The Astronaut Wives Club Part 17

Her fellow s.p.a.ce widows didn't seem to be faring as well. Unable to sleep through the night, Pat White was consoled a bit by the books of Catherine Marshall, the widow of the chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Mrs. Marshall's books, touching on the afterlife, helped her during her time of need. She insisted that reading To Live Again might also help Martha Chaffee.

One thing in the book bugged Martha, how Mrs. Marshall said that after death there is no time. Martha considered the possibility of an afterlife reunion with Roger. "If there's no time then I'll be seventy-six and Roger will still be young-that won't be right!"

A huge framed color photo of eternally young Roger hung over the piano in the Chaffee family room. There weren't many books at Martha's save for the one Pat had lent her. Feeling like a guest in her own home, she'd walk around past the color TV and the big blowup color photo Ed White had sent her months ago of the Apollo 1 crew. She loved that one of Roger smiling, Ed laughing behind him, Gus by his side.

"They were so happy, they loved what they were doing," she thought.

Martha had never been to a funeral before Roger's at Arlington. She never did get to see her husband's charred remains; she didn't even know if he had been buried in his military uniform. During the funeral, she had just followed NASA's orders. Thirty-one-year-old Roger was the rookie, the youngest and least known of the three dead astronauts.

After the funeral, Martha worried about his headstone. Was there one? The burial had been such a blur that she couldn't recall the details.

She went to visit Roger's grave. NASA gave her a driver. There was her love. NASA had taken care of the headstone, which looked just like the rest at Arlington, white and official. She hadn't even realized that Roger and Gus were buried side by side. Seeing that made her feel better. She visited Ted Freeman's grave, Charlie Ba.s.sett's and Elliot See's. Then JFK's. There were a lot of people standing before the Eternal Flame. An older woman muttered to Martha that she used to come to Arlington to read because it was so peaceful, but now there were just too many tourists.

Frank Borman, the only astronaut a.s.signed to the Apollo 1 Fire Review Board, visited Martha's home on Barbuda Lane several times, offering to answer any questions she wanted to ask about what had happened. Frank gave Martha the report of the investigation, all three thousand pages of it. It described a scream in the capsule, "Hey, we're burning up!" and implied that it was Roger's.

Her five-year-old Stephen hadn't talked about the accident after it happened, but that summer, a few months later, he had some questions. He obviously was trying to come to terms with his father's death.

"Why weren't the suits fireproof? Did they burn up?"

"Your daddy didn't burn up, he suffocated," Martha said, explaining that the fire had burned up all the oxygen in the capsule, and the men couldn't breathe without oxygen.

The day after, she bought Stephen Mexican jumping beans, but they stopped jumping.

"Are they dead?" he asked.

"Well, if they are," she said, "we'll make them a present for Daddy."

What would she do when school started? Like Roger, Martha hated just sitting around. She needed to be busy. She considered joining the Clear Creek Community Theatre, which Buzz Aldrin's wife, Joan, was heavily involved in. Martha applied for a job in television, but she didn't get it. Then she went to Los Angeles with a friend who had quite a lot of money. They went to lots of "in" parties. L.A. was really a happening place in 1967, its music scene exploding with Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Byrds, who sang, "Hey, Mr. s.p.a.ceman." They visited movie sets and met movie stars.

Martha's friend wanted her to move there. "You'll get in a rut in Houston, Martha," she warned.

Back in Na.s.sau Bay, Martha was a night owl. She'd gotten so used to Roger being away from home to begin with, it wasn't hard to pretend he was just away again, training for Apollo. Whenever she couldn't stand being alone in the house at night and had to get out, Martha would call Gene and Barbara Cernan next door and say, "I have to have a drink," then go across the lawn to their house.

Sometimes when she came home, she still couldn't shake her insomnia. It was h.e.l.l, just h.e.l.l.

Finally she went to the family medical center at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center and talked to Dee O'Hara, the astronauts' nurse. Dee cut quite a figure. She drove an electric blue Mustang, which she parked alongside the guys' hot rods. She wore her signature pink-grape lipstick and a white cap with the small red cross over her short black hair. She was friendly with the wives, but would never give away the guys' secrets. She called Martha "hon" and "dear."

"At 3 a.m., I'm still wide awake, like this," Martha emphasized with wild eyes, heavily outlined in mascara. "I'm so lonely, Dee, I'm just so lonely."

There were nights she tossed and turned for hours, holding on to her American flag like a security blanket, the one that had been handed to her at Arlington after being draped over Roger's casket. When she really couldn't sleep, she'd go out and sit on the edge of the diving board over her pool and look up at the stars and feel so close to Roger. He had wanted to go up there so badly. One night, staring at the Moon, she completely lost it.

Since her husband Elliot's death in the T-38 crash over a year before, Marilyn See had traveled to Acapulco and Mexico City, and now she was about to take off on a grand European tour. She'd been studying to be a court reporter, not just to keep occupied but to make some money to get on with her life. Before he'd joined the Navy as a pilot, Elliot had been at General Electric. That was where they'd met. Marilyn had been his secretary. Now Marilyn was ready to spread her wings and fly a little. The wives organized a bon voyage party to send her off. They gathered around, insisting she open her presents. She held up a lacy corset with a quizzical expression. The wives had sewn a padded behind onto it as a joke.

"It's because those Italian men like to pinch!" squealed Jane Conrad.

Betty was there to see off Marilyn, too. She thought Marilyn had gotten a raw deal with all of Deke's gossiping about Elliot flying like an old woman. Alan Shepard had been even worse. Marilyn had told Betty that when she had gone to the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center to pick up some of Elliot's things from the Astronaut Office, Shepard had tried to bar her from entering. She had to drive home and call a NASA higher-up to help sort things out. Then when she went to Ellington Air Force Base to pick up her dead husband's car, the guards gave her the runaround.

While the two women were having a private chat that evening, Marilyn had a sudden idea: "Why don't you come with me?" she asked Betty.

"Shoot," said Betty. "I don't even have a pa.s.sport." She started making her usual excuses but then s.h.i.+fted gears. Well, why not? Her sister Mary Lou could come stay with the boys, Mark and Scott; and besides, Scott, who was seventeen, was practically old enough to stay on his own.

"I think," said Betty, "I might just take you up on that offer."

The party was on Sat.u.r.day night, and come Monday morning Betty was downtown filling out the forms for her pa.s.sport. As the youngest s.p.a.ce widow, Martha Chaffee seemed to be traveling around in her own circuit, off to Los Angeles and all, but Marilyn asked the newly widowed Pat White to come to Europe, too. Pat was still grieving, and refused the invitation with a simple "I can't plan that far ahead. One day at a time."

Betty thought about Marilyn See as she packed-if Betty hadn't accepted the invitation, Marilyn would've gone to Europe alone. "I wouldn't have done that myself," thought Betty, "but then again, maybe I would."

They started their trip in New York, where they spent a few days taking in the Big Apple. The Unsinkable Molly Brown had long sunk on Broadway, as had The Star-Spangled Girl. h.e.l.lo, Dolly! was still going strong, although now it was an all-black cast starring Pearl Bailey as the irrepressible widow, as well as Cab Calloway and a young Morgan Freeman.

Then they took off for Europe. Betty wasn't sure that they would get along. At thirty-five, Marilyn was still one of those "younger ones." Forty-year-old Betty was pleasantly surprised. Marilyn had planned the trip brilliantly, and the two did not have the usual sorts of trivial arguments both were used to having with their husbands on their rare family vacations.

First they went to Greece, then Italy, then Spain. If Betty had mapped out the trip herself, she would've picked the same countries. They shared rooms in charming hotels, enjoyed ordering breakfast for two, and together studied their travel guides and plotted their plans for the day.

"You always get up in the morning in a good mood," Marilyn told Betty.

That made Betty glow. She enjoyed having a companion. Gus had hardly been around enough to know what she was like in the morning.

At the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome, Betty spotted La Mendola, a world-famous boutique. Rita Hayworth and Anita Ekberg wore La Mendola's custom print dresses. They came in sherbet colors, and bore images of Roman emperors. One s.h.i.+ft was printed with the folds of a toga, another a fabric of flames. It was of Rome burning.

Betty ignored the daunting price tags and picked out a screaming pink coatdress lined in psychedelic silk with slits high up the sides. She even bought the matching headscarf. Amazingly, who should walk into the boutique while they were shopping but Nancy d.i.c.kerson. The TV reporter inspiration for Primly Stable was the only person who recognized Betty during the entire trip.

In Spain, Betty bought a carved wooden Don Quixote statue, which she called "my little man." She didn't give a second thought to how much money she spent. When she returned to Timber Cove she even bought Gus's share of Performance Unlimited and looked forward to going to the Daytona 500 with the Rathmanns. She loved car racing. She could buy anything she wanted now. Gus had left her with that $100,000 Life insurance policy, some investments, and around six hundred dollars a month from his military pension. Of course, it wouldn't last forever, but it was enough to kick-start Betty's new life. She was becoming almost a textbook "liberated woman," just as women were taking up the idea across America.

In the evening, driving her twelve-year-old son, Kent, back from his afterschool activities, Marge would see the bright lights of the cold, clinical, male-centric Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center. Sometimes Marge felt ready to storm the place. The MSC stood out against the flat horizon, a flush of petrochemical red streaked across the sky with ominous-looking clouds hanging above. The exhaust from nearby oil plants, which often prevented the wives from having a private moment alone with the Moon, created the most stunning sunsets.

If someone had asked Marge (or any of the Astrowives, for that matter) what her relations.h.i.+p to the nascent feminist movement was, she'd probably laugh, thinking she had nothing to do with it. But in her own way, she did. Marge was trying to create a haven for women in a world of men. The Astronaut Wives Club was the closest thing the s.p.a.ce burbs had to a NOW chapter.

And besides, there weren't many card-carrying members in NOW who could say they'd had a heart-to-heart with Janis Joplin. Marge had been attracted to the young woman, who was also from Texas, not because she was a famous R & B singer, but because she recognized a floundering soul in need.

At a social gathering in Was.h.i.+ngton, Marge had found herself seated on a sofa next to Janis, and though she didn't know that Joplin had been the star of that summer's Monterey Pop Festival, she heard the broken heart in her smoky, Southern Comfortcured voice.

Marge dosed out some peppy, upbeat advice. There were easy steps that could be accomplished right away. Janis might not have been conventionally beautiful, but Marge could tell she had a wonderful soul. How about pulling her frizzy hair back from her eyes? A little lipstick, maybe even a frost...

Alas, there were so many souls to save. Even Marge herself had a blues song to sing. She may have had the sweetest smile in Togethersville, but it hadn't been easy growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Los Angeles, on "skid row," with a drunken railroad detective father. Her family was so poor that young Marge would actually peel warm asphalt from the ground and chew it like bubblegum. Finally her mother, Nanabelle, left the drunkard father, taking her two daughters with her.

"We had to go on the dole," said Marge, but Mama would never let Marge and her sister go with her to pick up the food stamps. She was a proud lady and wanted better things for her girls.

Marge had seen a lot of the world, and though she wanted her ashes to be sprinkled over Mount Fuji, it was Friendswood, Texas, that claimed her heart. Marge's home on a heavily wooded bayou in the Quaker community of Friendswood had an open-door policy. She welcomed all the wives to visit at any hour, especially the younger ones. Marge's mother, Nanabelle, lived with the Slaytons to help take care of their son, Kent, who was fast growing up.

One day, Kent asked his mother about the strange name on the Army footlocker in his bedroom, and Marge had to hedge. He wasn't quite old enough to hear about her ex-husband, but Marge laughed about this story with her friends. Apart from the occasional b.u.mp, it was smooth sailing in Marge's neck of Friendswood.

"Those beautiful Quakers!" she'd say. "I've lived in a lot of places, but if I'm from anywhere, I'm from Friendswood."

Every morning she went for coffee at the town's drugstore. Sometimes her smoking buddy Jo Schirra would drive over from Timber Cove and they'd share a Danish and cig at the counter.

"It will never be the same again, the friends.h.i.+p of the first Seven," Jo would complain. But Marge was hopeful for the new generation.

Taking advantage of Marge's open-door policy, Nineteen wife Gratia Lousma came to seek counsel and comfort. Things were so different in Togethersville, and the astronaut life was so intimidating, and, to make matters worse, her dog had just died. Marge was more than sympathetic. She always said that her weakness was that bladder behind her eyes. They sat on her couch hugging each other and crying-Gratia for her pup, Marge for her long-gone Acey.