Page 11 of The Launch

Ed makes a face. “Exactly.” He puts one hand on his hip and brings his coffee cup to his lips again. “Anyway, I just wanted to know if I was alone in feeling like ground beef after it was all said and done.” He gives an uncomfortable laugh.

Bill, not normally one for honest heart-to-hearts, gives Ed a sympathetic look. “You’re not alone. Trust me.”

Ed holds out his hand and shakes Bill’s. “Thanks for that.”

The men stand there awkwardly for a moment; the transition to sports talk or to breezy conversation about the weather seems like too much effort. “Let’s head in and get this day started, shall we?” Bill says, tipping his head in the direction of the offices where they all meet up each morning for a debrief.

Ed claps Bill on the back heartily, nearly spilling his own coffee in the process. “Lead the way, Lieutenant Colonel,” he says with a level of good-natured cheer that seems at least partially fabricated after the seriousness of their brief conversation.

The men walk together in companionable silence, their shoes squeaking against the linoleum all the way.

FIVE

jo

It’sa week and a half after the barbecue at Bill and Jo’s house, and the women and kids are gathered in Caroline’s backyard. Caroline’s kids, Marcus and Christina, are showing all the other children how to jump through their sprinkler (as if there were a right and a wrong way to do so), and Barbara is sitting in the shade, holding newborn Huck to her breast beneath a lightweight blanket as she nurses him.

“You don’t even look like you had a baby,” Caroline says, walking across the thick sawgrass in a pair of wildly unfashionable, single-buckle Birkenstock sandals. Jo admires the way Caroline bucks convention by forgoing makeup and wearing simple dresses that look as though she whipped them up in twenty minutes on a sewing machine in her rec room. “Drink this, hon,” Caroline says, handing Barbara a tall glass of lemonade over ice. “I’d love to spike it for you, but I don’t think little Huck is ready for vodka just yet.”

The other women laugh lightly and take their Madras cocktails from the tray that Caroline sets on the patio table in the grass. Jo sips hers, unsure about what exactly is in a Madras, but she soon deduces that it’s just cranberry, orange juice, vodka, and lime. She also realizes quickly that it’s terribly refreshingin this heat and humidity, and that if she’s not careful she could easily overdo it. She sets her drink down purposefully and focuses on Caroline.

“I have to ask, Caroline,” Jo says, looking once again at the simple floral print A-line dress with a rope belt that Caroline is wearing, “but do you make your own dresses?”

Caroline puts one leg over the picnic bench and sits down to join them with a pleased sigh. “Oh, call me Carrie—everyone does,” she says. “And how could you tell—was it the upscale edge stitching along my hem?” She winks at Jo with a smile and holds up the skirt of her dress with one hand, showing them a slightly wonky line of thread.

Jo flushes; she hadn’t meant to sound catty—not at all. “No! I sew a lot of my own clothes, and I thought I spotted a fellow seamstress in our group here. That was all.”

Carrie reaches out and pats Jo’s thigh as if they’ve been best girlfriends for years. “I’m teasing, Jo. I sew because I never got bitten by the fashion bug, if I’m being honest. I see the things that other women wear and I admire them so much for their style, but it’s not for me.” She wrinkles her small nose, which is dotted with a constellation of freckles. “But your clothes look so professional. Where did you learn to sew like that?”

“My mom,” Jo says with pride. “And thank you. I was a Girl Scout growing up?—”

“Of course you were,” Frankie interjects, tapping her pack of cigarettes against the wooden tabletop, but not taking one out—most likely in deference to the newborn in their midst. When Jo looks at Frankie she expects to see derision, but instead, Frankie’s face is a mixture of amusement and affection. “I know who I want on my team in case of an emergency or a natural disaster, and Barbie doll,” she says, turning to Barbara and the baby, “I’m sorry, but it ain’t you with your twinsets and pearls.”

Barbara looks stunned for a second, but then her face collapses in laughter. “I am actually not offended,” she says, switching Huck from one breast to the other beneath the blanket. “My money is on Jo being the one out of all of us who could start a fire without a match. Or build a shelter from twigs and leaves.” Huck fusses as he resettles, and then he goes quiet. “But if you ever want someone to keep the score of a golf game in her head, I’m your girl. I also won a limbo challenge in college, and I’m passionate about dressage.”

The other women stare at Barbara for a long moment and then they break into collective laughter. “Yeah, I’m on Team Jo, too,” Judith, who is overall the quietest of the bunch, says. “But I’d love to see you limbo sometime, Barbara.”

“You know,” Barbara says, leaning back against the chair she’s sitting in next to the trunk of the tree that hangs over them, “when you called me ‘Barbie doll’ a minute ago, Frankie, it took me back to when I was a little girl. My parents always called me Barbie, and to be honest, most of my friends back in Connecticut do, too.”

“Huh,” Frankie says, slipping her unopened pack of cigarettes into her purse and snapping it shut. “So most of us have nicknames already—Frankie, Jo, Carrie, and Barbie. Aren’t we a bunch of cuties? We sound like a pep squad.”

Everyone’s eyes shift to Judith, who is sitting there quietly, knitting as she sips her Madras cocktail. She’s focusing on her motions—knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one—but she suddenly notices that everyone has gone quiet and her eyes flick up to the other women.

“What about you, Moody Judy,” Frankie says, lifting her chin at the most mysterious member of the group. “You got any good nicknames? Do people call you Judy?”

Judith pushes her dark-framed glasses up her nose with her forefinger. “Not really. Just Judith.”

“Well, Just Judith, I think we’ll call you Jude,” Frankie says, uncrossing her legs beneath the picnic table and recrossing them. She rattles her ice in the empty glass, having long since drained her Madras.

Judith shrugs. “Suits me just fine,” she says, returning to herknit one, purl one.She truly does seem like the most easygoing person Jo has ever met, but as the other women move on with their conversation, comparing notes about babies and men, Jo’s eyes linger on Judith—or rather, the recently-christenedJude—and the way her face remains placid and unbothered.

Jo tilts her head slightly, watching the calm sea of Jude’s face. She has given them nothing so far in terms of personality: she hasn’t once yelled at her twin daughters, the sweetly-named Hope and Faith, and she hasn’t said a single bad word about her husband Vance’s long hours at NASA, unlike the other women whose lightly-veiled complaints run the gamut from “He’s never home,” to “I feel like his head is in space already, but the empty shell of his body is still here on Earth.” But not Jude; she just knits and purls and watches as Hope and Faith work out their differences with one another and with the other children, never even raising an eyebrow.

“So we are officially a girl gang now,” Carrie says, reaching out and putting her index finger inside the soft curl of Huck’s baby fingers now that Barbie has removed him from under the blanket. He is slumbering easily with a belly full of milk, and the women carry on around him. “We’ve got nicknames and we drink together in the afternoon.”

“Yes,” Frankie says drily, “we are an extremely tough girl gang, drinking Madras cocktails beneath a palm tree while we run a pre-school here in the backyard.” She lifts her chin in the direction of the children—nine in total, aside from baby Huck—and as if on cue, Hope and Faith seem to team up withoutexchanging words and push Carrie’s five-year-old daughter, Christina, right into the sprinkler.

Christina stands up, her face already crumpled into a red, tear-stained mask. “Mommy,” she says, walking over to Carrie with both hands held out. Her palms are wet and covered in blades of grass. “I don’t like to be messy.”

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