Page 35 of The Launch

“I’m so glad you could make the trip, Mr. Booker,” May Ogilvy says, smiling at him like the kindly grandmother she most likely is. “I’d like to take you to visit with Margaret, and then perhaps we can talk in my office.”

Bill hasn’t been sure what to expect during this visit, other than a discussion about Margaret’s care going forward, but seeing her right out of the gate makes his heart race. “Okay,” he says amiably. “I’m game.”

The facility director leads him down a sunlit hallway. Through the open doors on that floor, Bill can see residents sitting peacefully in rocking chairs that face windows. Many of them have plants growing and flourishing on their windowsills, and he takes stock of their clean rooms and crisply made beds as he walks by them. So far, so good.

May Ogilvy leads Bill through a set of double doors that she unlocks with a key that hangs on a giant ring attached to her belt. She holds it open for him and he follows, sensing the slight shift in energy as the doors close behind them.

“This is our elevated care unit,” Mrs. Ogilvy says, avoiding his gaze as she leads him directly through the unit and to another set of doors. She repeats the key process, only this time they encounter a big, burly man in white scrubs, who insists on inspecting their pockets and patting them down. Bill is growing alarmed. “And this is our intensive care unit—not to be confused with medical intensive care,” Mrs. Ogilvy adds. “This is where we have moved Margaret, and I’d like to bring you to her if you’re prepared.”

Bill feels his eyes widen as he nods; he is suddenly far less certain about seeing his ex-wife. “Okay,” he says, swallowing. The idea of space travel and potential oxygen leaks seems more manageable in this moment than sitting down across from a woman he’d once loved but who would now, most likely, not even recognize him.

May Ogilvy leads Bill to a room where two male attendants stand against one wall. Bill’s eyes graze the room, landing on a woman with long, curly, wild hair. She is standing at the window with her back to him, her face turned up towards the sun that bathes her in hot white light. May Ogilvy stands near the door and nods at the woman standing at the window.

For a long moment, Bill just stares. Finally, he collects himself and clears his throat. “Margaret?” he says.

She turns around slowly—so slowly that Bill isn’t even sure she’s heard him until she’s fully facing him. The moment their eyes lock, everything comes rushing back: school dances; her warm skin under his eager hands; the smell of roses and antiseptic when he’d visited her in the hospital after the miscarriage; the taste of her hot, salty tears whenever he’d held her and tried to kiss away her pain. “Margaret,” he says again, this time not as a question.

Margaret looks older but not old; wiser but not wizened; a little frightened, but not frightening. She stares at him. Narrows her eyes. Looks him up and down from head to toe, lingering on his broad chest, his close-cropped hair, and on the wedding band that wraps his left ring finger in yellow gold. Their matching wedding bands had been white gold, with a tiny chip of a diamond embedded in Margaret’s. Now her hands are bare, and her face free of makeup.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come, Bill,” she says to him in a soft, slightly raspy voice. Her eyes fill with tears. “I thought you forgot about me.”

Bill shakes his head wordlessly, clears his throat, finds his voice. “I didn’t,” he says. “I didn’t forget about you, I just didn’t know how to save you.”

FIFTEEN

jo

Bill is gone.He’s in Arizona.

Jo wakes up to these mental reminders as she rolls over and stretches in her giant, empty bed. She puts on her robe and slippers and pads out to the kitchen, where she puts on a pot of coffee and looks out the window over the sink at another bright blue, humid Florida morning. The grass is still slightly dewy, and the pool filter hums loudly as she steps out onto the back patio through the sliding door.

The kids are still asleep, so Jo opens the front door and brings in the newspaper, the eggs, and the glass bottles of milk that have all been delivered just after dawn. Unlike in Minnesota, it’s imperative to get the eggs and the milk in and stored safely in the cool refrigerator as soon as possible so that they don’t fry and boil on the front porch in the hot morning sun.

Jo drops the newspaper on the kitchen table as she pours her coffee, and the headlines blaze up at her:There’s going to be a march on Washington at the end of the month; A freak escalator accident kills a man and his eight-year-old daughter at a racetrack in New Jersey(Jo’s hand goes to her heart as she skims this one);Hurricane Arlene passes directly overBermuda with eighty-five mile an hour winds…Jo sits down and reads on, sipping her coffee in contemplative silence.

She’s trying to focus on the news of the world, but her brain keeps jumping back to the late night phone call she’d received from Bill before going to sleep the evening before: he’d arrived in Arizona, gotten a car and driven straight to Desert Sage, and had seen Margaret for the first time in many years. He’d delivered it all so dispassionately—and Jo had certainly tried to receive the details the same way—but beneath their words there was an undeniable current of discomfort. A frisson of angst. In the end, they’d talked about the children briefly, Jo’s shift at the hospital, and the fact that Frankie was staying with the kids again. Bill told her about the motor hotel he’d booked near Desert Sage, and that he missed them all terribly. The call had lasted less than five minutes due to the exorbitant cost of a long-distance phone call, but hearing his voice had both soothed her and riled her up, leaving Jo with a weird bubbling sensation in her chest that had kept her awake well past midnight.

When Frankie shows up to watch the kids that afternoon, she’s carrying an overflowing bag full of feathers and sequins, but Jo is so distracted that she barely notices her girls’ excitement.

“Mommy!” Kate says, dancing around as Jo clips on her pearl earrings and smoothes her skirt before leaving for the hospital. “Did you know Frankie was a dancer on New York?” She’s looking at her mother hopefully.

“It wasinNew York, dummy,” Jimmy says to Kate.

“James,” Jo corrects, frowning at him. “Do not call your sister names.” She turns back to Kate. “Yes, I did know that, sweetie. She told you that?”

Frankie is standing in the front room, pulling things out of her bag and laying satiny dresses over the back of the couch.“The girls wanted to see some of my costumes from my days as a Rockette,” she explains to Jo. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Jo fingers the canary yellow feathers of a short dress as Kate sits on the floor with a pair of well-worn dancing shoes, trying to slip her feet into them as if they aren’t several sizes too big.

Since Bill is out of town, Jo figures it can’t hurt to leave the kids in the hands of a woman who wants to dress them in sequins and beads and teach them how to can-can. “Sounds good to me,” she says, dropping a tube of lipstick into her purse. She leans over with a smile and kisses each of the children on their cheeks on her way out of the house.

Jo is uncharacteristically self-assured at the moment; it isn’t often that she’s alone and in charge of everything on the home front, and if she’s being honest with herself, she manages it quite well. Waking up and drinking her coffee in the quiet of the house as she reads the paper, shepherding the kids through their meals and playtime, and running laundry as she sings to herself suits her just fine. Even her simpler dinner plans are like a little vacation to Jo: that night she’s promised the kids fish sticks and oven french fries followed by a swim, and the night before she’d let them eat their franks and beans quickly and spend the evening watching television.

Of course they’ll go back to business as usual when Bill returns, but for now, sitting by the pool and watching her kids take turns doing cannonballs as the sun sets and the dinner dishes languish in the sink sounds just about right.

“Good afternoon, Josephine,” Nurse Edwina says as Jo passes her in the hallway, pushing a freshly stocked and organized cart full of goodies. “Having a nice day?”

“I am,” Jo says with a nod. “And you?”

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