He left the fuse box hanging open. “Hey, you’ve had a lot on your mind. It’s all right.”
The stack of mail on the table all but glared at me. I had barely been cleaning the apartment, and now this. “I’ll go through the accounts tomorrow. Make sure I didn’t miss any others.”
“It’s all right.” He blew out his candle and walked around the table to me. “I’m just happy to have you home.”
Then he blew out my candle. I think he meant it to be romantic, but it left us standing in a darkness of my making.
SEVENTEEN
INSULATING CONCERN HEATS HOUSE FOR $12 A MONTH IN A 2-YEAR TEST
KANSAS CITY, KS, July 14, 1956—In cooperation with the UN’s Climate Committee, the Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation undertook a two-year test program involving 150 new houses in all climatic regions of the United States, Europe, and parts of Africa. The test homes were “comfort-engineered” and required trees and trellises for shade, a wide roof overhang or heat-repellent screening, and attic ventilation.
Before we got home from the synagogue, I needed to take my coat off. It felt like it must be in the mid-seventies. On the one hand, thank God it was finally warming up. On the other … I knew what the warming meant. We were hitting the beginning of the greenhouse effect.
I stood, my coat over my arm, as Nathaniel crouched to open our mailbox. He tipped his hat back on his head. “Huh. I wonder what this is…”
Inside the box, a large padded envelope nearly filled the entire space. He wrestled it free, and the thing seemed to expand as it came out of the box. The last edge came loose suddenly, and Nathaniel lost his balance and fell back on his rump.
“You okay?” I bent to retrieve a couple of other envelopes that had dropped on the floor.
“Fine, fine…” He reseated his hat and clambered to his feet, staring at the envelope. “It’s for you.”
I stopped in the process of slipping the other envelopes into my purse. “Me?”
“From NBC.” He tucked it under one arm and bent down to shut our mailbox. “Betcha someone got fan mail.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s probably just a thank-you gift or some such thing.” We started up the stairs, but my heart was pounding before we even reached the first landing. I wanted to believe that no one had watched the show.
And yet, when we got to the apartment and settled in, the giant envelope taking up most of the kitchen table, I circled around it as if it were a cobra or something equally deadly. Nathaniel sat down at the table and pulled out the rocket booster design he’d been working on when I’d talked him into leaving the office yesterday.
“That looks suspiciously like work…” I opened the refrigerator and rummaged through it, trying to figure out what we’d have for lunch.
“And you look like you’re about to start cooking.” He looked up at me and winked. “You knew I was a terrible Jew when you married me.”
“I just made a comment.”
“Mm-hm … and you don’t get to use Shabbat as a weapon if you’re going to ignore it too.”
“Fine.” I shut the refrigerator door. For me, the observation was as much about discipline and reminding myself of who I was as anything else. It had seemed important after the Holocaust, and then again after the Meteor, because Grandma would have …
Grief pops up at the strangest times. “I’ll cook after sundown, which isn’t until nine tonight, if you’ll take an actual day off.”
“Wait … let me see if I understand this. You’re trying to convince me to not work by offering to not feed me?” Nathaniel tapped his pencil against his chin. “Hm … there’s something not quite right here.”
“Oh, I’ll feed you. Cold cuts and guilt.” I laughed and pulled the envelope toward me. Best to get it over with. Sitting down opposite him, I patted the giant envelope proprietarily. “Besides, I have to see what’s in this.”
He laughed and stood, giving me a kiss on the back of my neck. “I’ll make sandwiches, and if I’m right and it’s fan mail, then…”
“Then what?”
“You’ll have to think of some way to reward me for being right.”
“Righteousness should be a reward in itself.” I pulled the envelope open and more envelopes fell out. “Damn.”
“Ha!” Nathaniel opened the refrigerator and said again, “Ha!”
“Sandwiches, husband.” Some of the envelopes had beautiful penmanship, others had been addressed in actual crayon. Bemused, I picked up one of the crayon-addressed envelopes and laughed aloud. “This is addressed to The Lady Astronaut—well … more accurately, it’s the Laddy Astronot.”
“That will be my new pet name for you.” Nathaniel set a cup of iced tea on the table next to me. “Chicken on rye okay?”
“Mm-hm … a little onion, too, please?” I opened the Laddy Astronot letter and pulled out a sheet of grubby primer paper. “Oh … My heart is going to break. Listen to this: ‘Dere Laddy Astronot I want to go into space to. Do you have a roket ship? I want a rokket ship for Christ mas. Your fred, Sally Hardesty.’ And there’s a picture of a rocket.”
“Just wait until you actually get into space.” Dishes rattled behind me as he worked on the sandwiches. “We’ll have to get a bigger mailbox.”
“If. And that’s a big if, with a lot of other ifs before it.” I put Sally’s letter back in the envelope and set it aside. I wouldn’t be able to answer her until Shabbat was over, but I could triage the letters. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to answer all of them, but at least Sally Hardesty and the other crayon writers.
“I have faith—”
“I thought you were a bad Jew.”
“I have faith in you. Speaking of which, I could use your help on an orbital parameter question.” He pulled a loaf out of the breadbox and set it on the counter.
“Use a cutting board.”
“I was going to.” Releasing the knife he’d grabbed, Nathaniel bent to retrieve the cutting board from under the sink. “I think we can skip the translunar orbit and go straight to a lunar orbit, which would save a lot of time and materials.”
“And risk the astronauts’ lives through inadequate testing?” I pulled another letter toward me and ran my finger under the flap to open it.
Dear Dr. York, I didn’t know that girls were allowed to be doctors …
“I’m not saying we’d skip the Earth orbit, just the translunar one. We’re sending an unmanned mission around the moon to get pictures in September, so we’ll know that orbit can be done. Having someone orbit the moon, though…”
… I would like to be a doctor …
“A lunar orbit involves transferring in and out of orbit, which is a whole different set of orbital mechanics. You have to change from the sphere of Earth’s influence to the moon’s and—”
“I know. I’m not asking about the mechanics of it. You already worked out fuel consumption and a flight plan … What I’m asking is if there’s any compelling reason to do the translunar orbit as a manned mission.”
“Seems like something you should be asking Parker.” I slapped the letter down on the table, not even sure why I was irritated with Nathaniel.
“Well, he’s not a physicist, is he?”
Ah … that was it. We’d been here before, where he asked me for advice because he wanted to prove Parker wrong about something. It reminded me too much of my college days, and being used as a tool to keep young men in line in math class. Nathaniel only knew about that in the most general sense, mostly as stories that I managed to make sound funny.
I took a slow breath and folded the letter carefully. Pressing down on the fold with my thumbnail, I creased the paper with a fair bit of vigor. “Sorry. I just … Okay. The primary reason to do the translunar orbit first is so that if we’re wrong about fuel consumption for the transit, it gives the crew a larger margin of error for getting home. And they only get one shot.”