Page 17 of The Space Between

“Right there is great, son.” Bill points at a spot near the barbecue. “Thanks.”

From the houses surrounding theirs, Bill can hear children splashing in swimming pools and smell the burgers grilling. Though the sky will still be light for hours, the anticipation of darkness as a backdrop for the colorful explosions of fireworks thrills him. Ever since he was a kid, Bill has loved the feeling of getting together with family and friends, of eating picnic food, and of waiting for dark to put on his own little pyrotechnic display.

“Hi, hi!” Barbie Roman calls, parading through the house with her arms full of foil-covered dishes. Behind her is her husband, Todd, holding their littlest boy, one-year-old Huck, and on Todd’s heels are their other two sons, Heath and Henry, who are five and four, respectively.

“Hey there, Roman family!” Bill says, slapping his knee as he stands up and reaches out to shake Todd’s hand. “Welcome and happy Fourth of July.”

The kids immediately run into the grass and start to chase one another, and Barbie sets her dishes down on the picnic table.

“It’s too hot out here for brownies and cookies,” Barbie says, glancing up at the sky as she swats at a bug buzzing around her. “Should we set up the food inside and have people serve in there and then come out?”

“I think so,” Jo says, picking up one of the trays of dessert and carrying it inside. Barbie follows, closing the door behind them.

“Okay, the women will be occupied all evening now,” Todd says. There’s a red cooler under the palm tree that’s filled with ice and bottles of beer and soda. He flips open the lid and takes out a beer. “Grab you one?”

Bill nods and holds out a hand; Todd tosses the bottle and Bill plucks it from mid-air. They move to the table in the shade, leaving the pool area to the kids.

“I gotta keep my eye on the boys,” Todd says, nodding at his three as they tumble around in the grass. “The older boys are turning into decent swimmers, but little man here will just somersault right into the pool if I’m not watching.” As Huck toddles by, Todd snatches him up and perches him on one of his knees so that Huck can watch the big kids.

“So, how are things?” Bill asks amiably. He wants to let Todd to pick a topic, whether innocuous or not. Since it’s just them out there for the moment, he’s happy to talk sports or work or women—anything, really.

“Things are good,” Todd says with a nod. He lets Huck hold the bottle of beer and put the mouth of it between his lips. The baby gums the glass bottle, knocking into it every so often with the few teeth he’s got. “But I’m sure jealous of your three-man orbital mission.” He narrows his eyes slightly at Bill, who is older and had more time in the Air Force than Todd had. “Do you think they chose you because you’re the most experienced of the five of us?”

Bill shakes his head. “Not sure. I didn’t think to ask.”

“I hear that. Arvin North pulls you in and offers you an opportunity like that, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?”

“Sure,” Bill agrees. This is how it goes: the men are curious about the things the other guys are tasked with, and there is some envy and healthy competition between them, but at the end of the day, Bill hasn’t felt that any one of them is less than supportive of the others when push really comes to shove.

“I’m happy for you even though I’m envious,” Todd says. As he does, Nancy and Kate slip out the glass door in their bathing suits and step right into the swimming pool as they plug theirnoses and go under. Once they emerge, their high-pitched little girl voices and laughter fill the backyard. “And I was happy for Ed when he got chosen to go to Seattle. I just feel like I need to start taking some big steps in the program, you know? I brought my wife and my kids down here for a dream, and now I’m ready to start seeing it come true.”

“Isn’t it already coming true just by being here?” Bill asks. He reaches over and lets Huck hold his forefinger; the baby squeezes Bill’s hand. “I mean, think how many guys would kill to be a part of NASA in any way, and we’rehere, Todd. We wake up every day and go to Cape Kennedy and work with brilliant people who are trying to put men on the moon.”

“I know, I know. I’m complaining,” Todd says with a frown. “And that’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m a lucky man. In so many ways.” He glances at the little boy in his lap, putting a hand on top of his soft, downy blonde head. “But I need a sign that I’m doing the right thing with my life, you know?” His words could have come across as whiny, but instead, they ring a bell in Bill’s own heart. He understands Todd entirely.

“I hear you, man,” Bill says in a low voice as the kids play around them. He’s struggled himself with his life decisions and how they affect his family, and there are times when the darkness has closed around him. Following his time in the Korean War, Bill has struggled intermittently with feelings of panic and terror, and the consistency of Jo and his children has really helped him to keep going, even in the darkest times.

Getting accepted to the space program has done wonders for Bill in terms of giving him new goals and focus, but certainly in his moments of reflectiveness—in the times when he feels somewhat less than capable in some area of his life—Bill has questioned what he’s doing and whether he even deserves to be an astronaut. Becausedoeshe deserve it? Is he strong enough and good enough to cut the mustard? Can he push aside his owninadequacies and do the best job possible for NASA? No, Todd is not alone in his feelings of being an imposter; Bill is willing to bet that they all question themselves when they’re left alone to ponder their own place in the program.

“All I can tell you,” Bill says, slipping into his role as elder statesman of the five of them, “is that you need to stay the course. If you were asked to come here, and assigned a role in this program, then you have something to offer. Do you hear me?” Bill keeps his eyes on Todd’s face as the younger man nods, still looking at his son in his lap. “You’re a smart and capable man, and no one would have hired you if they didn’t see a place for you at NASA.”

Todd is about to respond when the back door slides open and the rest of the families join them in the backyard, the kids jumping straight into the pool or running out to the grass to join the Roman boys as they kick a ball that they’ve found in the corner of the yard. The women are their own hive of activity, talking and pointing at the tables and shouting back to Jo about where they should put extra chairs and how they’ll arrange everything. Two of the women are carrying little folded fans in their hands, and they wave them in front of their faces as they search for shade. The men make a beeline for the cooler and extract their own bottles of beer.

“Hey!” Vance Majors says as he joins Todd and Bill at the picnic table. “Blazing hot Fourth of July, but happy Independence Day to the both of you.” He has a jovial smile as he pops the lid off his bottle and takes a long, thirsty sip of his cold drink.

“You watching Wimbledon?” Todd asks Ed Maxwell as he joins them at the table.

Ed laughs. “Nah, I’m not from Connecticut,” he teases. “I grew up watching real sports like boxing and football.”

The other men laugh.

“I’m watching,” Jay Reed says. “But I’ll watch any sport that’s on.”

Talk quickly turns to sports, as it so often does with men, and Bill relaxes into it.

The moment between Todd and Bill has passed with this onslaught of activity, but Bill hopes that his words have landed; self-doubt is a part of life, without question, but Todd needs to have the confidence in himself to push that doubt away when it crops up. His own success at NASA depends on it, and if he is chosen for a mission to space, then the safety of the entire thing rests on the competence and confidence of the men involved.

CHAPTER 7

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