trails off.
‘I want to hear all about it, sweetie, but I need to get some sleep. Can we talk about it tomorrow?’ She stifles a yawn.
He looks at her, then nods. ‘Sure. That’s fine.’
That’s not fine, she can see that much even in the half-light. ‘Okay. Night.’
‘Night.’ Rhonda continues up the stairs, feels awful at blowing him off, but relieved too. She has not the time nor energy for another extended dissection of his career tonight.
Judd watches her go. She pulled the ‘sleepy face’, the one where she crinkles her mouth into a yawn, one eye half-shut, and feigns tiredness. It didn’t look anything like a genuine yawn but it served its purpose. It was her I-don’t-want-to-talk expression and when she flashed it Judd knew better than to attempt conversation. It hadn’t always been this way. There was a time when they would stay up half the night talking about anything, everything. That hasn’t happened for a long while.
When Judd first met Rhonda, during a NASA ‘meat & greet’ barbecue, she was the toothy young blonde student from Caltech. She asked Gordo Cooper, another of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, a vexing question about fluid dynamics and their application to the design of the Mercury capsule. Judd was instantly smitten. Lucky for him, once they’d had their first date, so was she.
They worked well as a team, shared information freely, filled in each other’s knowledge gaps, bolstered each other at every turn. They were the epitome of one plus one equals eleven. That their work schedules were extreme beyond anything they’d previously experienced only made the relationship more intense.
Even though Rhonda had started at NASA before Judd, his career ascended first. She was sure, and he agreed, that it was because he’d been a naval aviator - a bias carried over from the early days of NASA, when every astronaut was a male from the service and the idea of a female civilian scientist like Rhonda flying into space was only possible in the realms of science fiction. That Judd was chosen ahead of her to pilot the mission to the International Space Station only fired her up, motivated her to do better. The competition between them was cordial yet fierce and added a similar, not unwelcome frisson to their bedroom. It was the best time of his life.
That all changed in 2003. One of the astronauts aboard Columbia had started his NASA career at the same time as Judd. The two had worked side by side for three years and bonded during the shared experience of doing something only a handful of people ever do. They were each other’s confidants and comrades and then Columbia broke up and, just like that, Judd had lost his best friend.
Judd slides back into bed and stares at the ceiling. It wasn’t long after the loss of Columbia that he first noticed Rhonda would periodically drift away from him, become remote in mind and spirit, if not body. It didn’t happen that often, and when it did she wasn’t gone for long. He attributed it to the stress of work and didn’t worry too much about it. She always found her way back to him.
But over the past few months her remoteness had become more frequent and lasted longer. Whatever kept them connected - a shared history, a shared ambition, a shared house, a shared bed -it now stretched longer and thinner with each absence. As he rolls over to find sleep he wonders how long it will be before it breaks.
**
3
‘You. Stay. Here. This is very important so let me repeat it so it’s perfectly clear. You. Sta-a-ay. Here.’ Corey Purchase sits in the doorless cockpit of the small, beaten-up Huey OH-6A Loach helicopter and stares at the passenger in the seat beside him. ‘Don’t give me that face. I can’t have you in there making a scene, okay? Sta-a-ay here. Are we clear?’
The recipient of the lecture is not a wilful child or a recalcitrant teenager but a strikingly
‘I want to hear all about it, sweetie, but I need to get some sleep. Can we talk about it tomorrow?’ She stifles a yawn.
He looks at her, then nods. ‘Sure. That’s fine.’
That’s not fine, she can see that much even in the half-light. ‘Okay. Night.’
‘Night.’ Rhonda continues up the stairs, feels awful at blowing him off, but relieved too. She has not the time nor energy for another extended dissection of his career tonight.
Judd watches her go. She pulled the ‘sleepy face’, the one where she crinkles her mouth into a yawn, one eye half-shut, and feigns tiredness. It didn’t look anything like a genuine yawn but it served its purpose. It was her I-don’t-want-to-talk expression and when she flashed it Judd knew better than to attempt conversation. It hadn’t always been this way. There was a time when they would stay up half the night talking about anything, everything. That hasn’t happened for a long while.
When Judd first met Rhonda, during a NASA ‘meat & greet’ barbecue, she was the toothy young blonde student from Caltech. She asked Gordo Cooper, another of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, a vexing question about fluid dynamics and their application to the design of the Mercury capsule. Judd was instantly smitten. Lucky for him, once they’d had their first date, so was she.
They worked well as a team, shared information freely, filled in each other’s knowledge gaps, bolstered each other at every turn. They were the epitome of one plus one equals eleven. That their work schedules were extreme beyond anything they’d previously experienced only made the relationship more intense.
Even though Rhonda had started at NASA before Judd, his career ascended first. She was sure, and he agreed, that it was because he’d been a naval aviator - a bias carried over from the early days of NASA, when every astronaut was a male from the service and the idea of a female civilian scientist like Rhonda flying into space was only possible in the realms of science fiction. That Judd was chosen ahead of her to pilot the mission to the International Space Station only fired her up, motivated her to do better. The competition between them was cordial yet fierce and added a similar, not unwelcome frisson to their bedroom. It was the best time of his life.
That all changed in 2003. One of the astronauts aboard Columbia had started his NASA career at the same time as Judd. The two had worked side by side for three years and bonded during the shared experience of doing something only a handful of people ever do. They were each other’s confidants and comrades and then Columbia broke up and, just like that, Judd had lost his best friend.
Judd slides back into bed and stares at the ceiling. It wasn’t long after the loss of Columbia that he first noticed Rhonda would periodically drift away from him, become remote in mind and spirit, if not body. It didn’t happen that often, and when it did she wasn’t gone for long. He attributed it to the stress of work and didn’t worry too much about it. She always found her way back to him.
But over the past few months her remoteness had become more frequent and lasted longer. Whatever kept them connected - a shared history, a shared ambition, a shared house, a shared bed -it now stretched longer and thinner with each absence. As he rolls over to find sleep he wonders how long it will be before it breaks.
**
3
‘You. Stay. Here. This is very important so let me repeat it so it’s perfectly clear. You. Sta-a-ay. Here.’ Corey Purchase sits in the doorless cockpit of the small, beaten-up Huey OH-6A Loach helicopter and stares at the passenger in the seat beside him. ‘Don’t give me that face. I can’t have you in there making a scene, okay? Sta-a-ay here. Are we clear?’
The recipient of the lecture is not a wilful child or a recalcitrant teenager but a strikingly
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