Page 18 of The Space Between

Jo

The women closethe sliding door, leaving the men and children outside. “It’s too hot out there for me,” Barbie admits, fanning her face with her hand. “Truly.”

“I know. Maybe we can invent kitchen tasks to do all evening and keep ourselves in here where we’ve got air-conditioning,” Carrie Reed says. “There are enough of them out there to watch the kids anyway.”

“You don’t think the men will mind watching all the kids?” Barbie asks, peeking out the window to make sure that her older boys haven’t pushed the baby into the pool while the men talk sports and work.

“They’d better not,” Jo says with her head inside the refrigerator. She’s made potato salad and coleslaw for the barbecue, and she shoves them aside now looking for a bottle of Tab to open for poor, overheated Barbie. “It’s not like we got ourselves pregnant,” she adds drily. “Keeping an eye on the children twenty-four hours a day isn’t a job that rests solely on our shoulders.”

“It isn’t?” Jude Majors asks with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She grabs a carrot slice from the platter of veggies andcrudités that Carrie has set on the kitchen table. It gives a loud snap as she bites into it. “Somebody better alert the men to that fact.”

“So,” Frankie Maxwell says as she leans her hip against Jo’s kitchen counter and looks out the back window. “We’ve got the lady engineers coming to this shindig?”

At the mention of it, Jo feels her stomach tighten. “Actually, just one. I met Jeanie Florence at your place, Frankie,” Jo says, trying to keep her tone light. “And I thought it might be nice to invite her, since she’s the only woman engineer on our guys’ team. She’s bringing her roommate.”

The women busy themselves with little tasks like dumping a jar of baby pickles into a serving dish, fanning out paper napkins on the table, and setting stacks of clean glasses out for people to use.

“When is she coming?” Frankie asks. She’s by far Jo’s closest friend of the bunch, and she watches Jo with narrowed eyes, as if she can guess what Jo is thinking or feeling.

“Soon,” Jo says noncommittally. “But so is Dave Huggins.”

“What?” Barbie nearly shrieks. “No one told me. I’m not ready to be photographed. My kids aren’t in the right clothes. I didn’t pick out anything for Todd. Jo, you should have warned us!” Barbie has gone from sorting utensils to spinning out of control in under thirty seconds.

“Honey,” Jo says to her, reaching out a hand and grabbing Barbie by the wrist. She shakes her arm lightly. “Dave has taken a million pictures of us already. We’ve done the formal thing; this is just a casual, real-life shoot for the Cape Kennedy newsletter. He wanted to get some shots of us as families, celebrating America—eating potato salad, watching fireworks. No big deal.”

Barbie puts out a hand like she’s trying to steady herself. “Okay, I just want to make sure we’re not going to show upinLifemagazine looking like a bunch of sweaty women who don’t care that their children come out of the pool looking like drowned rats.”

“I think you’re taking this way too seriously,” Carrie says with an amused frown. “It’s Dave’s job to get pictures for NASA, and we don’t always have to look like we’ve been styled for a photo shoot, Barb. Sometimes he just wants to see us laughing and being ourselves. Maybe he’ll catch you eating a hot dog or something,” she jokes with a wink.

Barbie makes the sign of the cross. “Eating a hot dog! In a magazine! I will never?—“

“Sweetie,” Jo says, still holding Barbie’s wrist. “I promise I won’t let you anywhere near a hot dog, alright?”

Barbie nods gratefully.

“Let’s just be glad he wasn’t invited to that first party here,” Jude says as she shoves a cracker into her mouth. “Remember how your water broke over there,” she says, nodding at the front room. “And you almost had your baby on Jo’s new floors?”

Barbie’s face goes white at the very mention of America seeing her with amniotic fluid streaming down her thighs.

“Jude,” Jo says firmly, “stop scaring her.”

The doorbell rings then and Jo wipes her hands on a towel. “Keep her busy,” she says to Frankie with a glance at Barbie, who is tugging at the hem of her dress and smoothing her hair with both hands.

Jo walks to the door with a smile plastered on her face. It was her idea to invite Jeanie Florence, and she wants to be welcoming. She wants to get to know the girl who spends the entire work week with her husband, and to make a friend out of her. For some reason, this feels important to Jo: make a friend out of the woman who has slightly raised your hackles, and somehow avoid potential disaster. It's kind of like encounteringa big, scary dog in the wild: make a friend before it turns into a foe, and perhaps it won't bite.

She puts her hand on the knob and takes a deep breath before opening the door.

"Hi!" says a woman in a low-cut top and a tight pair of capri pants. She's got frosted blonde hair that's curled and sprayed to within an inch of its life, and her lips are a glossy pale pink. Her tanned chest--and most of it is visible--is covered with sun spots and a tangle of thin gold chains. In one hand she's holding a bottle of champagne, and in the other, a Polaroid camera--the kind that spits out peel-apart black-and-white prints.

Jo is speechless. She knows she's looking as stunned as she feels, and she isn't even sure what to say to this middle-aged stranger.

"Oh! Jo!" a voice from the end of the driveway calls out to her. Jo looks that direction, relief flooding through her as Jeanie closes the door of her Volkswagen Bug and walks towards the door with a covered dish in her hands. "This is my roommate, Vicki."

"Hiya, doll!" Vicki says this time, still holding up the champagne and the Polaroid camera. "The party has arrived!"

Jeanie and Jo exchange a look, and then Jo gets her wits about her. "I'm so sorry, please--come in," Jo says, stepping aside to make way for Vicki and her champagne.

"Thank you so much for inviting us. Our only plan for the holiday was going to be watching fireworks with the retirees at our condo and having a picnic at the pool, so this is way more fun," Jeanie says in a rush. She follows Jo through the front room, looking around at everything as she does. "Your house is so beautiful, Jo. You have exquisite taste."

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