Page 9 of The Launch

In her rearview mirror, she sees Frankie getting into a convertible Corvette—one that looks just like the car that Bill drives. She registers the carefree way that Frankie settles inbehind the wheel with the top down so that she can bask in the Florida sun.

It never would have occurred to Jo to ask Bill if she could drive his Corvette. And she knows in her heart that it never would have occurred to him to offer it.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Nancy shouts that evening as Jo takes a bubbling tuna casserole from the oven, both hands engulfed in giant, well-worn oven mitts. “Can I get the new Nancy Drew book? It’s calledThe Moonstone Castle Mystery!”

Jo uses one shoulder to push the long strand of hair out of her eyes as she navigates around her ten-year-old daughter to set the hot casserole dish on a trivet on the kitchen counter.

“Baby, I’m not sure right now,” Jo says distractedly, turning to pull a salad from the refrigerator. She takes the lid off the Tupperware container, revealing a chopped head of iceberg lettuce dotted with shaved radish rounds, light green crescents of celery, and chunks of tomato. “Can you get the salad dressing out of the fridge, Nance? Please? And set it on the table,” Jo says hurriedly, nodding at the table with its bright yellow placemats and clean silverware set out on folded, ironed napkins.

Nancy sighs, but does as her mother asks. “But, Mom. Please? I played Barbies with Kateall afternoonlike you wanted.”

Jo can hear the annoyance in her middle child’s voice over having to entertain her younger sister, but Jo had already thanked Nancy for watching Kate so that she could go to the hospital to see Barbara and baby Huck. Jimmy had been home as well, and while Jo prefers not to leave her children alone, she knows that, at ten and eleven, her two oldest kids areplenty responsible enough to watch television for a couple of hours with their little sister, or to make a snack that doesn’t require any cooking. She’d grown up strong and independent and responsible, and she wants that for her children as well.

“Honey, Daddy will be home soon and I want to make sure you’re all washed and ready for—“ Jo is about to say “dinner,” but just then, the door from the garage into the house opens. Bill walks in looking distracted.

“Daddy!” Nancy shouts, flinging herself at her father. She wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him, looking up at him adoringly. “Do you think I can get the new Nancy Drew book since I babysat Kate today?”

“Why did you babysit?” he asks, looking at Jo as he puts an arm around Nancy and pats her shoulder.

“I went to the hospital to check on Barbara and the baby,” Jo says, willing her eyes not to travel to the spot in the front room where Barbara’s water had broken just days earlier. She’d been able to mostly remove the spot, but the reminder of impending childbirth in the middle of her new house is mildly unappetizing as Jo gets dinner on the table.

“How is she?”

“She’s doing just great,” Jo says with a smile. “I got to see the baby—little Huck. He’s adorable.”

“Todd seems pleased to have another boy,” Bill says. He gives Nancy a squeeze and lets her go, moving through the kitchen to set his briefcase on a table in the front room. “Listen, I need a few minutes to myself. Why don’t you all eat without me this evening, and save me a plate for later?”

For the third time that day, Jo finds herself standing there just blinking at someone without knowing quite what to say. “You don't want to eat with us?”

This is a turn of events; Bill is the one who has always been so insistent on the importance of the family dinner. Thoughthey’d never talked about it much, she’d gotten the impression that Margaret, his first wife, had always felt unwell and never wanted to cook or eat together. It takes very little motivation for a second wife to do the kinds of things that a first wife didn’t do—quietly besting the first wife can become a competition, of sorts—and once Jo had gotten that impression about Margaret, she’d made it her mission to have a hot meal on the table each evening, and to have the children washed and ready to eat when Bill walked in the door.

“I’m a little under the weather,” Bill says. Jimmy has come in to the kitchen with his face washed and hair wetted down to hold his cowlick in place. “Hi, buddy,” Bill says to his son.

“You’re sick, Dad?” Jimmy asks, eyes filled with worry. “We can’t play catch tonight?”

Bill puts out a hand like he might muss his son’s hair, but then pulls it back. Jimmy has just reached the age where he isn’t a fan of things like having his hair tousled, or being treated like a baby in any way. As a fellow firstborn son, Bill can understand his son’s need to grow into manhood, and he does his best to act as though eleven is right on the cusp of shaving and driving.

“Listen, bub,” Bill says as he clears his throat. “I just need to lie down for a bit. I’ll see how I feel, okay?”

Without another word, Bill vanishes down the hall and leaves Jo with two of her three children. They’re looking to her for cues, but Bill has never once, in their entire marriage, come home and gone directly to the bedroom for a nap.

“What do we do, Mommy?” Nancy asks.

Jo slides her hands out of the oven mitts and tosses them on the counter, then she slips the apron over her head and hangs it on its hook in the pantry cupboard. She runs her hands over her hair to smooth it down.

“Well,” Jo says, “I guess we eat. Jimmy, please get the milk out of the fridge, and Nancy, go get your sister. Make sure her hands are washed.”

Nancy emits a long, loud sigh, then turns on her heel to walk back to the bedrooms, where Kate is no doubt lost in a land of Barbies or baby dolls. “Fine,” she says, her voice ringing out in the giant openness of the modern house. “But I still think I deserve that new book.”

It’s Jo’s turn to sigh out loud as she drops into her seat at the table, spreading her napkin across her lap. She reaches for the serving spoon to dish up some casserole onto Kate’s plate, and then makes a mental note for the next day while she’s out running errands:Buy more milk; go to fabric store to find new Butterick patterns for summer dresses; stop at the bookstore and look for the new Nancy Drew book.

Another day, she thinks, glopping a spoonful of casserole onto her own plate as the children pull out their chairs and sit down with her,of not learning a foreign language, of not shopping at Neiman Marcus, and of not taking a leisurely nap after lunch. Oh well.

FOUR

bill

It isn’tlike Bill to come home, skip the family dinner, and miss out on playing catch with Jimmy in the neighborhood park, but the psychological evaluation that morning had given him a pounding headache that’s lasted all day, and holing up in his dark, air-conditioned bedroom is about all he can manage.

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