Page 9 of Starlight & Dark Nights

Nancy, who is ten, would rather spend her every waking moment with her nose in a book, and in a sense, Jo can’t blame her. She leans back against the couch, letting the wrapping paper she’s just been creasing unfold a bit as she sighs.

“You don’t want to go and swim? Jude said they were barbecuing hot dogs.”

Nancy looks at her mom with the patience of a saint. “I’m reading areallygood book right now,” she says.

Jo still struggles with the fact that her oldest children are not babies any longer. Jimmy, who is now thirteen, and Nancy, her studious bookworm of a girl, are both trustworthy and calm. Leaving them home alone for a few hours while she takes Kate to the birthday party would be no big deal.

“Okay,” she says, relenting. “You and Jimmy can stay here, because I doubt he’s interested in going to a party for two little girls.”

“You got that right,” Jimmy himself says, striding through the room with a baseball mitt on one hand, and a well-worn ball in the other. He pounds the ball into the mitt, as he so often does, trying to wear in the mitt he just got for Christmas. “Can I play catch outside with Paul and Wayne?”

Jo nods. “Of course. Just keep an eye out for cars.”

“We always do, Mom,” Jimmy says, rolling his eyes.

As the kids wander off, Jo is left alone with her thoughts again. She leans forward and begins to tape the packages for the twins, watching her own long, slim fingers as they press firmly on the paper.

Her wedding ring sparkles, and Jo eyes the small diamond. Bill had given her that ring when they’d only been dating for a few months. Their courtship had been a quick one, their wedding small. And, up until recently, Jo has always thought that their love story was big. Their hopes and dreams worked in tandem, not against one another, and they always seemed to be in step.

She pulls a piece of tape from the dispenser and closes one end of the first Barbie box.Okay, she thinks to herself.You’re forgetting a lot of bumpy patches here, Josephine. Don’t gloss over the hard stuff.She flips the box and starts to fold the paper at the other end. Jo isn’t trying to lie to herself, but sure, there have been a few things that have made it feel like she and Bill are shouting to one another across a great divide.

Moving to Florida a year and a half ago had been the first thing that felt divisive, in her mind. She’d been a Minnesota girl, born and bred, and leaving her home and her extended family for constant sunshine and the unknown had been hard. It had taken Jo reminding herself many, many times that when you marry someone, you sign up to support them through all their hopes and dreams. Particularly if that someone is your husband, and he gets hired by NASA to become an astronaut. What womanwouldn’tsupport a dream like that?

Kate runs through the room in a short, flowered dress, her tanned legs moving quickly as she races into the kitchen. “Mommy, Mommy—can I have some Kool-Aid?”

“You may,” Jo says mildly. “Please rinse your glass afterwards.” Kate’s request doesn’t stop her wrapping or halt her train of thought.

Moving to Florida had been the first thing that felt like she and Bill weren’t entirely on the same page, and then there had been the fact that Jo wanted to do something for herself, and so she’d started to volunteer at Stardust General Hospital. While Bill doesn’t fundamentally have a problem with women working, with volunteering, or with Jo finding her footing in their new community, he’d struggled a bit at first with her being away from the children, and it had been a point of contention between them.

And then there is Jo’s writing. She’d felt the itch to write stories the year before, and with some real effort and a stroke of luck, Jo had gotten her short romance stories published inTrue Romancemagazine. The pay is minimal—only ten dollars a month—but it had caught the eye of the PR department at NASA, and they’d thrown a reading in her honor. Unfortunately, that reading coincided with the explosion at NASA in December and the deaths of two astronauts, and Jo’s writing has suffered since then, but her writing is yet another thing that she feels has come between her and Bill.

He’s always been loving and supportive, but it’s all been hard. Every time one of Jo’s columns comes out she feels as if her husband is patting her on the head like a dog, congratulating her mildly for her ten dollar paychecks and for getting her little story published, but it hasn’t been lost on Jo that he’s never read her work. Any of it.

And if he did read it…that would be another thing. Her story, which is being printed in installments inTrue Romance, is about a woman in love with an astronaut. She’d set out not intending to infringe at all on their own lives or their marriage, but somehow the writing had become personal, and Winston, the main character in Jo’s story, had started a flirtation with a woman at work. Now, does Jo want to be embroiled in a scenario where art imitates life? No, not really. She’s chastised herself for that a number of times, but somehow writing her own emotions down just feels so good—so cathartic—that she can’t stop herself.

The doorbell chimes and Jo uses the heels of her hands on the coffee table to push herself to standing and crosses the vast sea of the carpeted living room to open the front door.

Frankie Maxwell is standing there, sunglasses in place, a cigarette held between her first two fingers.

“So, are we going to this shindig?” she asks throatily, exhaling a plume of smoke up into the sky.

Jo laughs. She looks her best friend up and down. “Is this a red carpet event? I thought it was a birthday party for two eight-year-olds.”

Frankie slides her sunglasses off her face. “Am I overdressed?” She glances down at the gathered and belted waist of her celadon green raw silk shantung dress. On her ears are two studded stones of a similar green color, and her hair is styled in smooth waves.

Jo glances down at her own capri pants and button-up blouse. She feels like they’re attending two different events. “No, you look gorgeous, but now I feel like I’m dressed to sweep out the garage or something.”

Frankie waves a hand and brushes past Jo. She makes a beeline for the kitchen and finds an ashtray in the cupboard, which is the one she always uses when she’s visiting Jo.

“You look gorgeous,” Frankie assures her, taking one last drag on the cigarette before stubbing the butt out in the ashtray and pushing it aside. She’s standing next to Jo’s kitchen counter. “I just felt like I spent the week cooped up inside, and I wanted to put on a dress that makes me feel good.”

“How is Ed? Has he been doing alright since the incident?”

“He's a little quieter than normal,” Frankie says, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down. She crosses her legs.

Both women clam up at the mention of the incident. The Gemini orbital mission, which was supposed to be led by Bill before he’d ultimately been removed from the test part of the project, had resulted in the deaths of Bob Young and Derek Trager. There isn’t a single person involved with NASA who didn’t spend the holiday season feeling traumatized by their terrifying and avoidable deaths, and the women in particular felt a shudder each time they imagined their own husbands trapped inside of a burning space capsule.

“How is Maxine doing?” Jo asks, reaching for the ashtray and dumping the single cigarette butt into the trash. Maxine Trager, Derek’s wife, is someone they know and like, and Maxine’s tragedy has become something of an unspoken cautionary tale to the women, as they watch her try to privately and publicly navigate the death of her husband.

---