have to sneak cookies in through the lobby).
The possibilities for extracurricular activities made Marge Slayton, for one, see double. God knows what her Deke was nailing down in Cocoa Beach. What was so top-secret that the Cape, the actual rocket launch site, was declared “off-limits to wives”? Who knew what went on at the top-secret Cape with the astronauts’ secretaries and nurses? Marge was no dummy. She’d been a secretary on an air base in Germany. That’s how she’d met Deke!
Marge decided enough was enough, and she finally gave Deke an ultimatum. “Tell them I’m coming to wash your damn Ban-Lon shirts. That I’m looking for a job. That I’m your girlfriend. That ought to do it!”
Deke drove out to the Cape and shot the breeze with the guards at the gate while Marge hid on the backseat floor underneath a couple of blankets. Recounting her adventure to the wives afterward, she said, “I was having a nicotine fit, and I just about jumped up and asked those guards for a cigarette.”
She didn’t want to get Deke in trouble for breaking the rules, or to do anything to jeopardize his chance to be the first man in space. After she popped up her head, she realized there wasn’t much to see at the Cape, only scrub grass and a couple of lonely launch pads, where she hoped Deke would make history. Suddenly, she looked over and saw Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the appropriately named flight director, who would have no small part in making the big decision of who would go up first. He stared right at her. Marge could have just died.
On another occasion, the wives were treated to a sporting boat trip down the coast to ooh and ahh over technological marvels created for their husbands’ journeys, like the green dye marker that would show the rescue crews of frogmen where their husbands’ “can” had landed. Its brilliant color was now spreading across the waves. After this fun fact was pointed out to them, perfectly bred Jo, emboldened by the company of the wives, asked, “Is that how we’ll know where to throw the wreath?” She made them all laugh through their fears.
The grand finale was getting to watch the test firing of the Atlas rocket, which would first be manned by Enos the chimpanzee, then by their husbands for the orbital flights. It was an ominous, gray, overcast day. Everyone on the beach craned their necks to see the magnificent bird rise in the distance from its launch pad on the Cape on a red-hot thrust of flame.
The girls looked on in amazement. Then kaboom! The rocket exploded like a bomb.
“Oh, thank God the monkey wasn’t in that one,” cracked one of them.
The wives knew NASA was looking not only at how their husbands flew, but how they lived at home. Alan Shepard offered an easy scapegoat, comedian Will Dana’s joke being if he had slept with as many women as he was rumored to, “his dick would have fallen off.” Besides, why would Alan want to squash the rumors? His reputation for astronomical virility might even help him outshine the competition! Wasn’t riding a rocket the biggest test of manhood around?
Still, the wives felt terrible for Louise. They called her Saint Louise, not because the Christian Scientist was churchy like organ-playing Annie, but because she was so serene and ladylike. She smiled so genuinely; often she seemed to glow from within.
Finally, in their own version of their husbands’ Kona Kai Séance, the wives broached the subject during a get-together at Jo’s house. They asked Louise if she knew what her husband was doing. It was so obvious. How could she turn a blind eye to Alan’s constant fooling around?
Louise had to catch her breath before she composed her answer—“Because I’m the one he really loves.”
The wives thought it was just awful. Louise was in total denial, lost in her own world and glued to her great consolation and time-passer, needlepoint. She would sit for hours sewing light yellow into the depths of brown,
The possibilities for extracurricular activities made Marge Slayton, for one, see double. God knows what her Deke was nailing down in Cocoa Beach. What was so top-secret that the Cape, the actual rocket launch site, was declared “off-limits to wives”? Who knew what went on at the top-secret Cape with the astronauts’ secretaries and nurses? Marge was no dummy. She’d been a secretary on an air base in Germany. That’s how she’d met Deke!
Marge decided enough was enough, and she finally gave Deke an ultimatum. “Tell them I’m coming to wash your damn Ban-Lon shirts. That I’m looking for a job. That I’m your girlfriend. That ought to do it!”
Deke drove out to the Cape and shot the breeze with the guards at the gate while Marge hid on the backseat floor underneath a couple of blankets. Recounting her adventure to the wives afterward, she said, “I was having a nicotine fit, and I just about jumped up and asked those guards for a cigarette.”
She didn’t want to get Deke in trouble for breaking the rules, or to do anything to jeopardize his chance to be the first man in space. After she popped up her head, she realized there wasn’t much to see at the Cape, only scrub grass and a couple of lonely launch pads, where she hoped Deke would make history. Suddenly, she looked over and saw Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the appropriately named flight director, who would have no small part in making the big decision of who would go up first. He stared right at her. Marge could have just died.
On another occasion, the wives were treated to a sporting boat trip down the coast to ooh and ahh over technological marvels created for their husbands’ journeys, like the green dye marker that would show the rescue crews of frogmen where their husbands’ “can” had landed. Its brilliant color was now spreading across the waves. After this fun fact was pointed out to them, perfectly bred Jo, emboldened by the company of the wives, asked, “Is that how we’ll know where to throw the wreath?” She made them all laugh through their fears.
The grand finale was getting to watch the test firing of the Atlas rocket, which would first be manned by Enos the chimpanzee, then by their husbands for the orbital flights. It was an ominous, gray, overcast day. Everyone on the beach craned their necks to see the magnificent bird rise in the distance from its launch pad on the Cape on a red-hot thrust of flame.
The girls looked on in amazement. Then kaboom! The rocket exploded like a bomb.
“Oh, thank God the monkey wasn’t in that one,” cracked one of them.
The wives knew NASA was looking not only at how their husbands flew, but how they lived at home. Alan Shepard offered an easy scapegoat, comedian Will Dana’s joke being if he had slept with as many women as he was rumored to, “his dick would have fallen off.” Besides, why would Alan want to squash the rumors? His reputation for astronomical virility might even help him outshine the competition! Wasn’t riding a rocket the biggest test of manhood around?
Still, the wives felt terrible for Louise. They called her Saint Louise, not because the Christian Scientist was churchy like organ-playing Annie, but because she was so serene and ladylike. She smiled so genuinely; often she seemed to glow from within.
Finally, in their own version of their husbands’ Kona Kai Séance, the wives broached the subject during a get-together at Jo’s house. They asked Louise if she knew what her husband was doing. It was so obvious. How could she turn a blind eye to Alan’s constant fooling around?
Louise had to catch her breath before she composed her answer—“Because I’m the one he really loves.”
The wives thought it was just awful. Louise was in total denial, lost in her own world and glued to her great consolation and time-passer, needlepoint. She would sit for hours sewing light yellow into the depths of brown,
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