The story is complete and finished. It is long; eleven chapters. I don’t have an editor and need one. To ask someone to edit something the length of a novel would be abusive at best. I have used the finest tech, ahem, that Microsoft Word can furnish. For my part besides writing it, I have proof read this eight times. Oy! Distressingly, I am not a paragon of grammar, one of many failings. I fervently hope there is something here for you to enjoy.
Splashdown Chapter 2
Gary
Peg was happy to see me that night, eagerly wanting to know if Kathy helped me as she placed grocery bags on the kitchen counter. She was trying to hide it, but she was nervous.
“Yes Baby, Doctor K basically took away several worries of mine. And couple that with my transfer to desk duty for a while and I have lots of happy time to spend with you.”
“That’s great.” Peggy answered. Then we looked at each other for a while. I had learned a long time ago that silence made most people uneasy. Peg did not rattle easily, hence astronaut. But she was anxious to know if I was alright. She was also curious as hell about what we talked about.
I let her stew by going to the fridge and taking out the vodka from the freezer. I turned trying not to let my amusement show. I teased the topic, “Oh, I get it. You understand I did not want to worry you with my concerns so that’s why I spoke to Kathy. And now since I said she took some of my worry away you want me to reveal what those worries were.”
“Yes, exactly!” Peg jumped towards me kneeling on a chair beside the table, like I was about to share a secret of juicy tidbit of gossip. I put two big ice cubes in a wide glass then turned back towards the counter grabbing a knife and orange. When I turned back, she was staring at me open mouthed.
“Wow Gary, did you just tease freeze me? Oh my Gosh, I will have to torture you in the bedroom tonight.” She suddenly looked worried for an instant. I wondered what that was about.
I asked slowly, “So, do you want to kno…”
“YES!”
“Okay, let me finish my drink, but you have to sit on my lap.”
“Yes Sir,” she cooed seductively.
“Crap you are good at that,” I told her. Peggy had my number and we both knew it.
She beamed, “I had a wonderful teacher.”
“Yes, and I have a wonderful headmaster.” Peggy smiled at my entendre as I put the orange slice in the glass with the ice and let the Grey Goose cover it. I set the bottle down and sat in the chair beside her. Peg hopped up and straddled me in my chair.
She began to unbutton her cotton shirt; she wore nothing underneath.
“I thought I would go braless the rest of my time here in preparation of six months in a sports bra.”
“Why do you need a bra up there? They can’t sag, there’s no gravity up there. Besides yours defy gravity down here.”
Peg answered quickly giving me a factual answer, “Modesty.” She saw me wince. The corner of her mouth turned down. She now knew she had another sort of problem to think about. Peggy correctly thought it best to stick to the original subject before breaching another.
“What did Kathy say?”
“She said we could still have children,” I answered honestly with a broad smile.
“What?” Peg was stunned.
“The shielding in your body and that floating Winnebago up there is enough that your eggs will be fine, and we can still have a family.”
Peggy’s jaw fell, it took several attempts before she could form words with it again, “Jesus Gary, you … you thought I would be sterile?” She was shaken that I had not shared such an important concern.
“No, I feared your eggs would be compromised making our having children unwise.”
She stared at me on the verge of tears. “Christ, I never even thought …”
“I know. I didn’t want you up there worrying about some worry of mine.”
“Wait, so … so you were going to let me go? Even if my trip had that terrible outcome?”
“Could you possibly not go? I mean it’s been your whole life.”
She was confused, “It’s been most of my life. Then I met you and you are catching up quickly.” She smiled at her joke expecting me to follow along. When I didn’t, she perceived there may be another unforeseen problem and rushed her dialog. “But Gary, our family, our future, you were going to let that go?”
“No, I was going to let you go … to the space station. I am not going to be the reason you don’t go. Baby, I want you to go, I think you HAVE to go. I was simply wondering just how significant the price was going to be. It’s always better to decide up front to pay a high price instead of finding out later that you already have. I had to find out what the risk actually was before I could figure out any plan of action.”
“Gary … you still wanted me to go?”
“Baby, if that really was a problem, then I wanted to make sure you knew that even if wiping away our planned future was in the deck, that as long as I have you, my future will be fine.”
Peggy was shaking her head overwhelmed, “Oh God, I’ve heard of this scenario. There is some emergency, and the wife can either save her children or her husband, a lot of women will choose the future, meaning the kids, and let their husband die.
She thought it through, her conclusion blanking her face, “Gary you faced that choice. And you decided to save me and let the children go.”
I nodded, “That’s an interesting academic discussion. But really, I was only confirming if I did have to make that choice. I didn’t,” I shrugged deciding to follow the idea out. “If I really had to decide between kids that were living and real, it would depend on a number of factors: if the kids are very young then the parents could probably have more — never replacements but different kids. The point being the couple could still have a family. However, if the kids are older, have promise for humanity, and have well-established personalities then it becomes a real choice.
“For many women however, the man is sworn to die protecting them, the children were what she owed both their families and species: if the kids lived so did their father in a way, so you serve him best by letting him die. And of course, find a new man to share their lives, raise the kids, and sleep with the wife.”
I shook my head ruefully and gestured in a sweeping motion with my arms,
“I’m not saying saving the kids would not be the right call for us, but I would take no solace in another man living what should have been my life. Perhaps another man might take solace there, not me.”
Peggy was hard to read, she was both troubled and flattered. It seemed the one aggravated the other.
“You would choose me, Gary? You knew my priorities concerning space and that I put off our original timeline for children in the hopes that I would be chosen to go up. That would piss some men off, but you agreed to put off having our kids. But if we had them, you would still choose me.”
Peggy was equal parts flattered by how besotted I must be with her and abashed at how badly she had underestimated my concern regarding her not telling me about the change in her mission’s duration.
My answer was simple, “I have chosen you. I don’t know if other folks would agree with our choices: they don’t have a career like yours. I also don’t’ know our kids yet. In fact, as the eggs are not fertilized, they are just eggs, not our children. We want our kids to do something grand for humanity, right? What are the chances they will do more for our species than what you will do with your flight? You are helping us reach another planet and then all the other planets beyond.”
“But Gary, you have talked about kids since we got really serious. It was a concern marrying me. Once we even talked about when I might retire from active space consideration and having our kids late in the game, but still having them. Children have been important to you since the beginning.”
“Yes,” What was I supposed to do, say something like, “You can’t always have what you want?” I let the one word handle it.
“So, you would give them up? Have you had a change of heart?”
“Space was your dream before you were my dream. Space was your dream before you knew me. If you never married, you would stay with the space program for the duration, not just until your flying days are up. Most likely you wouldn’t have kids. It’s your dream, your life, it’s who you are. How can we be together if I make you deny your nature? Could you ever look at me again? Would you see me as the man who you love, or the man who stole your purpose from you? Even if you were not resentful of me, would you still be able to love me?”
Her lips parted of their own volition as she stared at me.
“I love you, Peg. I want you. I chose you, not as a baby incubator, though I would still like that eventual outcome, but as you. I want to have my children with you. I don’t want my kids anymore: I very much want our kids. And if I can’t have that I’m not interested. If you were sterile, I would not leave you just to have kids. Understand?”
She was actually digging her nails into my neck without realizing as she searched my eyes for, well, everything. Peg digging her nails into anything was a challenge as she was a worker; she kept her nails short.
“Gary, you would give up having children … so that I could be … happy? What if I could not be happy without children?”
“Then that’s your call to not go up, not mine. I’m sorry I can’t make that call. I won’t. My decision would be that you go, that you fulfill your destiny. I’m not sure I really believe in destiny per se, but you catch my drift.”
“But Gary you really were going to give up your dream of children to facilitate my dream of space flight?”
“Yes. If that was the verdict, but it isn’t. We will still be fine having kids.”
“Jesus Gary, I want to have children, our children and I plan to! But that you would make that huge sacrifice on my behalf … I don’t believe I have ever been this turned on. I was going to tease you, rub your ice cube all over my nipples and entice you into bed. Now I think I’m going to stand up and take off our pants and re-straddle you right here.”
“A decision that profound should not be thwarted.”
She did, and we enjoyed the fruits of her decisiveness. I love a strong-minded woman!
* * * * *
MECO
(Main Engine Cut Off)
Peg came back the next day from the flight center and tip toed around me. All of the relief and joy she felt when I came back from Kathy thinking my issues were resolved was gone. After a few years of marriage even couples that aren’t always on the same page can smell trouble. As soon as she started the old “walk just past your spouse then check them out with the corner of your eye trick”, to gauge my mood I figured I would just cave to the inevitable.
There was no point putting this off, “What is it, darling?”
Peggy froze, looking upset and nervous, there are worse combinations though this one is rarely fun.
Peggy started wringing her hands together. She was a little pale, stammering before she got traction on her words. Okay time out, for those who may not have connected the dots: stammering, nervous, pale, handwringing; these are bad signs when exhibited by an astronaut. I could hear flight control calling to me, “Husband we have a problem!”
Peg was tripping all over herself and looked like she might be ill. As she was a “Vomit Comet” veteran that was bad.
“I, uh, I have to tell you something and I really don’t want to. Let me explain further … there are things I have to do to prepare for space flight that I did not expect. And we need to discuss them.”
Peg seemed just this side of disconsolate, way beyond gloomy, just past miserable. That’s not a wonderful place on the dial especially for an over stimulated husband who was hoping to have a nice evening with his sexpot wife.
“Wait, should I make a drink? We don’t have to get divorced or anything, right?” I quipped.
“Uh, well, that’s up to you,” she mumbled at the floor.
So, anyone who is not married understand when you get that response from your wife it’s called a buzz kill. I appropriately pursed my lips. I’ve read the marriage manual, that was my minimum required response.
I looked at Peggy with quite a bit of qualm, “You aren’t serious, are you?”
“No, no, I will never leave you, but you are going to be disappointed in … things, and I just don’t know how to tell you. Especially on top of your magnanimous decision about letting me go into space even if it cost you your future children.”
At this point she actually began to tremble, “C-Couple that with my being gone three months, a-and then six months and … I don’t know how to tell you this.” Her mouth had curved down, her eyebrows made sorrowful commas over her frightened sad eyes.
“You aren’t leaving me?” I repeated her words as I felt the ground dissolving beneath my feet.
“I will never leave you Gary. But I’m scared you might want to leave me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Do you have feelings for someone else?”
“Noooo! Nooo, no, no. It’s about … sex.”
I paused, actually feeling my heartbeat change.
“Are you having sex with someone else?” I said it like a joke except my heart was pounding.
“NOO! Noo, please. Please make a drink and make it a strong one, we will share it.” Peggy leaned back against the kitchen counter bringing her trembling hand to her furrowed brow. Without changing that position and with her eyes closed momentarily, she began to speak again, “Gary, I only want you. I only love you.” Distraught she added, “Baby, I will be gone for SIX months!”
“Yes, I am keenly aware of that!” All the joking was gone from my voice.
She looked like she might puke, “There are a couple ways to go. I am on the pill.”
“I know.” I was now faking being completely in control. Peg needed me to be in control.
“The progesterone r-regulates my period and my cramps. I used to get them so badly …” she trailed off looking trapped.
“Sure ….” I had no idea where she was going.
“Six months is the new norm up there, so they are changing the protocols. The menstrual cycle can be a real burden up there, for everyone.”
I narrowed my eyes, “My wife’s body cycle, is no body’s business. It is not community property.”
Peggy froze, she was breathing shallow, perhaps too shallow. She was eyeing me gravely. She had expected a bad reaction to whatever she was going to lay on me, but that response had thrown her. I had no idea why.
“They can give me shots to suppress my reproductive cycle, but it is supposed to kill my libido too.”
“When would they start?” I said with a disapproving hum to my voice.
“Well, if we did that, soon, very soon.” There were tremors in her voice, and she had a hard time swallowing afterwards.
“Launch is still four months away. Shit. So, we would be about a year without sex.” She could hear the dismay in my words.
“Well, sex might work. We might have to use lube.”
“MIGHT?” I said that too loudly, then I thought about it: it wasn’t near loud enough, I wanted a megaphone next time. This was stupid, what the hell had they told her? She actually ducked her head at my outburst and gaped at me with deer in headlights eyes, throwing in her mouth agape for good symmetry.
“Peggy, I need you being into our romping. I need you on edge and frantic, screaming like a banshee and urging me on. That’s you. That’s my girl and I love you for it. On their fantasy drugs you wouldn’t be into the sex, would you? I can’t imagine that. That would almost be like cheating on you with another girl, I don’t think I could do that. Just seeing you excited, does something wild for me. I don’t support that option. I love sex with you, it’s my favorite hobby. And I am giving up too much already.”
Peggy didn’t say a word, she didn’t even make a sound.
I was angry at this. “I want, no I insist my woman have fun. My partners have always gotten off, that’s part of who I am. Tell me the other options because they may take you away from me for six months but not a year, and they should never alter me. I don’t work for those dumbass motherfuckers. I keep them alive: they are in my debt.”
Peggy was dumbfounded at what had just rolled out of me. First that I did not respect the powers that be. Hell, the folks in most of those positions now succeeded in spite of themselves. They were political appointees. Gene Kranz was long gone. I thought the agency’s only hope was the present dead time where there was no press interest, the political appointees would get stuck there with no chance to move up, so they would move themselves out, which might make it possible for a genuine person to move in. I prayed for that sort of thing, and for plagues that only affected politicians.
“Gary, we have actually talked about some of their ideas. I have reaped many benefits of birth control. But there’s another catch now with the extended stay up there.”
“Great. Hit me,” I took a swig of our drink. Peggy took it from me and took a bigger swig.
“I don’t like the idea of messing with my cycle. I am younger and I want children, so that just seems to be fraught with trouble or potential for trouble so …” She looked at the floor. I had no idea what was of such continued interest down there.
“Yeah …” I said, impatience dripping from me.
“Well, the more traditional way is to increase the dosage on my pills.”
I shrugged. That would do the trick, probably unnecessary if I knew my progesterone chemistry correctly, “Great, sounds good. I am not sure why we would want to pursue anything else.”
Peg tried to stand still, but her trembling was back. For a split second her eyes darted around looking for something that wasn’t there: escape, an answer? I didn’t know which. I only knew I was annoyed to be in this damn conversation, and I didn’t even know what we were really discussing.
“Well Gary, there are other options, a-and we should at least look at them. Another option would be to perhaps switch to longer term injectable progesterone, and while that kicks in, aaaand to make sure I’m not pregnant up there … we use condoms until lift off.”
“What?” I said it rather quietly. Poor Peggy began to shake. I thought she might wet herself. She had an expression like she had just met Jack the Ripper in a dark alley. My anger was gone replaced with a calm cool rage, almost undetectable until I actually lifted my victim’s recently resected heart and took a bite out of it in front of them.
“G-Gary, they suggest we don’t have sex, b-but if we do that you wear a condom.”
I let the last sentence hang in the air, dying the lonely death it deserved.
“Peggy, dear. I’m not going up, so why do they want to fuck with my going down?”
She laughed despite herself. “Baby, they went all over my heath today and will be all week. And they were especially sure to go over my, um, reproductive system.”
“What?” I wasn’t just going to kill her doctors, I was going to murder them, painfully. No that wasn’t enough, I was ready to start a wave of genocide on medical technicians. No, I was going to figure out the mysteries of time travel so I could carry my holy jihad against their ilk across the ages.
“I phrased that p-poorly. They want to make sure I’m not pregnant. Cosmic rays could cause me to lose the baby or it could be born with abnormalities. They really don’t know what to expect, so they won’t send me up if I’m pregnant. I knew that part, Gary. I didn’t know about the condom thing. I figured that birth control would do the trick, as it is now.”
“You do this as I tell you, this is no joke. You say my words exactly as I say them.”
“Y-Yes Gary.”
“Tell the doctors that If I don’t get to fuck you, that I will fuck them … in the ass. And that I am exactly the man that if I decide that’s what it takes to make an object lesson of them, that there is nothing on God’s green earth that can stop me. I can get to them or their careers. Do I need to repeat it, so you say it right?”
“N-No Gary,” she was very quiet, something was bothering her big time.
I added, “These are bureaucrats. Never ever let a bureaucrat make a decision for you, Peg. My job is largely fixing the world, after bureaucrats fuck with it. I’m giving you great advice now: never ever take their advice.”
Peg looked like she would throw up.
“Gary, I said as much to them, I did, though much more politely. No let me amend that, I said it more weakly. They said there were millions of dollars riding on the flight, they didn’t want to take the chance.”
“Don’t worry about that. You have what it takes to make their system produce something, all they have is their impotent system. You have them by the balls, not the other way around. All their power stems from you not understanding that cogent fact of life.”
Her eyes went absolutely huge.
I asked her, “Do the other female astronauts do it?”
She didn’t seem confident in her answer.
“Well some are much older, not all are married or, um, have men around. I mean Kathy is not a lesbian, she simply doesn’t have a boyfriend all the time.”
“Well, you have a husband, one who doesn’t want to pretend he isn’t your husband at any time. There have surely been other married young women who have gone up.”
“And I spoke to them.” Now Peggy took a big swig of our drink. In fact, she polished off the glass. I looked at it, that was a lot of vodka, I had figured I would sip it for the better part of an hour. This was worse than it seemed.
“Spill it!” I knew I wasn’t going to like it.
“K-Kathy said the condom thing was ringing in her ears while discussing cosmic rays with you. But she was not going to bring it up. She thought you would go ballistic, maybe hypersonic.”
“She was wise,” I practically growled back, “At least now I know what she made reference to several times. And each time with the tacit understanding I would not be happy. Tell her she’s right, I have no intention of bending to those I bail out every damn day. In short, the catchy phrase “fuck condoms” should be ringing in their ears. If they try telling you they will scrub you from the mission, merely ask them what to tell the press about why you were scrubbed. You watch them back pedal!” I laughed aloud, I loved playing those little parasites for the maggots they were.
“O-Okaaay, I just figured why not shut things off as much as possible, I mean that’s better than sex with cosmonauts.”
Peggy didn’t know, so I couldn’t blame her, but that was one of the few things I could never joke about, one of the things I simply could not bear, and she just hit it dead center.
I thought she was going to faint at whatever she saw on my face. If we had been playing darts, she had scored the center ring, she got the bullseye. She hadn’t put all the pieces together yet, but going up with three Japanese men or three French men would be bad, three Russians was the worst for me, well them or the Chinese, perhaps? Maybe she would put it all together later.
But her line, even suggesting sex with whoever she was up there with … shit that further spoiled my mood. Peggy had gone from grey to pale white watching my face. My countenance must have been something akin to an animated billboard in Times Square.
“I c-called a number of the married astronauts of childbearing age. And had some pretty frank discussions. I sort of promised them I would not let on who was who, that the conversations were private that way.”
My wife was worried about making a deal to keep things from me on top of the bad news, I didn’t want to know anyone’s business. Still, the precedent was awful. She had just promised someone she would keep things from me. We were not headed in the right direction.
“Fine!”
She breathed easier, “Baby, of the women astronauts that had sex a lot, about two thirds, broke down through their hoped tenure and said to hell with it and had the sex. And about a third didn’t. The ones that did have sex had already been up to the station or already had kids and had nice post NASA jobs lined up.”
Peggy swallowed hard and was staring at me with a rising anxiety that was not something one saw often in astronauts as she continued.
“But Gary, none, not one, of the newbies or ones that didn’t have kids ignored the protocol. They all chose the maximum protection route. Gary, some said that when you start the long term injectables that they could get moody or irritable and about half initially said they lost a lot of their sex drive. They said due to any of those factors they didn’t have sex very much.” She held her breath.
“Christ honey, any more good news.”
She shook her head.
“Any divorces from this?”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and croaked, “Yes.”
We were silent for a while before I finally asked. I had prayed she would ask me, it seemed she did not want to take the chance I would choose a course different from what she wanted. Surely, she was not going to remove me from the equation. Certainly not after her last huge mistake. That was unthinkable.
I started building my case, you know, just in case.
“Did you ask any of the ones who went security max if they actually loved their husbands?”
Peg’s eyes grew wide again.
“Well Peggy, I think the ones who got married, but never valued their husbands, and put their careers over their family were the ones to get a divorce, so I would not worry too much. I would also not count their opinion as valid. Like throwing out the top and bottom bids you should throw out the folks with strange social agendas and political axes to grind. You talk to normal folks to get real answers. We will have a list of things for you to do tomorrow.”
“Why Gary?” I could not help noticing the tears welling.
“To help you make up your mind what way to go. And I think I will drop in and talk to whoever spoke to you from your medical staff. I will need their names.”
“Gary you can’t just get an appointment to see them that fast.”
“I don’t plan to go through regular channels. I think their day needs to be disrupted.” I smiled as Peggy impossibly went even more pale. “I haven’t yet but might just pull rank.”
“What?” She said trembling again, her open mouth thing was back too.
“Don’t worry, Peggy. If I want to see someone at their level and am willing to bend a few rules I will see them! I will get you the straight scoop so you don’t have to take it from me, though you should, and you will know how to play these cretins the rest of your career.”
Peg was very quiet. That didn’t bode well. Neither did the tears now dripping from her eyes, or the fact that she wasn’t looking at me anymore.
“Peg baby, my suggestion is to wait and tell them what you will do at week’s end. Trust me you are in the driver’s seat not them. Don’t let them fool you or monkey around with your biology or your life. The program heads and directors are where the authority is, not the adjunct medics and paper pushers. And Peg, give me a week and I can convince someone to investigate even the program heads.”
Her head was down. She was shaking, I could see an occasional tear fall. One idea to explain why, stood out from the others.
“Peg, have you already made a decision?”
I’m sure she heard the astonishment in my voice. Had she left me behind? Had she gone on without me?
Her head bobbed now before she reined herself back in. Her head bobbed more: she was trying to nod, “Yes.”
My shock and disappointment was magnified by my volume, which was just more than a whisper. I sounded a lot like Dirty Harry.
“What are you going to do?”
Now Peg started to cry in earnest. No, it couldn’t be, she hasn’t taken action yet – has she? She didn’t sign me up for the sexual death penalty, did she?
“Baby, I want to go. I want to go to space. I designed this experiment. No one can read it like me, and no one can make adjustments or compensations like I can. It seems like a lot of the … shit is falling on you. I know all that I have to do to stay in shape, and the hours of study, work, and practice that I signed up for are somehow landing on your shoulders.”
“A-And it’s going to get worse, Gary. Those hours are going to get much longer now too. So, uh, you will actually have me around less as well. And, uh, you won’t be able to enjoy me as much even, uh, when I am home. I will be tired and, uh, with drugs that inhibit my … drive my desire will be much less, and damn, none of that is good … for you. I mean, I know that I signed up for all that, but you didn’t. You have your own career. You expect a wife and partner and … I didn’t expect all this to fall on you, Gary.”
She regained some of her composure, “Damn Gary, I’m sorry. I really didn’t foresee all of this falling on you. I knew what I was in for, but somehow I just didn’t think of …”
“Me.” I injected rather coldly.
She stood there breathless. It was obvious what she had done except hearing it expressed aloud shone it for the despicable thing it was. I was being told; this wasn’t a discussion! Well by damn that changes right now. I was going to reset the table for her, then we could damn well hash this out.
“Peg you had better not have done what it sounds like you could have done.”
“If you had come home and discussed this with me, I would have been disappointed and worried, more worried than ever, more than I already was. You have made some decisions without consulting me, ones that were bad for me. I know if you are definitely going up there some of those decisions only have one choice, so you should have come home and let ME make them. I have been advocating for you, you already knew that. I have chosen you over me at every damn juncture!”
She inhaled sounding like a hiss. She was not apprehensive, she was frightened.
“Don’t sell me short Peg. Have I done anything to make you think I would choose against you? I haven’t thus far.”
“I am encouraged to hear that two thirds of the women didn’t pay attention to the sex rules. I am shocked to hear that any loving spouse would in fact choose the other options.”
Her eyes grew as large as I have ever seen them. Oh shit. I only hesitated a second and continued to redress the table. She couldn’t pick the one third’s option: she could not handle it. I wasn’t selling her short, mine was an honest appraisal, and I can think of no one better suited to make it.
“I know you left me out in the cold on taking the mission. A mission I fully support and want you to take. Still, I know on the biggest stuff you would never go ahead and choose for me, especially if the decision is well … against me. Especially a decision that is, in effect, the negation of our marriage contract.”
Her tears multiplied substantially, what the hell was going on?
“But even for the small stuff baby, it would have been so much smarter to let me make those miserable decisions, if they are going to make my life worse. You already know what I would choose; whatever it took to get you into space. To do this any other way than with me would only serve to make me questions how important I really am to you. My making the decision to immerse myself in excrement sets you free and puts both the crap and blame on me. I could grumble, but the fault would be my own. That way I may be deprived, but I will still have my dignity, and perhaps be a bit of hero in your eyes.
“To do it differently, for you to ignore me and choose for me without any input, basically devalues me, and squarely places me behind your career as far as what you value. It also makes it your choice to sink me in excrement not mine, and only for your amusement and personal advantage. I mean so much for even a partnership, little less a marriage, right? I mean it would be obvious I am not your love, but actually a roadblock to you.
“So, we will get you the facts and tell them what is going to happen on, say, Friday. Just for my upcoming meetings with them, when did those little fucks want a decision?”
Peg seemed blown away, numb. She mumbled her answer, “Today.”
I was furious! “Well I will go down there tomorrow and let them know how badly they have fucked up! I will rewrite their protocol for them to make it workable. When do you want to give them the answers? Do they all have to come at once? Can we discuss them the next few nights?”
Peg looked frantic but decided on action instead of giving in to panic. She stepped over to me and knelt on the floor in front of me, clutching my belt, looking up into my eyes.
“Gary, I-I gave them some answers today.”
It couldn’t be. I know my face said that. I’m sure it showed abject astonishment as much as my horror.
This wasn’t like her. I guess she really did feel she had to pick between me and her career. I simply couldn’t believe she had not chosen me. There had to be some scrap of information that would prove the opposite, I just didn’t have all the facts. I would not sell her out now, I would not take things at face value. I would have faith in her and wait until all the facts were in. She really would do the same for me, wouldn’t she? Surely, she had not already made these choices. My Peggy simply couldn’t sell me down the river.
Peggy’s mouth quivered a bit as she watched me think. While she knew this evening was not going to go well, she had never foreseen it going this badly. We had always been a team, now she had converted us into territorial animals facing off against each other. She could tell I was thinking something through, though she could not tell I was trying to send her an olive branch.
“So, you are going up. We expected that: good.” I said trying to lower the drama level.
She took a breath.
“So, the two third’s solution I presume …”
“Gary, if I get pregnant, even if I had an abortion right away, they probably would not recertify me in time.”
“Abortion? Abortion! Y-You would kill our children to go for a ride on a rocket?!” I was apoplectic.
She wailed in the negative.
Then in a voice as close to panic as I ever wanted to hear from myself, “Wait! You aren’t pregnant now, are you?”
“No! No!” Her eyes were dish pans again. I could see her asking herself the questions as to how I could believe such a thing, then answer herself that she had now infused me with that much doubt. I could tell she felt the awful reality of the question she had to ask herself next: what decent person would do that to someone they loved?
“You haven’t already killed our child, have you?” That is how suddenly unsure I was about his person I thought I knew so well. Peg felt that even more keenly.
“Noooo!”
I fell back, “Dear God. Dear God, I don’t mean …” She knew where I was going.
“Gary, I love you.”
“Just not as much as your glorified amusement park ride.”
That stung her. She was smart enough to not take the bait, if she had given me a smart ass answer I would have boosted her into orbit right there and then. She was wary if not scared, I don’t think of me, but for me, for us.
“What the fuck Peggy. This is too much, I was certain you would never do me dirty.”
A terrible moan came out of her. It took me a while of purposefully slow breathing to get back to where I wanted to be. She watched every breath of mine absolutely terrified now.
When I was ready, I spread out the table of options like I would in a pre ops meeting, explaining to new partners where we were, and how we got there.
“Peg before we review, what would you like to do at this exact moment?”
“So, uh, I would like to,” she got quiet, “start the long term injectables. You see they don’t want to have to send up all those pills and something could happen to them: sunlight or radiation of heat or cold.”
I bit my tongue on what I really wanted to say instead trying to lead her to what I wished her to see.
“Why exactly do you need contraception up there anyway?”
Now she began to shake, “To-to regulate my system, and they are putting a lot of emphasis on not getting pregnant now.” She thought for a second, her face took on a crimson glow and she hastened to add nervously, “Oh God, I knew that was going to come up. Oh God Gary, it’s for the biology! No, I won’t need contraception for the time I’m away. Dear Lord, Gary you don’t think I will be having sex while I am away? Please tell me you don’t think that!”
“Half a year!” I blurted out reminding her of how long the duration of her being away was. Just in case she had forgotten.
“Half a year,” she said solemnly as she began to shake harder.
I wanted so badly to talk to her about that; that I didn’t think she could make it that long. It wasn’t her fault, it was her individual biology, but it was her responsibility. She needed to take safeguards, at least stack the deck in her favor. My apprehension was that she was stacking it against herself and me. I knew her, she became a basket case without regular sex, nature had deigned that she not go that long without sex.
Even masturbation was an outlet that didn’t lend itself to the ISS environment. Jilling off while the men folk knew seemed to be more foreplay than cheating abatement. I wasn’t sure masturbation could be done without anyone knowing. Having sex could be done if everyone knew however, and that was my nightmare scenario. And from a probability equation that ridiculous scene played out as likely as sneaking in some private masturbation! If she forced herself to cut off sex entirely, it would mess with her brain until it happened by nature alone. When she came out of the heat, she would be crushed at what she had done.
“Let’s look at the options Peggy. One: we chemically shut down your reproductive system. Two: we increase your present dosage and still have sex like normal until blast off because, after all, the contraception measures we are taking are working and have worked for years, and there is no rational reason to think anything will change. And because six months away from each other is an ungodly time away for an experiment that could probably be run from the ground at Hopkins, Goddard, or Wallops with only a small loss in efficiency.”
That made her head spin up to meet my eyes.
“You will be away from me for six months in order to run a two and half month experiment as is. So, I’m sure we don’t want to make this a whole damn year in hell, so the third option: super strength injectables that kill your desire seems not only a bridge too far but where no bridge is needed. Especially as I am still expected to use condoms on top of that, which is ludicrous. It is impossible to live with, while having no further guarantee of stopping pregnancy than option two, which allows us to be ourselves and act like a married couple in actual love. So, I figure option three is as off the table as option one.”
Peggy was actually wincing at some of my statements. She should have been in agreement. And that tore something in my head. I wasn’t finished either, in fact, I was going to hedge my bets about putting bad ideas in her head. Apparently, she had plenty of them swimming around up there already.
“Frankly Peggy, even having heard everything tonight, my plan was, and is, for us to ramp up the sex dramatically right up until launch, in order to give you half a chance of making it the six months stuck in space without going bonkers.”
I wasn’t so interested in internalizing my worries now that Peggy had started making pointless decisions without me.
She was almost frozen with panic. I took note because astronauts don’t do that. “What now, Peggy?”
“Are you just trying to get even with me for this?” It sounded like Peggy was asking a real question. Once again, she cringed when she saw from my face that I had no idea what the “this” she was referring to was. I could also read from her face that my not knowing made things worse for her. I presumed she was referring to her telling them answers to questions she was now going to have to rescind in the morning.
“What? Dear Lord no. I would never play games like that with you! I will always have your back, Peg. I don’t have a department agenda or want to make the promotion board. I am your best friend and husband; you can always trust me to do what is best for you. You know if it came to it, I would lay down my life to protect you. Let’s figure out what we are going to do. I’m not making proclamations: I would never make a unilateral decision involving you, especially when it’s so easy to talk it through with you.”
Peggy leaned against the wall hard, practically falling against it. She put a hand to her head rubbing her forehead then her temple. Her mouth was a downturned comma resembling that of a carp.
She spoke in an odd sort of wispy breath. It sounded like she was thinking aloud more than speaking to me, “You really think we should ramp up the sex, not cool it off?” Her mouth was left open in astonishment as she finished. “You would never make a unilateral decision for something concerning both of us. And that has to be safeguarded even more greatly the more important the decision is.” She swallowed with great difficulty. “I-I can see that. I believe your sincerity on that.”
So why was she so quiet? Why did that seem to kick her in the guts? And why was she apparently only seeing it now?
“Yeah, Peg, I think that’s only reasonable considering these idiot paper pushers think it’s fine to cut back on their bloated budgets by keeping my wife away from me an extra three months. Their problem has become my problem, which damn well is going to cause pain for them when I meet them and explain it.”
“Gary, what are you going to do?” She sounded downright defeated. It scared me.
“I don’t know yet, but if I feel their bad decisions, so will they.”
“Gary, please don’t.”
“Come on, if there was more common sense in the agency there would not be a ton of Sturm und Drang like we are dealing with tonight.”
“But Gary …”
“But Gary nothing. Is the current state of affairs reasonable? It’s been over fifty years since we landed on the moon. Do you like what’s happening? We should have been to Mars by now, you know it.”
“But Gary that takes political will.”
“Regardless of party, politicians much more than regular citizens must be led to do the right thing. The regular folks normally know what is right, sometimes they just need confidence to do it. Politicians have to be shown that it won’t blow up in their face and then what’s in it for them. But often showing them how it will blow up in their face if they don’t do something is the best motivator.”
I did not lecture Peggy often, nor let her see behind the curtain into my world. She knew I worked in the intelligence community, she now knew part of my job was application of both carrots and sticks. In her job she got the limelight, while I worked in the filth to make brightness available for people like her. At present life seemed even more oppressively unfair at the notion.
“Let’s get back on track. I agree that shutting down your system seems risky. Do you agree?”
“Yes.” Peg said quietly, reseating herself with her hands folded. I did not notice then how tightly they clasped each other.
“Do you think long term injectable or just convert your pill to higher dose?”
Peg chewed on her lip, “I’m going to be stuck up there, Gary. Having a period is hard enough up there. I uh, I think the high dose injectable.”
I was stunned. I stared at her. I hadn’t gotten through to her at all. I didn’t understand how she could see that as a viable choice for us. She looked away and couldn’t look back, like a puppy that had done something wrong unable to look their pack in the face.
I gathered myself. “So, have you chosen the one third solution then? The one that destroys libido.”
“Gary I … I did what I thought was best, I don’t mean…”
I cut her off, “So, were you going to inform me I was losing conjugal rights to you any time soon? Why did you let me go on this long? Was all this showtime tonight just to tell me that you are moving into NASA quarters, “see you later dear?””
“Gary, I-I we are talking … now.”
“Talking?!” I was indignant. “We’re not talking. I am being told what you have decided.” I took a big breath. “Okay, let’s see if we can get this train back on track.” I was speaking through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry Gary. I really am.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Peg. I don’t want to hear it.” She gasped.
I continued, “Let’s just get back to work and fix it.” She looked at me in some sort of wonderment I could not decipher. Her eyes were about to bulge.
“So, let’s go through the list again and make sure we understand the fallout, and the ramifications of all the choices and then make the decision. Boy, I am going to tear them a new one tomorrow.”
“Gary they … you can’t just walk in there. You don’t have appointment.”
I looked at her trying to make sure she really was beginning to understand any of what I was desperate for her to understand. “Baby, if I want in the rocket building lab, I can be in there, with credentials, in 48 hours or less.”
Her eyes just about fell out of their sockets at my statement about one of her most secretive buildings. It took high value scientists months to get clearance.
“I am not a God damn operator, but if these bastards think they can rewrite my life and take my wife away from me for what, ten fucking months, they have another thing coming. I might have to have their security clearance suspended pending review or something a lot worse. That will, of course, cause them to lose their jobs in the interim and have to reapply for them, but in a couple years they could at least be back in the system. I can tell you right now several of them will be notified of IRS audits shortly.”
Now Peg’s eyes were really bulging.
“I don’t perform the occasional HALO jump or ride sea sleds through rough oceans to fix their mistakes, only so these pencil necks can steal my wife from me while I’m out getting shot at or almost blown up so to save their hapless rears.”
Ashen, Peg tried to stand, then sat back down hard, then tried to stand again on wobbly legs. She didn’t know I did that sort of thing. Though it wasn’t classified, it took a lot to make me slip up that severely.
“Baby do you, ugh, are you …”
“I plan things. The guys and gals with talent and equipment are important, so are their missions. Missions that I design, so sometimes I go along to explain or fix things that go wrong. It’s a lot like your experiment on your mission coming up. Sometimes the mission is getting me somewhere so I can look directly at something for myself, there is a fair amount of that. I do not go in the field most of the time, but I do go a fair amount of the time. And I don’t risk life and limb to keep the guys that infect our government from their little ivory towers safe, so they can mess up my personal world. They will find themselves inside a rocket funnel on thrust day before I allow that.”
Peg swallowed hard at the mere idea.
“Baby, Gary, you said my experiment could be done from the ground. I’m sure every department has its secrets. Is that true?”
“Not for your department, as you call it, but I understand our telemetry abilities and our rocket capabilities: we could launch your experiment on satellites with sounding rockets from Wallops and you could run it from there or probably more conveniently and easier from Goddard, maybe even Hopkins. But as currently configured it would be more expensive that way. And with the priority launch list as it currently stands, your experiment would never get done. A decade from now though, that is probably how your experiment will be handled.”
She was about to be sick, “Then why am I going on a rocket?”
“We are launching to the ISS anyway. It makes sense to cram the launch as full as possible with whatever will give us a return on investment. As far as that ROI, it’s just what you said, we really do need the data and you are the ultimate trouble shooter for this experiment. The data will be most pure, being gathered in orbit instead of in the atmosphere. We can compensate for obtaining the data through the atmosphere, it’s a simple equation, but there are more variables. Sending you up eliminates that step and those variables. And besides we don’t want to globally broadcast our exact capabilities. Let me just say we are doing more out of Vandenberg than pretty much anything at the ISS, only it’s all intelligence and military.
“Peggy, you are right that humanity needs to push out there. What I do defends and hopefully preserves the potential of doing things like landing on the moon or Mars. What I do is dirty, and hopefully keeps things stable enough that you get to take your shot one day. And when you get that shot you will lift up all of humanity. Who knows, because of what you do maybe one day people like me can crawl out of the slime. Don’t you get it, Peggy? The things you do validate the things I do, just as you validate me. You give me hope. Hope for our species and hope for me personally. Peggy, I don’t know what I would do without you, or even exactly who I would be without you now.”
Peggy acted as if she wanted to cry, for reasons both good and bad.
“I love what I have been able to do. So far, I have not been put in a morally compromising situation. Well, not for me and my morals, though I’m sure we could dig up any number of folks who would question both. If the job was to do something underhanded, it’s been to do it to someone reprehensible. So, I have enjoyed doing it. It’s like taking out the trash, someone needs to do it, though it would be a tough thing to develop a sense of pride over. But I am so proud of you, and what you do Peg, and why you are doing it!”
I was demonstrative about the last sentence. Peg beamed out of her worried face, though she still saw the pain in mine. She knew there was something left unsaid.
“Peggy, you are doing good and you should go. Surely you can see this is a really messed up situation. I can’t for the life of me understand why you did this without me.”
“They told me I had to decide today.”
I felt my head drop. It was from that position I spoke, “No one, not even astronauts, have to decide on medical treatment without consulting family physicians and damn it, family. Don’t fall for that again. Did you even try to call me?”
Peg suddenly looked away crying. She struggled and calmed down, drying her face with the back of her arm. Damn it. Damn her. What the hell! At least she now understood she messed up badly. I made my voice more neutral. It was just impossible to take the disappointment out entirely.
“So, you want the more powerful long-term injectables. So, what do they need, six weeks I guess, to figure out if they are working?”
“They want as many planned periods as possible to study before launch and we are just four months to lift off.” She had this far-away look as she said it.
“So, if you do choose that route, how long do we have to be together before I lose the functional company of my wife?”
“I will be here for you.”
“Baby, you will be tired and exhausted. Does that sound like the prescription for keeping our close connection intact when you have artificially removed your desire? Then we remove the physical intimacy, and then we remove you. I would like to think I will still have the physical even if I have to lead because you are tired, you respond so well, and sex has always been a stress reliever for you. A hard day of training, a night of study, yeah, a passionate roll in the hay to cut the tension and reconnect with your supporting loving man, because that’s all the time we will have really. Because with that lone exception you will keep your nose in a book: I know you. Our playtime will let me know you still care about me, just by your taking that abbreviated time out to be intimate with me. And I won’t let you down. I will cut your tension so you can sleep. Bank on it!”
I tried to give my most earnest smile. But Peggy was grey, silent. That tore thigs further. I thought, ‘Sorry Peggy,’ I was going to do just what I told her; I was indeed going to be at NASA tomorrow. Those guys who badgered her were going to pay. She had to learn from the mistake she made talking to them today. I was going to connect the dots and make her see it. And that last volley had landed with explosive result.
“But if we go monkeying around with your balances and hormones it’s going to blow the whole thing up. You won’t be interested in being intimate, and you will be so focused that you won’t even think of me. Hell, we have already seen some of that, and it hasn’t turned out very well has it?”
Peggy didn’t answer, there was some other shoe that had to drop. She probably didn’t want me making a fuss in there tomorrow, but she had to understand that those folks don’t have much if anything to do with the mission. Ah well, can’t make an omelet …
“If on top of all that these chemicals mess with your balance making you moody and emotional, typical side effects of this sort of hormonal treatment until you arrive at your new norm. How many times do we flip the coin trying to change the dosage or massage this or that chemically before we get a side effect that makes you hot for me again? Well never, because you told me your desire will be suppressed. So, it’s all wasted time that is detrimental to us as a couple, no matter how you slice it.”
She was shaking “Sooo … you don’t want to touch me?”
“Hell baby, that’s my line. You’re doing this to me. Don’t even think about reversing our roles. My plan was to jack our sex up until the day you left. Your contraceptives are fine and well tested, you don’t need a boost there. If you aren’t getting pregnant now with as much as we screw around, you aren’t going to when we up the dosage and your stress levels, so this new treatment is hooey. Really, we are talking about you not wanting to touch me, nor wanting me to touch you.
“And worst, you know how you are worried that if we shut off your cycle maybe it won’t come back right, and we will have trouble conceiving later? Well, I feel like that about passion. You have never known a time when you were not passionate for or about me. You have never known a time when our passion for each other did not reach an overwhelming need. What happens if we shut that off and you learn to live beside me like a disinterested roommate? Will the passion ever come back? And what of my passion for you, knowing you would do that to me? Do we make a clean repair of that after you are back on earth? Can we?
“Being honest Honey, altering our passion scares me to death! I don’t want to touch that option with a ten-foot pole. If we are going that far I vote for real results and shutting down your cycle which is much more assured of having the desired effect of non-pregnancy than just messing with your hormones and mind. Of the three options: the long-term injectable I vote as the worst option.”
She gasped again, looked nervous and let her hands flop in her lap where she stared at them.
“Sorry. I’m Mr. Practical, I have to be in order to do what I do, or we fail and maybe people die. So, I see no reason to be sacrificed on the pyre of space flight: my martyrdom simply isn’t needed. No Peg, if you take those drugs on top of stress and exhaustion you won’t want to even consider a dick inside of you, not even mine. And the last real measure of relief and comfort that I can give you, or frankly that you can give me, or we can share until after you come home, will be gone.”
“What do you mean by “not even” your dick?” Peg sensed I had something else in mind.
“Well Babe, I hope mine is your favorite. Yet I find it really weird, and I wasn’t going to bring this up, but this is the missing conversation I had with Kathy: why do you need contraceptives in space? I keep hearing to regulate your cycle, well it’s already regulated. Now you are telling me that the time before launch will be more stressful and hectic than after launch. So, you will have a worse chance of getting pregnant before you launch. In fact, you only have a job for half the time they want to keep you up there. So, you are going to have too much time to think and not enough to do up there for months. Theoretically your stress levels will drop after your mission objectives are completed. They must know that too.”
I stopped. I hadn’t wanted to get into this. Then again, I never expected her to make a decision for me without consulting me, especially one that went wildly against me and our best interests.
Peg looked at me apprehensive yet needing an answer, “Baby, connect the dots for me. What are you saying?”
“This is playing out like you having some sort of affair.”
“Oh my God!”
Her eyes were huge, she shook perhaps partly in anger: that was not going to make me back down. I had done nothing to her except voice my concerns, she had taken overt action against me.
Despite any flash of anger, I leaned in for emphasis.
“I’m lassoing up your dots here Honey. You want to cut me off, even before you have to. Then you go up with up to three guys. You only have serious work for half the time you are locked in with them. You have a huge sex drive and you can’t go that long without the physical intimacy you have grown to expect. You will be valiant, but six months? You’ll lose your mind: you will be red hot; it points to a crash and burn. You won’t know what the hell happened until afterwards. I have been petrified that through no fault of your own I get a tainted wife back, one that has been with another man.”
“How can you think that?” The tears welled from anger and dismay. Yet she saw I was truly in fear of it. It was a reality I saw, not something to throw in her face after she slighted me.
“I’m explaining that. Peg, if you heard that a wife cut off her husband for sex, had no desire for him, but went on super contraceptives so she could work in a tight intimate space with three men who were also at the top of their collective profession, what conclusion might you come to? Be objective.”
Peg became some sort of sea foam color and stayed that way.
“You are my wife. I am supposed to think of the bad scenarios in order to protect you. So, what do you make of a wife cutting her husband off from that husbandly duty as well as ceasing intimacy with him? How about taking the advice of others to heart while avoiding her husband? How about treating her husband in ways that show more contempt than respect? How about keeping secrets and making decisions that cut against him but allow her to profit in her own estimation? And what do you make of a wife not only circumnavigating her husband’s protection, but no longer letting him function as her protector?”
A low rumbling groan emanated from somewhere deep inside Peggy, as she finally saw that was exactly what she had done. Whether she intended it or not, these weren’t debatable points, they were a list of facts.
“You decided without even running it past me, little less asking my input, to cut me off from your passion. You say I can have your body, but basically you won’t be participating. I don’t even know if your body will respond enough for lubrication. Meaning I will be training you to be physically uncomfortable having sex with me in the future, while simultaneously you remove me as an object of passion in your mind.
“Baby, I am not accusing you of wanting to fool around, not at all, but I am still the worried cut off husband who is being wounded for no discernable reason.
“Peggy, revisit the female being locked in an office building with three guys for six months scenario again. You can’t tell me that you would not be worried for her, her marriage, and her poor tortured husband’s mind. I mean there aren’t just coincidences with the story, there are direct parallels. You would have to want to ignore them not to see them.”
Peg went through several expressions, anger was still one: no one likes to be accused, but my tone was not accusatorial, rather highly concerned. She was pensive as she actually looked at the pattern and saw it for herself. She was frustrated the pattern actually existed. Then fear as the recognition dawned that indeed there were a whole host of parallels there.
“Babe, I don’t think that you are conspiring to cheat on me. If you were, you would cover your tracks a lot better than this, but you are exhibiting tunnel vision concerning your flight. The same folks giving you extra work to do now before the flight, are the ones telling you what your health choices are and are rushing them. It sure seems like you are being manipulated. Then again, I am paid to be paranoid. I stopped believing in coincidence a long time ago.”
Peggy tried to respond but my last sentence seemed to negate whatever point she was about to make. She saw I was almost desperate to make her understand. The anger was drowning out as a sick sympathy was replacing it.
“It seems to me that if your body builds a resistance to whatever new drug they want to give you, or if your friends up there can get to it and switch it, or tamper with your future injectables, or if it is an injectable that breaks down with cosmic rays, or has a shelf life, that you could end up there without either protection or the chemicals holding back your sex drive. I don’t know how frank you have been with your doctors, if your strong procreative drive has ever been entered into your official records, your circumstances could be altered in such a way as to set you up. Whether it happened by chance or deception, you still wouldn’t have a chance. You won’t know what hit you till after your hit.”
“I have made sure that NASA, that the agency, knows everything about me physically, that I know,” she spoke softly but blushed crimson. “Gary, I get hit on a lot. I do. Never once has another man even tempted me. This may be the absolute wrong thing to say, but I pray it’s the best thing to put you at ease. You are very fit, but I am constantly surrounded by successful extremely fit military men. There are a ton of female “buttons” to push in my everyday environment. Fit young men, success, command, power, men that have excelled to a point of surpassing all but a fraction of one percent of others in their branches of service or chosen endeavor. Hell, there are even uniforms! Some women melt at the sight of a uniform. Gary, I react to NONE of those buttons. The only man I want is you.”
“Peg, I just want you to understand the patterns that are already manifest, that’s all. I don’t think for a second that you want another man or want to sample, or play, or see this adventure as any sort of opportunity to try something new. But there is more than a small chance that it could still happen if you are up there without anything inhibiting a strong drive. And if that happens and the percentages play out … well if it happens you will be beside yourself. You will feel terrible and you know what? I will have to pick up those fucking pieces too.”
Peggy’s face went blank realizing that’s exactly how matters would play out if she cheated. I would have to manage my pain and hers if we were to stay together. I watched it turn her stomach.
“Additionally, you are putting me in the worst position possible to do that for both of us because it is all so easily avoidable. If it happens after this conversation, it will be in the light of that you knew what could happen. We would both know that you never had to choose against me, but still did. You don’t think any of that would make me doubt your sincerity or your desire for me?”
Peggy seemed very desperate. Why? All I needed her to do was make the right choices. The biggest one was just talking to me about the choices before she made them. I wasn’t even trying to lead her there on her own any longer; I was telling her directly.
“Gary, what can I do to give a demonstration of my, faith, my fidelity, what? Tell me, I will do it!” She grabbed for my arms.
“I have laid out my great fear: that you will hurt both of us. You are already giving credence to pressures that would damage us. I don’t see demonstrations of faith Peggy, what I see are demonstrations of pulling away from me. You are making decisions against our marriage that simply don’t need to be made. You seem to make them because you are giving our marriage no consideration.”
My wife looked helpless, but not angry, in fact there was a ton of guilt right under the veneer of fear. She saw what I was saying. I found it disturbing that she was trying to find a path away from it instead of slamming into it head on. That didn’t sound like Peggy, she normally charted a path for what she wanted and headed off at throttle up.
“Peggy, asking me for one thing to do for atonement is a pipedream; I needed you to start thinking like a woman in love again.”
She recoiled at my remarks. A gesture all the more confusing as it was not said in anger. Besides, why recoil? I had just done what she told me to do. Pipedream or not I told her to start acting like a woman in love. Something she claimed to be already, recoiling from the idea was hardly in keeping.
“Look, I forgive you already, but if you make decisions that make your ultimate fall unavoidable, even though you may not want that fall, you are culpable. If you set yourself up where that fall is practically a fait accompli, then you aren’t innocent, even though you didn’t want the outcome. It’s like deciding to drive drunk and being in a wreck. You didn’t want to wreck, but you did everything possible to bring one about.
“As I am not allowed to believe in coincidences, I have to step up and admit this is more, this has seemed fishy all along. I make my living and keep people alive based on my fish-smell-meter and this is really bad. Every additional happenstance can no longer be taken as happenstance: it’s simply more evidence.”
I’m pretty sure I looked blindsided, dismayed, confused, and betrayed.
“Oh Gary …” she looked away. This was eating at her.
“Peg, I love you. I trust you, but this is setting yourself up to fail like employing a newly reformed alcoholic as bartender the day he comes out of rehab. You need the sex right up to launch, I mean it, six months is too long! I didn’t think three months was going to work.”
“Were you going to throw me out if this … premonition came to pass?”
That worried me. I thought that was dismissive, she was upset so perhaps I read the use of the word incorrectly. The parallels were there damn it, there was no denying it.
“No, I was going to live with the scar and the pain the rest of my life because I want you. I was going to suck it up, that was my plan because you simply HAVE to go on that rocket! You must in order to be true to yourself, but Peg, you don’t have to betray me to do it. So, let’s make sure you don’t. If you won’t simply increase the contraceptive dose you are employing now, I want you to reconsider the shutdown of your reproductive system. You don’t have to be untrue to me to be true to yourself.”
My voice was shaky by the end and I found that embarrassing. Peg looked sickly again as she saw it play out. She was tearing my pride away.
“What? Why?” Peggy was confused, and even more upset than I expected.
“Because if you are already going radical for the one-third solution, go full in radical and shut yourself down. Just think about it.”
She seemed to be mulling it, yet was strangely sad.
“Or what’s better: let’s walk this whole thing back to practical and do it right. We should not have to go without each other for that long. I love you and you love me. Let’s show everybody that and stop this opportunity for manipulation here and now, before it’s used to harm you and us, and anyone who comes after you.”
That struck a couple of cords which made Peggy shake again.
“What do you say, babe?” How could she not at least consider it? Hell, she had just asked me for a demonstration she could make to reassure me. Considering that I had just bared my soul, and given her my greatest fear, I was offering the olive branch of olive branches.
She could not look at me as she began sobbing, “Garrry, I-I already made the decision.”
“I know. We will tell them we have changed our minds tomorrow. Really, it’s no problem I CAN get us in to see them – and their bosses. Why are you so upset, isn’t that good news?” I didn’t understand. My question wasn’t excited or panicked, I just needed verification.
“Gary … I had the first shot today — already! It was the longer-term higher dosage one: the option you hate!”
She wept like a kicked dog. She turned away from my eyes. My lips were parted, at least I was not completely slack jawed, I knew I was just staring at her. If she was expecting me to console her, she was disappointed, but not more disappointed than I was. My reaction surprised even me. I didn’t like to be worse than courteous as a bottom resort with Peggy. Bad guys were a different story. This however, was pain and shock manifesting, pure and simple, jet fuel for sorrow.
I couldn’t think, the words came right from my heart, “You’ve already fucked yourself up?! W-Without even talking to me? You — you … sold me down the river? That … that can’t be.”
That last was choked out, all of it was blurted, none of it was planned. I don’t like not being in control of myself, few things cause that reaction. This was the worst.
Peg was full out bawling now, perhaps pretty poor choice of words. Or perhaps a bullseye. I had never expected her to make me doubt her. Once doubt is introduced who knows where it ends. I was scared of having an idea infect her mind, now one had infected mine.
“Can you switch tomorrow?” I knew the answer, but I had to try, I had to think quickly now.
“And send my bios all over, only four months before launch?”
Wow, her response was in anger. There was no slip up in that. That response was full of what I saw as nothing but a rotten attitude.
“Yes! BECAUSE it’s four fucking long months away! Or rather four “NO-fucking” months. Four months with my WIFE being at best a blowup doll! You didn’t even call me! If this had to happen, you HAD to let me decide to do it to myself. I have NEVER chosen against you or your mission! I never would have!”
She cried out, “I’m sorry!”
“Why? You made this choice! This must be what you wanted! You knew exactly what you were doing. This basically cuts me off for ten months. And you didn’t bother to even talk to me. How could you? I can’t … I simply can’t believe … I never would have believed you were capable of this level of disloyalty. Hell, it’s not just that, this is an act of contempt towards me.”
Such sorrow as I have never known flooded into me and I searched for some other way to explain it. I quietly admitted the only categorization that fit. And the quiet made it echo, “My God honey, it’s, it’s betrayal.” I was beyond shocked, I was blown away.
I know the words were cold. But I did, and do, believe them to this day. Honest appraisal: what she had done was atrocious. I would never do the like to her. Peg knew that was true. She also saw I was not poorly using words in my dismay and anger: I truly believed what I had said.
“Wait,” I blurted, now two bad ideas were merging into a bigger really bad idea, like toxic chocolate with diseased peanut butter forming one horrific taste that kills great together. Peg tried to listen to me through her sobs.
“Did I see grocery bags?” I turned confirming grocery bags were indeed on the kitchen counter. “You knew all this; knew you hadn’t consulted me about any of it. Then you went grocery shopping on top of it all, further delaying notifying me I have been put on the shelf?”
She nodded, her blood running cold as she saw me put something together. She froze, even the tears stopped. She barely uttered an involuntary, “Oh no.”
I began a monolog, “Well, let’s see how complete this sell out is.” I went to the bags. I wasn’t even careful as I dug through each bag sending the contents over my shoulder and far away, so they could not contaminate the evidence. I prayed I would not find what I knew I would.
Finally, on the third bag I found more household products than food, a particular shaped box was in my fingers. Now I stopped frozen. I looked at the bag the same way a fisherman who was pulling in a marlin looks when he realizes he is also pulling in a shark who has ahold of his would-be trophy: the dream was ruined. But not only ruined, matters were worse: they were suddenly dangerously bad.
Peg stopped breathing. I actually heard her whisper, “Oh God help me.”
I dared not look into the bag. I was working on feel. I withdrew the package. I didn’t want to look at it, it would confirm my world was not what I thought, that perhaps it never was what I thought.
When I did remove my hand from the bag, still clutching the terrible contents, it seemed like my hand could not drop it. I could shake it and still it would not fly away, as if the terrible contents had grafted themselves to me, their realty rewriting my entire married life.
I let my eyes drop to my hand. I emitted a loud noise; it sounded like the first part of a sob then replaced by a roar. My hand shook. I stared at the shaking box of condoms it held. I heard the loud sound but didn’t register what it was. My wife still on the floor since she knelt some time ago, recoiled and pushed herself against the wall. I came out of my fugue just enough to realize the box of condoms was still in my left hand, but the kitchen table was no longer near my right. The wall to my right was shattered and the table was demolished at its foot. Apparently, I had reached down and thrown it. Wow, good toss! That must have been what the sonic boom was, that or my marriage exploding.
I couldn’t help but think that this was the same dose of anger that got me home that day everything went wrong in that far away country. The day I had killed in order to make it back to Peggy. I had to get home to Peggy. There was nothing more important than Peggy!
Now these new bastards were trying to take me from Peggy. I had been extremely lucky that day not so terribly long ago, maybe not so lucky now. Now it was Peggy taking herself away from me. In a staggering display of asymmetry, apparently there were things more important to her than me. She had joined forces with them against me. My validation, my base, my stability, and my happiness were all simply gone.
The air in my lungs suddenly felt leaden. All the energy just flowed out of me. I glanced at my wife who was still astonished sitting on the floor to my left; she saw it. I could read it in her expression: I had transformed from a man who was powerful, who could make lightning bolts come out of my eyes, into the saddest clown in the world.
Quietly, more of a groan than speech, I asked of the groceries she had purchased, “So which bag has my damn cock cage in it?”
Peggy was transfixed. Not only by what she had seen me do, or seen me melt into, not just the question I had just asked, but knowing everything her husband had to feel in order to ever ask a terrible thing like that of his cherished wife. She heard a slapping sound in front of her and glanced to see that I had finally dropped the box of condoms.
She looked up at me still in the clutches of raw astonishment, I wasn’t looking at her, I was just gazing straight ahead, having no focus at all.
My voice was dry and raw as if I had been yelling at a sporting event for hours, “Well, I don’t think I can get it up enough to fill those anymore, so your plan to cut me off has worked better than you expected. Hell, maybe you should have my job: you just wrecked your opponent. That was devastating work, thorough, complete. Bravo Peg.
“So, uh, maybe take those damn things to work or, yeah sure, take ’em with you up there: give ’em to the Russians. The three Russian men you will be cohabitating with. Because that’s what they will tell you when they find it out. I’ve already confirmed it. Oh, the irony of that. You never even thought of that. How the hell could you ever agree to go with Russians? Or maybe they are ones who turned you against me.”
“G-Gary …”
“I used to have a wife and now she goes and shacks up with three Russians. Hah, in my world the Russians still try to kill me. It was one of their South American lackies that gave me the scar on my chest, babe. How about that? It looks like they will get the job done this time. Somewhere between now and ten months from now they’ll finish the job.”
This revelation seemed to flatten her. It was the last secret I was holding out. She didn’t know exactly what I did for a living, but the premise was all too clear. And so was the cause: if she had been involved or considering me or my feelings, or my considerations, or my circumstances at all, the connection of an all-Russian crew with the wife of an alphabet named intelligence agency analyst would have bowled her over.
Coincidence? Hell, she never looked at it or me, never bothered; I wasn’t worth the time compared to her precious space flight. This had betrayal or trap written all over it. She would figure out the obvious consequence soon, now that she finally had her eyes open.
And I had never sold her out. Not once. I took the consequences for her, for us, for love. I was a fool.
We stayed there for a bit. I don’t really know how long it was before I came out of my nightmare enough to be capable of motion.
“Well, I guess I can say it one more time considering that’s the tree I have been nailed to …” I started walking, “I love you, Peg.”
In a quiet voice she replied, “Gary I lo…”
I rounded on her, perhaps the last of the lightning bolts were there in my eyes, “Stop. Stop. Stop! You don’t have to do that. I know very well where I stand now: it’s crystal clear. It’s just a hell of an adjustment. But you don’t need to say it anymore, I won’t make either of us into hypocrites on top of everything else. I will still back you. Heck, I actually do love you. Don’t worry, I will make sure you get on that rocket, after all, it is the thing you love more than anything else. So even if you have pneumonia, bubonic plague, and the fucking clap, I will make sure you are on that goddam rocket.”
I felt an involuntary shudder. I wasn’t sure what to do, finally I shrugged my shoulders and walked to the kitchen door, opened it, and walked outside. I kept walking without even closing it.