HOUSTON, TEXAS, 1961–1963
Elise was happier here, tucked away in the row of identical houses painted in a range of mauves, the driveways all glinting in the early mornings with the cars the dealerships had leased for nothing to the men like Vincent. They lived in as close proximity as they worked, in a cul-de-sac without a sidewalk, and their bodies, subjected to the same diet and regimen, were nearly facsimiles. The push of Texas heat was constant, the power of the air conditioners soul chilling, and life here sometimes felt only about managing the two extremes, pulling on a sweater indoors and dragging a handkerchief across your sopping neck while out. Elise had bought and bought with the determination of someone under deadline, a pitcher with hand-painted stripes of primary colors and eight matching glasses, as though some inspection were approaching, Danish teak sconces that resembled horns, as though someone were coming to make an assessment and say this was or was not a home and a life. The bills were large, and he sorted them on the long walnut dining table with foldout leaves, the few hours he was home, paid them but barely on his government salary. Her parents, calling from their Garden District mansion in New Orleans, would not believe how little money he made. She took out a line of credit at the department store. Nine of the astronauts in his class had bought in this development, but they were kept so long at work that they rarely saw their houses, hardly dug their toes into the deep carpet or marveled at the spring of the toaster, and it was their wives who napped and ate and twisted the telephone cords here, building a community that existed below or inside the men’s daily lives.
He saw the most of his wife in a crowd, every spare hour now consumed by a dinner party she or some other woman on the block threw. They were rigid and high-pitched, multicourse affairs for which Elise did her hair, the dishes topped by increasingly elaborate garnishes, lilies made of sliced tomatoes and egg yolks and endives, bow ties of lemon wedges and pimiento strips. At these events the men hardly spoke or adjusted their chairs. They had risen at four to run five miles and eat three eggs, to not blink during the talk led by the German rocket scientist who sliced nonstop at the air with his hands, to ride parabolic arcs over Houston just for the thirty seconds of weightlessness at the height of them. In transit from one obligation to another Vincent heard the other men pretending they were less exhausted than they were, leaning on reliable jokes. Dark jabs at the German, Arbeit macht frei. Speaking like a man running a carnival ride and waving an invisible cane. Step right up into the vomit comet! They had learned quickly to pat a man on his back if he hurled and tell him Happens to the best of us but also to keep track of how many times the others had retched versus how many times you had, and worry if the latter was approaching the former, and do everything possible to keep your flight suit pristine and avoid that admission of weakness. Swallowing vomit became a perfected skill. This is what they were thinking of at these dinners, not the pink and cream Jell-O layered and chilled at a diagonal to make bold stripes. They were immune to the small defiances of their children, barely recognized by the family Labradors and basset hounds. There was at least half a chance any story recounted had happened to somebody other than the teller.
Friendship was not what he felt for them, but he was not unhappy to see them at his dinner table or sit at theirs. He could understand why they sat the way they did, Dean Kernan and Wally Lacey, shoulder blades nailed to the backs of their chairs, why they ate as they did, Jesse Gordon and Dick Lovett, seconds and thirds in preparation for the marathon of tomorrow. To see them was to know how he was seen, which circumvented love or hate. Sam Bisson was the exception.
A veteran in a field were there were no veterans, Sam had been the only one to make it from the Mercury program to Gemini in anticipation of Apollo, and he spoke rarely and impeccably. Vincent had once and only once heard him misspeak, mistake the number of minutes into a lunar rendezvous that the lunar module would pass behind the moon—one figure of thousands they were meant to memorize, easily forgotten, easily forgiven—and it had grieved him so that he apologized like a person who has arrived hours late. Early in their training, he and Bisson developed a reputation among the others—Hey, it’s the Dour Dyad—and it surprised no one when they chose houses next to each other, built a fence with doors between their backyards and front yards. Catching each other gardening in the mornings, Elise and Sam’s wife, Marlene, clasped hands across the wood peaks. Sam grilled for the four of them and his two children. Spread out in reclined patio chairs, protected by citronella candlelight, they sighed or laughed into the alien blue of the pool. Vincent and Bisson traded notes, ideas they had about the mechanization of the simulators.
The months in Texas hurtled on, spliced by day flights down to Cape Canaveral or weekends in Johnsville, where they rode the centrifugal wheel, trying to surpass the record of sixteen g’s, the backs of their cheeks pinned by their ears. Though there was no time for a hobby, for the first time in his life he could imagine one: the goggles he might wear while woodworking, the easel he would place in the sun.
When the new astronaut class was selected, when he saw Rusty strolling into the room in a line with the rest of the proud faces, when Rusty acknowledged him with a wink that lasted too long, he felt cheated, then foolish. Why had he thought some guarantee had been made, some injunction that sealed off his old lives from his new one—why did he believe he should be the only one to remember Fay, that horse? During the commute home came a dark possibility, a thought he felt trapped in the car with him. It was that he had always relied on his success to separate him from the time and people he’d manipulated to reach it.
Rusty and the wife he’d acquired during his graduate program in Los Angeles, Janet, were hosting soon and often after their arrival, themed evenings to which they always invited the Life photographers. Tiki torches and coconuts, cowboy hats and plastic feather headbands, their toddler twins running through slapping fat palms to open O-mouths as they yodeled. Vincent hated these parties but they were required—that his image there be captured.
“Heard something funny about an old friend of ours,” Rusty said to him one night, catching him in line in the bathroom. “One Fay Fern. Something that might particularly interest one Vincent Kahn.”
There was a flush, the sound of a faucet, a whistle as the water ran. Vincent nodded.
“Hard to trust what you hear, isn’t it? I imagine I’ll read about that once it shows up in the paper,” he said, excusing himself into the door that had opened.