My mouth hung open. Brilliantly, I said, “What?”
“Control. Your. Wife.” He brought his fists together and pressed them against his forehead. “Control your—fuck him.”
“Wait—because of the magazine?” If Clemons had said that to me, I might have been furious. As it was, I was just horrified that I’d gotten Nathaniel in trouble. “Or the Girl Scout appearance? I didn’t … what did I say?”
He snatched the magazine from the desk. “This? This isn’t the problem, except that he’s an asshole and a coward.”
“You didn’t say that to him, did you?” The headache I’d been fighting all day spiked and ran a line of current through my right eye.
“No.” Nathaniel scowled. “No. I told him I would talk to you. And I am. We’re talking.”
“I’ll stop doing interviews. I’ll call and cancel things as soon as I get home tonight.”
“Stop? I don’t want you to stop.”
“But if it’s affecting your job…”
His anger transformed to horror. “No—no. It’s not you. I’m not angry at you. Clemons is the one who’s out of line. And it’s because what you’re doing is working. He spent the majority of the time ranting about how he’s getting criticism for not including women in his plans, and pressure from some pretty influential people to add them. All of them talked about having seen you or listened to you or read an interview with you.”
My stomach churned. “I’m so sorry.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“But if it’s getting you in trouble … I don’t want to cause any problems.” I held up my hands, but they were shaking, so I folded them in my lap. This was just like being in college again. Every time I stood out, it made someone angry, and now it was causing Nathaniel problems too. “I’ll stop. It’s fine. I’ll stop.”
“I’m not asking you to stop!”
“I know, and I love you for that, but still—” I swallowed, tasting bile at the back of my throat. The room was too warm, and my headache sent lines of green and white across my right eye. “I mean. I don’t need to prove anything. If I keep going, it’ll be bad for morale. Distracting. The astronauts don’t like having me out there.”
“Parker asked you to talk to the Girl Scouts! Aside from expressing some jealousy that you’d been on Watch Mr. Wizard, even he admitted that you’d done a good job. In his usual way, I mean.”
“He watched the show?” I was standing. I didn’t remember standing. Had everyone seen me on television? My stomach was a fireball of tension, and seemed set to launch itself up my esophagus. I tried to catch my breath, but all systems were critical. “Tell him I’ll stop. Tell Parker that I’ll ask Don to invite him next time. I’m so sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”
Nathaniel was staring at me like I was some sort of freak. I was messing everything up. His mouth hung open, and his brows were drawn together like he’d never seen me before. “Elma…”
I vomited. Noisily, and without discretion. What little I’d managed to eat at lunch spattered in messy chunks on the linoleum floor of his office. Nathaniel flinched back, and my stomach heaved again. I managed to make it to the trash can, but the damn thing was wire frame.
“Oh God.” He had me by the shoulders and braced me as I threw up again, sobbing.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Hey … hey, sweetie. No. Shush. No. You have nothing to apologize for.” He smoothed the hair back from my face and kept murmuring at me. I have no idea what else he said.
But he eventually got me calmed down and sitting in his office chair. He knelt in front of me, holding both of my hands. I don’t know what his face looked like because I was too ashamed to lift my eyes.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a rational part remained, screaming at me to pull it together. Or maybe it wasn’t rational, because it was my mother’s voice, sounding mortified. Elma! What will people think?
I wiped my eyes with the handkerchief—when had I acquired a handkerchief? Oh, it was Nathaniel’s. In one of my few early domestic fits, I had embroidered NDY in the corner with dark blue floss. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. It’s my fault. I should have waited until I wasn’t so angry.” Nathaniel squeezed my hands. “Elma, I’m not angry at you. At all. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I got you in trouble at work. I didn’t pay the electric bill, and we were behind on the gas, too. My housecleaning isn’t much more than doing the dishes and making the bed. I’m having trouble concentrating at work. If I weren’t trying to make trouble—”
“Okay. Stop. Shh…” He squeezed my hands and rose up on his knees. “Elma. Elma? What’s 441 multiplied by 48?”
“21,168.”
“Divided by twelve?”
“1,764.” My breathing eased a little.
“Square root of 1,764?”
“Forty-two.”
“Okay. Good.” He wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Can you look at me?”
I nodded, but gravity seemed to keep my gaze chained to the floor. I used my next breath as a propellant to look up.
Nathaniel’s sky-blue eyes were pinched and worried. “I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to make you doubt that.”
“Nothing. I mean…” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “This is just … I’m sorry.”
“If I accept your apology, will you stop apologizing?” He tried for a smile, but his voice still cracked with worry. “Tell you what. Let’s take the rest of the day off and go home.”
“No—I don’t want to pull you away from work. And Bubbles still needs my help with calculations, and if I’m not there, Mrs. Rogers will have to reschedule people, and I don’t want to be trouble.”
He put a finger over my lips. “We’ll stay here, then. Okay? But I want you to stay in here with me. I need your help on some calculations. Okay? Can you help me with those?”
I nodded. I could be helpful. That I could do. I could do all the math he wanted.
“Good. Now, Elma, here’s…” He stood and rooted around on his desk until he found a piece of paper and drew it toward me. “Here’s the equipment list for the moon landing. What I want to know is how many launches we’ll need to do to get everything there.”
I pulled the chair closer to the desk. “What type of rocket am I assuming?”
“The Jupiter class, unless it’s more efficient to do something else.” He rested a hand on my back. “Just sit here and work. I’ll be right back.”
NINETEEN
BIRTHS IN SPACE HELD POSSIBILITY
Psychologist Believes Man Could Produce Children Fit for New Environment
By GLADWIN HILL
Special to The National Times.
LOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 19, 1956—The possibility of husband-and-wife scientist teams voyaging through space and begetting children on the way was seriously cited today at a gathering of leading space scientists.
By the time I’d figured out that the lunar mission could be done with five launches using the Jupiter class rockets, or two using the Sirius class that was still in development, Nathaniel had cleaned up my mess, brought me a lemonade, and …
And I’d realized that he had given me equations to do so I would calm down.
It had been a good choice. The line of equations was clearly either wrong, or right. Having that certainty gave me a lifeline back to … sanity, I guess. It had been a really long time since I had broken like that. It hadn’t happened since before I met him. Not to that degree, at any rate. Now I just had small panics. The desire to flee. Sweats. The occasional vomit session before a television appearance.