide blue eyes. Nan’s face was small, and its component parts were pleasingly out of of proportion. Her eyes were just a tiny bit too far apart, her mouth slightly off kilter, her hair was a rather random mop of brown silk. All of this imperfection served to make her a pretty young woman.
There was a haphazardness to her gamine face that suggested a mischievousness that contrasted with her sister’s alternating moods of serenity and anxiety.
The two women dressed in completely different manners and styles as well. Jillian kept things casual and classical, never straying an inch beyond the boundaries of good taste; Nan looked thrown together.
She appeared for dinner at Jillian’s door that night dressed in bright pants, a ribbed knit shirt, a pair of black classic Keds on her feet. Had she looked any more current she would have been dressing in the styles of the week after next.
The two sisters were at work in the Armacost kitchen, back to back, preparing dinner. Even the tasks the two chose to do pointed up the differences between them. Jillian was bent over a cutting board, chef’s knife in hand, carefully but skillfully making a julienne of fresh vegetables. Nan, no less skillfully, worked the cork out of a bottle of red wine. Behind them, mounted under the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets, a small color television set played, the sound off. The sisters were hardly aware that it was there.
“Let me get this straight… he called you from space?” said Nan as she eased the cork from the bottle of pinoe noir. She sounded incredulous. De-spite her sister’s marriage to an astronaut she still could not get used to this NASA stuff. It was still science fiction to her. Of course, it wasn’t the technology involved that astonished her, but the act itself. Nan was not famous for her success with men.
The cork emerged with a pop. “From outer space,” she repeated as she reached for a wine glass.
Jillian, still engaged with her vegetables, did not turn around. But she nodded, as if to herself. “Well, technically not outer space,” she said. “He was still in the earth’s orbit. But, yes, he called me from the orbiter. Out there.” She gestured vaguely toward the window with the knife in her right hand.
Nan sighed and sipped her wine. “I can’t get Stanley to call from the Beef and Brew and you get a call from outer space. You gotta admit, that’s got to make a kid feel a little… inadequate.” She poured a glass of the scarlet wine and handed it to Jillian. “Not that it’s your fault or anything, Jilly 0…”
Jillian smiled and took the glass. She thought that if she was in Nan’s shoes she would not exactly relish the idea of a call from Nan’s latest boyfriend, Stanley, whether from the Beef and Brew, outer space, or anywhere else. Stanley, sadly, was no woman’s idea of a knight in shining armor.
“Like I said,” Jillian replied gently, “technically it wasn’t outer space, Nan.”
Nan shrugged and shook her head. “Earth’s orbit, outer space, Jupiter, whatever. Jill, if you want to get really technical about things, you scored.” She took a deep pull on her wine and shook her head again. “Oh man…”
“What?” Jillian asked.
“I don’t get it,” Nan replied. “How is it—we grow up in the same house, we watched the same television shows, ate the same frozen dinners… Your background is no different than mine, you know. It’s no nature versus nurture thing here. We weren’t separated at birth or anything like that—”
Jillian looked puzzled, not quite sure where her sister was going with this. “So what?”
Nan rolled her eyes and swigged a bit more wine. “So what? So you land Johnny Rocket Boy—who probably would have sent you flowers from outer space if he could have—and I keep on ending up with subtly different models of ‘throws up on himself Elmo.’ ” She took another gulp of the wine and then winked slyly at her sister. “And let me guess… I’ll bet he’s good at the little things, too, isn’t he?”
“What little things?” Jillian asked innocently. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling broadly, but she could not match her sister for brazenness. After a moment, she blushed and looked away, turning back to her vegetables.
“Those little things that mean so much,” said Nan, peering at her sister over the top of her wine glass. “You know what I’m talking about, July.”
“Maybe,” she replied and blushed a little bit more.