Page 18 of Across the Universe

With a self-conscious laugh, Jo blows out a breath. "Yes. To all the above. It's a woman doctor--what if she's judging me and thinking I'm a terrible wife?"

"What if she's not?"

"Does a person go into therapy to sing their wife's praises, or do they go to talk through all of her worst behaviors and personality traits?"

Nurse Edwina stops what she's doing, pops one rounded hip, and plants a fist on it. She levels her gaze at Jo. "Again, I've never been, honey, but what your husband is doing and saying in there is his business. Not yours. You need to accept that he's going, watch the process from the outside, and assume that whoever this doctor is, she's doing good work with him. Got it? 'First do no harm.' They all take that oath." Edwina wags a finger at Jo and turns back to the cart. "Now, why don't you find me some laxatives and let me put them on the shelf here, huh?"

Jo smiles at Edwina, who has become something of a confidant to her over these past couple of years. Although Jo had found Edwina steely and a bit prickly when she'd first started at the hospital, she now finds her wry and empathetic. She dearly loves the older woman, and always looks forward to working with her on little projects so that they can chat like this.

As she hands over the box of laxatives, Jo smiles at Edwina. "Thanks for listening," she says. "I mean that."

Edwina waves a hand at her again as she turns back to the storage closet. "Oh, honey. It passes the time," she says in an off-hand way, but Jo knows it's more than that. These brief moments of connection with other women have changed everything about her life--they were the first thing that brought her genuine joy after moving to Florida with Bill and the kids.

Impulsively, Jo reaches out and gives Edwina a quick hug when she turns around from the closet.

"Oh, you," Edwina says, giving her a firm pat on the back to release her. "Now go visit some old sick people and let me do my work, will you?"

Jo smoothes down the front of her sweater and then takes her own cart, pushing it down the hall with a grin on her face.

* * *

“I hate events like this,” Jo says through gritted teeth to Frankie, who is standing next to her. Jo and a group of the astronaut wives are stationed off to the side of a big room at NASA, smiling and looking picture perfect. Their husbands are sitting at a table on the stage at the front of the big meeting room, and there are lights and cameras aimed at all of them. Their faces are young and unlined; handsome men with smoothed hair, big smiles, twinkling eyes. There is a buzz of excitement in the air.

“Today, February third, 1966,” Arvin North begins from his place at a podium under the lights. “The Soviet Union has landed its Lunar 9 probe on the moon.” Flashbulbs pop wildly, and the click of camera shutters crackles all around the room. North pauses and waits for a moment until it dies down. “This is obviously an exciting event for the entire world, and a coup for the Soviet Union. They have beat us to the moon.” Again, cameras clack and click in a burst. “I, however, do not see it that way. I see this as inspiration. As challenge. As motivation.”

Jo looks at the men seated at the table: Bill on one end, with Todd Roman, Ed Maxwell, Vance Majors, and Jay Reed seated in a line. Arvin North’s podium is at the opposite end of the table from Bill, and all the men have their eyes and smiles trained on their boss expectantly.

“These are our newest crop of astronauts,” Arvin North says, turning to nod at the men seated at the table. They’ve been with us now for nearly three years, training, preparing, working hard, and keeping their eyes focused on a moon landing for the United States. I think today is the right time to bring them forward and to show America that we have a strong, dedicated, amazing team of men who are ready to take us not just into the stratosphere, but the exosphere, and all the way to the moon.”

Applause, the noise of cameras, and shouted questions break out in the room, and the sudden burst of noise startles Jo. She puts a hand to her heart and looks out at the rows of reporters.

“How are things going?” Frankie leans in closer, putting her mouth near Jo’s ear so that they can talk between the two of them and not have the other wives overhear.

Jo keeps her eyes on the crowd but takes a step closer to Frankie, standing next to her so that their bare upper arms are touching. “We had a bonfire on the beach this past weekend,” she says, “and everything was going great. The kids were playing, we were about to roast some hotdogs, but then Bill just lost it.”

Frankie waits as the room goes silent and a selected reporter is allowed to ask a question. When Arvin North launches into his answer, she turns her head back to Jo and whispers. “He lost it? How? Why?”

Jo puts a hand over her mouth discreetly and whispers back. “I was asking some questions about therapy and he was responsive, which kind of surprised me, and then when I admitted that I didn’t like him talking to some strange woman about our lives and our marital issues, he exploded.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes. He reminded me ever-so-gently that I’d used our marriage as material in my story, and that every woman inAmericaalready knew what went on behind closed doors in our lives.”

“Ouch.” Frankie winces. “He’s not wrong.”

“I know.” Jo glimpses Barbie, who is standing a few feet away from them along the wall of the room. Things have been a little off between them since Bill fought with Barbie’s brother on New Year’s Eve, but they seem to have tacitly decided to let the men handle their own issues without the women feeling any sort of real fracture in their friendship. For this, Jo is grateful.

With all the lights focused on the stage, the women are clustered in the dim recesses of the space. Barbie flicks her gaze in their direction curiously, and Jo smiles at her before leaning in even closer to Frankie. “I knew right away that I’d messed up, but he just stood and walked away. I ended up cooking everything, the kids ate, Bill wouldn’t look at me, and we haven’t talked about it since.”

The room explodes in discussion again as the reporters vie for the opportunity to pose the next question. The women wait.

“So, you two haven’t spoken at all?” Frankie says after things settle down again.

“No, we have.” Jo folds her arms across her chest and looks at the stage, trying to pretend that she’s paying attention to whatever is being asked. She feels like they’re standing off to the side in gym class—like a group of girls who don’t want to take part in sports and who don’t want to be called on by the teacher. “We’ve talked, but it’s all been surface stuff: ‘How are the kids? How was your day? Do you want milk with dinner?’ Stuff like that.”

“Have you tried… you know?” Frankie nudges her with an elbow and Jo makes a surprised sound that comes out like a laugh tangled with a snort. “Maybe you two just need to shake the sheets a little.”

“Frankie!” Jo hisses. “My God!”

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