The Astronaut Wives Club Part 21

"What I keep on imagining is, if I were a traveler from another planet," mused Jim, "what would I think about the Earth at this alt.i.tude-would I think it was inhabited?"

Using two hand controls, Frank put the ship in "barbecue" mode with the s.p.a.cecraft slowly spinning like a rotisserie once an hour, distributing the heat of the sun.

On Monday, Marilyn drove over to Mission Control. With its bleacher seating behind soundproof gla.s.s, walls lined in felt to absorb all sound, the VIP section was set up like a crying room in an old-time movie theater, overlooking the high-octane operations. The s.p.a.cecraft was at the tipping point between the Earth's and Moon's gravities. Then Apollo 8 slipped away from Earth's gravity and was pulled in by the Moon.

"Have you seen Susan yet?" astronaut John Young asked. He'd been a.s.signed to Marilyn to explain everything that was going on during the flight.

"No," said Marilyn. "Would you like to go over there?"

"Well, why don't we both go."

When they arrived at Susan's house in El Lago, they found a few people in the living room, milling around the tinsel-draped Christmas tree, having drinks, sipping coffee, munching on holiday candy and peanuts. The boys had snuck off to go duck hunting earlier that day. Susan was holed up in her bedroom. Marilyn decided she would wait for Susan to come out and greet her, but it became apparent that Susan wasn't coming out and Marilyn wasn't being invited in. After waiting an hour to see her, Marilyn asked John to take her home.

When Marilyn returned to Lovells' Levels, she fixed herself a scotch on the rocks. She sat at the brick bar in the family room and cried her eyes out, the tears literally streaming down her face into her scotch. It was humiliating. Their husbands were on their way to the Moon together, and Susan couldn't come out and say h.e.l.lo? Marilyn felt like they, too, were on a mission together.

Jim was going into lunar orbit very early the next morning, Christmas Eve, which meant the s.p.a.ce capsule would disappear around the far side of the Moon (Jim and the astronauts were sticklers about calling it the far side instead of the dark side because it was permanently turned away from the Earth; it wasn't always in shadow). On the far side, all radio contact with Earth would be cut off. Would he make it back?

Marilyn couldn't allow herself to go there, couldn't bear to consider the question. Of course he'd come back. He had to. She always told her friends she couldn't live without Jim.

Soon she had some company with teenage Betsy Benware from next door coming over to give her and the kids a home-cooked meal. Betsy's father was the head of a company that supported Mission Control, and her mother was Marilyn's best friend. Marilyn could tell Betty Benware things that she wouldn't dare say to another Astrowife, even Jane Conrad.

Betsy handed over the tray that her mother had prepared, but Marilyn wasn't very hungry. The girl quickly realized how upset she was.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Lovell?"

"Oh, yes," Marilyn replied, but Betsy didn't believe her.

Betsy headed home, and within minutes, her mother took over as Marilyn's Mission Control. Soon other close friends began arriving, called over to Lovells' Levels because Betty Benware had decided they were going to come over to support Marilyn and cheer her up. Now that she was relaxed after some food and a few cigarettes and laughs, Betty told her she better get some sleep before Jim went around the far side of the Moon. She laid a gentle hand on Marilyn's shoulder and led her back to her bedroom.

"Lie down. I am not leaving this room until you lie down."

At first Marilyn resisted, but soon she let her body settle onto the bed. She awoke a few hours later around 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve.

Padding down the hall to the family room, where the TV was on, Marilyn found one friend sleeping in a big chair, another on the sofa, and a couple on the carpeted floor. It really touched her how they'd all made themselves beds just so that they could be there for her.

Over in El Lago, Frank squawked through Susan's box. "As a matter of interest, we have as yet to see the Moon." The astronauts were about to arrive at the Moon. NASA gave Apollo 8 a "Go" for lunar orbit, and just before the Apollo 8 crew went over to the far side, Susan asked Mission Control to pa.s.s along a message to her husband: "Frank. The custard is in the oven at 350."

"No comprendo," Frank replied. He'd forgotten the reference that was so important to his wife-"You just worry about the custard, and I'll worry about the flying." After that, her squawk box went silent.

Why Frank hadn't responded to their private joke? Susan only prayed that the engine would work and slow the s.p.a.cecraft down so that it came into lunar orbit at the proper angle. She couldn't bear the awful silence on the squawk box. Would they ricochet off the Moon's gravity field and be lost forever in s.p.a.ce, or crash into the Moon?

Finally, the squawk box came to life.

"Apollo 8, Houston. Over."

"Go ahead, Houston," crackled Frank. "This is Apollo 8. Burn complete."

"Apollo 8, this is Houston. Roger...good to hear your voice."

Susan closed her eyes in relief. For the next twenty hours, Frank would be orbiting ten times around the Moon, from late Christmas Eve into early Christmas morning. On Christmas they'd head home, but first they'd have to perform the most critical part of the mission, the one Susan dreaded the most-trans-Earth injection.

Dear G.o.d, she didn't know if she could survive it. She kept vigil in her kitchen, ears alert to the squawk box, eyes glued to the television. The sun still hadn't fully come over Houston Christmas Eve morning at 6:30 a.m. when the TV in the den broadcast the first lunar telecast, the video from Frank's camera surveying the bleak, pockmarked lunar terrain.

Susan had greater things on her mind than to be fascinated with this glimpse of another world. The only thing that mattered was that Frank came home.

As the navigator, Jim Lovell identified landmarks from the Moon maps-the Sea of Tranquility, Dry Gulch, Apollo Ridge, Twin Peaks. Nearby was a lunar mountain range.

"I can see the initial point right now, Mount Marilyn," Jim radioed to Mission Control. Astronaut Mike Collins, serving as Capcom, was puzzled. "Roger."

That afternoon, Marilyn Lovell phoned her priest, Father Raish. It was between services. "I'd like to come over to the church," she told him.

When Marilyn arrived, the church was empty save for Father Raish and the organist, who was playing the music for midnight ma.s.s. The church was lavishly decorated with poinsettias and holiday garlands, but she didn't expect to see it alive with hundreds of candles like tiny dancing stars.

"You did all this for me?"

Father Raish knew she wouldn't be able to attend regular midnight ma.s.s, since her husband would be performing some critical maneuvers then, but there was something G.o.dly about going around the Moon. He wanted Marilyn to have a special Christmas. She and Father Raish knelt down at the altar. As they prayed, tears welled in Marilyn's eyes.

Driving home from church, her whole heart was up there with the Apollo 8 crew. As she was pulling into Timber Cove, she looked up at the sky, just as she and Jim had when they were teenagers back in Milwaukee and he'd point out the constellations to her and they'd neck. It had been cloudy all week, but suddenly the clouds parted. There was the Moon, the bright, beautiful half Moon.

"My G.o.d, my husband is going around the Moon at this moment," Marilyn thought. "I'm blessed, I'm truly blessed."

Susan sat down at her kitchen table. She took out a piece of paper and a pen and began writing Frank's eulogy. If they don't get the Apollo 8 crew back safely, the press will really have a field day. Three dead astronauts circling the Moon, she thought. They'll stage a big funeral in absentia, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if they are going to tell me how to run it. She didn't know where to start, but then she had an epiphany: What a magnificent place to die. She wrote down her feelings that the world should feel uplifted. After all, Frank was watching over them, orbiting the Moon for eternity. Susan thought that was what Frank would want. No brown mud-earth grave for him at Arlington or West Point, but the smooth silver orb that lovers had stared at for centuries. Susan could look up whenever she needed a connection.

"Mom, what are you writing?" Fifteen-year-old Ed had come into the kitchen.

"Your father's memorial service. He might not come back."

"Just remember, Mom," said Ed. "Dad gets to choose the way he goes-you and I don't have that privilege."

Ed took the pen out of her hand and Susan slid the paper with the eulogy from sight. Later she would hide it in a drawer.

That night at 9:30 p.m., it was time for the crew to make their special Christmas Eve television transmission. "We are now approaching lunar sunset," said Frank, "and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to share with you."

"In the beginning, G.o.d created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," said Bill, reading from the book of Genesis for a live television audience around the world, "And the spirit of G.o.d moved upon the face of the water. And G.o.d said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light. And G.o.d saw the light, that it was good. And G.o.d divided the light from the darkness."

Jim picked up next. "And G.o.d called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day..."

"They must be in G.o.d's hands," Marilyn said to herself, as Moon shadows flickered on her TV.

"And G.o.d called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the water called the seas; and G.o.d saw that it was good," Frank continued. "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with a good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and G.o.d bless all of you-all of you on the good Earth."

Susan cried as her husband concluded the broadcast. Marilyn took her kids for a walk around the neighborhood, past the pool shaped like the Mercury capsule and their friends' homes lit up with reindeer and lights. Jim and the Apollo 8 crew were about to go over to the far side one last time.

Trans-Earth injection, or "TEI," was next. Susan was still dreading it, and soon the rookie Bill's wife, Valerie, would be arriving to sweat it out with her. Earlier in the week, the two women had decided they'd sit together for the midnight event.

Bill had actually named a lunar valley for his wife. He wanted the name, Valerie's Valley, to stick. But it didn't quite have the ring of Mount Marilyn.

For the Life photographer, Susan wore a gray-lilac sheath and her signature strand of pearls, which she intermittently chewed on. Somebody had stuck a red pin on her that said SANTA LIVES!, but Susan didn't look as if she believed it. Valerie wore eggsh.e.l.l blue trimmed in squiggly white rickrack. Both women had sweaters around their shoulders, for comfort as much as anything else. Two white squawk boxes, one for each, were dead silent.