The Astronaut Wives Club Part 13

A few weeks before Gus's launch on Gemini 3, Betty joined him at the Cape. To protect her, he never wanted Betty to be there for a launch, just in case something went wrong, but this was a little treat to squeeze in some alone time before the launch. The Astrowives called it "patting the booster."

One day Gus and his s.p.a.ce twin, John Young, took Betty for a ride along the Strip. Sitting next to her in the backseat was a young woman named Susy. Who was she? Betty didn't dare ask John, who'd ushered her into the car. The gal was skinnier than John's Barbara. "Probably younger, too," thought Betty.

They drove in silence past Cocoa Beach's low-rent motels. Then Susy piped up: "Oh, there's our old apartment."

Dry-mouthed and uneasy, Betty stayed mum, refusing to give this Susy, whoever she was, the satisfaction of acknowledging her comment.

"Okay, that's the answer to that puzzle," Betty thought to herself. "I guess he's been living with her."

That's why John was never around when Gus called. He'd found himself a Susy in St. Louis. Susy was probably already in the picture during the couples' romantic Broadway trip. John should've gotten a bouquet of roses thrown in his face for his performance as the loving husband.

Alone with Gus, Betty cut to the chase. "Are any of the other guys messing around?"

Gus wouldn't answer, so a skeptical Betty later flared her nostrils and muttered under her breath, "I guess they are."

Soon she was back home with the gossiping wives of Togethersville, and this time she had a real death threat to worry about. Gus had told her that someone was threatening to kill him.

"Why would anyone want to kill you?" asked Betty.

Gus was evasive about the specifics of the threat. He just told her that NASA had given him the warning. He shrugged it off.

She kept on asking for more details. "Okay, how 'bout John? Are they threatening to kill him?"

"I don't know," was all Gus said. He had been staying at the Holiday Inn and was a.s.signed a Secret Service man.

"Everywhere I go, he's there," Gus told Betty when he called home. "I go into a bar, he's there. I go to eat, he's there. I finally just gave up, and moved out to the astronaut quarters at the Cape."

Betty was glad to hear that.

On March 23, 1965, Betty sat in her living room with the Mercury wives, old pros watching the countdown. Her boys and Sam the Dog, "a sad-eyed ba.s.set hound," were watching with them. The Grissom boys munched on fried chicken, ham sandwiches, avocado salad, and chocolate cake, washed down with milk. Betty ate skimpily. Following h.e.l.lo, Dolly! Gus had decided to name his Gemini capsule after another popular musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown. NASA absolutely hated the name, but after Gus threatened to rename it the t.i.tanic, the s.p.a.ce agency reluctantly agreed.

Over at her home in El Lago, Barbara Young was grateful for all the company she had during the first launch party starring a New Nine astronaut wife; the more the merrier. Her fellow New Nine wives were there to make sure their hostess didn't have to lift a finger. Instead of keeping the press at bay as Betty Grissom did, Barbara brought out pots of coffee and home-baked goodies for the hungry journalists camped out under a lone tree on her property. She even offered to clear her cars out of the garage so they could have shelter.

Back inside, settled in front of her TV, Barbara began to chain-smoke, an occupational hazard of being an Astrowife. She was a former art student, and her old paintings hanging around the family room raised some eyebrows.

"John looks mean this morning," said Barbara, setting down some napkins and lighting yet another cigarette, her big brown eyes glued to the television as her husband prepared to launch into s.p.a.ce. Someone kept a flow of coffee on the burner and emptied the ashtray filled by the chain-smoking artiste. The special red emergency phone NASA installed in each astronaut's home before he went up kept ringing and ringing, but every time Barbara picked it up she was met by eerie silence on the other end. Finally, halfway through the morning, the NASA repairman arrived to fix the phone. After it was rewired, Deke Slayton called from the Cape and a.s.sured Barbara that all systems were "Go."

The reporter from Life magazine who had been a.s.signed to cover Barbara's launch party gave some of the wives the creeps. They thought his questions and comments were just plain weird, and overly focused on the dark side of things-the existential meaning of it all, which Barbara was currently too preoccupied with the possibility of John blowing up to consider.

Spotted red and white with chicken pox, Barbara's six-year-old Johnny ran around screaming manically: "Daddy's got a rocket ship! Daddy's got a rocket ship!" She didn't bother trying to control him. Dashing out the front door and into the crowd of well-caffeinated newsmen, Johnny soon returned to the living room and set loose a frog he'd caught from a tin can.

The house was abuzz. The New Nine wives were taking the launch party to a whole new level, with the kind of panache that made the old pro Betty Grissom say, "One thing that has always kind of bothered me: some of the other wives, as soon as their husband is in orbit, they had their champagne. And I thought: 'What are you celebrating? They're not down yet!'" There were already cases of bubbly on ice at Barbara's. The new minimum was thirty pounds of ice. Now the regular phone was ringing off the hook, so Marilyn Lovell took control of the receiver while keeping an eye on the elaborate spread of launch party fare-shrimp and tuna ca.s.seroles, devil's food cake, deviled eggs, always deviled eggs. Why did her journey with Jim always seem to revolve around food? Marilyn Lovell wondered. They'd even met in their high school cafeteria! It was fate, probably, just like with her parents, who'd met in a candy factory and later ran their own chocolate shop. Marilyn had grown up in the candy kitchen of her parents' shop, watching her mother hand-dip chocolates while her father made peppermint sticks.

Applause broke out as the black-and-white television reported that the Gusmobile had landed. Pop! Marilyn enjoyed the champagne along with the rest of the wives.

The tremendous success meant Gemini 4 was on course to launch in June. This mission would feature the first "s.p.a.ce walk" by an American. The Russians had just chalked up another s.p.a.ce race victory by beating the United States to this feat. Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov floated in s.p.a.ce on the end of a long, snakelike tether attached to his s.p.a.ceship.

Jim Lovell was one of the backup pilots for Gemini 4, and even though he wouldn't be flying this time around, Marilyn wanted to make sure she looked her best for the launch. She went on a diet, only this time she couldn't seem to lose a pound. She actually gained. When she went to the doctor, she learned she was pregnant.

What a time to have a child! Jim was not only a backup, but expected he'd be a.s.signed to Gemini 7, an ambitious two-week mission scheduled for December 1965, right when their new baby would be due. Marilyn had a terrible feeling that if NASA learned of her pregnancy they would take the flight away from him. A pregnant wife about to pop would be viewed as a major distraction for the astronaut.

"What am I going to do?" Marilyn cried to her doctor, the same one who had once confused her with Jane Conrad. "They're going to take this flight away from him-I can't tell Jim! Please don't tell anyone I'm pregnant."

"My hand on the Bible, I swear," said Dr. Adels.

As the weeks rolled on, Marilyn's dresses were getting harder to fit into. She was four months pregnant when Jim drove her and the three kids down to the Cape to watch Gemini 4 take off. Marilyn was sick the whole way there. Jim had to keep stopping so she could go to the bathroom.

"Oh, I have a bladder infection," she insisted. She still hadn't told Jim she was pregnant, and miraculously, he hadn't noticed. He was never around long enough to notice, thought Marilyn.

They finally reached the Holiday Inn at Cocoa Beach. The Lovells were offered two one-dollar-a-night rooms for Jim, Marilyn, and the three kids to squeeze into. To stave off her morning sickness, Marilyn hid saltines underneath her pillow and nibbled away at them in the middle of the night.

"What's wrong?" asked Jim, awoken by her mousy noises. "Why are you eating crackers?"

Marilyn sighed. She had to tell him. "You'll never believe this."

"Believe what?"

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but I think...I know...I'm pregnant."

"Oh my G.o.d," groaned Jim, "pinch me tomorrow and tell me I had a nightmare."

After a while, Jim calmed down and told Marilyn he hadn't meant what he'd said, but what a shock for both of them! They decided it would be best to keep the news from NASA for as long as they could-at least until Jim had proven himself irreplaceable for Gemini 7.

Back in El Lago, New Nine wife Pat White couldn't sleep, worrying all night about her husband, Ed, who in a few hours would be blasting off on Gemini 4; he was to be the first American to step into s.p.a.ce. Many in the neighborhood considered war-decorated Ed to be NASA's "next John Glenn." He'd certainly proven himself El Lago's hero a few months before.

The Armstrongs, the Whites' next-door neighbors, had been awakened in the middle of the night by the smell of smoke, to find their entire living room wall in flames. Ed White, who had almost qualified for the Olympic high hurdles, cleared the six-foot fence dividing their yards, landing in the Armstrongs' backyard. Neil handed his ten-month-old son through a window into the safety of Ed's arms. The story of Ed's heroics spread like wildfire. Strong, athletic, and redheaded to boot, "Red Ed" did indeed seem to be the next John Glenn. He stood out in the neighborhood full of workout-obsessed, overachiever astronauts, up at the crack of dawn, jogging around the suburban streets, decked out in sweat clothes. He made the younger wives in the neighborhood swoon. At one of their gatherings, they crowded around the window to watch him go by.

Delicate-as-porcelain Pat had met Ed at a fall football weekend at West Point. Even after a dozen years of marriage, she was still very much in love with her husband. She loved that Togethersville thought of him as a hero. She'd happily go to the end of the Earth with Ed, to the Moon, maybe even the White House. He had a kind and attentive manner that some of the other s.p.a.cemen in the neighborhood lacked. Just like John Glenn, Ed always tried to be home with his family on Friday nights.

On June 3, 1965, Pat sat on her bed and watched Ed taking off with his Gemini s.p.a.ce twin, Jim McDivitt. This was the first flight to be directed from the new Mission Control at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center here in Texas. Previously flights had been controlled from the Cape. As would become the tradition, NASA had installed in Pat's house a "squawk box," an amazing s.p.a.ce-age device that let her tune in to the transmissions going on between Ed in orbit and Mission Control. The mission would take four days, so along with the box in her living room, NASA had installed one in her bedroom so that she could go to sleep listening to her Ed, coordinating her own sleep schedule in Texas with his in s.p.a.ce, and silently wishing him sweet dreams. Of course, there were limits. She'd been told that in case of an emergency, NASA would shut the box off, so Pat knew things were going all right as long as it squawked.

Still, she chewed on a pencil, and when the doorbell rang was presented with a beautiful bouquet of gladioli from Ed. While only the launch could be televised, he knew she'd be listening in the rest of the time, so he had timed the delivery to only a few minutes before he took his first step into s.p.a.ce.

In grand Texas style, Lyndon Johnson was trying to do everything at once, pushing through the greatest triumph of his presidency while sowing the seeds of his destruction. With his Great Society program, which included the establishment of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he hoped to save America's soul. At the same time, he was planning to increase the country's involvement in Vietnam, adding another 50,000 to the 75,000 American soldiers already there.

He welcomed the festivities of June 17, 1965, when he faced Ed White and Jim McDivitt in the Rose Garden and hailed them as "the Christopher Columbuses of the twentieth century." Especially Ed, for performing the first American s.p.a.ce walk.

He could not celebrate without thinking about the large numbers of American troops lost just the week before at Dong Xai, when the Vietcong had overrun an American Special Forces camp. The weary president hoped the s.p.a.cemen would provide some relief and optimism, saying, "Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend into the depths of war and desolation."

The s.p.a.ce twin families had been invited to stay overnight at the White House. Lady Bird ordered a Walt Disney movie to be "laid on" for the Astrokids while their parents headed to the State Department, where the astronauts would narrate for Lyndon, Lady Bird, and a host of politicians a screening of the footage, in color, that they'd filmed of their trip into s.p.a.ce. The lights dimmed and everyone watched spellbound as Ed, bulky in his white marshmallow s.p.a.ce suit, pushed himself out of his s.p.a.cecraft and into the void. The only thing keeping him from drifting off into s.p.a.ce was a twenty-three-foot umbilical cord. He squeezed a gun that squirted invisible puffs of gas to change his position, twisting his body above the beautiful blue Earth.

His visor was gold-plated and it covered his face. "This is fun!" faceless Ed had said as he floated.

Some said they heard an infinite longing in his voice. He was rumored to be experiencing the "ecstasy of the deep," a sort of s.p.a.ce narcosis or euphoria. When his twenty-minute s.p.a.ce walk was over, he wasn't ready to return to the capsule. He was having the time of his life.

"Come on," Jim McDivitt had coaxed from inside the capsule. "Let's get in here before it gets dark."

When Jim's efforts to reel his partner in didn't work, Mission Control worried things were getting dangerous and sent up an ultimatum. Finally Ed relented, but as he climbed back inside the capsule, he'd confessed, "It's the saddest moment of my life."