The Astronaut Wives Club Part 16

All of a sudden, glancing up, she saw a woman sporting a perfectly coiffed hairdo.

"No reporters!" screamed Betty, only the lady wasn't a newswoman. She was New Nine astronaut wife Pat McDivitt, who'd just gone to the beauty parlor.

Betty's neighbor, Wally, was put in charge of making the arrangements for the funeral. "What do you want?" he asked her.

"The whole nine yards," Betty told him. "The whole thing, whatever they do, do it."

NASA called Betty to inform her that a NASA Gulfstream would fly out of D.C. to pick her up and fly her to Gus's funeral in Arlington. But NASA wasn't going to start pulling anything over on Betty Grissom. Being the most senior of the widows, she insisted she get to fly out on the Gulfstream already parked in Houston. "How about the Houston airplane?" she kept asking until NASA finally rejiggered the plans.

Having heard the terrible news on the airwaves-the capsule on fire, and everybody burning up-Betty's hairdresser figured her client could use a touch-up. Betty had a standing Friday appointment for a shampoo and set, and had gone just that morning. She had come a long way from the plainspoken Hoosier who once upon a time had refused to have her makeup done for the Mercury wives' first Life cover shoot.

"I can't let you go to Was.h.i.+ngton looking like that," the hairdresser said.

All the wives sitting with Betty followed her down the hall to her bedroom. Betty closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax in the girl's expert hands. The kind stylist also worked her magic on the other wives. Betty still pretty much followed Gus's orders of "Don't mess with your hair."

Over at the Whites' home in El Lago, Susan Borman sat with Pat White for hours as Pat cried her eyes out. The following night, after seeing the capsule burned like a "fire-blackened charnel house," Frank and Deke held their own version of the Irish wake, smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and watching a NASA man perform handstands. Frank felt very strongly about Ed White. He thought Ed was marvelous.

Back in his Edwards days when a guy bought the farm, famously tough Frank took a moment to be glad it wasn't him. He never got all "clanked up," but remained stoic and quiet. After the fire, his face was stripped of its fighter pilot unflappability. In the days and weeks to come, Pat White asked Susan her terrifying questions.

"Who am I, Susan? Who am I? I've lost everything. It's all gone."

After the fire, Martha Chaffee woke up in the middle of the night and realized she'd unconsciously switched to Roger's side of the bed to be closer to him. Her two kids, Stephen and Sheryl Lyn, were sleeping right beside her. The doorbell was ringing. It was astronaut Gene Cernan from next door. He'd been out at the Apollo contractor North American in Downey, California, and had flown home to be with her and his wife. Martha cried all over him, because he was a man, and they'd been such good friends ever since Purdue.

The cars lined up to make the trip out to Arlington National Cemetery. "I'm in the first limousine this time," Betty said to the other Mercury wives. "Catch up to me."

The flag-draped wooden coffin was in a caisson drawn by six black horses; three were riderless with their saddles empty. The trees at Arlington were gray and barren; it was the dead of winter. Rifle shots sounded, then a bugler played "Taps" as three jets roared overhead in a "missing man flyby," with one peeling off in memory of the fallen astronaut. It was very moving.

Betty wore navy blue, seeing as how much Gus hated black. She squinted at the wives, watching suspiciously to make sure they acted appropriately.

Gus's six Mercury colleagues were the pallbearers. When Betty saw the old gang together again, she thought, "Gus was a lick above them all." She figured they all knew it, too. Why else had they dismissed him as a nave Hoosier from the beginning?

Gus had been picked to fly the first missions of both the Gemini and the Apollo programs, and Betty knew if he had lived, he would've been the first man to walk on the Moon. Where were the others now? Scott Carpenter was now working as an "executive a.s.sistant to the director" at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center and as an aquanaut. Chief Astronaut Al and Coordinator of Astronaut Activities Deke, while in charge of the Astronaut Office, were both grounded from flight. John still peac.o.c.ked around like he owned the place, but he was retired from NASA and working as an executive for RC Cola. Gordo was still with the agency but too c.o.c.ky about his skills, not giving his all to learn the new technology. Wally was still flying, but today he was just plain irritating Betty, standing too close to her side by the grave. She was pretty sure that Wally had been a.s.signed to babysit her, but Betty didn't think she needed any d.a.m.n wife-sitter! She could handle herself perfectly well on her own, thank you very much.

As her Gus was lowered into the ground, LBJ bent down to whisper into the widow's ear.

"What did he say?" Wally wanted to know.

Betty hadn't heard what condolences the gloomy vulture LBJ had offered, and she didn't care to ask him to repeat them. She didn't want to play the mourning wife. Gus had always said that if he died, she needed to have a party. She had promised him she would, and besides, Betty would never be able to say good-bye. But all things considered, she thought the funeral was pretty nice.

Next was Ed White's; NASA had been terrible about where he was to be buried. He'd wanted to be laid to rest at his alma mater, West Point. But NASA had insisted he be buried at Arlington beside Gus and Roger.

Pat White was beside herself, but she didn't have the guts to stand up to NASA. Her friend Susan Borman did. Frank phoned the Pentagon and convinced them. Ed would be buried at West Point. That's what Ed's father, a major general in the Air Force, wanted. That's what his widow wanted.

The pilots roared over and the missing-man plane peeled off as "Taps" came to an end. Afterward, Lady Bird comforted Pat behind her black veil, and little Bonnie and Eddie. Pat was the only Apollo 1 fire widow who went to all three services: Gus's first, Roger's next, then two hours later she was on a plane bound for West Point. She functioned. She thought she was doing all right. Later she would remember little of those days.

"Well, I'll get a color TV for the children," Pat told the press, wanting one of the new marvels, "and we'll take a trip."

One of the astronauts had taken over Pat's business affairs, and told her, "Now Pat, you aren't going to be able to do these things for several months."

NASA was still in the ladies' business; they'd been screening their mail since the fire.

Pat shrugged it off. "It's annoying," she said to a friend, "but perhaps it's for the best. Some people send pretty nutty letters. Even obscene ones."

What would Pat do with her time now? Ed had always filled her days, even when he was off working. She had dedicated everything to him. She had cooked gourmet meals. She had handled all his correspondence.

"She just worked at being Ed's wife," said one of the wives, "and she was wonderful at it, and that was all..."

12

Women's Lib

With Deke still grounded, Marge was no longer an astronaut wife like the others, but she was Mother Marge to her girls, as she thought of the Astrowives. Her girls were going through such heartache. She knew that Betty was tough and would be all right, but what about poor pretty Martha Chaffee, and dear Pat White? Marge wanted to bring as much comfort as she could to her girls. The monthly coffees and teas of the Astronaut Wives Club served the same purpose she did: "If you need us, come."

They'd lost Jeannie Ba.s.sett to San Francisco, but Marge considered the A.W.C. a lifetime members.h.i.+p. Regardless of how NASA treated the s.p.a.ce widows, considering them excess baggage, as far as Marge was concerned, Faith Freeman, Marilyn See, Betty Grissom, Martha Chaffee, Pat White, and Jeannie Ba.s.sett would always be astronaut wives.

Marge had imagined the Astronaut Wives Club as a port in a storm: the wives would see each other through trying times, offering homemade ca.s.seroles, a stiff drink, or a shoulder to cry on. But somehow, after that first meeting, her baby was failing to thrive. n.o.body really opened up; they carefully skirted the big issues, and only talked about safe things.

The meetings had become routine-discussing launch parties, sharing recipes, and planning bake sales to raise money for the POW/MIA wives whose husbands were missing in action in Vietnam. The taboo subjects of depression and alcoholism, T-38 crashes and fatal fires, were strenuously avoided. So was pretty much anything that had to do with their husbands' compet.i.tion and extramarital activities. And the Cape Cookies, who presented a much-loathed rival group to the astronaut wives.

One morning, with the a.s.sistance of Lady Louise, who drove in from Houston for every meeting, Marge drew up a phone tree on a blackboard that she wheeled in. She explained how, in case of another terrible emergency, they should first call the women in their respective groups who lived nearest them. She described how the wives should be dispatched to care for the woman and her children, until an astronaut arrived to officially inform her she was now a widow. G.o.d forbid it should happen again.

The women nodded-didn't they know this already? But Marge knew they were scared, all of them, especially the younger ones, and she wanted to put it front and center.

"Ever since the accident," said Marilyn Lovell, "I've been telling Jim I want him to be a postman. Can you imagine him delivering mail?" She added, "n.o.body chases a postman but dogs." As Barbara Cernan put it, "When I'm reincarnated, I want to marry a nine-to-five man, not an astronaut."

"I think it's a wonder this hasn't happened before," said another. "Do you know how many miles they fly, all the time? And all the other things they do? It's a wonder."

The Apollo deaths haunted not just the astronaut wives, but the entire nation. LBJ was too dragged down by Vietnam to send NASA budgets unquestioned through Congress, where the term "Moondoggle" now echoed down the marble halls. The Apollo program was stalled for eighteen months as the Apollo capsule underwent redesign, and until NASA could come up with some answers to what had happened.

Gene Cernan figured that if he had to sit out on the bench for a year and a half, he might as well put his T-38 skills to good use. He was sick of hearing about the antiwar protest movements raging around the country. It made him angry. He loved his old college pal Roger Chaffee and mourned his loss, but he also was getting leery of hearing about astronaut heroism all the time when his old Navy buddies, good soldiers all, were out there in Nam getting shot at every day, dying and being thrown into POW camps. That "hairy furball of guilt," as he called it, was lodged in his throat, and Geno had a powerful urge to hack it out by roaring over North Vietnam and carpet-bombing the G.o.dforsaken place back to the Stone Age. He marched over to Deke Slayton in the Astronaut Office to tell him what was on his mind.

"You can go," said Deke, "but I won't guarantee a job when you come back."

Geno stayed put.

Ten days after the fire, one of the wives was amazed to see Betty at a party, sitting in a chair, sparkling. Betty had loved and lived for Gus, but when he died, she said to herself, "Betty, you're on your own now. You have to start looking out for yourself from this moment forward."

People would call up worried that she was alone now, but Betty had to admit that things weren't all that different. "Well, I'm going to miss the phone calls," she said. "That's mostly what I had of him. The phone calls."

Some of the wives thought now that Gus was gone, Betty felt he truly belonged to her. She didn't have to share him with the program or his hobbies.

Wives would run into her in the grocery store and Betty would stop them just to chat, talking a blue streak. She told everyone that she and the boys could go right on living the way they had. "Gus always said he'd take care of us, and he did." The change was evident in Betty. There was no doubt she was coming out of her sh.e.l.l, turning into an extrovert. She said to one wife, "All my life, ever since I married Gus, I've felt as if I were sitting on top of a volcano."

Now the volcano had erupted, and she was free to live as she wanted. She joined a bowling league in La Porte, Texas, just up the highway, and was having her teeth capped. She had to make weekly visits to the dentist. All those years as a test pilot wife and worrying about Gus had wrecked havoc on her jaw. One day, in the window of a local antique store, she saw the sort of player piano she'd wanted all her life. Its front featured a carving of wizened old men and trees and queer little Oriental dwellings. It was made of mahogany inlaid with iridescent pink-and-green mother-of-pearl. Betty bought it.