I came around his desk and stood behind him. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I leaned down to kiss the top of his head. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes. “You will.”
No. No, that wasn’t cigarette smoke. It was the stink of the burning farm. Nathaniel shook his head, and the muscles under my hands jerked with the movement. “There’s probably going to be a government inquiry.”
I dug my thumbs into his tight muscles and he grunted. Working in little circles, I leaned all my weight on him. “Parker was wondering how long they’d be grounded.”
“It’ll take months to go through everything.” He rubbed his forehead. “We’ll have to push the moon launch back too.”
The moon launch wasn’t scheduled to use the same type of rocket, so it shouldn’t be affected by the flaw in this one. On the other hand, this one wasn’t supposed to have a flaw. Plus, the orbital platform would be set back with the loss of the payload.
Nathaniel cleared his throat, and the muscles in the back of his neck tightened again. “Say … Elma?”
“Right here.”
He swallowed. “I don’t think I can … I think I’ll need to stay here for the next couple of months.”
“I figured.” Any chance I had of getting him to take a vacation was pretty much out the window now. I grimaced. I’d chastised Parker for wondering about being grounded, and here I was worrying about vacations. I was a jerk.
“That means I won’t be able to go to your nephew’s bar mitzvah.”
My hands stopped moving of their own accord. “Oh.” I bent my head and resumed the massage as I tried to sort out my thoughts. I didn’t want to leave Nathaniel alone, not with the amount of pressure he was under. But Hershel needed me there, and it was Tommy’s bar mitzvah, for crying out loud. “Do you … do you mind if I go by myself?”
“Thank God.” He spun in his chair to face me. “I was all prepared to convince you that you needed to go.”
I brushed the hair back from his face. “See, you needn’t have worried. I’ll abandon you at a moment’s notice.”
He grinned, but the movement was pained. “Falser words were never spoken.” He slid his arms around me and pulled me close. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“I can’t yell when I go out on the floor. I want to. I want to scream and gnash my teeth. So thank you for giving me a place where I can be awful, and find my way back again.”
TWENTY-THREE
JUPITER ROCKET EXPLOSION IS LINKED TO HUMAN ERROR
KANSAS CITY, KS, Dec. 12, 1956—(United Press International)—Failure to transcribe a program correctly—apparently a human error—was blamed for Tuesday’s explosion of a second stage for the Jupiter moon rocket in a preliminary report. The rocket flew off course and crashed onto a farm, killing eleven. Government inquiries are scheduled to determine if the disaster was preventable.
I was not happy about leaving Nathaniel behind, but, as he predicted, the government scheduled inquiries about the crash. Besides the IAC’s own work looking into the explosion, they also needed to prepare documents that laymen could understand.
The smart thing to do would have been to take a commercial plane to California, but I wanted to clear my head, and flying seemed an excellent way to do that. However, Nathaniel insisted and maybe, occasionally, I can be not an idiot. Whatever. The end result was that I wound up on my first commercial flight.
I was not impressed. The only good thing about it was that they served cocktails, which I couldn’t have enjoyed if I were the pilot. The view was terrible. The pilot bounced twice when landing, and he didn’t even have any cross-winds as an excuse.
But just being able to stand up and leave the plane without running through a checklist? That was nice. Walking off the plane and seeing my brother waiting? Glorious.
My brother stood with Doris, Tommy, and Rachel at his side. It looked as if California continued to treat him well. He had a tan and wore a light Hawaiian shirt printed with arcing hibiscus. The kids had sprouted like weeds, and Tommy was nearly as tall as his father. It had been three years since I’d seen them. Rachel hung back a little, but she was grinning, with dimples in her round cheeks.
“Aunt Elma!” Tommy wasn’t shy, though—never had been. He was the first to fling himself across the space between us, rocking me back with the force of his hug. “You came! There’s a great place to throw gliders from our new house. And I made a really cool one, and it’s not from a kit, either.”
Hershel rocked forward on his crutches. “Easy, tiger. Let’s get Aunt Elma home before you plan her whole itinerary.”
Releasing my nephew, I beckoned to Rachel. “Do I get a hug?”
She nodded and submitted to an embrace. I had to crouch, but not nearly as much as I had last time I saw her. Doris rested a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Tell her about your club, Rachel.”
Her face turned up toward me, with wide eyes. “We started a Lady Astronaut club. It’s really neat.”
“That’s great, sweetie.” My stomach twisted as the reason that she was suddenly shy became clear. I wasn’t just her aunt anymore. I was Someone. The Lady Astronaut had come to call. “Maybe I can visit it, huh?”
Rachel nodded, and her eyes got bigger and brighter, then she turned back to her mother, her hands pressed together like she’d won a prize. What did I expect? I hadn’t seen her in three years and now I was …
If I were an actual astronaut, I wouldn’t mind it so much. I think. It’s just that people called me “Lady Astronaut” because I wasn’t allowed to be one. That was the thing that rubbed. The reason I was known at all was because I was agitating for a role I couldn’t have. Having folks call me that? Having my niece do it? It was like being jealous of a character on TV, except that character was me. Can you be jealous of yourself?
I straightened, and finally the path to hug my brother was clear. He’d shaken off the cuff of one of his crutches and transferred it to his other hand so he could hug me without the metal pole knocking into my back. I wrapped my arms around him. Despite the hibiscus printed all over it, his Hawaiian shirt smelled like lavender. “Oh … I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve lost weight.” He pulled back, eyes pinched behind his glasses. “We’ll talk.”
It was a damn good thing that Nathaniel wasn’t with me, or I’d have given him such a look right then. “Well, that won’t last long with Doris’s cooking.” I let go of my brother to greet my sister-in-law.
“I don’t know.” She gave one of her trilling laughs, which ran up and down a scale. “I’m planning on putting you to work. Hershel didn’t tell you that?”
“That’s why I’m here. I wouldn’t know how to take a vacation if one fell on me.” Although that is what our vacations had a disturbing tendency to do.
I remember when Hershel had his bar mitzvah. He’s seven years older than I am, but it’s one of those early memories that stuck. Or parts of it did. I remember that I had to stretch up to see him over the top of the pew, and that he stumbled over the words when he was reading the maftir portions. Afterward, being six and full of belief in my own infallibility, I announced that I wouldn’t make that sort of mistake when it was time for my bar mitzvah.
He didn’t laugh at me like a lot of boys would. I remember him, balanced on his crutches, looking with pain at our father. That distress, on what was a happy day, is the part of my memory that is still so strong and so much my brother. He sat down and patted the sofa beside him, then explained that girls don’t get to have a bar mitzvah. It’s different now, but that’s the way the world worked in 1934.