Page 3 of The Launch

“Thank you,” Jo says, smiling at the woman. “It probably looks a lot like yours does. And you can call me Jo.”

The woman, tall and willowy with a cigarette in one hand, gives her a grin that makes Jo feel as though they’re already old friends, although Jo has been so occupied with unpacking and keeping the kids busy that she hasn’t actually met any of the other families until today. Should she have gone around and introduced herself to the other wives in the cul-de-sac by now? Probably. It must seem unfriendly of her, but in truth, she’s just out of her element.

Jo inhales and exhales, forcing herself to smile and relax; her nerves are about to get the better of her, and she hasn’t even been out amongst the guests for any real amount of time.

“I came in while you were in the kitchen,” the woman says, still grinning at her. “You were busy. I’m Frances Maxwell,” the dark hair, dark-eyed woman says, extending a slim hand with red lacquered nails. She holds the cigarette in her other hand, elbow perched on her sharp hip as the smoke wafts over her shoulder. “But I only answer to Frankie.” She reminds Jo of Sophia Loren, both in figure and in smoldering eye contact.

Jo shifts the towels to one hand and runs a hand over the front of her white linen dress before offering it to Frankie to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been so busy getting things sorted out here that I haven’t met anyone in the neighborhood yet. I just…” Jo trails off, her eyes darting down the hall nervously. She wants to make a good impression.

Frankie appraises her for a beat, taking a drag on her cigarette and exhaling the smoke upwards through lips the same color as her nails. “Funny thing,” she says. “We both go by boys’ names. Are you a tomboy, Jo Booker?” Jo shakes her head, though shedoesenjoy fishing, camping, and riding a bicycle. Maybe she is a bit of a tomboy after all. “Me either,” Frankie says, putting a hand on Jo’s arm. “I wouldn’t trade in being a woman for all the tea in China. The dresses, the makeup, the glamour—it all seems like so much morefunthan being a man, doesn’t it?”

Frankie is more plain-spoken and down-to-earth than Jo would have imagined for a woman wearing a bias-cut silk dress in the middle of the Florida humidity, and it’s easier than Jo expects to just relax and be herself. She laughs. “I’m a big fan of being a woman,” Jo agrees.

“Come over sometime and we’ll have a drink by my pool, alright?” Frankie says, blowing smoke over her shoulder again.“You seem like a real peach, Jo Booker, and I think I’m gonna like you.” Frankie winks at her as she takes another drag on her cigarette. “I’ve got to grab a beer for my husband. See you out there?”

Frankie walks down the hallway, hips swinging beneath her sheath of a dress, cigarette held aloft in one manicured hand.

Frankie is obviously going to be a handful, but she seems fun. She’s nothing at all like Sally or Genevieve, Jo’s closest friends from Minnesota, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe a fresh start means jumping in headfirst and trying new things. Meeting new people. Being adventurous. Maybe it means being open to things she previously thought she’d never get used to.

Regardless, Jo thinks she may have just made her first Florida friend.

The dining room table is pushed up against one wall, and Jo has covered it with platters of fried chicken, a Jello mold with flecks of pineapple and chunks of canned peaches suspended inside of it, bowls of baked beans, a tray of deviled eggs, and the various potluck dishes that the other women have carried in and handed to her as their children raced through the open sliding door and out to the pool. In one green glass serving bowl is a heap of coleslaw; another platter boasts brownies covered in white chocolate icing. Another wife has brought cupcakes, and the family who lives next door to Barbara has contributed a tray of miniature hotdogs stuck with toothpicks that have red, white, and blue plastic flags waving from them. Jo is doing her best to keep track of names and faces and which kids belong to which family, but to be perfectly honest, she’s confusing people leftand right as she refills drinks and laughs at their small talk and joking asides.

“I really love what you’ve done with the place, Mrs. Booker,” Barbara says, waddling over to where Jo is standing by the dining room table. Barbara has her right hand pressed into her lower back, and her hugely pregnant belly protrudes out in front of her; she looks like she’s smuggling a beachball beneath her turquoise-and-white checked tent dress. “I had no idea what to do with this space in my own house,” Barbara says, sweeping the hand not pressed to her lower back around to indicate the open kitchen, dining, and living area. “It’s just so…modern. I mean, I love it, but I grew up in Connecticut with lots of cherry wood, four-poster beds, and brocade. This looks like a house out of a magazine, doesn’t it?” Barbara turns her head to look at Jo as she wrinkles her impossibly small and cute nose. “It’ll take some getting used to.”

Jo nods and glances over to where Bill is standing with a knot of men who are all dressed as he is: slicked down hair; collared short-sleeve shirts; dress slacks ironed so the crease shows. Each man has a bottle of beer in hand, and even from a distance, Jo can see that Bill is a bit older than the other men—not much, but enough that it’s noticeable. Bill has always had a whiff of maturity to him that makes him seem older than other people his age, and in fact, it was one of the things that Jo had liked about him right away.

“You’re so right,” Jo says absentmindedly, tearing her eyes from the men and bringing them back to Barbara. “It’s not what I’m used to either.” She tucks her hair behind her ear nervously and points at the sunken living area. “We moved here from Minnesota, and our house there was very traditional: split level, master bedroom upstairs, kids’ rooms downstairs. My kitchen was closed off from the rest of the house so I could cook in peace, and the living area was a den with a door that closed. Thisconfiguration is going to take some getting used to. It feels like we’re all sharing the same space all the time.”

Barbara walks over to the edge of the dining space and looks out at the sunken living room where Jo has placed her furniture. She’d assured Bill before leaving Minnesota that her heavy wooden end tables, coffee table, and the dark plaid upholstery on her couch and loveseat were timeless, but now, here in light, airy, sunshiny Florida, it all looks kind of staid and boring. Not to mention out of place—after all, they’re essentially living at the beach now, not in some sort of mountain hideaway. There’s no fireplace, no heavy wood breakfast bar, and no carpeted stairs in this new house.

Jo follows Barbara so that they’re standing side by side as they look at the living room. She sets one hand on her narrow hip as she surveys the room. “I wasn’t sure about decorating. Again, our previous home was more traditional, and this house seems to call for entirely different decor. I’m kind of stuck.”

Barbara, who is about a foot shorter than Jo, looks up at her with a dimpled smile and dancing eyes. She leans in closer as if she’s about to impart a deep, dark secret. “I can give you the name of the lady who decorated our house, Mrs. Booker. You’ll love her.”

Jo, who has never been one to waste anything—especially the solid, expensive furniture she’d chosen for the house she thought her family would live in forever—smiles with relief. “Please, call me Jo. And thank you so much,” she says. “I’m a little lost. This has been a harder transition than I’d imagined, and now that we’re here I really want to enjoy our new life. But it’s all a bit foreign to me.”

“It is,” Barbara says, nodding vigorously. “Florida is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Todd and I can’t get over this weather,” she says, lifting her chin in the direction of the men in the kitchen. “He’s the one in the red shirt,” she sayshelpfully. “Sweetest guy you’ll ever meet, but he’s more at home on a sailboat than he is on a surfboard. And I grew up riding horses and wearing corduroy, so being down here where it’s just beaches and bikinis is pretty out there for me.”

Jo feels immensely relieved to hear that she’s not the only one suffering from culture shock, and she can’t help feeling that she and Barbara are bonding—at least enough that she can push their discussion beyond furniture and home decor.

“So,” Jo says, looking at the men again. “Is Todd excited to be here?”

“Oh, definitely. He’s always wanted to be an astronaut. How about Bill?”

“He’s over the moon,” she deadpans. The women laugh together. “Sorry, but yes. He is excited. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, and once he heard that there was a chance he could be selected by NASA for a manned space flight, I heard about nothing else. Our whole lives were consumed by his desire to be chosen for this.”

“Oh, you’re not kidding,” Barbara says, bumping Jo’s bare shoulder with her own. The central air conditioning is working like magic, but the fact that the kids are constantly going in and out of the sliding patio door means that the sticky May heat is seeping into the house nonetheless. “Todd was obsessed with being chosen.Obsessed.”

The women shake their heads in unison, looking at the men as Todd leans back against the counter, listening intently to something Bill is saying. “Looks like maybe our husbands are hitting it off, too,” Jo says hopefully. She’s already envisioning barbecues by the pool, and having another family to trek to the beach with for picnics. A big part of their lives back home had always been doing outdoorsy things with friends and family, and Jo can’t wait to find that kind of community here in Florida. Of course nothing will replace her friendships with Sally andGenevieve, but if she’s going to get by here, then she’s going to need to forge these new relationships. Her sanity relies on it.

“Hey, we should toast Gordon Cooper,” one of the men says, raising his beer bottle in the air. “Cheers to the first man to sleep in space.”

“Yeah, but he had to sleep alone!” crows one of the younger-looking men—a guy named Ed Maxwell who Jo has figured out is Frankie’s husband. The other men laugh appreciatively.

“I think we can beat thirty-four hours,” Todd, Barbara’s husband, says with a hopeful grin. “If he did twenty-two orbits, I can do twenty-three.”

Barbara leans closer to Jo as the men boast and clink beer bottles. “Lot of bluster for a bunch of newbies, huh?”

---