Page 25 of The Launch

“Well,” Jo says with faux brightness as she takes her seat at the table. “Daddy is all caught up on the day.” She turns a high-wattage smile towards Bill that he can tell is clearly not a true reflection of her mood. “So I think we should eat dinner here, and then after I clean up, I think he should do an evening swim with you guys again so that I can take a walk with Frankie and get some exercise.”

The kids hoot and holler with joy as Jo surely knew that they would, and Bill catches her eye across the table. He knows from the look on her face that this is her way of saying she needs to process the letter and that they’ll talk about it later once the kids are asleep. Making any sort of grumbling noises about her going out walking with Frankie will only exacerbate things, so Bill takes it all in stride.

“Good for you, Jojo,” he says, accepting the bowl of applesauce that she passes. “Getting out there and walking in the evenings. You and Frankie are quite the duo.”

Every word between them seems loaded with some sort of unspoken meaning. They had talked about Bill’s feelings towards Frankie as a sitter for the kids while Jo volunteers at the hospital, but they’d tabled that discussion and not brought it up since. Digging that up now might only make things worse in the face of this issue with Margaret’s care, and the increase in monthly fees that comes with it.

“Frankie and I do get along,” Jo says with a tight smile. “Like birds of a feather.”

The rest of dinner is just chitchat and listening to the kids talk about their new friends in the neighborhood, and Jo quickly washes the dishes and sets the kitchen right again before changing into shorts and Keds and a sleeveless shirt.

“I’ll be back in a while,” she says to Bill, kissing each of the kids in turn. “You three get to bed and don’t give Dad any trouble, you hear?”

Bill watches as the front door closes behind his wife before rallying the troops for their evening swim.

ELEVEN

jo

The sun has vanishedbehind the trees but the stars aren’t out yet when Jo meets Frankie at the end of the driveway. Instead of shorts, Frankie is wearing a long, loose caftan with bright orange and blue swirls. The tip of her cigarette glows as she inhales. She reaches up to push a stray piece of hair behind her ear; the rest of it is loosely clipped into a messy chignon. Frankie looks like she’s been lounging around all afternoon, reading Mary McCarthy’sThe Groupon the couch and drinking gin and tonics as she works her way through a pack of cigarettes.

Jo frowns at her. “You okay, Frankie?” she asks, stopping at the edge of the driveway as Frankie smokes but does not move.

Frankie tilts her head to one side. “Yeah,” she says in an off-handed way, waving her cigarette around. “My monthly visitor showed up today. I’m just low on energy. How about you? You look like you’ve got a bee in your bonnet, and you sounded that way on the phone. Did Bill come home hot under the collar about that new woman engineer?”

Jo grabs Frankie by the elbow and starts dragging her down the block. “No,” she says, puzzled. “What new woman? I thought only men worked at NASA. Except for the secretaries, of course.”

Frankie tugs her arm from Jo’s grasp and slows their pace, putting her cigarette to her lips again as she shrugs. “Beats me. Ed was just ranting over dinner about how this young girl is an engineer and how she got the floor today to introduce herself like she was some grown man with decades of experience. He thinks it’s strange that Arvin North let her have so much control. Maybe she’s his niece or something.”

Jo stops walking. “Frankie,” she says. “Maybe she’s just a brilliant scientist. Maybe she has every bit as much right to be there as our husbands do. Maybe she’s going to be a top-notch engineer.”

Frankie exhales a stream of smoke as they pick back up their slow walking pace. “Or maybe she’ll go into space with one of our husbands, closed up in a tiny rocket ship where they have to share oxygen and a bed.”

Jo shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’ll be a woman in the space program anytime soon, and if there ever is, I’m sure they’ll get their own beds.”

Frankie looks unperturbed by the entire discussion. “I think there will be a woman on the moon.”

They amble in silence for a minute or two as the sky fades from blue to lavender to plum, with a line of creamy golden orange hovering along the horizon. If there’s one thing Jo can say for sure about Florida, it’s that the sunsets here are top of the line.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Jo reaches for Frankie’s cigarette, which Frankie gives her.

“Josephine Booker has secrets?” Frankie says with a smirk. “Wait, is this like your mom’s secret apple pie recipe or something? Because I cook strictly out of theBetty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book,and I only do that just barely.” She takes her cigarette back.

Jo shakes her head, watching Frankie’s face. She truly feels as though they’ve become friends over the past couple of months, and while they’ve spent more time on the phone, taking their evening walks, and hanging out in each other’s kitchens than they have with any of the other women in their group, there’s still a lot they don’t know about each other. “No,” Jo says, “it’s a real secret. Although if I gave you any of my mother’s best recipes, she’d tan my hide.”

“Those Minnesota broads and their secret recipes.” Frankie watches Jo with interest to see where she’s going with this.

“Anyway,” Jo says on a sigh. “I need you to promise me you won’t tell anyone—not even Ed—what I’m about to tell you.”

Frankie stops walking and leans against a Cadillac that’s parked at the curb in front of a darkened house. She pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her caftan and lights a new one, passing it to Jo. Then she lights another for herself. “I promise,” Frankie says. She keeps leaning against the car, with her eyes trained on Jo.

“Okay.” Jo paces back and forth, smoking like a chimney. She’s never told anyone about this—not even Sally and Genevieve, who have always been her closest friends. “Before Bill and I were married…he had another wife.”

Frankie waits. “And what? Did he kill her or something?” She snorts at her own joke.

“No, he locked her up in a mental facility.”

Frankie’s laughter dies instantly. “Jo. What the hell?”

---