The Astronaut Wives Club Part 19

At one of the annual Moon b.a.l.l.s, while others were waltzing on the rooftop of the posh Warwick Hotel, Faye snuck out onto the veranda by the pool. She took a good long look at the Moon, thinking it (or she) must be far less hostile than the upper-crust denizens of Houston.

Though she allowed her husband, Tom, to drag her from one party to the next, Faye was a homebody. Her idea of a great evening was staying in doing needlepoint with her Pomeranian pups and her two teenage daughters. She and Louise Shepard had plans to open up a cozy yarn store, the Penelope Shop, in Clear Lake.

Faye did like going to the neighborhood get-togethers, but the nurse in Harriet couldn't help but notice her friend's many phobias. Faye didn't like flying in planes or traveling, although she'd go out to eat or shop with Harriet. In the future, Faye's antisocial tendencies would inch toward full-blown "phobic anxiety disorder," or agoraphobia. She got to the point that she was afraid of leaving her own house.

Harriet had arrived in Togethersville with her own problems. At a get-together at her and Donn's home before they'd moved to Togethersville, Harriet had walked into her bedroom to find Donn kissing another woman. Donn could be very "wishy-washy" and it didn't take much to convince him to do things he didn't necessarily want to do, so Harriet didn't make too big a deal over it, but her trust was a little shaken when she arrived in Houston as a fabulous new astronaut wife. Marge Slayton tried to make light of the situation by saying how all of the wives were in the same boat: "People throw themselves at them-it wouldn't matter if they had two heads!" But soon Harriet had bigger worries.

"No nurse ever makes a diagnosis" was one of the key tenets that Harriet had learned in nursing school, but she'd always been good at diagnosing, and it was clear to her that there was something wrong with her son Matt. Harriet noticed blood blisters on his little body; he was cranky, and just wasn't himself. She was certain the blisters were petechiae, a telltale sign of leukemia, not uncommon in kids with Down syndrome.

"I think I need to bring Matt in, but I'm scared," Harriet told a NASA doctor she saw at a party. Unfortunately, her diagnosis was correct. Matt was taken directly from the family medical center at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center to Texas Children's Hospital. He was in and out of the hospital for a year and a half. Only once during that time, when Donn was home from training, did Harriet ask him to spend the night with Matt in the hospital. The next morning, Donn told Harriet that he was so upset by Matt crying out in pain that he couldn't bear to stay in the room. He never stayed at the hospital again.

Matt had two remissions and was able to go back to his school for a time, but his second remission was short. In the last weeks of his life when Matt's condition was rapidly deteriorating, the doctors told Harriet, "I think we need to call Donn."

But Harriet knew she couldn't find him at the Cape. She had suspicions he was with another woman and she couldn't deal with that now. During this time, the wives supported Harriet, keeping her freezer stuffed full of Tupperware dishes, with no names so she wouldn't have to write thank-you cards. One wife came over and mowed the lawn without saying a word.

Donn was with Harriet at the hospital the day six-year-old Matt died. Harriet sat holding her little boy and Donn was on the couch. Both were devastated, but Donn rarely talked about his feelings, saying, as many of the astronauts did, "I'm not given to introspection."

Afterward, Donn flew off to the Cape, where he would begin training for Apollo 7, the first manned mission after the Apollo 1 fire, and Harriet was left to deal with the emotional fallout. Donn rarely came home the summer before his flight, and Harriet's sense that there was another woman in the picture continued to grow. Donn would give her the typical excuses, blaming it on his crewmates not doing their jobs, which forced them to work overtime. "Wally and Walt are goofing off-if I don't stay, we're all going to be killed," he'd tell her. He accused Harriet of ruining his concentration, suggesting that her pestering him with her crazy worries could also get the whole crew killed.

Then Donn started leaving clues-Harriet found out he'd been at some movie star's house (which she thought was a big deal and would have enjoyed being taken along, but Donn excused it as a trifle). She also found a matchbox from the Beverly Hills Hilton. It was as if he wanted to be caught, as if he were living a second life and wanted to get rid of his first. He kept on denying it, and when Harriet raised her suspicions, Donn bought her flowers and told her she was acting even crazier than usual. She began to be afraid that she was imagining things. There was that unspoken belief, especially among the guys, that if you got a divorce, you'd be done for. At the height of the intense compet.i.tion for a.s.signments for the Apollo program, guys aching to be chosen to go to the Moon believed selection went hand in hand with a textbook marriage. The tighter the marriage, the thinking went, the better the flight position. Broken relationships, screaming fits, no matter, as long as all this remained behind closed doors.

With his Apollo 7 flight just around the corner, Donn had begun appealing to Harriet's friends, saying Harriet was upsetting him. Even her best friend Faye told her it was all in her head.

"You're crazy," Donn kept on repeating to her.

Harriet finally said to Donn, "If I'm really crazy, I should see a psychiatrist."

"You can't go see a psychiatrist," said Donn. "I'll lose my job."

Flying out in March 1968 to join her husband, Bobby, at his first campaign stop in Kansas, Ethel Kennedy worried about how the conservative midwesterners would react to her husband's progressive platform of civil rights and social equality, and his commitment to end the war in Vietnam. The country was bitterly divided. But when her husband touched down in Kansas City and Bobby stepped out onto the metal steps, a throng of young women were waiting at the bottom, screaming, "Bobby!" As it turned out, the girls were TWA flight attendant trainees, recruited to raise Bobby Kennedy's appeal to rock-star status with the youth of America.

In Topeka, Bobby addressed a cheering crowd in the ballroom of the Ramada Inn. "In 1960," he began, "the American people and mankind looked to John Kennedy." The crowd loved him so much that they ripped the b.u.t.tons off his coat and his shirt.

That night at the governor's mansion, where the campaign staff was staying, Rene sewed the b.u.t.tons back on while Bobby was in the next room, walking around in his bathrobe drinking a Heineken and eating a roast beef sandwich. The next morning, Rene awoke to a frantic Ethel knocking on her door.

"Can you please help Bobby?" she asked.

Downstairs, Bobby was having his breakfast while the governor watched in awkward silence. Neither was much for small talk, so Rene came in and saved the day.

Since the beginning of his run, journalists had been asking Bobby if he was scared that "they" were going to kill him, but Bobby just shook his head and smiled. A month later, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a.s.sa.s.sinated in Memphis. Many of America's major cities, including Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Boston, erupted in riots. America seemed to be spiraling out of control.

In June, on the night he won the California primary, Bobby Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles at the Amba.s.sador Hotel, gunned down in the hotel kitchen. The Glenns were traveling with the campaign and staying there. Early that morning, John and Annie led five of Bobby's eleven kids from the hotel and flew them home to Hickory Hill and tucked them into bed. When they woke up, John had the terrible task of telling them that their father was dead.

On October 11, 1968, sitting at the Formica bar in the Schirra family room, Jo and Marge sat tight for the Death Watch, smoking cigarettes and watching the NBC coverage of Apollo 7. Finally back on track after the tragic fire, this first manned mission in the Apollo program was commanded by Wally Schirra with his crew of Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham. Apollo 7 was to orbit Earth for ten days so that the crew could check all the features of the new and improved Apollo capsule.

"There's Rene!" Marge's face lit up, clicking the volume up on Jo's "Zenith s.p.a.ce Command" wireless remote.

Smiling on the television, wearing a poppy-red shirt and a navy blue vest, Rene sat side by side with TV's top news duo, Huntley and Brinkley.

I'VE DEVELOPED A NEW PHILOSOPHY. I ONLY DREAD ONE DAY AT A TIME. Harriet Eisele had pinned the huge Peanuts b.u.t.ton onto her sweater on the day of the flight, letting it do the talking for her.

Reporting for Life, embedded journalist Dodie Hamblin, who was fond of Harriet, thought she was the biggest wreck she'd ever seen. Like everyone in Togethersville, she knew that the past few months had been horrible for Harriet, who didn't want to be caught in the glare of publicity.

Over the ten days of Apollo 7, Harriet cowered while the squawk box squawked its incomprehensible numbers and vectors. She was deeply disturbed by the change she heard in Donn's voice. Some felt he was clearly imitating his commander, Wally, who was being a real hard-a.s.s to Mission Control. This was Wally's last mission and he wasn't holding anything back. But Donn unwisely followed his lead, making inappropriate remarks. He seemed to be committing professional suicide. Harriet just thought there was something different about Donn-this was not the Donn she knew.

Finally in November, a month after the flight and right before they went to the White House for the post-flight celebrations, Donn told Harriet about "Susie." Harriet actually enjoyed the trip-because for the first time in months, things were out in the open, and she knew she wasn't crazy.

Harriet thought they had achieved a new openness. Then she noticed Donn had started closing bank accounts.

"You've got to file for divorce to protect yourself and the kids," her minister told her, and she did.

The Astronaut Wives Club was called to order at the Lakewood Yacht Club. One word silenced the clanking teacups.

"Susie."

The name was poison. Even though each wife knew too well that some Susie, however she spelled it, could come between her and her husband, the gals pinned all their fears onto one particular Susie, the new wife of Donn Eisele, the rookie astronaut who'd suddenly made big headlines around the world. Paris Match showed up at Harriet's door wanting the inside scoop. The s.h.i.t hit the fan and Harriet was terribly embarra.s.sed. "Astronaut Donn Sued in First 's.p.a.ce Divorce'-And More Homes May Break Under Strain," ran a headline in the UK's Daily Express.

"The astronaut life is a great strain on marriage," Donn told the tabloid. "It is like a circus. To be avoided."

But Susie married him anyway. And now she wanted to join the A.W.C.

Susie didn't yet comprehend what she was in for. She didn't think she'd done anything wrong. She hadn't hunted Donn like some of the other Cape Cookies. She was a respectable single mother who'd worked at the Cape Kennedy Savings and Loan a.s.sociation. Some of the wives were exceedingly kind-s.p.a.ce widow Beth Williams out in d.i.c.kinson was a dear-but the rest?

"It was a living inferno," said Susie. "I figured if we minded our own business, it would be okay. But I did not know how radical this group was."

Susie was up to her ears in alligators and figured the wives who were meanest were the ones whose husbands cheated the most. Donn's new wife didn't stand a s...o...b..ll's chance in h.e.l.l in Togethersville.

Susie got a new job at a local savings and loan a.s.sociation in Houston, and as Donn was always working, she wondered what on earth she might find to do in her spare time. It occurred to her to join the Clear Creek Community Theatre, where Joan Aldrin and Clare Schweickart were amateur actresses. The theater put on the all-female Clare Boothe Luce play The Women, about a bunch of catty, backstabbing women. They also did The Crucible, Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prizewinning play about the Salem witch trials. But Susie was told that an Astrowife had to ask NASA's permission if she wanted to appear in a community play, and Susie didn't want to. Someone urged her to attend an A.W.C. meeting, but before she even got a chance to consider what she might wear, Susie received a phone call informing her that if she dared to show up at the Lakewood Yacht Club, the other wives would walk out. It wasn't long before Donn was fired from NASA.

14

The Dark Side of the Moon

Dodie Hamblin, a big-boned Iowa girl turned New Yorker, was Life's new bureau chief for outer s.p.a.ce. She paddled across Clear Lake in a red canoe, her preferred mode of transportation between the three s.p.a.ce burbs of Timber Cove, Na.s.sau Bay, and El Lago. Today she was visiting the Bormans. She'd been told that their yard looked like a pit stop with all the hot rods Frank and his two sons worked on. The grease-stained, buzz-cut trio hunted duck in the backwoods. Dodie hoped they didn't hunt reporters.

Dodie had been getting the lay of the land since the winter of 1967, when she'd been dispatched. One of her first pieces was on the s.p.a.ce widows. She certainly felt she'd landed in a curious place. Here, plumbers plumbed at cost, and if an astronaut family had a crisis, all the other families instantly appeared.

She'd found her best material at the gym at the Baysh.o.r.e Club. One day, feeling fat and uninspired, she spied a woman clutching her bosoms as she ran around in a circle, brown ponytail bouncing behind her. Next, she wrapped the vibrator belt around her tummy to give herself a good jiggle. It was not until Dodie was on the belt next to her and struck up a conversation that somehow turned to j.a.pan, of all things, that she realized she was speaking to none other than Marge Slayton.

Marge asked how Dodie was adjusting to Texas, and started chattering about how she used to have curly hair before she came to Houston.

"But then I got off the plane and it went to h.e.l.l," she said.