The Astronaut Wives Club Part 12

Buzz named his monkey "PoPo" and left the little ragam.u.f.fin to look after Joan when he flew back to the Cape. Joan fell in love with the little guy. She fed him with a spoon and tucked him into a basket on a shelf in the kitchen. It nearly killed her when PoPo was diagnosed with terminal encephalitis. Buzz had to have a NASA doctor at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center give him a sniff of something to hasten him to that great jungle in the sky.

Joan was heartbroken. She swore she'd never have another monkey.

Grinning jack-o'-lanterns lined the brick entryways of all the new homes in Na.s.sau Bay. The best part about this Halloween 1964, the first in Togethersville for the Fourteen Astro-families, was that it fell on a Sat.u.r.day. That meant Daddy would be coming home for the weekend after training all week at the Cape. Putting on plastic masks and eye-patches and face paint, the slew of neighborhood Astrokids got ready to ring the bells of the Cernans' and Chaffees' and Beans' and Ba.s.setts', hoping Cinderella would greet them at the door of her castle with armfuls of Jujubes.

With her dog "Red Dammit!" generally being a nuisance, hence his name, Faith Freeman helped her ten-year-old Faithie get into her costume. The sharp-looking Connecticut blonde was finicky about details (especially her jewelry; Faith hated to jangle). She was so busy putting on the final touches, she almost forgot that tomorrow was the first day of the month, and that she'd repeat the good luck charm she'd started last month.

Ted would be fast asleep at her side, and she'd wake him up good by screaming, at the top of her lungs, "Rabbit!" Faith had heard that yelling "Rabbit!" as soon as you woke up on the first day of the month offered a bubble of protection to last all month. Like many of the wives, Faith wasn't above using superst.i.tious rituals to keep her man safe in the sky.

"Rabbit!" had served her well so far. She figured she'd try it again.

Truth be told, Faith was looking forward to sending her Faithie off trick-or-treating with the neighborhood kids so that when Ted got home she could settle back with him, drinks in hand, to greet the ghosts and goblins.

The doorbell rang, and Faith padded over to find a reporter from the Houston Chronicle at her door. He was here to find out some information.

"There's...been an accident."

Accident?

A Canada snow goose had smashed through the Plexiglas bubble canopy of Ted Freeman's T-38, sending shards of gla.s.s like gigantic plastic teeth through the intake system and causing the engine to flame out. Ted, a birdwatcher who loved geese, had punched out, but he was too close to the ground. His parachute only partially opened before he smashed down by his plane's wreckage near Ellington Air Force Base.

Faith completely lost it. Little Faithie, who hadn't left yet to go trick-or-treating, was there to hear the terrible news. Soon the neighborhood wives found out what had happened and came over to be with Faith and Faithie.

The round-robin was on fire. How could NASA have let this happen? The military had an exact protocol for how news of a death should be officially delivered. First and foremost, a man on the inside, a base chaplain or a high-ranking official, should be the one to bring the bad news to the family. But in Togethersville, it seemed n.o.body was in charge. The first death got the community up in arms and NASA got busy coming up with a protocol in case the worst should happen again.

On the morning of Ted Freeman's funeral, Betty Grissom kept an eye on Gus as she dressed in his least favorite color. She added the finis.h.i.+ng touches to her black outfit: gloves, a modest gold watch.

Gus hated black. He was still sitting on the bed, slumped over his knees, head in hands. He wasn't budging or even looking in his closet. Betty knew what his intentions were-he refused to go to funerals, insisting he would only ever go to one, and that would be his own. He felt funerals were bad luck.

"I'm going back to work, I'm going to go back to work," Gus kept on repeating, hardly looking at Betty.

Finally he started putting on his formal Air Force uniform decorated with honor patches.

Betty feared it was only a matter of time before Gus crashed in his own T-38. The d.a.m.n thing was too fast and dangerous, especially after Gus had been working for hours on end. He'd hop in that sporty little death trap to check on the progress of his Gemini s.p.a.ce capsule being built at a NASA contractor in St. Louis, then zip back to the Cape. Betty didn't care to think too much about it; she had two boys to raise, and a house to clean and a yard to mow, but she strongly believed Gus was living in too many d.a.m.n time zones, and she told him so.

The first Gemini mission, which Gus was scheduled to command, was only a few months away, and Betty had finally managed to convince her husband to squeeze in a little relaxation time at their ski chalet in Crested b.u.t.te, Colorado-Crusted b.u.t.t, her boys called it. They'd bought it with the Coopers, only Betty wasn't a skier like Trudy, who could fly down the mountain, so she kept the bar open and the fire burning while working on Playboy Bunny jigsaw puzzles, which proved to be the perfect decoration for the chalet bar.

Over in Na.s.sau Bay, Sue Bean crossed her backyard and went over to Joan Aldrin's for their ritual afternoon tea. Joan's mother had been of British parentage, so teatime was always a genteel treat. The poor woman was dead now from a freak accident, having crashed in a private plane into the side of a mountain. It made it a little weird that Joan had married Buzz, a pilot, a year later.

A coppery blonde Jersey girl, Joan had always intended to become an actress. She'd received a master's degree in theater arts from Columbia University and would let you know she'd had a walk-on role on the TV show Playhouse 90, not to mention a couple of lines on the live mystery series Climax! She'd always been attracted to struggling actors and suffering artists, and there were plenty of those floating around New York in the fifties.

Then her mother had introduced her to a handsome, blond twenty-two-year-old Air Force lieutenant. His name was Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (who when he was very young was called Buzzer by his little sister-she couldn't p.r.o.nounce brother, and the name stuck). Buzz was the first man Joan dated that her oil executive father approved of for her, especially because he knew Buzz's father, a colonel in the Air Force. Unfortunately, there was zero chemistry between the two. Buzz went to Korea, and Joan pursued her acting career in New York.

When Buzz finished his tour in Korea, Joan's mother had been killed, and Joan, who commuted to New York and lived at home, was left alone to console her father while her own heart was breaking. She didn't lodge a complaint when Buzz pinned his Air Force "A" onto her sweater. Her father declared her off-limits to all dates while Buzz was out in Nevada working as an Air Force instructor.

A couple of months later, Joan convinced her father to go on his two-week vacation in Las Vegas, near where Buzz was a flying instructor. The night before Joan was to return to Jersey, Buzz proposed. When the minister stared into her eyes and p.r.o.nounced her Buzz Aldrin's wife, Joan felt she was playing the greatest role of her life. Joan's first year of marriage was h.e.l.l. The gregarious city girl was married and in a flash living at the Squadron Officers' School in Montgomery, Alabama, with a hubby who was usually away flying, or locked up inside his own head. "I was always alone," said Joan. "I was nave; I had been brought up as an only child; probably I was spoiled. Men don't really chatter as women do, and Buzz is not a man who talks a lot. I am a talker, and I am very direct. It was hard for me, not to have him there to talk to."

The other astronauts gave him the moniker Dr. Rendezvous, because when he was earning his doctoral degree at MIT, the subject of his thesis was "Manned Orbital Rendezvous," which he dedicated to the Mercury Seven astronauts. It turned out to be the rendezvous program NASA used to get to the Moon. "Boy, he's really something," his colleagues said. "He could correct a computer." Given his proclivity for spending time with a slide rule, he wasn't exactly a scintillating dinner companion.

Buzz seemed to be able to shut off his emotions as if he were turning a valve. Part of being a good pilot was remaining totally unemotional, being on the ball and ready for anything, with the ability to make split-second decisions that saved lives. Such a man didn't necessarily make for a good husband. Buzz could be heartbreakingly cold. Joan learned that all too starkly with the arrival of PoPo II, her unwanted Christmas present from Buzz that year.

Sue Bean couldn't believe Joan put up with the animal. Just a regular old squirrel monkey, he was significantly bigger than darling PoPo I. As Sue sipped her tea at Joan's, she'd see the beast scampering around. It seemed so uncivilized! Sometimes the little fellow would run up and down on their shared fence, bare his teeth, and make obscene gestures. He was just awful to Joan. Even when she locked him in his cage, the monkey danced around, mocking her.

"Buzz, I've had it," Joan finally said. "It's either the monkey or me. Somebody's leaving."

Buzz turned around very slowly and looked at his wife silently, as if to say, Well, what are you waiting for?

"I've done it now," thought Joan. "I'd better just shut up."

At last came the day when she found PoPo II floating facedown in the backyard pool. Joan breathed a sigh of relief; she'd gotten her wish, though she'd never admit it. She felt very guilty about it, too.

10

The Astro-Pageant

Betty Grissom and Barbara Young were thrilled that they and their husbands were being treated to a free trip to New York and prime seats for the hit musical h.e.l.lo, Dolly! Their husbands were going to be flying together on the upcoming Gemini mission, kicking off the new two-man phase of the s.p.a.ce program. Since a duo would be going up in all the missions, the program took its name from the twins of the Gemini sign of the zodiac.

Gus's partner, John Young, was an animated speaker, fond of such expressions as "dam-gum-it" and "what the d.i.c.kens." Nevertheless, to some of his neighbors he was basically an introverted wisp of a fellow, just the opposite of his wife, a big brunette who had a heavy hand with the eyeliner. John was a hard worker with wildly creative ideas. For him, nothing ever seemed to be right, including his Barbara.

Betty liked Barbara well enough, but couldn't help noticing that she acted more like John's mother than his wife-she was always needling him about why he didn't come home as much as the other guys. Everyone in the s.p.a.ce burbs knew Gus didn't come home much either, but Betty didn't give him a hard time about it. She knew how hard Gus and his "s.p.a.ce twin" had been training over the past few months.

As the commander of Gemini 3, Gus wanted to make d.a.m.n sure the hatch of his capsule wouldn't blow this time as it had on his Mercury flight. The new and improved Gemini capsule was fitted with individual James Bondlike ejection seats with parachutes that would lift Gus and John away from the new Gemini t.i.tan rocket, should the beast, which had almost double the thrust of an Atlas, explode upon liftoff.

"Gemini's a Corvette," Gus proudly told Betty. "Mercury was a Volkswagen."

His fellow astronauts had named the Gemini capsule the "Gusmobile." Gus had had such a hand in its design that it fit his wiry five-foot-five frame like a glove. The others just barely fit inside it, which might've been Gus's plan all along. The NASA contractor that built the capsule, McDonnell Aircraft, was outside St. Louis, so Gus and John shared a little two-bedroom apartment there in the months leading up to their flight. Betty thought it was a little weird how every time Gus called home, when she asked if John was there with him, he'd say no. The two were alone, living together like bachelors. Wouldn't they at least have dinner together now and then?

Betty tried to push these sorts of questions far from her mind as the couples took in the grand, gaudy spectacle of Broadway. After the play, the Grissoms and Youngs were invited backstage to meet the googly-eyed star, toothy blonde Carol Channing-h.e.l.lo, dollies! Alas, the magic of the New York trip wore off quickly.

It wasn't too long after that a new drama opened for Betty in Timber Cove. One day she found a threatening note in her mailbox. She always opened Gus's mail for him, but her stomach bottomed out as she read the scribbled note:

How can a good fellow like you with two charming children have a no-good, two-timing wife?

It was obviously written by a woman. After all Betty's sacrifices-slaving away as a telephone switchboard operator to put him through engineering school at Purdue, sticking with him during Korea and through a time when they lived in a trailer and he only made $105 a month (and Gus later said, "She must have felt that flying equaled poverty!")-someone was writing to tell her husband that she was no good?

When Betty showed Gus the letter, he said he had no idea who'd sent it, and rea.s.sured his wife that he knew she wouldn't cheat on him. He told her not to pay any attention to the crazy woman who'd written the letter.

"Well, maybe I should," retorted Betty, "because if she's after you-I'm the one who's going to end up dead."

Gus just smiled and shook his head. "You don't pay any attention to that."

He didn't stick around to calm her fears. Come Monday morning, as always, he was off again to St. Louis. Betty tried not to think about what was really bothering her. Gus was probably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around on her. One particularly nasty story that circulated was that after a party in Cocoa Beach, Gus had driven Betty to the airport only to return to the festivities with another girl. Betty was the first to admit that Gus didn't come home as much as the other guys, but she always maintained that it was because he worked harder than any of them.

"I'm not saying that Gus didn't have girlfriends," said Betty, "but whenever I thought of things like that, I just tried not to think about those possibilities."