The Astronaut's Wife (6 page)

“Are you going to live in space?”
“No, Paula, we won’t be going to live in space.” Virtually every student in Jillian’s second
grade
class had asked her a similar question since the
beginning of the goodbye party. No one looked like they were having a very good time, despite
the tray of cupcakes and the brightly colored balloons anchored to chairs and table legs. It was difficult for a bunch of kinds to lose a popular teacher in the middle of the year, and
Jillian felt a certain amount of guilt for dropping such a bombshell on them. But she also knew
that kids were resilient and that not too many weeks would pass before they had adapted to a
new and probably beloved teacher. Mrs. Armacost would be nothing more than a dim, if
pleasant, memory.
It turned out that Paula had a follow-up question. She wanted more information on this
troubling subject. “But your husband lives in space,” she lisped,

and he’s taking you back with him, so aren’t you
going to go and live in space?” It made perfect sense to her seven-year-old way of looking at things.

“My husband
used
to work in space,” Jillian explained patiently. “Now he and I are going to go live in a place called New York City. That’s up north.”
“Oh.” The little girl took this in, thinking about it for a moment. Then she asked, “Mrs. Armacost?”
“Yes, Paula?”
“When your husband is in space, does he ever see God up there?” she asked matter-of-factly.
It was, Jillian thought, a damn good question, but before she could answer, a little boy named Calvin ran up to her.
“What about aliens? Does he see aliens?” The words tumbled out of the boy’s wide red mouth. “Does your husband bring a laser gun in case there are aliens? If I were going into space and I saw aliens I’d make sure I brought two laser guns. A little one for my pocket and then a big laser rifle. Does your husband have a laser rifle? Does he bring it home from work with him? Does it work here on Earth or does it only work in space? Mrs. Armacost, does it?”
Calvin was panting now, as if he had just run up a couple of flights of steep stairs.
Jillian laughed. “You know what, Calvin?”
“What, Mrs. Armacost?”
“I’m going to miss you.” She looked around at the kids frolicking in the classroom and felt a lump
in her throat. She knew she was going to miss all of them.

The party was being held in a tent behind a NASA watering hole called Jack’s Tavern and by the time the party really got going, the tent was packed. There were the men with short hair who had worn crew cuts since the fifties and saw no reason for a change, there were healthy, middleaged women in Bermuda shorts whose skin suggested that they spent more time than they should in the Florida sun. There was a gaggle of NASA geeks with black-rimmed eyeglasses and a pallor that suggested they did not spend enough time out of doors. Nan was there, making eyes at the bartender, but he didn’t have much time for her—he was working hard to slake the thirsts of the merrymakers. Parked on a table near the bar was a sheet cake shaped like a space shuttle with “Farewell Spence and Jill” unsteadily embroidered in frosting across the midships.

The entire crew of the
Victory
was there as well as Sherman Reese and the Director himself. Not even the appearance of the big bosses could dampen the high spirits of the party.
Someone was trying to make a speech through a blizzard of static and feedback. “They asked me to
write a speech. A farewell for you, Commander—” There were interruptions from the audience,
cries
of “No!” and “Don’t go!”
But the man persisted, determined to give his
speech. “But I’m a mission specialist and that specialty does not include speech giving. I tried to tell ya—”
A man called Tom Sullivan, one of the crew of the
Victory,
stepped out of the crowd. “You are absolutely right, Stan. You can’t give a speech. I will.”
To general applause Stan relinquished the microphone and Sullivan stepped up. He grinned drunkenly at the crowd.
“Spence,” he said, “you have been our commander lo these, many years..
_.“
“Lo these many years..
_.“
the crowd roared back. Farewell speeches tended to follow a standard script.
“We figured that there must be some way to tell you how we truly feel..
_.“
Jillian had been having a pretty good time, though she had been to plenty of farewell bashes just like this one, and was doing her best to get into the spirit of the thing until she looked through the crowd and saw Alex and Natalie Streck. In contrast to the general good humor that pervaded the gathering, the Strecks were not having a good time. In fact, though their words were drowned out by revelry, the Strecks were in the middle of a very nasty argument.
Alex was reaching for a plastic glass filled almost to the brim with a clear liquid—a very stiff gin or vodka, maybe—and she saw Natalie try tb stop him from taking it. A flash of anger crossed his face as he snatched at the drink, grabbing it so forcefully that a good deal of the liquid slopped over the brim, raising another furious look from Alex. No one else had seen the action and if the Strecks cared about being observed they were doing nothing to hide themselves. Most eyes were on the stage where Tom Sullivan had been joined by two more members of the crew of the
Victory,
Shelly Carter and Pat Elliot. The three of them were joined shoulder over shoulder and swaying to a music that only they seemed to be able to hear. It was plain that the three of them were going to sing whether the crowd wanted them to or not.
“Commander,” Tom Sullivan slurred into the microphone, “this one’s for you.” He looked over his shoulder at the bartender. “Maestro, if you please...”
The bartender hit something on a karaoke machine and the night was flooded with an extremely loud set of opening chords for “My Way.” The difference was, this wasn’t the “My Way” that had become the anthem of Frank Sinatra. This was the mocking, sarcastic, and rather funny version of the same song as performed by the late Sid Vicious. While it is widely held that astronauts and NASA types are generally square, the Sex Pistols had managed to penetrate to this part of the space program twenty years after their heyday.
As the intro for the song kicked into high gear, Jillian saw Alex Streck raise the glass to his lips and drink it down as if it contained nothing more powerful than a soft drink. Then she remembered:
vodka...
Vodka was Alex Streck’s beverage of choice. From across the room she winced as she seemed to feel the heavy belt of alcohol that Alex had just smacked himself with. Natalie too looked away in pain. In that moment she hated her husband. And in that moment she hated to see him hurt himself-like that.
The three drunken astronauts burst into song, singing every bit as badly as the dead punk rocker they were trying to emulate. The crowd screamed and laughed at the singing, and everyone was enjoying the parody—even Spencer was enjoying the antics of the singers on the stage—everyone, that is, except Alex and Natalie. The entire audience pointed at Spencer for the last line about doing it “his” way.
There were hoots and hollers from the crowd as Spencer took a bow. As he did the guitar began to crank and almost simultaneously the crowd began to dance. The music was harsh and driving now, assaulting the dancers and listeners, as if somehow the lyrics had drained a portion of the goodwill from the party. Everyone seemed lit up with the rock and roll and the flowing booze. The under-twenty-five crowd started slam dancing, throwing themselves against each other in bone-crunching smashes, as if they didn’t care who got hurt. The older types were at the bar throwing down beers and hard liquoras if it were their last night on earth. The music pulsed so loud it seemed to split the darkness and wash away any rational thought or action.
Jillian caught sight of Spencer, his hair awry, laughing as he was drawn into the frenzy, caught up in the mass of gyrating bodies packed together on what passed for a dance floor. It was strange to see one of the NASA geeks stage diving from the bar into the throng, his black tie flapping, the pens from his breast pocket scattering. He hit the solid mass of bodies, then disappeared from view.
Jillian was crouched in a corner, as if protecting herself from her own farewell party, but she could see what was going on, as if through an old kinescope. As legs jerked and arms waved she could make out the action in shaky sequence. Then, through the wild antics of the dancers she saw Alex Streck again. He was taking the glass from his lips and staring as a red bloom appeared in the middle of his vodka, a large gout of his own blood. His nose was bleeding, the gore dripping straight into the glass of colorless liquid.
Jillian jumped to her feet and tried to move through the crowd toward him. Sweaty bodies, damp and clammy and ‘as immovable as sandbags, stood in her way.
The singers screamed till ears hurt.
Jillian never lost sight of Alex. He was just standing there, dumbly, as if attempting to figure out how his own blood could be flowing from his body. His face was stained red with blood from his
brow to his chin but he did not seem to be in any pain. No one else had seen this except Natalie and Jillian. Natalie was yelling something in her husband's ear—not words of anger this time, but urgent words of interrogation. Jillian could not hear the questions but she could imagine what she was saying, the kind of thing a doctor or a nurse might ask:
How much have you had to drink, do you feel dizzy, nauseous, do you remember a blow to the head...?
Alex staggered a bit and Natalie threw her arms
around his waist to hold him up, but he was too heavy for her. Suddenly he spasmed as if shot and pitched straight forward, headfirst, landing on a table covered with glasses and beer bottles. His weight brought the whole thing down, glass and plastic shattering under him.
Natalie screamed and Jillian ran for her. But still the music and the frenzy of the crowd overpowered the sickening sound of a man falling, a woman screaming.
Natalie sucked in another lungful of air and screamed again and this time her plaintive wail cut through the noise. It cut through the music and the laughter and the drunkenness. That unholy scream cut the cacophony, slicing It off, as if decapitating it. The music stopped. The dancing stopped.
There was nothing but stillness in that party except a screaming woman and the red blood pumping from the nose of a bleeding man.
All eyes were on Alex. He lay on the concrete floor, the broken glass and plastic spread under him
like a painful carpet. Alex twisted and writhed on the beer-soaked stone, his body going thorough a horrible sequence of paroxysms, muscle-wrenching contortions that looked from second to second as if his own body would tear itself apart. Not one sober person in that crowd—and there weren’t many— gave him too much longer to live.
The singing and dancing stopped. Karaoke continued to blast out of the speaker until the bartender got the brainstorm to stop it. Suddenly all was silence there in that tent behind a Florida honky tonk—silent save for the wailing of Natalie and the ghastly beating of Alex’s fists against the concrete floor. His clenched hands smashed into the hard floor, into the shattered glass. His hands were flayed, his fingers split, and his blood gushed.
No one tried to save him until Spencer acted. He broke through the crowd and dropped like a wrestler down on to Streck’s body. slamming him against the cement floor, grabbing his bloody hands and pinning them as if scoring a point. Blood spurted from a dozen wounds, from Streck’s nose, from his hands, from his torn cheek, the hot fresh blood spraying Spencer as if from a hose, soaking him.
It was as if Alex Streck was determined to bleed to death. He fought the help that had come to his aid. He battled against Alex, and Tom Sullivan (who had stopped singing and dropped down on Streck’s chest), and he fought against his wife who tried to hold his thrashing legs. Alex threw Natalie off him like a bronco bucking a green cowboy.
His real adversary was Spencer. He had Streck’s blood-slick hands clasped in his own and he was shouting something to the older man, looking into his eyes as if telegraphing a message that only the two of them could understand.
Then, without warning, Spencer lowered his mouth to Alex’s and began administering CPR, breathing for his mission commander, pinching off the nose of the older man and trying to push his own breath into his lungs. Spencer looked into Alex’s eyes as they were locked mouth-tomouth and Spencer shook his head from side to side:

But Alex had ceased to understand. He summoned up the strength for one more deep, gutwrenching muscular spasm and he convulsed, throwing Alex and the others from his body. His blood-filled mouth pulled away from Alex’s lips and he screamed, yelling his lungs out in pain and anguish—a sound louder than the howls of his tormented wife, a scream that screamed all the life out his body.

When the shriek finally died away, Alex Streck fell back on the beer-covered concrete behind that shitty bar in Florida... and he was dead. It was as if he had chosen to screech the very life out of his soul.

Before anyone else could react, Natalie dropped to her knees next to her husband, the fabric of her blue jeans soaking up the thick black blood that had flowed out of his body. She knew he was dead and she picked up his heavy head and cradled it in her
own strong arms, as if it was a sacred relic. She laid her tear-streaked face on his bloodencrusted face and whimpered, “No, no, no, no... oh, Alex, please, no..
_.“
The tears ran from her eyes and cut pale courses through the blood on his cheeks like rivers.

Everything was so quiet, and so suddenly. The merrymakers, the party-goers, the hangers-on suddenly felt as if they had intruded at something sacred.
The night had become as quiet as the grave.
Quiet but for the grieving of a woman lost. “Oh,” she said, “Alex... oh... Oh, my Alex, what did they do to you?”
Natalie Streck, the lifeless body of her beloved husband clutched in her arms, looked up at the assembled crowd. The astronauts, the NASA geeks, the Mission Control guys, the crew of the
Victory...
she looked at Spencer and Jillian Armacost. Sherman Reese was still there but the Director was nowhere to be seen.
“What happened?” she asked quietly. “What happened to my husband?”
In the distance insistent sirens could be heard. They were drawing nearer with the passing of every second.
Natalie still wept, but she knew what she wanted to say. “What’s going to happen to us all?”