Part 6 (1/2)
The next day, some of the wives flew down with Betty for the post-flight press conference at Patrick Air Force Base, located just south of Cape Canaveral. Someone snapped Betty's picture standing next to Gus's other true love, his Corvette, which was waiting for him on the runway. With her skinny little legs crossed at the ankle, she clutched her new raffia purse and held her boys' hands. She was wearing a carnation corsage with a red, white, and blue patriotic ribbon pinned to her lapel and a gold pin designed especially for the Mercury wives in the shape of a seven inside the circle of , the astronomical symbol for Mercury. She felt good, dolled up in one of her snazzy new outfits. She waved excitedly when she saw Gus emerge from the NASA Gulfstream. Taken to a little waiting area, where Gus was being fussed over, she stole one peck on the cheek before Gus was ushered back to a receiving line to greet the bra.s.s.
During the ceremony, under a tent set up on the steaming tarmac at Patrick, Betty felt her anger rising. She didn't know whether it was because the reporters wanted to blame Gus for his hatch blowing, or because NASA seemed to be only halfheartedly defending her husband, their least media-savvy astronaut, but she could see through their pomp.
Afterward, NASA honored the Grissoms by giving them a VIP beach house at Patrick for the weekend. There, Betty opened the refrigerator to find it stocked with bacon, eggs, and milk. Did she have to play perfect housewife today of all days? ”What do these people think I am going to do?” she asked Gus. ”I am not going to cook!”
”Well, you won't have to cook much,” said Gus with a sheepish half grimace. ”I'll be going back to work at eight tomorrow. It's a regular workday.”
The worst was yet to come when Gus broke it to her that there would be no White House visit. He tried to shrug it off, saying that the president was probably busy. He had a lot on his plate. He was still dealing with the fallout from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Betty was not buying it. She knew it was because of that lost, very expensive s.p.a.ce capsule. Not getting a ceremony in the Rose Garden was terrible for Gus's reputation. All it would have taken was a smile from the president, a flash of that Kennedy wit with a line about getting wet, and all would've been forgiven in the eyes of America. But silence was d.a.m.ning. Betty had wanted so much to have her own moment alone with Jackie, and she felt humiliated having to tell the other wives that she and Gus were not to be given the special honors Louise and Alan had. She was heartbroken.
Soon she was fuming. That stocked fridge really pushed her over the edge. She looked around this rat-shack that was supposedly for Very Important Persons and pointed out to Gus that there wasn't even a TV for the kids, and the beach was across the highway. ”I'd have been ready to commit suicide if I'd have stayed in that place all day waiting for him to come back home,” Betty later reflected. She could call one of the girls from over at the Holiday Inn, where the rest of the astronauts and their wives were staying and probably having a ball, and say, ”Somebody come get me!” But how would that look? She was supposed to be Mrs. Queen Astronaut for the weekend.
”I'm not staying here,” she told Gus. ”You call the Holiday and see if we can get a room.” Gus got right on the phone and got Betty and the boys a room.
A couple of hours later, Betty was sitting by the side of the pool, still seething. ”Hey,” Gus called to Betty. He had just finished revolving-door interviews with the press. ”Get dressed. You're coming with me.” Betty didn't smile, but she got dressed. Someone volunteered to watch the kids at the pool, and Gus ushered her into his Corvette.
He drove her out toward the Cape. They got to the checkpoint, and Gus didn't even crack a smile at the guard. He said, ”You know who I am and we're going through.” The guard didn't argue. Gus took Betty up to see the giant t.i.tan rocket, which was being prepared for the two-man Gemini flights that would follow Project Mercury. Betty got to go up the gantry elevator and touch the t.i.tan's smooth metallic body.
Gus also screened for her the raw footage of his rescue mission, and it was terrible. Betty felt worse than ever, hearing Gus narrate the drama of flailing around in the choppy water in his silver s.p.a.ce suit, about to drown. ”h.e.l.l, I'm waving and they're waving back, and I'm saying, 'I want you to pick me up!'” he narrated for Betty. The helicopter over him had been blowing the water hard, and his head went under the waves a few times. He worried that the sharks would get him.
Betty knew Gus had carried a couple of dime rolls in the leg pocket of his s.p.a.ce suit, which he and Betty had planned for him to hand out as souvenirs to their family and friends back in Mitch.e.l.l, Indiana, and the boys' cla.s.smates. Gus had regretted the added weight with each swell from the helicopter. Betty knew he was a swimmer, but not a very strong one.
Finally a second helicopter had come to Gus's rescue and let down a harness. Gus hadn't even managed to get in it frontward, just let himself be lifted up and away. In the helicopter he had enough strength left to grab a Mae West life vest, so called because it made the wearer look big-chested.
Back at the Holiday Inn, the nightmare replayed through Betty's mind at the pool as she stared into the water. Betty realized her husband had actually thought he was going to die out there. She herself had never learned to swim.
Primly Stable
The United States was still behind Russia in the s.p.a.ce race. It had been a year now since cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth. ”I didn't see G.o.d,” the Russian told the world upon his landing. When he posed for pictures in a veritable love embrace with the bearded revolutionary Fidel Castro in his army fatigues, Gagarin's bright smile was said to have accelerated the Cold War.
After two manned suborbital flights, both deemed a success despite Gus's blown hatch, NASA was confident that it was time to send a man to orbit the Earth. It would take more thrusting power than the Redstone rockets that had sent up Alan and Gus. They would have to use the dreaded Atlas rocket, the one that had blown up before the wives' eyes as they watched the test firing at Cocoa Beach. John Glenn was ready to saddle the beast and ride it to the stars.
America couldn't have hoped for a better choice. His sunny, freckled face was sure to eclipse the smiles of those communists. As for seeing G.o.d in s.p.a.ce? NASA was confident that with John Glenn that would not be a problem. The man taught Sunday school in his spare time, a rare counterpoint to the hard-living, hard-playing astronaut life. He saw the grace of G.o.d in everything, especially in Annie. Annie was simply lovely-dark-haired with her wide, toothy Girl Scout grin. (One couldn't help but picture her in the sage green uniform, badge sash, and matching socks.)
Scott Carpenter, John's backup for his upcoming Friends.h.i.+p 7 mission, was less tightly wound than John, and took it upon himself to help his friend let loose a little. They enjoyed eating out at a Polynesian-themed restaurant in Cocoa Beach. They cruised the Strip in Scott's Shelby Cobra with its s.e.xy metalflake blue paint job. John was also putting his church choir tenor to good use, sweetly singing while Scott strummed his guitar.
Meanwhile, the wives got busy on Annie, offering to help in whatever way they could. The post-flight press conference on the lawn, by now a necessary ritual, was something all of the wives dreaded. None more than Annie. She could get through short, practiced phrases such as ”Fine,” ”Thank you,” ”Please do,” but she couldn't improvise without stumbling over her words. Annie really couldn't even get through a complete sentence except when she was singing, and she could hardly sing to the press. She was incredibly independent and self-sufficient in most aspects of her life, but she often had to rely on others when called upon to speak. She dubbed her daughter Lyn her ”telephone surrogate.” Lyn had been making her mother's doctor and beauty parlor appointments since she was a little girl.
To keep spirits high and light, all the wives had their ways of dealing with the press. A favorite was the comic skit Rene came up with: a one-woman show that she called ”Primly Stable,” starring the perfect astronaut wife Primly Stable, married to her astronaut, Squarely, with their little d.i.c.kie and Mary and dog Smiley. The Stables were suspiciously like the Glenns-who had two perfect children, Dave and Lyn, and a dog named Chipper.
Rene usually played all the parts, changing her voice accordingly. Holding her fist up to her lips as a microphone, she launched into her routine playing reporter Nancy the Newscaster, who bore a wicked resemblance to Nancy d.i.c.kerson (the one who had accosted Betty).
”We're here outside the trim, modest suburban home of Squarely Stable, the famous astronaut who has just completed his historic mission, and we have with us his attractive wife, Primly Stable,” began Rene, playing Nancy to the hilt. ”Primly Stable, you must be happy, proud, and thankful at this moment.”
”Yes, Nancy, that's true,” Rene's ever-so-proper Primly said tentatively (or sometimes another wife would play this role). ”I'm happy and proud and thankful at this moment.”
”Tell us, Primly Stable-may I call you Primly?”
”Certainly, Nancy.”